27 Leadership Lessons From Doug Fields

Live Blog From Orange Conference ’15: 27 Leadership Lessons From Doug Fields

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Brian Dodd on May 1, 2015 in Church Leadership

In an effort to add value to pastors and church leaders, I am live blogging significant portions of this week’s Orange Conference and their amazing Senior Leader’ Track.  For pastors and church leaders, this is the most informative and thought-provocing three days you can spend all year.  It is “can’t miss” event for church leaders.
The afternoon’s first plenary session was led by Doug Fields.  Doug is the Executive Director of HomeWord’s Center for Youth/Family at Azusa Pacific University, the co-founder of Downloadyouthministry.com, and the author of more than 50 books.
Before getting to their thoughts on why churches stop growing, INJOY Stewardship Solutions is offering a FREE download of Church Branding 101.  In this resource Ken Wilson, Director of NewSpring Creative, will be walking us through NewSpring Church’s recent rebranding process.  If you are unfamiliar with NewSpring, they are led by friend-of-Orange Senior Pastor Perry Noble.  You do not want to miss this.  Click here or on the image above to sign up.  Now onto the lessons from this session.
The following are 27 Leadership Quotes and Lessons from the this afternoon’s opening plenary session:
Doug Fields

1. I have had so many failures it would make Joel Osteen stop smiling.
2. I do messy things. I think messy thoughts.
3. My inner-world where my faith and soul collide is uglier than I like to admit.
4. If you’re a little bit spiritually messy, you’re in good company.
5. You know who edits the mess out of Bible characters? We do. Bible teachers.
6. One of the reasons we are seeing kids walk away from the church is we’re not making the church a safe place for kids to mess up.
7. Some of the teaching is on behavior modification. That’s the way we were taught.
8. The goal of parenting is not to teach the kids how to behave.
9. As leaders our job is not to prevent kids from doing wrong. Our job is to help them through the things they do wrong.
10. We want kids running to the church, not away from the church.
11. We need to teach that failure is part of the spiritual journey.
12. When you fail, the church is a place of grace upon your return.
13. Kids aren’t thinking about the future. Kids are thinking about now.
14. Failure is part of the now.
15. What if we treated with each child as if they were a prodigal child?
16. Every kid has a prodigal nature in them.
17. The church is the place where sin meets forgiveness.
18. We need to more intentional about admitting our own weaknesses.
19. We need to teach kids a bigger story about who God is.
20. When kids see real adults it gives them hope.
21. Don’t tell the stories of how great you are.
22. Jesus was comfortable leaving 11 messy followers unfinished.
23. Jesus had this preposterous idea that the broken and wounded could be part of the Kingdom of God.

Ryan Leak

1. Chasing failure took me further than chasing success ever could.
2. Do not be defined by success or failure. Be defined by the process.
3. Encourage every kid to do the impossible.
4. I can’t wait to fail again.

What an amazing event this has been.  I cannot wait until next year!