Nathan Neighbors
Follower of Christ, Husband, Father, & Youth Pastor
Today Morningside had the great privilege of having Pat Williams speak in both services. Pat is a well know sports manager and has worked in both major league baseball and basketball. He’s managed many pro teams and also speaks on leadership. He currently lives in Orlando Florida, where he co-founded the Orlando Magic. More than anything, he’s a man who loves the Lord with all of his heart. These days he is a highly sought after speaker on leadership. Here are just a few things I heard him say today about leadership during the message he delivered. Check out his website for more info about him or to get one of the 26 books he has written.
Seven Sides of Leadership…message by Pat Williams
- Vision – keeps you focused, keeps you fueled, helps you finish well
- Communicate Your Vision – communicate optimism, inspiration, motivation, talk about the vision often in front of people
- People Skill – be visible, be available, empower others, listen! It may not be a coincidence that “listen” and “silent” have the same letters just in a different order.
- Character Counts – don’t disqualify yourself because of your character, honesty, integrity, humility
- Competence – must be good at what you do, need to be a good teacher, need to be a great learner
- Boldness – great leaders step up, don’t worry about others, be the boss
- Serving Heart – our greatest model is Jesus himself when he told us if we want to be great, we need to get up and serve other people.
Yesterday it felt more like Carow “hot” than Caro “winds“ at the Big Youth Thing. We took 29 students to the South Carolina Baptist Convention Youth Day at the Carowinds Theme Park in Rock Hill, SC. It was around 111° heat index and it was almost unbearable. Teenagers were dropping like flies. We were in line no more than 30 minutes at 10:30am when our first young teen girl blacked out and hit the ground. So most of my morning was in the First Aid station. Within a few minutes I got a call to say that one of our guys passed out briefly, but was OK. Then later that afternoon one of our girls, who has diabetes, didn’t have what she needed to pump her insulin into her and her blood sugar was rising. By the time we got her to the ER at Piedmont Medical, it was 515. (about 5 X’s the normal level). Her dad came and the doctors got her back to a normal level and she got to go home, but it was a little scary for a while.
Despite the heat and mishaps, the day was great and the concert by the David Crowder Band was awesome. The rest of the students had a great time and look forward to cooler days ahead!
Yesterday Katie Roberts, one of our youth from Lancaster, and her family came to visit us in Spartanburg. It’s great to see students that we have had the opportunity to make an impact on and see what God is doing in their lives now. God bless you Katie and all the youth at FBC Lancaster. I can’t wait to see all that God does through your life – especially this year as you find a college.
Nathan Neighbors 