I was blown away once again by this year’s Willow Creek Association Leadership Summit! From the thought provoking words from the speakers to the inspiring interviews to the inspirational music I’m returning home with my heart and my head overflowing.
But now comes the most important part of the entire Summit. As I re-enter the “real world” if all I take away from the Summit is inspiration I may do life a little more inspired for a little while, but within a week or two that inspiration will fade and I’ll be back at the same place I was before the Summit. As John Maxwell once said, “If within 3 days of a conference you do not have an acion plan in place that you follow, one year later nothing will have changed.”
Here’s what I’m going do to process what I’ve heard and put it into action…
- Pray and ask God to make it clear what he would have me do.
- Review my notes from each session.
- From each session highlight a) what I need to think on some more, b) any new goals or action steps I may want to take.
- Think and pray over those items I need to ponder. Then be quiet and listen for God’s still small voice. If I sense God is working on me on something and it’s not clear if or what I should do, I’ll continue pray and listen some each day and probably journal and talk with a close friend or two until it becomes clear.
- Take all the possible goals and prioritize them.
- Consider those goals in the context of my existing life. Are these possible new goals more important than what I’m already doing?
- Create a 6 x 6 plan. What 6 things am I going to accomplish in the next 6 weeks? Set a specific date for each goal to be accomplished. (BTW, I’m not going to get hung up on the number 6. If its 5 things or 8 things, then that’s what it is.)
- Write out the specific action steps it will take to reach each of those 6 goals with completion dates for each step.
- Create a “stop doing” list. Unless God intervenes, my days are still going to be 24 hour long. I can’t add more things to my schedule without removing other things. What am I willing to give up in order to accomplish these 6 things?
- As soon as it’s complete, share my 6 x 6 plan with at least one other person who participated in the Summit.
If you participated in the Summit what are you doing to process what you heard? What questions and issues do you have to sort through in order to know what action steps to take? And finally, what’s your plan – what goals are you setting and what action steps are you taking as a result?
I’ll leave you with one parting thought…
“Ideas without action are worthless.” — Helen Keller
Paul, great step of accountability and inspiration to the rest of us! You truly are a leader that is God appointed and annointed. Thank you for your commitment to God and the church.
I will follow your lead and post my 6×6 later today when I have enough time. Now I have to get ready for church!
Jacque, thanks for contributing so many thoughtful comments throughout the Summit.
Another thought I had with regards to developing goals, action steps, and a 6×6 plan is to be sure to consider what I learned at the Summit in the context of how it relates to all the various leadership roles I have. For example, my roles include:
– Self-leadership/personal development
– Husband
– Father
– Elder
– Small group coach
– CEO
My commitments for 6×6 are the following:
1. Research the info that Rev. Flake and Michael Porter gave to see how that would work in Haiti. by Sept 10th
2. Write 5 notes of encouragement each week to people God prompts me to contact. Weekly
3. Research Haitian Children’s Choir. By Sept 3
4. Develop a plan and a strategy for recognizing and growing the God given strength of my children and those around me. by Sept 15
5. Grow in my spiritual walk with God through the ignite series and the commitments connected with the series. Weekly
6.Be an inspiring leader of my classroom, my children, the Discovery Ministry, and in Kids Connection. Weekly
I am still not connected with a next step partnership, so that is my next step.
Jacque, great to see you’ve got your 6×6 plan together. Thanks for sharing it here. Here is my 6×6 plan.
1) Set-up the Cypress Meadows Ignite Daily Devotional Blog for the start of the Ignite series Aug. 18.
2) Coordinate all the family ministries so there is a shared vision, a single calendar for Next Step Partnership Sunday (Aug 26) and everyone knows what each ministry is doing.
3) Have all the OurChurch.Com staff do an exercise to determine their strengths and the Love/Loath exercise described by Marcus Buckingham by Sept 4.
4) Think and pray about Summit-related issues in preparation for the next Spiritual Leadership team meeting Sept 6.
5) Complete the redesign of the Cypress website and form a web ministry team to carry it forward it by Sept 14.
6) Complete a major OurChurch.Com project by 9/19.
Anyone else got their 6×6 plan together? If you’re not comfortable posting it publicly, maybe you could just let us know you’ve got one.