Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--Erwin McManus

Getting ready for the last session "Chasing Daylight" and praying I'll be able to implement some of this awareness into our Operation Christmas Child team.

Erwin McManus--Chasing Daylight

There are moments in our lives when we're inspired to act and start looking for incremental changes when we need a total change of mindset. We need to have a different relationship with the future. Ecclesiastes 1--everything is meaningless.

One day in his living room Erwin said he was convinced Solomon was wrong in Eccles. 1. "There's nothing new under the sun." Erwin believes there is something new under the sun. Jesus said, "Behold I am doing a new thing."

Jesus says "you can't put new wine in old wineskins." God was an artisan as He created the world. Every human being is created in the life and image of God. When we live our lives alive in the creator of the universe we become God's instruments for creating the future.

Evil men do not wait for permission from God to create the future they have in mind while good people sit idly by waiting for God to create a better world. We can say God saved the world through Noah but we have a harder time saying Noah saved the human race.

After the post-modern world is whatever we choose. Why do we keep waiting for someone else to create a better future?

Where to focus to create the future God has in mind--

1) we need to become the cultivators of human talent so each person is developed to the furthest level When Moses was born he was no ordinary child and no ordinary child has been born on this planet. But most of us die painfully ordinary. The church should be the nurturer of the human spirit. What would happen if the world knew the Church as the epicenter of Christian creativity? "The moment I met Jesus Christ something came alive in me and I knew there were things still waiting to come but I was afraid to let them be expressed." There are a lot of people who are going to die with their dreams trapped inside of their souls. There is no conflict between human talent and the glory of God.

We need to become narrators of the human story. We used to be the best poets of the world. "When I came to faith I didn't know why I believed the Bible. I began doing an empirical study of the Bible to see if what it said about humans was true." We need to reclaim the truth-telling power of the gospel. (Example of Nathan telling a story to David to convict him of his sin.) We need a revival of great storytelling. Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture. Truth can be lost in a bad story and falsehood is spread in a good story.

It's not that hard to bring a person to Jesus when you tell them a story that they find themself in.

There's a future in the creative and if we nurture the wonder in every person people will be drawn to our communities. If we acknowledge that we are a mosaic that God's light shines through, we will find ourself in this new creative order because Jesus has come and He makes all things new.