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About Brian C. Stiller

Dr. Brian C. Stiller Brian Stiller was raised in a minister’s home on the prairies. Educated at the University of Toronto (BA in History), Wycliffe College (Master of Religion), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Doctor of Ministry), he has received honorary doctorates from Briercrest College and Trinity Western University.

During the 1960s, Stiller began working with youth: director of Montreal Youth for Christ, then Toronto YFC, and finally as Canadian president of Youth for Christ.

From 1983 to 1997 his leadership as president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada www.evangelicalfellowship.ca gave him national profile as a voice for people of biblical faith. By way of weekly television, publishing a national magazine, authoring a number of books and public speaking, he helped move the evangelical community into the mainstream of influence and commentary.

Brian served as President of Tyndale University College & Seminary from 1995 to 2009. Tyndale is the oldest standing institution of its kind in Canada, serving some 1200 students. Since 2009 he has served as president ot the Tyndale Foundation, leading a capital campaign of sixty million, in purchase of a new campus and is now appointed President Emeritus by Tyndale.

As of July 1, 2011, Stiller will serve as Global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance, a global alliance which serves some 600 million evangelical Christians. www.worldevangelicals.org

Stiller is founder and former editor-in-chief of Canada’s national magazine, Faith Today. He hosted a national weekly television program "Cross Currents." He is the author of eleven books. The most recent are You Never Know What You Have 'Till You Give It Away (2010), published by Castle Quay Books, Preaching Parables to Postmoderns (2005), published by Fortress Press; Jesus and Caesar: Christians in the Public Square (2003), published by Castle Quay Books Canada; What Happens When I Die? (2001), published by HarperCollins; When Life Hurts: A Three-Fold Path to Healing (1999), and From the Tower of Babel to Parliament Hill (1997).

His life mission comes from the time King David was rebuilding Israel. One group assisting him was described as those “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (I Chronicles 12:32).

Brian and his wife Lily have a son Murray (married to Catherine) and a daughter Muriel (married to Jesse Pascal); and five grandchildren.

NOTE: to order any of Stiller's books go to http://castlequaybooks.com/BrianStiller

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Quotes from The Issachar Notes

It's better to burn out than to fade away.

— Neil Young

I will consider, as if I were at the point of death, what procedure and norm I will at that time wish I had used in the manner of making the present election. Then, guiding myself by that norm, I should make my decision on the whole matter.

— Ignatius Loyola

No plan of war survives the first exchange of gunfire.

— Carl Von Clausewitz, On War

For a leader, there is but a grey line that divides hope from hyperbole.

— Brian C. Stiller

Where is the line between loyalty and jealousy?

— Janet Clark

Once you've figured out what you want to do, find someone who has done it before... If they share your values and aspirations, and if they freely share their counsel, they can help you through rough patches and celebrate your victories as their own.

— Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO

It is not the critic who counts.

— Theodore Roosevelt

People discover and respond to the future as much as they plan it.

— Ronald A.Heifetz

You can do everything with bayonets, Sire, except sit on them.

— Talleyrand to Napoleon

Real football players don't play with blue footballs.

— B. Pascal

To lead is to be transformed. For in leading I am by necessity testing, learning, finding out, and if in process I'm not in a transformation mode, then I get stuck and if I get stuck so do my people and our organization.

— Brian C. Stiller

Don't expect others to take greater risks or make greater sacrifices than you have.

— Andy Stanley

Wonder is the only launching pad for exploring this fullness, this wholeness, of human life.

— Eugene Peterson

People discover and respond to the future as much as they plan it.

— Ronald Heifetz

As each Goose flaps it wings, it creates an 'up lift' for the bird following. By flying in a V formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.

— Robert McNeish

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confessional, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ—living and incarnate.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is sometimes frightening to observe the success which comes even to the outlaw with a polished technique... but I believe we must reckon with character in the end, for it is as potent a force in world conflict as it is in our own domestic affairs. It strikes the last blow in any battle.

— Philip D. Reed

Complaint is the soil in which seeds of destructive attitudes are planted.

— Stan Walters

What is true for leaders is, for better or worse: we are our own raw material.

— Warren Bennis

By providing illusions of grandeur, internal scapegoats, and external enemies, Hitler misdiagnosed Germany's ills and brought his nation to disaster. He exercised leadership no more than a charlatan practices medicine when providing fake remedies.

— Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers

I need discernment when looking for a new place of ministry or vocation. For in my search, the need may not be so much a call for a geographical cure as much as a call for a cure of a different sort.

— Brian C. Stiller - from my journal

A restless countercultural instinct to keep challenging the status quo was built into Jesuit heroism.

— Chris Lowney

Evil rolls across the ages, but so does good. Good has its own momentum. Corruption never wholly succeeds... Creation is stronger than sin and grace stronger still. Creation and grace are anvils that have worn out a lot of hammers.

— Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.

If you don't have the Vince Lombardi Trophy, everything else is a paperweight.

— Coach Shanahan of the Denver Broncos

Jesuit heroism is not just a response to a crisis but a consciously chosen approach to life; it is judged not by the scale of the opportunity but by the quality of the response to the opportunity at hand.

— Chris Lowney in Heroic Leadership

Leadership is taking the way of least resistance.

— Bob Cooley

Leaders must challenge the process because systems will unconsciously conspire to maintain the status quo and prevent change.

— The Leadership Challenge

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