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.”

Continuing with Godin:

“What we have to think about is: Is it your opportunity?”

Slide of Adam Smith up there now. Talking about the pin factory. I don’t think Godin likes Adam Smith (standardization).

“The person who owns the factory makes the decisions. But now, the means of production is no longer a factory, but a laptop. The thing that lets you connect with anyone in the world. The thing that gives you what every ad agency has. And guess who owns it? The worker. Anyone who has a white collar job has their hands on the world. And you can chose to do something with it if you want to.”

“Is this the end of the job? There is something after the job: being an artist.”

“Don’t just do your job. Make a comment.”

“The receptionist — the one you fired to replace with a voicemail system — she was an artist, because she responded like a human.”

Talks about these artists that create paintings in a village in Europe. That’s art. The people who mass produce a painting by Picasso or such, not artists. Just reproducing, copying.

Culture of compliance: doing something just because boss tells you. In these cases, most people just do the minimum.

Henry Ford: Changed everything in the 20th century because figured out that mass production created productivity. But it was a culture of just having to do what you were told. Faster you went, more money made. Factory mindset is just keep the line moving. Managers and leaders are different. Mangers: Do what they did yesterday, and try to get their people doing it a bit faster. This system of “following the rules” has infected our spiritual organizations as well. The notion of interchangable parts leads to a culture of interchangable people. We create a culture of fitting in, because that’s what makes the factory work. And then you are ignored. Leaders are different.

You have a chance in this post-industrial age to do it differently.

We tend to say to this: “OK, what’s the map.” Wrong question. There isn’t one. “If I could tell you how to do it, it wouldn’t be art anymore.”

Competence is no longer scarce. It is thus no longer sufficient to get a job. You need to be an artist: take initiative. Don’t just comply. Be engaged. Do what matters to you, and be remarkable in it.

How many channels are there now? If you count Netflix and the Web, a billion.

The Betty Crocker notion of make a product, buy TV ads, and it will sell, is gone. We’ve branded ourselves to death.

“This light never turns green.”

There’s a slide up there now of a grave stone that says Santa Clause, with a little kid crying in front of it. Funny. (Pry have to see it!)

“The TV industrial complex is being replaced by an age of Tribes. A tribe is a group of people who share a culture, a goal, an idea. Who want to be together.”

“We used to have just three tribes in our life: spiritual, work, community. Now there are far more”

“Deep in our DNA, we want to be in sync with people. Not everyone in the world, but our people. This desire to be in sync is where tribes come from. And tribes need leaders. Who will connect the people, be clear on where they are going and why they are going there. And this is the opportunity of your lifetime, if you want to do work that matters, because you don’t have to do it by yourself.”

“Someone watching here today is going to change everything. They’re not going to do it because someone told them to, but because they decided to and because it’s important.”

“We grew up with this idea that if you have a product, create an ad with some babies or doctors in it, and it will sell. This idea that you promote things from a position of power. The TV industrial complex. Create a product, get TV ads, leading to more sales, leading to more money, leading to more TV ads.”

“Leads to average products for average people (except for maybe Pop – Tarts). Why? Because if you want to make something for everyone, you have to make something everyone wants to buy. Mass is built into our culture.”

“But right here on our watch is a revolution.”

Next post.

They aren’t full of text and bullets, but pictures. During the sound check he made the great point that using PowerPoint as a visual aid hits a different part of the brain than your words, so it works. But if people have to read your text while you talk, they have to do two things at once, and it doesn’t work.

Adam Jeske, one of the other guest bloggers I’m working with, took excellent notes on her session, which you can read here.

It’s also worth checking out his blog, Executing Ideas.