Global Leadership Summit 2013: Andy Stanley

I hope the notes I’ve been posting this week have been helpful! The closing session of the 2013 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was entrusted to Andy Stanley of North Point Ministries, and he delivered! If you haven’t ordered it already, I’d encourage you to get your hands on a copy of his newest book Deep & Wide.

• Jesus didn’t predict a place (upon this rock I will build my church), he predicted a people…a movement.
• Jesus has built a movement on the back of an extraordinary statement that “He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
• How could this have possibly worked?
• Because Jesus made a promise and He has been at the epicenter of the local church for more than 2,000 years and Jesus has been, and will continue to build the local church and no body’s death is going to stop it…not even His own.
• The reason it’s important to ask “How this thing got started?” is because in a majority of the world even in churches all across America it needs to start over.
• The message was “You killed Him, God brought Him back to life…now say you’re sorry.”
• The central teaching of the church was not we believe something is true. It was we believe something has happened. All religions think they have the truth. The first century church believed something had happened.
• The movement stopped moving…the gathering stopped growing…when they got just beyond the reach of the persecution…it stopped.
• Then God went and got a new kind of leader…Saul of Tarsus…who became the Apostle Paul.
• Whether you believe or not, whether you corporate or not…Jesus is going to build His church.
• James, the brother of Jesus, may be our greatest argument for the deity of Jesus. Because what would your brother have to do to convince you that He is the Savior of the world?
• If a guy can predict his death and his resurrection I am with him.
• You may do more profitable things with your life but you’ll never do anything more meaningful with your life than build the local church because it is the work that Jesus has been doing for 2,000 years.