Global Leadership Summit= FLUID

If I had to choose one prevailing theme for the 2011 Global Leadership Summit, I would choose the word fluid. I could sense this theme during the Summit, and I can sense it in the work I'm doing around our church and community.

The world is changing so rapidly. Things are slippery. We're in such a disorienting, major shift, and the organizational structures that we've known will likely not be the effective structures of the future. This transition that we're in is demanding creativity and differing forms. New kinds of fluid thinking, organizing, leading, networks are emerging as we meet and create the future.

Through the Summit, I could hear the challenge to leaders to take steps into this unknown by...

- believing God for it.

-creating economic and social value everywhere...being an entrepreneur.

-digging ditches...preparing the ground for God's intervening.

-understanding the limitations of predictability and cause/effect.

-taking action to create the future.

-taking small steps with what you have and building off what you find.

-flexibility and multi-dimensional efforts.

- breaking through cultural and racial barriers.

-creating art.

- practicing silence.

- stewarding over vision by guarding mission and joy.

- "poking the box."

-learning humility and vulnerability.

- serving, sacrificing, suffering.

-becoming cultivators of human talent and potential; developing the creative gifts of people.

As I continue to walk into Christian Community Development, this Summit helped give language and affirmation to the direction and findings along the journey. The word of the day may be fluid but Jesus is still rock solid!