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About 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 set out to work with youth, first in Montreal as director of Youth for Christ, then Toronto YFC, and finally as national president of Youth for Christ.

From 1983 to 1997 his leadership as president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada 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, increasingly his opinions and views of issues of moral concern were sought.

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.

Stiller is founder and former editor-in-chief of Canada’s national magazine, Faith Today. He hosts a weekly commentary, You've Got Mail, on the national television program, 100 Huntley Street. He is the author of ten books. The most recent are 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 two children: a son Murray (married to Catherine) and a daughter Muriel (married to Jesse Pascal); and four grandchildren.

Quotes from The Issachar Notes

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

Greeks taught dualism: separating the spiritual from the material. The church was trapped in this bifurcation of life. It led to a class of priests, who themselves were separated from the people. To Hebrews this was strange: for them the mind and heart, belief and actions were not separated.

— unknown

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

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

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

— The Leadership Challenge

A modern assumption is that to have a calling is to experience self-fulfillment in that calling.

— Douglas Shurrman

Some people assume that learning about God's bigness necessitates negative obsession with their own smallness. You might hear them say things like, 'I am not valuable' or 'I have nothing to offer.' Such statements do not honor the nature and authority of God; they demean it.

— Ascent of a Leader, Kurtz and Ketcham

Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.

— Peter Drucker

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

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

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

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

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

— Andy Stanley

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

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

— Eugene Peterson

It is not the critic who counts.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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.

The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.

— Anne Lamont

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

— Chris Lowney

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

— Coach Shanahan of the Denver Broncos

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

— Warren Bennis

Real football players don't play with blue footballs.

— B. Pascal

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

— Neil Young

Where is the line between loyalty and jealousy?

— Janet Clark

Leadership is taking the way of least resistance.

— Bob Cooley

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About Brian C. Stiller

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Quotes from The Issachar Notes