Leadership Calling, Distractions, and Critics

Brian Houston, Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church in Australia, spoke at the Gateway Church Connect Conference on Monday night, February 21. These are my leadership notes from his teaching.

Brian Houston – Session 1 (this post…)
Brian Houston – Session 2
Robert Morris – Session 1
Robert Morris – Session 2
Jimmy Evans – (still working on these…)

On Calling

• Don’t let what God has called you to do distract you from what God has called you to do.
• Ultimately the church is all about people and God; and every person has “people” in their lives.
• Jesus was all about people, but the very thing he was all about was his potential distraction.
• In being all about people, we can get sucked into the smallness of other peoples worlds
• We should be all about people, but never about their smallness.
• The phrase “Don’t you care” is the refrain of smallness; and we can get suckered into following it’s whims.
• The leaders called Jesus to prove he was God by coming down off the cross. Jesus proved he was the Son of God by staying on the cross. People will try to pull you down off your calling to prove you are called. Don’t cater to the smallness that causes you to come down from what God has called you to do.

On Disappointment

• Don’t be distracted by the disappointments.
• We are most easily disappointed by the people we’ve poured into the most.
• Opportunities to be offended will come. But no mature Christian who is seasoned in the Word has a defensible excuse to be offended.
• Whatever happens to you in life, never develop a wounded spirit.

On Critics

• Don’t get distracted by the opposition.
• The best thing you can do with critics is to outlast them. Keep your heart pure. Keep your head right.
• There is a big difference between catering to the crowd, and building the church. Pacifying the crowd does not mean the church is built.
• Learn to become more loyal to the future of the church than to the past, because you can’t move forward by taking things back to where they’ve always been.
• Personal ambition can never be at the cost of other people. We must always be all about people, but be aware that often the distractions look just like what God has called us to do.

How do you handle critics and distractions in your leadership?