Some REALLY personal take aways from Leadership Summit

The stuff you are about to read is very personal.

This Leadership Summit has meant more to me than the past two years put together because I think I am in a place today where I desperately needed God's touch on my life. Combine that with the fact that the speakers have been over the top and I can boldly say this has been an awesome experience.

The past five years have drained me of many of the things I hold dear. Loss of ministry, loss of home, loss of community, and subjected to some of the most incredible rejection I could ever imagine.

Then this incredible, grace-oriented, Christ-centered, loving church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa called me to serve there - New Covenant Bible Church. And now I am sitting at a conference in Des Moines because they care about leaders and my personal welfare. Thank you NCBC.

Anyhow, here are some of my take-aways. I like bullet points, so here we go:

• I have lost "it." (I have become a fulltime pastor and a halftime follower of Christ)
• My discipline of eating healthy, sleeping right, and daily exercise has gone out the window.
  
• I have avoided making the hard decisions that come with leadership.
• I have failed to reach my neighbors with the love of Christ.
• Co-dependency is an issue I deal with, and in ways I never would have believed.
• I MUST find my sufficiently in Christ, and no one else. I soooo desperately crave relationship with people that it controls me. It's Christ first in all relationships.
  
• Grieving over loss I have experienced in the past year.
• My love language is words of affirmation. And I have to learn how to sustain myself with God's help when I don't get this need met in my life.
  
• I've ignored issues that need to be addressed.
• I was told the other day that I was a self-serving leader. ouch. But am I willing to listen that kind of criticism? Aha! One of the test of servant leadership is the ability to deal with feedback even when it hurts.
  
• I've failed to fail at something this year.
• My devo life has slowly gone downhill, too slow to notice until it was WAY out of wack.
• God is calling me to do something more with the CR flood that I am doing right now. I don't know what this means right now, so please don't ask me.
• As a sensate (Sacred Pathways), I really enjoy worshiping God when the music is loud to the point of overwhelming and it is played with great excellence by people committed to their craft. I love the light show, cameras, big screens. I love the way the worship leader directs our attention to God through all the above.
• The above statement is the reason I need to get away periodically and experience worship in the way I best connect with God.
• I've only read two or three books this year. Last year was 18.
• I have become disorganized again at home.

Are you surprised? Shocked? Disappointed? Probably all three, unless you live in my house. Why would be willing to blog this? I am willing to risk being transparent so that others might be challenged and motivated to improve yourself. Let me know if this has impacted you. I would love to hear about it. Tye out.
Certainly you made my mind and heart; you wove me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13 NET