Collide Magazine

If you weren’t able to make it to ECHO last week, you missed out on a phenomenal conference. Lucky for you, Tim Stevens took good notes at the keynote sessions and posted them on his blog. As I thought about how nice it was for Tim to take and share his notes, it quickly occurred to me that I may have discovered one of the secrets to Tim’s success.

If you’re not familiar with Tim (if you read this blog, you probably are), he’s an executive pastor, an author, and a popular blogger. The place you might expect to see him, then, is sitting attentively in an auditorium listening to someone else speak. Doesn’t Tim have it all figured out already? Doesn’t he write books and work at a church on somebody’s “most innovative” list? Doesn’t he speak at conferences all over the country? If so, shouldn’t he be hiding out in the green room, checking his email, and haggling with his publisher? Evidently not.

My guess is that one of the reasons Tim is so successful professionally is that he’s still hungry. Rather than rest on what he knows and what he has done, Tim listens carefully to people who have something to say in hopes that he might learn something new. I respect that, and I think Tim sets a great example for all of us: No matter how much we accomplish or learn, let us not forget how to listen and learn.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under Conferences, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.