Bill Hybels Quotations

Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I think the church would have been asleep at the switch. This level of activism and engagement with the needs of society by local churches I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It takes a great deal of courage to follow another person's lead.

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

Thirty years ago, we were in a movie theater and thought it was so cool because we were finally delivered from the horrors of stained glass and wooden pews.

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

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

Simplified living is about more than doing less. It’s being who God called us to be, with a wholehearted, single-minded focus.

Humility enables us to learn from each other.

Develop your reflective will and gain better insight before you say or do something.

If I've learned anything about prayer, it's that desperation drives discipline.

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.

If there is ever a time crying out for courageous leadership, its now.

The nature of human beings is such that we tend not to drift into better behaviors. We usually have to be asked by someone to consider taking it up a level.

God wants us...to talk to him as to a friend or father-authentically, reverently, personally, earnestly.

The Christian life is one of faith, where we find ourselves routinely overdriving our headlights but knowing it's okay because God is in control and has a purpose behind it.

Your energy and the ability to energize others is more valuable than your time.

I can write about prayer, you can read about prayer...but sooner or later you have to fall to your knees and just plain pray. Then, and only then, will you begin to operate in the vein of God's miracle-working ways.

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

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

Leadership grit begets grit. Lead by example.

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

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.

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.

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

If you're a serious minded leader, you will read. You will read all you can.

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

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

The worst days of leadership beat the best days of being an onlooker.

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

Our minds, like the needle in that compass, can focus on a variety of subjects throughout the day. But in the end, when they're left alone to settle, they'll focus on the objects of our greatest affection.

Leaders have to figure it out when there is no road map.

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

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

If your life is rushing in many directions at once, you are incapable of the kind of deep, unhurried prayer that is vital to the Christian walk.

Savor every day you have the privilege to lead.

Effective leaders do not fear passion. They welcome it. But from time to time passionate discussions digress into personal attacks, and real people get really hurt. In my view, leaders must head that off before it happens.

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever you see something going well - whenever light begins to chase back the darkness that threatens to engulf our world - look closely. There stands a leader who is holding that candle.

People join organizations, they leave managers.

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.

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

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

Our conduct will never change God's character.

Legacy leaders are the only ones wiling to pay the price to fix a broken culture.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness.

Busyness is the unrivaled archenemy of spiritual authenticity.

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.

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.

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

God led Jesus to a cross, not a crown, and yet that cross ultimately proved to be the gateway to freedom and forgiveness for every sinner in the world.

The grander the vision the greater the price tag.

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

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.

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.

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

If leaders don't have an antidote for fear they will be crushed by it. What is your antidote?

Authentic Christianity is a supernatural walk with a living, dynamic, communicating God.

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

The mark of community is not the absence of conflict. It's the presence of a reconciling spirit.

Many leadership problems are driven by low self-awareness.

Everyone wins when a leader gets better

Leadership requires a non-stop demand of fortitude from Day 1 to the end.

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

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

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

Build something with enduring value.

One of the greatest thrills in all of life is to feel the hand of God working through you and to be a part of the working reality of the church engaged in a movement larger than self.

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.

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

Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.

It’s the great temptation for small groups of people to slide into a state where they’re not quite telling each other the truth and they’re not quite celebrating each other. Instead, they tolerate each other, they accommodate each other, and they settle for sitting on the unspoken matters that separate them.

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

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

For a marriage relationship to flourish, there must be intimacy. It takes an enormous amount of courage to say to your spouse, 'This is me. I'm not proud of it - in fact, I'm a little embarrassed by it - but this is who I am.

You don't have to be any more talented, any richer, any slimmer, any smarter, any more or less of anything to partner with God. All you have to be is willing to be used by him in everyday way

Leaders, your God-given job is not merely to preside over something, not to pontificate to your underlings how smart you are, not merely to preserve something from its gradual demise; it's to figure out what God wants to get done in this world, figure out what role you play in that, and then to move something or someone from here to there.

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

Self awareness allows you to self-correct.