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It’s lonely to lead. Leadership involves tough decisions. The tougher the decision, the lonelier it is. It’s dangerous to succeed. I’m most concerned for those who aren’t even 30 and are very gifted and successful. Sometimes God uses someone right out of youth, but usually he uses leaders who have been crushed. It’s hardest at home. No one ever told me this in Seminary. It’s essential to be real. If there’s one realm where phoniness is common, it’s among leaders. Stay real. It’s painful to obey. The Lord will direct you to do some things that won’t be your choice. Invariably you will give up what you want to do for the cross. Brokenness and failure are necessary. Attitude is more important than actions. Your family may not have told you: some of you are hard to be around. A bad attitude overshadows good actions. Integrity eclipses image. Today we highlight image. But it’s what you’re doing behind the scenes. God’s way is better than my way. Christlikeness begins and ends with humility.

John Frame's 'tri-perspectivalism' helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a 'kingly' emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a 'prophetic' emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church -- leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision -- will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a 'priestly' emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view 'community' as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching

1. Vigilance in personal spiritual disciplines is absolutely critical to loving and wise leadership.

2. Leadership can only be as effective as relationships are strong.

3. Make changes slowly and smoothly.

Email contains a paradox, like these grasshoppers: Going faster doesn’t mean you’ll get less. In fact, it might mean that you’ll get even more, because email responds to your presence, just like the grasshoppers.

What you need to do is both become more efficient at processing email and at the same time decrease the number of times that you check email each day.

For if you choose to be almost immediately responsive with email, then you will get less long-term and important non-email stuff done.

1. Your desk should be like a cockpit

2. Everything at your desk falls into just a few categories

3. The desk is for doing work, not storing work or reminding you of work

From Hugh Evan Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge (Eerdmans, 1977), 123-4:Although he wrote so many letters Simeon was very well aware how much better it was, if possible, to talk rather than write, especially when a 'delicate or much-controverted point' arose. With his usual sensitivity to the feelings of others, he said, "If I speak with a man, I can stop when I see it is doing harm; I can soften off the truth so as not to fly in the face of his cherished views...Written words convey ideas, convey sentiments, but they cannot really convey exact feelings."Simeon was a thinker who also 'felt' a great deal. He wrote when there was no other way of communicating with a person, but realised all the time the many limitations of letters, particularly in expressing emotions: "You cannot hesitate upon paper; you cannot weep upon paper; you cannot give upon paper the tone of love; you cannot look kindness upon paper," though he tried his hardest to do so. At any rate, the difficulties and drawbacks in communication in those days do not seem to have deterred him from putting his pen to paper almost every day.