More Yelo

Some specific quotes & thoughts that popped up during this very cool one-day seminar... for more of my reactions, check out my post, Yelo, from last week - or the Yelo website.

• Someone asked Erwin a question and used the phrase "a strength overdone will become a weakness." I don't remember what the question was, but Erwin quickly quashed that kind of thinking. "A strength overdone will not become a weakness... a strength overdone will become a greater strength. A strength informed by bad character will become a weakness."
• In fact, that was a key teaching of the day - your character is more important than your strengths. A charismatic leader with good character turns out like Billy Graham; a charismatic leader with bad character turns out like Adolf Hitler.

For those who are interested (and have some background with StrengthsFinder), my strengths are (in order):

• Input
• Learner
• Belief
• Maximizer
• Responsibility

I think Input is clearly dominant (I'm not sure if it's my ability to remember where to find information in books and/or online, or my 2000+ volume personal library, or my game collection of nearly 800 board & card games that tipped the scale), along with Belief (which, I think, is probably a nice thing for a pastor to have.) The other three are supportive or lesser... I'm not sure in which combination.

Coupled with the StrengthsFinder results was some very interesting conversation about having a "strengths culture" in your enviroment - in my case, NewLife Community Church. One of the big questions I have to answer for myself & our community is "what strengths do we over- or -under-value?"