Bill Hybels Quotes

If you're too chicken to repent, then please don't ever say Christianity is for weak people.

Whatever your quitting point, I challenge you to test God's truth and faithfulness by saying, God, I'm going to proceed, trusting you to empower me to crash through this quitting point and come out in one piece on the other side.

You may well have to simplify to live the life God is inviting you to live.

Your culture will only ever be as healthy as the senior leader wants it to be.

This is the only leadership life I get, my one and only shot at following God the way I feel him prompting me to do so. This isn't some pre-game warm-up. It's the game, and the clock is ticking!

Pray when you're alone. Pray when you're with a lot of people. Pray when you're in small groups. Pray on your way in; pray on your way out. Pray in your closet, in your car, at your desk. Pray morning prayers, pray mealtime prayers, pray in between mealtimes. Pray fervently, expectantly, and unself-consciously. Pray when you're burdened, worried, sick, or brokenhearted. Pray when you're soaring, setting records, or dancing on a mountaintop. Pray when you're up, and pray when you're down. Pray when you're healthy, when you're sick, when you feel like it, and when you don't. (Especially when you don't.)

People join organizations, they leave managers.

Life is too short and the world too compassion-starved for you to keep subsisting in situations that drag you down and curtail your potential to help advance the Kingdom. There's just too much at stake.

When you get to the end will God say, "Well done," or, "What was up with that?"

To be developed as a leader, failure must be allowed. Failure only helps us improve.

If you are anything like me you'll have to fight tooth-and-nail to stay in the game (evangelism). Because although the home runs have been invigorating, my batting average over the years is abysmally low.

The leader is the organization's top strategist ... systematically envisioning the future and specifically mapping out how to get there.

The grander the vision the greater the price tag.

God delights in pouring his favor on obedient risk takers.

God wants to father all of us until we're dead sure of his approval, his guiding power and his promise of heaven.

It helps certain church leaders identify the fact that they have the spiritual gift of leadership that the Bible talks about in Romans 12:8. Once you understand that God has given a gift, then training becomes more seriously. When you receive better training, you become more effective in the leadership position that God has assigned to you.

Live each day with an open ear toward heaven, eager to respond to any whisper from God.

Those churches have closed down or have been merged with a church that has a more positive vision.

One thing is that life's great moments evolve from simple acts of cooperation with God's mysterious promptings-nudges that always lean toward finding what's been lost and freeing what's been enslaved .

Every single decision you make as a leader has an effect on the spirit of those you lead.

The heart and soul of the Christian life is learning to hear God's voice and then developing the courage to do what he asks us to do.

You cannot do leadership without a source of regenerative strength. What is your source?

If it's the last thing I do, I will give every ounce of the rest of my life to helping leaders and churches get better.

Leaders need to have a ruthless commitment to resolving relational conflict regardless of how bad it feels.

Is the ambient noise level of my life low enough for me to hear the whispers of the Lord?

Delayed gratification is important first and foremost in training children.

Obeying the Spirit instead of your own self-centered whims will lead you to places you've never been, challenge you in ways you have never been challenged, and invite levels of sacrifice you never dreamed you could make. This is the power and the promise of full-throttle faith, of living a life fueled solely by God.

Most people feel best about themselves when they have given their very best.

If you're living a yielded life, and if you have the preaching and teaching gift, and you're yielding that to God on a continual basis, that's one of the signs that you're in the right place doing the right thing for the right reasons. If you're doing something in the kingdom, and you rarely feel that, that's a red flag. Something needs to be looked at. Are you using the right gift? Are you using it in the right way? For the right reasons? At the right time? In the right context? If I didn't feel it consistently, that would be quite troubling to me.

Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let's not go to Church, let's be the Church.

Personally, I've never understood inactivity. Why a person would sit when he could soar, be a spectator when he could play, or atrophy when he could develop ... is beyond me!

Enjoy every single day you get to lead because it will be over in a blink.

Playing around is one thing; following an established regimen is quite another. It's true with exercise equipment and it is true with prayer.

One of the greatest joys of leadership is assembling and knitting together teams of fantastic people.

We will probably have to pay a price for devoting our lives to building the kingdom of God. Jesus did.

Jesus is not directing the angelic choir, taking long naps, or doing crossword puzzles. He is completely focused on building his church, the hope of the world.

In Paul's day, instead of giving gold medals for winning first place in an Olympic event, a crown of olive or laurel leaves was placed on the winner's head. By the time the athlete went home that night, the wreath would already be wilting and falling apart. Think of that. All that energy expended for a wreath that didn't last beyond a day.

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

You can live and lead small, live and lead safe, live and lead selfishly, or you can pursue a grander vision.

People won't give their best unless their leader challenges them to do so.

We live in a world that is crying out for better leadership.

The question isn't, "What do I want to get done in the next thirty days?" but, "Who do I want to become in this next season of my life?

My selection process is based on "three Cs": first character, then competence, and finally chemistry with me and with the rest of the team. Character. Competence. Chemistry.

It's a huge responsibility to have influence and to steward it in a way that leads to God-honoring leadership.

God in His grace will allow us a certain number of friendships that stick for the long haul of life. These friendships are a treasured blessing.

Visionary people face the same problems everyone else faces; but rather than get paralyzed by their problems, visionaries immediately commit themselves to finding a solution.

You have never looked in the eyes of someone who does not matter to God.

I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity.

Religion is spelled DO. Christianity is spelled DONE. One endlessly works to earn love. The other simply receives it!

Leadership is the catalytic gift that energizes, directs, and empowers all the other gifts.

Our conduct will never change God's character.

Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.

If you don't change your schedule, you'll be the same person you've always been.

God is looking for women and men who are full on for Him ... people who have abandoned their own program and are just looking for how they can use their unique talents and abilities to further God's activities and programs in this world. These are the people God will tap on the shoulder and say, Come with me and we're going to do something great in your lifetime. Come, we're going to do this together.

It's one thing to see a vision; it's another thing to be seized by a vision.

Most of us are far too busy for our own spiritual good.

Don't get so addicted to vision that the people feel like equipment

I look at tens of thousands of church leaders who still do need a bit of an awakening.

Life's great moments evolve from simples acts of cooperation with God's mysterious promptings.

Vision is the most powerful weapon in the leader's arsenal.

Many leadership problems are driven by low self-awareness.

The more varied the environments in which you exercise your leadership gift, the stronger that gift will become. You will become a far more effective leader.

If we were to boil down Christianity to its core, we'd be left with simply this: relationship with God. The living, loving God of the universe has spoken throughout history, and still speaks today - not just to pastors or priests, but to anyone who will listen. God will speak to you.

I would never want to reach out someday with a soft, uncallused hand-a hand never dirtied by serving-and shake the nail-pierced hand of Jesus.

The Lord's Prayer is an excellent model, but it was never intended to be a magical incantation to get God's attention. Jesus gave this prayer as a pattern to suggest the variety of elements that should be included when we pray.

If you're a serious minded leader, you will read. You will read all you can. You will read when you feel like it, and you will read when you don't. You will do whatever you have to do to increase your leadership input, because you know as well as I do that it will make you better.

Church work ought to be at its core the work of loving people
like God loves them

A leadership development plan has to address these three phases: Identifying emerging leaders Investing in the development of emerging leaders Entrusting responsibility to emerging leaders

It's amazing how many coincidences occur when one begins to pray.

Everyone wins when a leader gets better

Humility enables us to learn from each other.

Wise leaders understand that the single greatest determinant of whether followers will ever own a vision deeply is the extent to which whose followers believe the leader will own it.

We all have strengths, weaknesses and blind spots. In fact, an average person has 3.4 blind spots.

Nothing that matters in this world happens unless leaders lead it.

Dignity does not float down from heaven it cannot be purchased nor manufactured. It is a reward reserved for those who labor with diligence.

Don't steamroll your way into a conversation before establishing any relational credibility.

Self awareness allows you to self-correct.

Leaders are at their very best when they are raising up leaders around them.

Truly, spiritual courage is on the endangered character-quality list.

If you lower the ambient noise of your life and listen expectantly for those whispers of God, your ears will hear them. And when you follow their lead, your world will be rocked.

Religion is spelled 'D-O', because it consists of the things people do try to somehow gain God's forgiveness and favor. But the problem is that you never know when you've done enough. But thankfully, Christianity is spelled differently. It's spelled 'D-O-N-E', which means that what we could never for ourselves, Christ has already done for us. To become a real Christian is to humbly receive God's gift of forgiveness and to commit to following His leadership.

You can never underestimate the amount of energy and frequency you must give to vision casting. You can never underestimate it.

The tithe is a wonderful goal but a terrible place to stop.

Most unmarried people have no idea what it takes to make a marriage work; they grossly underestimate the price people have to pay to build long-term, mutually satisfying relationships. And they fail to understand that the only people with the strength to pay that price are those who have plumbed the depths of their relationship with God, and have dealt with their own brokenness.

Busyness is the unrivaled archenemy of spiritual authenticity.

Leadership in church is one of the biggest challenges that the Church is facing because without strong leadership, the church rarely lives out its redemptive potentials.

A leader's most valuable asset is not their time but their energy and ability to energize others.

The Church will never reach her full redemptive potential until men and women with the leadership gift step up and lead.

We will occupy a right and wonderful world only when God's values occupy our lives.

Leaders should never apologize for the strength of feeling that accompanies their God-given visions. God designed leaders to experience their longing, their desire, and their drive deeply, and to express it fully. And when they do, they energize others.

It's incredible to realize that what we do each day has meaning in the big picture of God's plan

More than anything, people want the reality of the discussion at hand. If what is going on in that building is the real thing, if the transforming love and power of Jesus Christ is being experienced, you can sit on a metal folding chair or in a plush theater seat.

He's dangerous because when God talks to him Bob will do whatever God asks him to do at great cost, even if no one agrees, if it's contrary to the way the stream is going, if Bob feels God is in it he will do it.

Destructive fear must be stopped in its tracks or it will undermine the life God invites us to live.

God made you on purpose, for a purpose

How do you pray a prayer so filled with faith that it can move a mountain? By shifting your focus from the size of your mountain to the sufficiency of the Mountain Mover and then stepping forward in obedience.

The real deal is always going to win in the end.

Coaching is the most important servant/leadership element in helping people accomplish their goals.

If you are too busy or too proud to pray with your children, you are too busy and too proud.

Leadership is not for the faint of heart