H. Henry Williams

Five Oaks U: "Living Your Stengths & Finding Your Place"

Living Your Strengths & Finding Your Place (Featuring the StengthsFinder and S.H.A.P.E. Profiles)

Based on the Gallup StrengthsFinder inventory and S.H.A.P.E. (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, Experience), this class will enable you to discover your own distinctive blend of strengths and spiritual gifts and discern how God can use you! God has gifted each of us with unique talents, abilities, personalities, and experiences. Investing in and utilizing these allows us to fully experience God’s potential and understand our calling to serve Him with our unique strengths. What has God given you, and what is He asking you to do?

• Dates: Eight Weeks - Sundays, Sept. 25, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13
• Time: 9:30am
• Location: Woodbury Campus
• Instructor: Emily Johnson
• Cost: $15 per person
• Registration: Online by linking here.

Faculty

Emily Johnson has worked in higher education for eleven years, and is currently in the Registrar’s Office at St. Catherine University. She has her Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Bethel Seminary, and she particularly enjoys studying the Old Testament. Her husband, Scot, their two boys and their dog live in Oakdale. The Johnsons have attended Five Oaks for about three years. Emily’s top five strengths are: Achiever, Adaptability, Relator, Responsibility, Developer. She dreams of one day owning her own pie shop.

Bill Hybels and Loving "Enemies"

Here's the video of Hybel's GLS speaker change announcement from this week's message.

 

Summaries of All Summit Talks

Whether you attended the Summit or not, you might want to check out the summaries of the talks at the Willow Creek Association blog. If you attended, it's a great way to review your thoughts, next actions and big initiatives you want to take on in the near future.

Favorite Quotes from the Global Leadership Summit

Here are pastor and blogger Tony Morgan's favorite quotes from the sessions he attended. What do you think?

• “Are you naming, facing and resolving the problems that exist in your organization?” –Bill Hybels
• “If you can’t predict the future, create it.” –Len Schlesinger
• “Everyone is born an original, but sadly, most die as carbon copies.” –Cory Booker
• “If failure is not an option, then neither is success.” –Seth Godin
• “God doesn’t give you the faith to finish what he calls you to; he gives faith to start it.” –Steven Furtick
• “I’d rather deal with anger than apathy.” –Michelle Rhee
• “When your maturity is not strong enough to change something, add external structure.” –Henry Cloud

Five Oaks' Summit Video

You can still sign up for the Summit. We're up to 115 from Five Oaks who are going. If you missed this promo video with some of our folks talking about the video, please check it out. Contact the church office ([email protected]) for the special pricing for Five Oakers.

 

Getting Pumped Up for the Summit?

Five Oaks has it's largest group ever going to the Leadership Summit this year. Registrations stand now at 115! Here are some excerpts from a recent Fast Company article on the Leadership Summit that will surely get you pumped up (you can link to it here):

"Willow Creek offers a deep set of lessons about organizational life that I have not been able to learn anywhere else," says Babson College president and former Limited Brands COO Len Schlesinger, who has studied the church for nearly two decades, though he himself is Jewish. This year, he took several of his Babson colleagues to the summit, which has also attracted delegations from Best Buy, Chick-fil-A, and Toms Shoes. "The quality of the teaching is extraordinary," Schlesinger says. "The fact that Willow Creek is a church and the fact that it is evangelical mean that some people may have a great deal of difficulty with it, but they skip it at their loss."

"I have my four Es," [Jack] Welch says, referring to the four leadership qualities he looks for in executives: Someone who has energy; who energizes others; who has edge ("someone who can say yes or no decisively"); and who can execute. "Bill has them all, along with a strong P: passion. He's a winner. He could be running a company -- or a country."

For Toms Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, who spoke this year about his company's "conscious capitalism," the summit was also a learning experience. The highlight for him was Hybels's interview with Welch. "Welch talked about the dangers of the 'meeting after the meeting.' That was happening at Toms, and it's not anymore," Mycoskie says, citing a new daily senior-leadership meeting implemented in direct response to Welch's summit message."Bill Hybels talked about recruiting fantastic people and being bummed when they quit," Mycoskie continues. "That has affected our hiring process. Before, we were hiring as fast as possible. I've since told my HR director to take the extra month to make sure we're getting the right people."

The two-day summit schedule is carefully choreographed to balance secular voices with those of pastors. "If we filled all our sessions with the Jim Collinses and Jack Welches and did not have the faith leaders, the summit would go away in a year or two," Hybels says. "What has made this thing last is the mix: It's the blend of high-impact, God-honoring messages with savvy, street-smart, don't-spiritualize-everything lessons from business."

Batons, Facebook and Target

...and a leader that has hit it out of the park on all three.

I was invited to the celebration lunch for the Women's Ministry leaders yesterday. Two other guys were supposed to be there but they weren't able to come (I've launched an investigation of their excuses). I was the only man with about 25 women. That always makes me nervous, and I've come to the conclusion that it's biologically based. But in spite of being jumpy, I had a great time.

Jenna Friedman, who has run our Women's Ministry for this last year, passed the leadership baton to her successor, Dee Meyers. When Jenna took on Women's Ministry for this ministry year, she set out to find her successor from day one because she knew her husband (Brian) was going to be transferred this summer. It was fun to see this hand-off and to reflect on how Jenna had done something every good leader strives for--to develop and unleash leaders.

I also reflected on how Jenna exemplified two other leadership traits we've been trying to grow in at Five Oaks. For one, the use of social media for connecting people in ministry. She and her team are using Facebook and SoChurch so effectively to get the word out about what the ministry offers.

I also reflected on how we've been trying for a couple years now to develop more of what we call "targeted experiences" for our congregation. A targeted experience is a class or mininistry that targets a need or passion or interest of a group of people (usually not a large group). Too often we measure ministry success by large numbers coming out to an event. But what we need are more and more smaller groups of people that are serving, learning or building friendships around a common area of need, passion or interest. Again, Jenna and her team hit it out of the park this year.

So, way to go Jenna. Your legacy at Five Oaks will go beyond Women's Ministry. You've been a great example to us as a leader.

How to Start a Movement

Learn how to start a movement. Simple and fun to watch leadership lesson. This video is 3 minutes and 10 seconds long.

 

The Future is Now

Guess. How many of our senior highers are involved in helping lead our junior high Rush Hour on Sunday evenings? Three, six or nine?

How many of our senior highers are helping lead our Children's Ministry on the weekends? Fifteen, Twenty or Twenty-five?

The answer to the first question is six. The answer to the second is twenty-five. Blew me away. The youth are not only our future; they are our now.

Summit Reflections (Part 11 of 11)

"And it came to pass."

T.D. Jakes advice to pastors when people leave their churches: Quote the Bible phrase to ourselves,
'And it came to pass.'" I have to admit that looking in from the outside, we pastors are really funny about how we feel when some people that leave our churches. Ego, nostalgia, the value of friendships and a whole lot of other stuff gets mixed together in our minds to create a bit of an emotional mess sometimes.

I've come to some "conclusions" for myself:

• The day it doesn't ever bother me anymore is probably the day I should get out of ministry because something in me that is essential for ministry will have died.
• The days I can't get over it are days I need to grieve some more or (if I've grieved enough) I need to grow up, get over it and move on.
• Some other pastors' heartaches are some of my greatest blessings.
• Some of my heartaches will be some other pastor's blessing.
• People are weird sometimes...and I too am people. 

Declaration: I will remember the third and fourth bullet-points next time I'm disappointed or grieving.