For eight years during the decade of the nineties I went to Washington D.C., every month to meet in the foremost centers of power with some of the highest elected officials in our country. What I discovered was not how powerful these people are, but how limited their power really is. All they can do is rearrange the yard markers on the playing field of life. They can't change a human heart. They can't heal a wounded soul. They can't turn hatred into love. They can't bring about repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace...
Businessman can provide sorely needed jobs. Wise educators can teach useful knowledge of the world. Self-help programs can offer effective methods of behaviour modification. Advanced psychological techniques can aid self-understanding. And all of this is good. But can any of it truly transform the human heart?
I believe that only one power exists on this sorry planet that can do that. It's the power of the love of Jesus, the love that conquers sin and wipes out shame and heals wounds and reconciles enemies and patches broken dreams and ultimately changes the world, one life at a time. And what grips my heart every day is the knowledge that the radical message of that transforming love has been given to the church.
The means that in a very real way the future of the world rests in the hands of local congregations like yours and mine. It's the church or it's lights out...
The local church is the hope of the world and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders... Will the men and women who have been entrusted leadership gifts take them seriously, develop them fully, and deploy them courageously, so that the willing and gifted believers in their churches can work together to make a difference in the world?
... the Church, the bride of Christ, upon which the eternal destiny of the world depends, will flourish or falter largely on the basis of how we lead.
- excerpt from Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church
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