The What And The Why Behind Texas Leadership Summit

Join in on a conversation with Tim Webb, the visionary behind the Texas Leadership Summit, as we unite faith-based leaders from all walks of life. Our discussion traces the roots of the TLS and its mission to foster a new generation of leaders under the banner of Christian faith. As we navigate through stories of Texas' storied past, we draw parallels to the present, examining the impact of robust Christian leadership within business, government, church, and education spheres. Discover how TLS equips individuals with the courage and tools to lead with conviction, all while nurturing a community bonded by shared values and the pursuit of meaningful change.

This chapter of our journey isn't just about heralding the call to action—it's about celebrating the victories of those who answered. We shine a light on organizations invigorated by our summit, who have taken a stand for their beliefs, overcoming challenges with grace and tenacity. Tune in for a heartfelt exploration of faith-guided leadership, the courage to shatter comfort zones, and the small but mighty percentage of proactive leaders shaping the silent majority. We're not just extending a hand to believers but also to those yet to discover Christ, with resources like the Teach Me The Bible Podcast and our dedicated website to guide and uplift. Together, let's reflect on the milestones reached and gear up for the waves of change rolling in with 2024.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Young, old, male, female, black, white, liberal, conservative. There is one big reason we can unite. We unite under the name of Jesus Christ, his life, his death and His resurrection. In Him we stand together. You're listening to the Texas Leadership Summit podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Happy New Year. I'm Deanna with Texas Leadership Summit. We want to welcome you to our first podcast. I'm here with founder Tim Webb. I'm the director of Texas Leadership Summit and we're just going to let you know the DNA of Texas Leadership Summit. Tls is what we like to call it. I'm going to admit I'm a little out of my comfort zone.

Speaker 3: 0:47

It's okay, it's good.

Speaker 2: 0:49

But I'm going to practice what I preach, so hopefully this will get easier as we go along and we can encourage you to also get out of your comfort zone, be the leader that you feel like you've been led to be and see what we can do in 2024. That's right, all right.

Speaker 3: 1:06

It's exciting time. It is exciting.

Speaker 2: 1:08

So we're just going to start off. I'm going to ask how did Texas Leadership Summit come about?

Speaker 3: 1:15

That's really a crazy question, deanna, and expect me to answer that in a short amount of time. But two parts to this. This is something I've been dreaming about for years, 16 years at least. Going way back in ministry being, when my wife and I moved to Brenham, we were just blown away. This is the birthplace of Texas. Can you believe it?

Speaker 3: 1:39

We live in the birthplace of Texas, where all began, and so I began to formulate in my mind what must have happened when they started the nation of Texas. I mean, you had business leaders, men and women, you had education, you had the church, you had government that needed to be established. In this leadership, they had to come together and decide okay, how are we going to found a nation? And so I've always been fascinated by that history. And then you fast forward to today's time, or last year, when this idea, as it's been percolating how could we bring leadership together? And centrally located in Texas, brenham? We've got San Antonio, houston, austin, dallas. We are centrally located in the state.

Speaker 3: 2:27

What, I wonder? What could happen if we were able to bring leaders together, pour into those leaders and then send them back out, or just that, bringing together leadership. All of this, though, rooted in God's word, biblically, that we know as a nation Texas, the US, our founding fathers they were rooted in God's word, they knew God's word and a lot of our principles came out of our understanding of God's word, and so it's always been something to where we wanted to pour into Christian leadership, because we believe that right thinking brings the right response. So all of this has been formulating over 16 years. And then over a year ago, we did a sermon series here at Champion Fellowship and just it was called the Pillars and it was centered on our faith in action in all four pillars business, government, church, education. What would that look like for us to engage our faith in those pillars? Because that's where we do life, in the pillars, and so I just also coupled that with where we are as a country and as a state. We're fed up with being fed up.

Speaker 3: 3:46

They are and we have an opportunity. And so it's kind of like that the cartoon Popeye when he gets to the point where he says I can't stands it, can't stands it no more, and he pops the can. And so we had this discussion with the pillars sermon series and what? How could we encourage people to stand for their faith in each one of those pillars? And so after that I had people just asking okay, what do we do with this? I mean, this, this is great information. And they had opportunity to see faith in action in each one of those pillars. What do we do at the local level? And so we came up with the idea of having our first summit experience where we had Speakers come in and talk about how their faith encouraged them within each one of the pillars. It was a fantastic day. You were there.

Speaker 3: 4:38

You're a big part of that Dang and 700 people, and there was this excitement no, we can do something. And so Now we're here today looking at how we can encourage everyday leaders With courage, tools and hope to stand for their faith in the pillar that they live and move in.

Speaker 2: 5:01

So they don't have to be a CEO already.

Speaker 3: 5:03

No, definitely not. We are talking about everyday leaders, from Whether it's in the family, in the church, in our community. How do and especially that's one of the things, the goals that we have at TLS how can we encourage leadership at the local level? How can people come together and bring forth solutions from God's word and this way of life in Christ? And so I definitely want to make sure people understand our Foundation comes solely from God's word and we are talking about Christian leadership. We're talking about the church and the people, god's people, standing for their faith and engaging that faith in community.

Speaker 2: 5:43

And so what does that look like? Just a little bit for on each one of the pillars so people can kind of identify oh, that would be my pillar, or I could fall under this one, or maybe I could do a little bit here and a little bit here so Definitely can speak to that.

Speaker 3: 5:57

It's just, let's. Just, let's go ahead and say this before we get into the pillars we know that failed leadership costs lives. We know failed leadership cost lives, and so we want to be about saving life. And so when you look at each one of the four pillars and how God has designed the the individual, the family, the church and government there are specific things that each one of those pillars are created for. So government we know the government was created to protect life, designed by God, go all the way back to Genesis. The government is to protect life, to reward those who do good and Punish evildoers. Unfortunately, what we see today is just the opposite. We see the government rewarding evil, in fact encouraging wickedness and evil. And so how can we get back? How can we engage our faith in government and elect leaders who will bring those faith values to the forefront? And it's not to promote this religion, it's not to promote someone's certain denomination. It is. These are biblical, godly principles that God has given in His Word that we know brings forth life, encourages life. And so that we know government is designed by God to protect life, punish evil doers.

Speaker 3: 7:17

We know that education gives life. Now that may sound weird. What do you mean? Give life? Education at the core of education. The chief end of man, as stated by the Founding Fathers, wants to know God and enjoy Him forever. Well, there's only one way you can know God and that's through His Word. God has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind through the prophets and through Christ, the apostles, and so we know that those words were handed down and they are, in written form, what we call the Bible. And so, if you want to have eternal life, what do you do? You hear the gospel, and we want everyone to have an opportunity to hear the gospel. If people don't know Christ, we definitely, through this, through TLS, want to constantly have that in the forefront, because it is this faith in God from the Word. It gives us the opportunity to receive eternal life, the gift of eternal life. But in that education continues as you grow. It's been said that you know, in the simplest of form of the gospel, you can know Christ. But then we grow in our understanding, and that's true with education the more you learn, the more you grow and the more you're equipped to interact in life, this life that God has given us. So we know if we want to overcome poverty, one of the best things you can do is educate, and so we know these things.

Speaker 3: 8:42

We do Business. Business is to steward life. We know that God has given us the opportunity to use our hands to work, to provide for ourselves, to feed and care for our families, and then he says the abundance out of that. We are to be a blessing to others, to give to others. But as Christians we know that our businesses can help steward and advance the kingdom of God.

Speaker 3: 9:09

Too long, for too long, the church has made a separation between the sacred and the secular. But that's not the case when you read God's Word. All of life is sacred according to God. We can't separate certain segments of our lives and say, well, this is just with God and this is ours. See, faith in Christ. We have been purchased by the blood of Christ, we belong to him and so we know that he's given us a life to steward. In some businesses Christian businesses We've had this conversation about how can we advance the kingdom through our business, how can we provide opportunities, community impact, ideas and how. You know there's so many ways, so we're going to look into that a little more. On the business pillar. It's been phenomenal to see how God has already used that pillar to change whole cultures within the business world, and so it's been exciting to see, and it has been exciting.

Speaker 3: 10:03

Finally, I would say the church. The church sustains life. Now some would argue well, I think it gives life. Just hear me out on this.

Speaker 3: 10:11

Okay, when I say sustained life, what I mean by that is that the church is foundational. When you come to Christ, you're immediately baptized in the body of Christ. You become a part of the church. The church is where we learn about the gospel, we learn about the word. This is the church, is the opportunity to create people, to go out and evangelize. We learn how to have a godly marriage, we learn how to have a godly family, we learn how to have a godly life, so forth, and so on.

Speaker 3: 10:42

If we shut the church down all of a sudden, there's no more teaching of the word, there's no more biblical model for marriage and family and so forth and so on, and there's no growth in the kingdom of Christ and the church.

Speaker 3: 10:56

So when we say sustained, I guess the best example would be what did Christ tell his apostles? He sent them out to take his word out into the known world, and they entrusted that to others. And that's why, for 2000 years now, we've had the church engaging the world that we live in. It is because of the Christians that we have orphanages, hospitals, people working in foster care. You're very familiar with that, and so, initially, these are the things that the church has been a huge part of, and so these are the four pillars that we want to dive deeper into and equip people, to give them the tools to engage their faith. So we're not simply asking people to come and have a great conversation. We want to equip people, we want to be a part of bringing leadership together, and so those four pillars are the main areas that we focus on for leadership, and so I think everyone who has influence as a leader, they just don't always understand it and see it.

Speaker 2: 12:04

Right, and it can be on a small scale, it can be on a large scale. So we're talking. If you're sitting on your couch and you're listening to this, or you're driving your car and you're hearing us and you're like, oh, I need to take a stand. You know PTA, I need to take a stand. Lead a Bible study, like these are all different ways that they could, on a smaller scale, become a leader and we want to be able to help direct them encourage them, bring them together, mentor, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 12:36

That's the purpose of TLS.

Speaker 3: 12:37

Well, we've had a great example. It's just in our first year, so we had our summit experience. We had some great, phenomenal speakers that came together. One of the things that came out of that I had a group of individuals said, okay, how do we do this? What does it need to look like? How do we engage our local community? And so we had people coming together to engage their faith in the local school district.

Speaker 3: 13:03

We have local businessmen and women who have come together. They've rejected the secular view of today and secular wisdom and said, nope, our values are important to us, our faith values. And so businessmen excuse me, businessmen and women have come together to formulate these groups, to be a part of advancing the kingdom, bring their values forward in the community. We have also had people get involved at the education level. We've had people get involved with the government and city council.

Speaker 3: 13:37

We've had a group of local pastors come together, started out with three or four, it's up to about 13 churches now, and so community-wide worship those things. And so it's been a phenomenal experience. And if you think about it in the day that we live in, the times that we live in now, where evil is rampant, I mean it is becoming very obvious. There's two sides good versus evil. If we can equip people at the local level, county by county, we can impact our entire state. If people learn how to come together and we know that the country is looking to Texas, at Texas yeah, texas is already a leader when it comes to the United States for sure.

Speaker 3: 14:22

So if Texas falls, it's a bad day.

Speaker 2: 14:25

Yeah, it is a bad day.

Speaker 3: 14:26

So, but in light of that, I always want to encourage people that we can do something. We can do something and there's an urgency to do it now. There is.

Speaker 2: 14:38

And so our next podcast that we're going to have is going to be a little bit longer, and we're going to actually have some of those organizations that started after our summit, where they were encouraged to take a stand and make a difference, and we're excited to be able to let them tell their story about how it got started and some of their challenges and some of their wins, which is also what we want to hear from those that are following us. Let us know how we can help encourage them and how we can, what tools we can provide you, but also we want to celebrate the wins.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Yes.

Speaker 2: 15:11

We love the wins and we don't want to just be here to tell people all the problems that are out in the world that need to be fixed. We really want to help them know how they can go and do the work and what the solutions are very important.

Speaker 3: 15:24

I think if we could capture this phrase right thinking, right response we've seen the wrong thinking and what it produces. We want to go after right thinking as design, as as given by God's word. So right thinking, right response. And with that I would also just. I know we're trying to wrap this, wrap this up a little bit, but we know that if we can get just 10% of our leadership at the local level, if we can get 10% engaging their faith and verbalizing it and moving out in their faith, we know that we can get 80%. There's that silent majority that's just looking for people to lead them and they will engage, and so that's what we're after.

Speaker 2: 16:06

And so when it's that fear factor too, right. So, getting out of your comfort zone, the fear that you have that you won't be accepted, or what kind of ridicule will you get? But there's comfort in numbers. So if they see other people stepping out in faith and getting out of their comfort zone, then you'll be really it'll be exciting to see what happens.

Speaker 3: 16:28

I'm trying really hard not to just jump in here with even more. I know we're running full time, but this whole thing if you leadership is lonely, there's so many things that we could talk about, and then when we are in days ahead. But people need to be prepared.

Speaker 2: 16:42

Well, and the enemy too wants you to be scared and not want to step out, so that fear is not by accident. I mean it's there to serve a purpose and your faith just needs to be bigger than it. That's right.

Speaker 3: 16:57

The Lord told us many times in scriptures do not be afraid.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Do not be afraid. He's not giving us a spirit of fear, that's for sure, that's right, and I can I mean, I can contest to that how it was kind of scary to step out and do this today, but you just kind of get, get in the ease of it and it's a little bit easier more you do it and you have other people around you to encourage you. And that's what we're here for for sure and foremost. We're here to make sure that we're leading people to Christ. So if you're listening to this and you're not a believer and you want to know more, we definitely want to reach out, point you in the right direction, get you resources, let you know more, more information on how to have Christ as your Lord and Savior and why we believe that it's so important. That's right and how you can have eternal life as well, right.

Speaker 3: 17:52

That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2: 17:54

That's what we really hear about.

Speaker 3: 17:56

I'm excited. I'm excited for you, deanna, see you stepping up out of your faith, and so it's exciting to see others do that as well. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this. Yes me too, and all the people that are coming together to support and encourage us.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Very exciting. So so, yeah, let us know how we can help you and things that you're looking for, and definitely those wins, so we can celebrate them with y'all. Here's to a wonderful 2024.

Speaker 3: 18:22

Yes, looking forward to 2024. Can't believe it's here. But with that, I want to point people to a resource that we have at TLS and that's Teach Me the Bible podcast. They can download that at the app store any app store. It's online and that is one of the resources that we direct people to as far as God's word, with our statement of faith, and so I'm really excited about that, and so I'm excited what God has for us in this next year. Deanna.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Yes, it's exciting. Thank you for joining us, tim, and also go to our website TexasLeadershipSummitorg for resources and also our email to reach out to us. And thank you for tuning in and we look forward to having you join us on the next one.