Pastor Wayne Cordiero is the leader who influenced our Bishop Dick Wills. Here are some of his teachings, gleaned from a presentation at a Bill Hybels Leadership Summit.

  • You can teach what you know, but you reproduce what you are.
  • Wayne went all-out for 22+ years until his world started to fall apart.
  • Some symptoms: Ministry no longer fun; avoided being around people; wishy-washy on decisions; felt (wrongly) responsible for issues — as if being blamed for the problems people brought to him.
  • The road to success (as the world preaches it) and the road to a breakdown are sometimes the very same road.
  • When you are in the dark night of the soul, you are open to hearing God when you weren’t before.
  • Sometimes the only time radical change happens is through radical pain.
  • Wayne retreated at a monastery. No internet. No phones. Not even coffee. He even took a vow of silence for his time apart. And God changed him during that week.
  • “What fills my tank?” “What drains my tank.” What am I doing when I feel the most alive, the fullest? Who am I with?  Where am I doing this?
  • “When I’m too busy, I increase my playtime.”
  • Schedule your rest time FIRST.
  • Find someone you can trust, a confidante who will help keep the main thing the main thing. If you aren’t intentional about this, you’ll dump on whoever is available.
  • Wayne says the best thing he ever did for his church was to teach them to feed themselves, to read the Bible, and to use a Life Journal (like this one).

And that’s what I learned from Wayne Cordeiro…