Lessons from Mr. Hybels

I am currently reading two books: "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" by Eric Metaxas, and "Axiom" by Bill Hybels. Both of these books are excellent, but I want to mention some of the lessons I'm learning - or relearning - from "Axiom," a tremendous little book on leadership principles. It's not really a, "This is how you lead" type of book. Rather, it's a book with an axiom, then Pastor Hybels' explanation of what he means, how he practices it, and why it's important. Here are a few that have caught my eye so far, especially in the context of leading the small group ministries here at GHC. I'm not even sure this post will do justice to these, so I encourage the reader to get the book. It's a little more expensive than it should be for its size, but if you go to the Amazon site linked above, there are some really good deals for used books, which is what I got. I'm sure there are other book store sites with similar deals.

Probably the most important one for me, as Shari and I work to create our coaching team for small groups, is, "The Three C's." This is a relearn for me, as Bill also wrote about this in his actual leadership book, "Courageous Leadership." (Another one I highly recommend.) Here's the gist of it: When recruiting for a position on your team, look at these three issues, in order: Character, Competency, and Chemistry. You can't fix or train character. If they don't have it, nothing else you do will matter because they'll torpedo it pretty fast. God can fix their character, but don't put somebody in leadership until He does. Competency can be trained, but if you are endeavoring to put somebody in a leadership position, you want to find the best you can to fill that position. Don't compromise or lower your standards. Even if they need to be trained on something, are they competent learners? Finally, chemistry is still very important. If things don't click between the leader(s) and the person coming on board, there can be some real fireworks, causing some large fires that you, as a leader, will need to put out. Now, after looking at all of these, it's true that one can work around the other two, but Pastor Hybels contends, and I tend to agree with him, that working around those - not considering them important enough to find the right fit - is not only asking for conflict down the road, but maybe serious conflict, and eventually having to find another person. It's much better to hire the right person with all three C's fitting in the first place.

There's so much more, but I need to get to work. I'll post more on this later. I'm about halfway through the book. I have so much to write about Bonhoeffer, too. It's amazing how much hasn't changed; that is, there's nothing new under the sun in terms of our sin nature.