Brian Houston is the founding and Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia.  If you haven’t heard of him, you’ve certainly heard of the people he’s surrounded himself with.  In fact, some of the greatest praise and worship songs in the last 10-15 years have come from this church.  If you haven’t listened to any of the Hillsong, Hillsong United, or Hillsong Kids CD’s, you need to stop reading this blog right now and go download one of each from i-Tunes as soon as possible.

Here’s what Brian had to say

“The capacity to empower people has to be one of the greatest gifts anyone can have.”

“Jesus was empowered by the Father.  Jesus empowered the disciples.  The Holy Spirit empowers us.”

“Empowering is the language of the gospel.”“Our environments should be empowering environments.”

“When we build a culture of empowering, that is where creativity thrives.  Thinking is enlarged and there is an openness to grow and change.”

“The only way you can miss an elephant is when you’re too big in the frame.” (I don’t have enough space to set this up, but trust me, this was profound!)

“When I get too big in the frame, the one thing that suffers is the empowerment of people.”

“Practice taking second place”  

“An empowering culture is not one of independence, but one of interdependence.”

”There’s something about a heart that never gets too big to honor”

“An empowering culture is one that is not just about me and my world, but is about the kingdom of God.”

Perry Noble is the founding and Senior Pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  I love following his blog and I’ve just got to say that he absolutely hit a homerun with this teaching this afternoon.  I wish I could capture how great it was, but there is no way a few comments will do it justice.  Anyway, here you go… 

“As leaders in God’s church, sometimes we are tempted to believe that what we do does not matter.  The reality is that the church is the only organization on the planet that Jesus died for and as a result, everything we do, matters.”

“Environment matters.” 

“It is our job 52 Sundays a year to create environments where people can see that Jesus is alive.”

“Some people that don’t like our church say, ‘We’re into reverence.’  I would say, ‘You’re into rigor mortis.’”

“Vision matters.” 

“What Peter said was so stupid, God didn’t let him finish.” (see Matthew 17:4,5 for context)

“If God hasn’t set you on fire with a white hot vision, then don’t move until he does.”

“If you can’t support the senior pastor’s vision, then you need to leave.” 

“Operate by vision and not voting.”

“Jesus matters.”

“It’s not my job to be anti-gambling, but to be pro-Jesus.  If enough people were pro-Jesus, all the other stuff just wouldn’t happen.”

“What we do matters for eternity!”

Mac Richard is the founding and Senior Pastor of Lake Hills Church, in Austin, Texas.  Here is what he said

“As leaders, we must measure the stuff that matters.” 

“If you’re the leader, you’re the leader!”

“At the end of the day, there is a part of leadership that is lonely.”

“As leaders, we have to set the bar high for our staff then keep the bar high.  When the bar is missed repeatedly, it’s time to dismiss that person gracefully.”

“It’s important for church staff members to be joyful.  We won’t hire anyone who’s not joyful.  It’s a hard enough job as it is.”

“We serve the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords in the only institution that matters.”

“If you love people, you’ll measure their performance.”

If you’ve ever heard Ed Young speak, then you know he has a tendency to say some things in a very unique way.  I didn’t mention the following sound bytes in my previous two posts, because I wanted to save these for their own little post.  Here are some of the classic things Ed said during these first two sessions. 

 “Envy is ‘U-G-L-Y, You ain’t got not alibi, UGLY!’”

“Potiphar was married to Hotiphar”

“Do you know what the baker did?  He baked.”

“Every time someone said to Joseph’s brothers, ‘Do you want to grab a cup of Joe?’, don’t you know that his brothers just freaked out.”

“We wanted to build a children’s building that looked like Disney World on steroids”

“We owed squillions of dollars!”

“The Devil is stupid!”

“Potiphar knew his wife was wack-a-doodle-do”

Ed Young spoke on betrayal again during Session 2.  He was very honest and transparent about a situation in which he and Fellowship Church were betrayed by someone and the positive results that actually came from it.  Here are some of the comments that I wrote down during this teaching. 

 “Betrayal always comes from those who are closest to us.”

“When someone betrays you, they fall into a deeper pit than the one they pushed you into it and they don’t even know it…betrayers don’t realize they’re betrayers!”

“We will meet our sin again!”

“Often God will serve our betrayers up on a silver platter…this is a test.”

“Unleashing unforgiveness is unbelievable!”

“Betrayal brought our staff together”

“Betrayal will separate the players from the posers”

“In Joseph’s life, one act of betrayal led to a nation being saved from a famine.  In Jesus’ life, one act of betrayal led to our salvation.  And in your life, one act of betrayal could lead to something great in your life and the lives of people around you.”