Andy Stanley Quotes

Jesus did not come to strike a balance between grace and truth. He brought the full measure of both ... It's easy to create an all-truth church model. It may be even easier to create an all-grace model, but Jesus didn't leave either option on the table.

Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty.

Preaching on Sunday mornings is such a simple thing, and by complicating it, I think we all do ourselves and the audience a disservice. It is very simple. Here is the model: Make people feel like they need an answer to a question.

We begin selling ourselves on what we want to do rather than what we ought to do. We listen to ourselves until we believe our own lies, and the we opt for happiness.

The leader who refuses to move until the fear is gone will never move. Consequently, he will never lead.

There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination.

There's a monumental difference in believing in God and believing God.

Initially, your vision will exceed your competency.

Loyalty publicly results in leverage privately.

Pencil in your plans but write your visions in ink

Preaching is not talking to people about the Bible; it is talking to people about themselves from the Bible.

Everything now will prepare you for the next step. Don't run from adversity; lean into it with all your heart and God will make you a leader worth following.

Make a list of your key people and write down what you perceive as their primary value to the organization. Having done that, evaluate their job descriptions, asking yourself this question: "How can I free up more of their time to do the things that add the most value to this organization?" Encourage your staff to rewrite their current job descriptions with the goal of refocusing their time on the things they do best. Lead your key people through a discussion of the principles discussed in these three chapters. Create opportunities for your staff to discuss ways to better leverage their abilities.

To ensure that we are leading with our feet firmly planted on the soil of what is, we must live by the seven commandments of current reality:
Thou shalt not pretend.
Though shalt not turn a blind eye.
Thou shalt not exaggerate.
Thou shalt not shoot the bearer of bad news.
Thou shalt not hide behind the numbers.
Thou shalt not ignore constructive criticism.
Thou shalt not isolate thyself.
Attempting to lead while turning a blind eye to reality is like treading water: It can only go on for so long, eventually you will sink. As a next generation leader, be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. And if you don't like what you see, change it.

What breaks your heart is part of a divine design to bring change!

Jesus did not come to be right. He came to make disciples.

Your friends will determine the quality and direction of your life.

Success is an intoxicant, and intoxicated people seldom have a firm grasp on reality.

It's a shame that so many churches are married to a designed-by-Christians-for-Christians-only culture. A culture in which they talk about the Great Commission, sing about the Great Commission, but refuse to reorganize their churches around the Great Commission.

If we were able to rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity, I think we would put the emphasis on developing relationships with non-believers, serving them, loving them, and making them feel accepted, only then would we earn the right to share the gospel.

You won't take risk without courage.

If a leader goes with their gut, it should be after listening first to people they trust.

If you're not looking forward to church this morning perhaps it's time to look for a church.

Where there's no progress, there's no growth. If there's no growth, there's no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life.

Creating breathing room financially may lower your standard of living but raise your quality of life.

There will be very few occasions when you are absolutely certain about anything. You will consistently be called upon to make decisions with limited information. That being the case, your goal should not be to eliminate uncertainty. Instead, you must develop the art of being clear in the face of uncertainty.

If you feed an appetite, it grows. Satisfying an appetite does not diminish it. It expands it. To diminish an appetite, you have to starve it.

No one ever has the resources they need.

The greatest motivator of change is a crystal-clear vision of what the future should look like.

To get from where we don't want to be to where we do want to be requires two things: time and a change of direction.

Think about this for a moment. What would happen if you were to begin speaking to people's potential rather than their performance? What if you made it a habit to dispense the same type of grace to others as has been poured out on you? What would happen if you intentionally laced your conversations with notions of what could be true of the people around you?

Identify the areas in which you are most likely to add unique value to your organization - something no one else can match - then leverage your skills to their absolute max. That's what your employer expected when he put you on the payroll! More importantly, leveraging yourself generates the greatest and most satisfying return on your God-given abilities.

Jesus doesn't take sides; He takes over.

Is Christianity fair? It is certainly not fair to God. Christians believe that God sent His Son to die for your sins and mine. Fairness would demand that we die for our own sins.

Seasoned leaders rarely regret having taken risks. Even the risks that didn't pay off directly are viewed as a necessary part of the journey. A leader's regrets generally revolve around missed opportunities, not risks taken. Many of those missed opportunities would not have been missed had they been willing to push through their fear and embrace what could be. Fear, not a lack of good ideas, is usually what keeps a man or woman standing on the sidelines.

If your desires be endless, your cares and fears will be so too. Thomas Fuller

Your greatest accomplishment may not be something you do but someone you raise.

Vions are born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be.

Christianity teaches that when man sinned, God opted for forgiveness rather than fairness. He opted for grace and mercy rather than justice.

We hurt most who we love the most. Bad grammar, painful truth.

If it suddenly became impossible for us to cover up all the junk we normally hide from the rest of humanity, I have a feeling we would all get real motivated to deal with the source of what ails us.

The root of anger is the perception that something has been taken. Something is owed you, and now a debt to debtor relationship has been established.

Preachers' kids who gravitate toward ministry are commodities. I hire all I can. We see church differently than everybody else.

God often showcases his power on the stage of human weakness.

One of our pastors, John Hambrick, has a saying that we've adopted organization-wide. He says, "We walk toward the messes." In other words, we don't feel compelled to sort everything or everyone out ahead of time. We are not going to spend countless hours creating policies for every eventuality.

Nothing hinders morale more than when team members with separate agendas are pulling against one another.

The first thing that sometimes keeps next generation leaders from playing to their strengths is that the idea of being a balanced or well-rounded leader looks good on paper and sounds compelling coming from behind a lectern, but in reality, it is an unworthy endeavor. Read the biographies of the achievers in any arena of life. You will find over and over that these were not "well-rounded" leaders. They were men and women of focus.

A good coach will evaluate your performance against your potential. A coach helps you measure your performance against your strengths instead of against someone else's. A coach will know what you are capable of and will push you to your limit.

What people pray for will tell you more than anything else whether they are locked into the vision and priorities of the church.

How do you recruit and keep volunteers? Part of the answer is that we clarify the win. Countless individuals quit working in churches every year

Selfless, generous, compassionate living is unassailable.

Don't be fair, be engaged.

As counterintuitive as it seems, generosity begins wherever you are. It is important to make generosity a priority.

Rich people have the potential to reach a point where they see money as the source of their safety and security.

Most of us are married to a model of ministry and we flirt with the Great Commission.

The value of a life is always measured by how much of it is given away.

If you are "seeking first" his kingdom where you are, then where you are is where he has positioned you.

To understand why, submit and apply.

If you're a preacher's kid, you see the church differently.

God is a God of systems and predictability and order, and God honors planning.

If you see your brother in need, it doesn't matter if you already gave somewhere else. You should be open to the idea of God using you to meet your brother's unexpected need.

If the Old and New Testament teach us anything, they teach us that nothing is too difficult for God. What he originates, he orchestrates.

Leaders who carry unresolved guilt are forced to hide a part of themselves from those to whom they are closest. They have a secret. They are forced to expend time and energy to ensure that no one finds them out. They know they are not completely trustworthy. Often they assume no one else is either. Guilty leaders have a difficult time trusting. Consequently, guilty leaders have a difficult time building teams.

The insecure leader will interpret critical thinking as critiscism.

Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.

Two things make a relationship providential: when we hear from God through someone and when we see God in someone.

Lord, give me the wisdom to know what's right and the courage to do what's right-even when it's hard.

Saying a prayer won't make you a Christian. Placing your faith in Christ as your savior makes you a Christian.

If you capture someone's heart, you will eventually get his hands and feet as well.

If you want to know if I'm a Godly man, follow me home.

Do you think God can be trusted? Or do yo think you need to take things into your own hands?

Are you the person the person you're looking for is looking for?

The church must capture and keep the minds and hearts of students.

Leaders learn to leverage the problems that never go away in a way to create progress for the organization.

Asking doesn't mean you lack wisdom - it's evidence of wisdom.

Generosity helps us cultivate awareness of things that really matter. Opportunities that make a real difference in the world.

Do you know why people are prone to make such foolish moral decisions? Because something always whispers to us that our situations are unique: Nobody has ever felt this way before.

I can go further and faster with someone coaching me than I can on my own.

In addition to a job description designed around your current employment, develop what you would consider to be the ultimate job description. This is for your eyes only. The goal of this exercise is to help you identify the niche in which you would feel most productive and consequently most successful. Dream a little.

Knowledge alone makes Christians haughty. Application makes us holy.

Celebrate what God has given others. Leverage what God has given you.

You have not been called to change the world, but you have been called to change something.

Grace is inviting to the unrighteous and threatening to the self-righteous

If the source were simply a few behavioral habits, you would have conquered them already.

Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.

Most of us wake up every day and make decision that will make us happy, and generally decisions that will make us happy right then in the moment or that day. We are not really on a truth quest.

That would hurt the one I love the most

Strange as it may sound, it is more difficult to maintain a faith walk when we begin to see our dreams come true. When hopes become realities it is easy to shift our faith onto the thing we have dreamed of and off of the One who was the source of our provision.

Forgiveness is simply a decision to cancel a debt.

In a volunteer organization there has to be time for community.

There is an inexorable correlation between leadership and change.

Dreamers dream about things being different. Visionaries envision themselves making a difference. Dreamers think about how nice it would be for something to be done. Visionaries look for an opportunity to do something.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (Prov. 3:6)

Narrow the Focus. By that I mean you shouldn't try to do everything; you should do a few things well.

Every time I stand to communicate, I want to take one simple truth and lodge it in the heart of the listener. I want them to know that one thing and know what to do with it.

It is amazing what can be accomplished when we wait on God to lead us out. It is equally amazing the mess we can make of things when we charge out on our own.

Greed is supported by an endless cast of what-ifs. Greedy people can never have enough to satisfy the need they feel in light of every conceivable eventuality.

People pray in one direction but they walk in a different direction, and direction always determines where we end up.

Grace is the offer of exactly what we do not deserve. Thus, it cannot be recognized or received until we are aware of precisely how undeserving we really are. It is the knowledge of what we do not deserve that allows us to receive grace for what it is. Unmerited. Unearned. Undeserved. For that reason, grace can only be experienced by those who acknowledge they are undeserving.

Often the reason we won't say no is that we are afraid. We fear disappointing people. We fear being passed by. We fear missing out on a good opportunity. But at some point every leader must come to grips with the fact that there will always be more opportunities than there is time to pursue them. If we don't choose our opportunities carefully, we will dilute our efforts in every endeavor. Refusing to say no eventually robs a leader of his ultimate opportunity - the opportunity to play to his strengths. Choose your opportunities carefully. Many opportunities are worth missing. Just say no.