Reconciliation

I have a whole lot of thoughts I need to write down.  Hopefully there's time in the next few days for writing and posting.  I went to the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit on Thursday and Friday (there was a simulcast at my church and it was considered professional development for work :-)).  God was working on some things in my life before then and the Summit just continued to reinforce some of the things I've been thinking about praying about.  More about that later...

 

But first! I had a great visit with one of my best friends Wendy and her sweet daughter C.  C is a tiny little peanut, but is sooooo full of joy and light and personality, even when she's not feeling great.  I wish I would have snapped a picture of her in the car, she was quite the little entertainer!!  We went to Storyville and she loved watching and playing with the other kids there!

C loves rocking and talking on the phone.  I feel so so blessed to be a part of this family's lives!!  I have a couple of great friends with little ones and am really thankful I get to watch them grow up.








After the Summit, I am really contemplating and praying more than ever about how God wants to use me.  I want to see Him do things that only He can accomplish.  Watching Caitlin have complete faith in her parents reminds me of how my faith should be more like that of a child.  I know God has great things in store, but I'm so scared about what He might call me to do.  In fact, I have a post written about it, but I'm not ready to post it yet.  It just feels too real when you write it down for others to see.  Soon though, I promise!!

I was really fired up though, about something that happened at the Leadership Summit and wanted to process it with you all.  For those of you who aren't familiar, Willow Creek is a very large non-denominational church in the Chicago, IL area.  They held their first Summit in 1995 and now it is simulcast to over 185 sites in the US and to leaders in 200 cities across the World.  What's really amazing is that they don't ask only Christian leaders to speak.  They invite leaders from all over the business world to share their expertise.  This was my second year attending and I got soooo much out of it!  I have a lot to share about the speakers and what I learned, but today I wanted to share about one speaker in particular.  I was really looking forward to hearing from Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks.  He seems to be an extremely bright, innovative and introspective leader and thought that a lot could be learned from him as he was going to speak on his new book Onward.  Unfortunately, Mr. Schultz backed out of his speaking engagement just days before the Summit began.   No one has said for certain his reasoning for backing out at the last minute, however, it's notable that a petition on change.org was started to encourage people to boycott Starbucks if he spoke, due to Willow Creek's supposed anti-gay practices.  The petition is now noted as a victory on the website.  Some 700 people signed petition, compared to over 150,000 people attending the event.  I want to say first, that I acknowledge that I can't fathom the discrimination and hate many in the gay community feel.  I don't claim to have experienced that or pretend that I know what it's like.  However, I was taught from a young age, and still believe, that two wrongs don't make a right.   I also thinks it's important to know all the facts before you make judgments, rather than act harshly based on assumptions.  I was saddened for so many reasons when Bill Hybels, the pastor at Willow, made this announcement.  The sadness was quickly replaced with great respect, however, at his response.  The first thing he clarified is that "Willow is not anti anybody." In fact, he explained that they had many regular attenders at their church who are gay.  He also explained that Willow let Mr. Schultz out of the contract with no penalty.  He went on to ask us to write an email to starbucks.com, but not to boycott, rather to share our disappointment and invite him back in the future with genuine Christian love. On top of that, the Pastor also encouraged us to go buy Starbucks to support them, rather than follow the trend of hate.  What most impressed me is that the leadership of the Summit is now trying to engage those who started to petition in a meeting with a spirit of reconciliation.  Friends, that is loving others.  Seeing actions based on hurt, and rather than attempting to hurt in retaliation, trying to understand the root with a heart of love and reconciliation.  Continuing to spread hate is not that answer and I hope that something great could actually come out of this unfortunate circumstance.  I've seen many other petitions like this and I know that we all aren't always going to agree, but I hope will all my heart that we will all work for reconciliation!