I’m a starter. Not a finisher.

An ideas guy. Not a git-er-done guy.

I like philosophy and concepts and reading and thinking.

Not planning and details and technical writing and instructions.

But at certain points, the rubber needs to meet the road, right?

As Thoreau said, I need to “put foundations under my dreams in the clouds.”

Which brings me to a talk I heard this week at Willowcreek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.

I was there as part of a group of leaders from Canada, at a weeklong leadership intensive called “Partnering to Prevail.” We had classes from sun up to sun down and it was brilliant all over.

This particular talk was by a 71-year-old chap named Gordon MacDonald, entitled “Self Leadership“. He was a great guy. 45 year church leader. Like a wise old grandpa. He was talking about discipline. I took notes.

One thing that really stood out was a quote from William Barclay, who was describing Samuel Taylor Coleridge…

“Coleridge is the supreme tragedy of indiscipline; never did so great a mind produce so little.

He left Cambridge University to join the army; he left the army because he could not rub down a horse; he returned to Oxford and left without a degree.

He began a paper called The Watchman which lived for ten editions and then died. It has been said of him: “he lost himself in visions of work to be done, that always remained to be done. Coleridge had every poetic gift but one- the gift of sustained and concentrated effort”.

In his head and in his mind he had all kinds of books, as he himself said, “completed, save for transcription. I am on the eve”, he says, of sending to the press two complete volumes”. But the books were never composed outside Coleridge’s mind; because he would not face the discipline of sitting down to write them out.

No one ever reached eminence and no one having reached it ever maintained it, without discipline.”

Dang. He had my attention, because it sounded too much like me.

He then shared with us 10 disciplines that he thought we all need to cultivate as leaders…
Physical- rest, exercise, nutrition
Intellectual- “do some heavy thinking”
Emotional-
Relational- “leadership is only as lonely as you let it be.”
Moral
Ego- walk humbly
Giftedness- “keep developing yourself to be the best possible- don’t just get by on current skill… Larry Bird took 300 shots in warm ups, even after decades of practice”
Financial
Spiritual
Convictability

He suggested that if we practice these disciplines intentionally, we’ll never stop creating real change in the communities that we lead.

A wise fellow indeed.

I’ll be sharing my class notes over the next week or so.

Next blog post: The Willow youth pastors put a new spin on prayer.