Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--T.D. Jakes

(here at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit for some leadership training that might help us get more Operation Christmas Child boxes to children around the world.)  Here T.D. Jakes shares from his book "Soar."

I’m excited to be here and spend a few minutes with you. I’m amazed by the brain power on this stage.  I want to spend a few minutes talking to the people who don’t have enough time or money or support or energy to get ‘there’. 

A vision can be tormented. A vision should be a little bit annoying and frustrating. If you have a vision everybody believes in it’s too small. You want a vision that you have to  choose who to share it with.

I am the son of a janitor and a schoolteacher. My father was whatever he needed to be to feed our family. My father started a business in 1960 with a mop and a bucket in West Virginia.  Five years later with 52 employees I learned to believe in crazy stuff.

Recently I did research on the Wright brothers’ story and I am amazed at someone who can stand on the ground and say I belong up there in the sky.  You need to think something scary—something you can’t tell anybody about—you need to think beyond your means and dream something so ridiculous it gets you out of your comfort zone. When we’re petrified we’re also electrified.

The greatest things that ever happened came through people who didn’t have enough but had a vision bigger than their circumstance.  It doesn’t matter where you start; it matters where you finish.

When we started gospel plays the first three almost made us bankrupt. I finally did a play that got some acclaim and I hooked up with someone else who was trying to get started—Tyler Perry.  We started the play “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and won a festival and got a movie contract that changed the next 15 years of my life.

Things happen out of small places. What started in Dayton, OH ended up in Kitty Hawk because the wind was right.  Sometimes you’ll have a great idea in the wrong place.  You can fail because the wind is not right.  You might have the wrong wind.

I believe you are here today because the wind is right. If you do the right thing in the right wind you can spread your wings and soar. I’m not talking to the winners who have multimillion dollar budgets. I want to talk to the young entrepreneur who can’t figure out how to get off the ground.

So much of what we learn is about winning but what really stimulates growth is losing. You will learn more from losing than you ever will from winning. The things you learn from failure sets you up to fly. Never count your failure as wasted time. What inspired the Wright brothers were eagles.

Eagles make love in the air, they build nests on cliffs, and when the eggs hatch they kick the kids out of the house. Eaglets don’t learn how to fly by flying they learn to fly by falling.  As they flap to keep from falling they find out how to fly.  What do you learn from the failure that gets you ready for the next dimension?  Those are the lessons that enrich your lives.

If you’re making bicycles and thinking airplanes I want to talk to you.  That is what produces the mystery, the majesty. To believe you can stand on the ground but you belong in the air. And if you keep flapping and falling it might look dumb at first but after awhile you’ll get your rhythm.

Soar.  It’s your time.