Bill Hybels, Holy Discontent: Fueling the Fire that Ignites Personal Vision. Zondervan, 2007.
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LifeandLeadership.com Summary
What motivates you to pay the sacrificial price of leadership? Often it is “holy discontent.” When you are stoked about something that you know is deeply important to God but is nowhere on the radar with the people you lead, this can often lead to deep frustration or even devastating disillusionment with the church. This book presents another possibility: allow God to use this firestorm of frustration to enlist you in his work of helping to fix a broken world. Drawing from the experience of Moses, who lived only “accidentally” (i.e. “providentially”) as an Egyptian, placed by God into a setting where his own people, the Israelites, bore under awful mistreatment and oppression. The marker event for Moses was watching one of his own people being beaten by an angry Egyptian. This fueled his anger, and something inside him snapped. The rest is redemptive history. This story and others like it from people he interviewed led Hybels to the central thesis of this book:
“The motivating reason why many people choose to do good in this world around them is because there is something wrong in that world. In fact, there is something so wrong that they just can’t stand it. …As a result, they devote their vocational lives, their volunteer energies, and their hard-earned money to making sure it gets fixed.”
And when there is deep spiritual congruence that connects one’s sense of what’s wrong with God’s priorities for the world, it is “holy discontent.” Whether one’s holy discontent is poor leadership, dead churches, wrecked marriages, economic injustice, violence, etc., this book can help one find it, develop it, and sustain it to make a real difference.
Publisher’s Description
What is the one aspect of this broken world that, when you see it, touch it, get near it, you just can’t stand? Very likely, that firestorm of frustration reflects your holy discontent, a reality so troubling that you are thrust off the couch and into the game. It’s during these defining times when your eyes open to the needs surrounding you and your heart hungers to respond that you hear God say, “I feel the same way about this problem. Now, let’s go solve it together!”
Bill Hybels invites you to consider the dramatic impact your life will have when you allow your holy discontent to fuel instead of frustrate you. Using examples from the Bible, his own life, and the experiences of others, Hybels shows how you can find and feed your personal area of holy discontent, fight for it when things get risky, and follow it when it takes a mid-course turn. As you live from the energy of your holy discontent, you’ll fulfill your role in setting what is wrong in this world right!
About the Author
Bill Hybels (B.A. Trinity College) is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. Willow Creek’s innovative ministries have made it one of the most attended churches in North America. Hybels has authored over 20 books, including, Fit to Be Tied, and Rediscovering Church (with his wife Lynne), Honest to God, Too Busy Not to Pray, and Courageous Leadership.
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