Hybels is talking now about Jeremiah, as the third tough calling we are looking at in this session.

Things start out, and nothing seems to be going right for Jeremiah. “They just keep telling him to shut up. He gets beat up and put at the gate for all to see. He has a problem with this, and was frustrated. He cries out to God ‘you deceived me.’ Meaning: ‘This isn’t what I had in mind when I said yes to you.'” Perhaps Jeremiah was thinking things would go well, that things are supposed to go well when God calls you. He is in such despair he even curses the day he was born. “But then he gathers his wits about him, and says to God ‘you did call me, and I did say yes.'”

“He is torn between his calling, and his ache for success. I want to do what God wants me to do, and I want it all to go up and to the right. He is right at the intersection of wanting to be faithful, and wanting to be successful.”

“He says ‘I’ll keep speaking your Words.’ Has a little lower expectations in round 2, which is a good thing because people get angry and recalcitrate. This time they throw him in the bottom of a mud-filled cistern. Thrown to the bottom, gets covered up, and is left there to die. Jeremiah is bewildered by this. ‘Things should go better with God,’ right? Some time later some people had pity on him, and brought him out and cleaned him up. And he said to himself ‘I cannot deny that God called me to be his spokesman. I have to give up the aim to be successful, and just let the chips fall where they may.'”

“So he goes out again, and speaks the word of God day after day, month after month, and they never change. After all this derision of him, one day the enemy comes over the hill and carries everybody, including Jeremiah, into captivity. And some time after that, Jeremiah sits down and writes a book, a book of lament — Lamentations.”

“At the end of the lament, he says ‘throughout all of this, God’s mercies were new to me every morning.’ What he did was hard, and never successful in the eyes of the world, but he felt the sweetness of God underneath it all.”

“I’m not worthy to have my name said in the same sentence as Jeremiah. Part of what’s been a ball about leading Willow is that for most of the 35 years it’s been going up and to the right. I had an easy calling, really. I got to lead a church in a suburban area in one of the most affluent areas in the nation. People who come here are sharp and trained. When I travel internationally, when I’m with leaders of businesses or NGOs or churches who are in oppressive situations and in under resourced areas, and have to run for their life every day, I just say ‘I’m not worthy.'”

“Our world is in tough shape. The fixes are not easy assignments. The fixes are going to take decades or lifetimes. And all throughout history, and in today’s environment, God is looking for some strong-shouldered leaders who say ‘If there’s a tough assignment anywhere in this world to be attacked, I’m available. I don’t have to …”

Lost the train of thought here — just heard that Mama Maggie, who just spoke before, is trending on Twitter.

OK, back to the message here in the next post.

“She has been called ‘The Mother Theresa of Cairo.’ Has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at least three times. Founder and CEO, Stephens Children Ministry.”

I have not heard of her before, but I’m quite impressed right off the bat. She seems to have an amazing humility.

“Christians in Egypt pay the highest price for their faith. Egypt is the country that has sent to heaven the largest number of martyrs in all history. I am a product of this land.”

“25 years ago I heard my tough call, and I never imagined what I’m going to say. The Lord took me step by step.”

Here’s a short bio from the Summit site:

“Mama Maggie Gobran led a comfortable life in Cairo. A Coptic Christian from a prominent Egyptian family, she taught computer science and lectured at Cairo University. But following a conviction from God, she started a ministry to serve the poor in her city. A Nobel Peace Prize nominee this year, Mama Maggie has spent 20 years serving the poorest of the poor.”

“When one has nothing, God becomes everything.”

Hybels introduces this next session (a bit of a paraphrase, because I was trying to finish up that last post at the same time):

“We often get the impression that if we get better as leaders, everything we lead will just always keep going up and to the right. But what if that’s not always true? What if God calls some people to lead in really hard realms where there may be little signs of visible success in this world.”

“We are going to talk about how addicted some of us may be to the narcotic of growth. Many of us are ready to step into leadership opportunities that promise success and perhaps an easier road, and some of us may like being leaders because we get to lead stuff like that. And I think it’s possible that we can get hooked on the narcotic of growth. So we are going to look at 3 leaders who have led through tough callings.”

Wes Stafford of Compassion International is up now.

Here’s a list of all my posts from the first day of the Leadership Summit yesterday:

General Reflections at the Start

• Blogging the Leadership Summit Today
• Why Worship Matters at a Conference on Leadership
• Why Christians Should Learn about Leadership from Secular and Christian Thinkers
• A Photo

Bill Hybels

• The Danger of Being Overchallenged
• The Danger of Being Underchallenged
• Is it Possible to Over-Rev an Organization?
• The Value of Good People
• How Long Do You Tolerate Someone with a Pervasive Bad Attitude?
• How Long Do You Tolerate Underperformers?
• What Do You Do When Someone Lacks the Talent Elasticity in Your Organization?
• Hybels: Don’t Lose the Core of Christianity
• Hybels Five Words Summarizing the Core of Christianity
• “There is Too Much at Stake in This World for Leaders to Have a Defeatist Mindset”

Len Schlesinger

• “The Leaders is Committed to a Reality that Does Not Yet Exist”
• “Entrepreneurship is Not Magic; It’s a Discipline”
• How Successful Entrepreneurs Act — It’s Not What You Think

Cory Booker

• Stand Up – Cory Booker

Brenda Salter-McNeil

• Brenda Salter-McNeil

Seth Godin

• Seth Godin Up Next
• Godin has 140 Slides
• The TV Industrial Complex
• The Revolution
• Godin: Is this the End of the Job?
• Godin: Be Remarkable, and Willing to Risk
• Godin: Stop Making Excuses and Lead

Steven Furtick

• Steven Furtick Up Next
• Audacious Faith
• Audacious Faith, Part 2

Notes from the rest of Steven Furtick’s message:

“We can learn and position ourselves and get great teaching, but only God can make it rain.”

“I can’t expect God’s blessing on my work unless I do it God’s way.”

“How are we going to get from inspiration to implementation? If all you have are some good ideas does not make you a visionary. It makes you a daydreamer. You need the faith to get started.”

“If your vision is not intimidating to you, it is probably insulting to the Lord.”

“So many of us don’t see any rains and don’t see any clouds, and so we don’t get to work. But faith believes it before it sees it. It doesn’t sit around waiting for it to happen, but digs a ditch.”

“Some of you have let time talk you out of your dream, but it’s still there in your heart. Life can beat your dream out of you, but I believe you are here to have it put back.”

“One of the reasons we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with other people’s highlight reel.”

“If you will dig the ditches, God will send the rain. If you will do what you can do by faith, he will do what he can do.”

“I may not have all the resources right now, but I have exceeding promises in God’s word.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem like anything is happening. But you don’t know what God is doing behind the scenes.”

“Expect God to do great things through your life.”

Noah: Building a boat until the flood came. “When the vision God has put inside you doesn’t match with what you see, close your eyes and keep going.”

“If you’re a preacher, I want you to preach this weekend like Billy Graham at a Tokyo Crusade in the 80s. Believe God for great things and go do them.”

Craig Groeschel on Furtick: “He doesn’t know what cannot be done. He’ll call me and say ‘I’m praying for 2,000 people to come to Christ this weekend. And I treat it like my son saying he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. Then he calls the next week and says 2,400 people came to the Lord.”

“One thing I believe I’m an expert at is being ‘dumb enough’ to believe God can do anything. That is one of the blessings of youth. The other faculty members here will help you get the wisdom you need, and I’ll help you believe you can do anything he’s written in his word.”

“I want to help you raise your faith today. Audacious faith, believing God for the impossible, is the theme of my life.”

At 16 he read a sentence in Jim Cymbala’s book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire that said “I despaired at the thought that my life could pass without God showing up in a big way. I knew then that God wanted me to plant a church.”

“I don’t just want to have a comfortable life and good retirement account. I want to have stories to tell of God showing up in a big way.”

(You can find Furtick”s blog here.)

Here’s a brief bio of Steven by Justin Wise, a fellow live blogger here with me (and also a fellow alumni of The University of Northern Iowa).

“We are constantly looking for a reason not to do our art, not to put ourselves on the line. We are OK with something going wrong if it’s someone elses’s fault. But we never want it to be our fault. We are not willing to take the responsibility.”

It’s so easy to look around you and come up with every reason it’s broken. Or you can do something about it.

“Go, make it happen” Make art, give gifts, do work that matters, make a difference.”

“If it’s worth doing, then what exactly are you waiting for?”

“There’s a box. Inside the box, it’s too dark to get anything done. On the outside, there is nothing to lean on. But on the edges is where you can make things happen.”

“If at the end of the day someone says ‘How was your day,” and you say ‘fine,’ you are not leading.”

“What the world is demanding is for you to lead them. I know you’ll do that.”

Continuing with Godin:

“If you have a job where the boss is writing down what you do all day, you are replaceable and it can be done cheaper.”

“If all you can offer in your institution is that you are the local one, it’s like cheap — it’s not going to get you where you want to go.”

“The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win.”

“Bowling is not a spectator sport. What people talk about, what spreads the word, is something that people don’t expect.”

Slide of “Diet Water” up there now. Funny.

“If you are playing by the rules, if you are bowling, don’t expect people to talk about it and spread the word and come from across town. Everyone has seen brown cows. The only cows people talk about are purple cows. You won’t get there by taking someone elses’s notes, or by simply doing what your boss told you to do.”

“We teach people to wait to get picked. Don’t wait. Pick yourself.”

“But you say ‘Wait, I might fail!’ But every project has two sides — success and failure. If you decided that what you are doing is so important that you are unwilling to fail, then success is not possible. Doing art risks failure. You will be criticized. That’s what makes it uncomfortable. That’s why they invented Blackberry’s — just check every 15 minutes and make sure everything is OK. No one has ever done creative work with a Blackberry. Because they are just checking. Not risking.”