10 Commandments of a Weekend Experience

Shawn Wood, author of 200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One: Creating a Life of Meaning and Influence, recently wrote a ten part series on the weekend experience.

There are some great things you can pull out of this series if you want to take the planning of your weekend church experience to a whole new level.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10

Church Leadership Podcasts

Are you the leader of a church or a leader in a church? Today I want to point you in the direction of some great resources. It is called Podcasting. If you don't know what a podcast is check out the wikipedia podcast entry.

To listen to these you need to download itunes which is a free program. Once downloaded and you are subscribed to them, itunes will gather them whenever a new one is posted.

Andy Stanley's Leadership Podcast - A relatively new podcast from Andy Stanley where he shares some of the best leadership topics designed to grow you.

Potential Podcast - Hosted by the guys and gals at Flamingo Road Church...this weekly podcast is a mixture of fun and content. Leading you through what Flamingo is learning this podcast is power packed with content.

Catalyst Podcast - Delivering some of the best interviews of church leaders, the catalyst podcast is sure to stretch your leadership as well as inspire you.

Church Leader Insights - Nelson Searcy brings some great content to pastors/church planters on many of the lessons learned in leading a church.

Looking Ahead

I'm looking forward to 2009 for a couple of reasons:

• I get to do our campus full time. With that comes a lot of responsibility. I'm cool with that.
• I get to pour into developing leaders at our campus. Time is free and there are now no excuses.
• Building a community on our campus.
• Finding more ways to serve our community like we did this past year.
• Revitalizing my blog. I'm looking to do some more series that can help pastors and churches out there.
• Our Bay Area Fellowship Multi-Site initiative. I feel God is going to do something special in '09. And I'm pumped that we are going to start even more.
  
• Networking with like minded leaders across the country. I get to go to Innovation3 and to C3 Conference. I'll finally get to meet some peeps face to face.
  
• Deepening some new friendships.
• Raising my level of leadership.
• Continuing to grow my relationship with God.
• Being a better dad and husband.
  
• Living the adventure with God.
  

Penn Says It All

In this video, Penn, of Penn & Teller, makes the most profound challenge to the church that I have ever heard. Understand...this statement comes from a self-proclaimed atheist.

Is this a challenge we must heed? Is this a challenge we must embrace? Watch this video and let me know what you think.



In the video Penn says:

I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, and you think, ‘Well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward’… How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?

Let's go out and make a difference and change our communities.

[HT: ChrisReeder.com]

Structure Your Church For Growth

Pastor Bil Cornelius of Bay Area Fellowship wrote a great article at ChurchSolutionsMag. Here is a sample:

In mentoring and associating with hundreds of church planters, I’ve discovered a very common trend: Although they have great vision, passion and a true sense of calling to a particular area or city, most church planters still are not equipped to be successful. In fact, pastors of small or struggling churches may encounter some of the same challenges. The main areas that seem to hold these leaders back from achieving their full potential are poor structure, ineffective staffing and......

Make sure you go read the whole article.

Bi-Vocational Multi-Site Campus Pastors

Does anyone know of any Bi-Vocational Campus Pastors whose campus is really going great? I would love to get in touch with them to find out some of the things they are doing. How they manage work and pastoring? What they are doing team wise for growth?

Any help in this area would be extremely helpful to me????

What Are You Challenging

One of the main roles of a leader is too challenge the status quo of their organization.

That is why you must:

• Challenge your systems. You must challenge your processes. What is working now may not work successfully in two years or at double/triple your current size.
• Challenge mindsets. Mindsets develop and can keep organizations, staff or people from changing. What mindsets
• Challenge success. The greatest enemy of an organization can be success. We often feel that what got us where we are will get us where we want to go. Problem is...things change...people change...organizations change.

A healthy leader challenges where they are as they continue to chart a course forward.

Haggling Through

Scott Williams at his blog, Big is the New Small, has some great dialog going in a post called "Haggling Through". Scott is a campus pastor for Lifechurch.tv.

Here is a mini-excerpt:

Last week I shared a post that was inspired by the LifeChurch.tv all-staff time with Bill Hybels. Bill shared quite the discerning quote: “Cool isn’t cool anymore!” This quote has provided for some healthy dialogue for my team, whom for about a year now has been feeling the tension of the coolness and God.

There are some great comments there. One of the things I wrote was, "So in the presence of our coolness do we have the presence of an AWESOME GOD!"

What are your thoughts? How does Church, God and Cool mix?

Winning Souls

If there has been one thing that I have always believed was the most important part of our youth night or Sunday morning service it was the invitation.

It was the time when we would invite those that didn't have a relationship with Christ to begin one. I have always stressed to our team and those that came that it was the part we were always working up to. It was why we created everything we created. It was the purpose of every song. It was the end result of the message that God had laid on our heart. It was the main reason we gathered.

It was what has always driven our growth. I believe God always drew people to what we did because we have always challenged those who came to begin a relationship with Christ if they already hadn't.

Craig Groeschel of Lifechurch.tv wrote two posts on the Swerve Blog about the invitation that may help you in your invitation.

10 Ways To Make Your Spiritual Invitation Stronger
10 Reasons Not To Invite People to Follow Christ at Your Church

Where There's Slack There's Lack

Nelson Searcy, ChurchLeaderInsights.com, wrote over the period of weeks, a great intro series to many of the systems a church should focus on. Check out each part below:

Part 1 - The Weekend Service System
Part 2 - The Evangelism System
Part 3 - The Assimilation System
Part 4 - The Small Groups System
Part 5 - The Ministry System
Part 6 - The Stewardship System
Part 7 - The Leadership System
Part 8 - The Strategic System

Why Two Part 2

D-Plum had a great question that he left as a comment on "Why Two" a post I wrote on why we went to two experience on our 6th week.

His question was:

1) How in the world did you get your people to buy in to 2 gatherings so soon?? :-)

2) Do you have enough volunteers at this point for them to "serve one, enjoy the other"? In other words, are your people serving for both services or are they able to fully experience during one without having to serve?

Thanks for the question Darren...let's see if I can give you and everyone a great answer.

1) Honestly...I'm not exactly sure how I did this. Frankly, I really believe it was casting a lot of vision to our key leaders/volunteers over so many months prior to starting. I really had faith that we were going to grow and just kept that out in front of everyone. I also believe I have some great people who want to see our campus explode with growth.

2) I would love to say that we have it perfect but I think there is a little over lap especially in the adult experience. But we have just enough of our Guest Relations Team to pull off their area. Our children's/nursery area's were covered. In fact the exact breakdown for the Sunday of 8-24 was 168 of which 62 were volunteers. The first experience was 113 of which 36 were volunteers. Since our original Corpus Campus is about 25 miles away and does a Saturday night....many of our volunteers can even go in there for their church experience. So there are many opportunities.

I guess for me it came down to saying...we could grow one and eventually fill it up and then "split" or we could just go ahead and grow two.

It also is a going to be a necessity for us to be at two. In fact, I'm figuring on three by around January. In about a week, we will be sending out a mailer on our grand opening which is the 14th of September. I actually feel we should do three that day....but I'm hesitating cause I'm not sure I could pull the volunteers just yet.

Volunteers are key....we are working hard to make sure that our volunteers don't have to work both experiences...we're pretty close.

Why Two

Question is...

Why did we go to two services on Sunday morning so soon??? We aren't even using all the seats.

That is a true fact. In our main adult seating area we have 143 chairs. The past two Sunday's in our 10:00 a.m. experience we are seating about 50% of those. So if we aren't filling those up why go to two?

1. More Opportunities To Serve - Having two experiences allows more people to serve. It also allows them to serve and be able to attend one as well.
2. Provides Choices - Having the two experiences gives people an opportunity to choose which time to come that best fits their schedule.
3. More Chances To Reach Out - The two gives our people two opportunities to invite people to church.
4. Two Times To Experience God - We want people not to just come to church....we want people to come to experience God.

I almost think of it in terms of a WHY NOT....

Did people come when the building wasn't full for one? If they did then...then why not just do two and grow them both at the same time. You don't have to fill one to start a second.

Obviously the same could be said with a third....but I would say fill up the two before starting a third option.

Is It In You??? 1

One of the traits a church planter, pastor or Christian should have is DETERMINATION.

One of the definitions for determination is the quality of being determined to do or achieve something; firmness of purpose.

I watched Danny Way at the X-Games exhibit this essential trait. On his first attempt in the Big Air competition. He ended up walking off the ramp under his own power...refused medical treatment and went on to finish all this attempts earning the silver medal. Watch the video.



The next time you are debating giving up...stay determined....your medal is just around the corner.

Mega-Church

So glad no one told Peter that they shouldn't be a Mega Church.....

Who's Standing In The Way

The only thing standing in the way of the church reaching this country is the church.

Do Something Different

I blogged about a certain quote before in a post called Out of the Box. The only problem is I can't seem to get if out of my head.

I have often said this in the past:

If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done.

That relates so much in so many areas of a person's life. Whether it be marriage or finances, if you continually do the same thing expecting different results it only leads to frustration. The same can be true to business and church.

But yet we seem to fall back on the same thing. I'm all for looking at what certain churches are doing that are working. I believe church, as it is when you look across the whole church landscape, has not been progressing. I do see it as stubbornness. There is a resistance to change. There is even a resistance to progressing...as if the church of the 20th century is the only way to do church.

Think about it for a minute:

Here is what a typical church Sunday morning looks like...and I say typical meaning the average church across this country. Sing a few fast and slow songs....take an offering...do some announcements...preach...pray. And then what pastors are told is just pray real hard and God will do something big.

I'm not here to challenge the method, nor the fact that God can do something big. I guess I'm challenging the fact that churches are not reaching people. I'm challenging the results. Maybe that is my passion flowing through...I am passionate about our church reaching people that have never been in church or who have checked out and gave up on church.

I know there are some great churches that God is using mightily. They are doing some new things to reach people that have not been reached. When you take a look at our city it is awesome to see what Bay Area Fellowship has done in 10 years.

That other quote though that is driving me absolutely crazy isfrom Craig Groeschel the pastor of Lifechurch.tv. He said, "If you want to reach people that no one else is reaching, you must do something that no one else is doing."

I look at the area our 5 Point campus is located in. We are in Corpus but our area is a little segmented from the whole of Corpus. There are 50,000 people in the area. I would be hard challenged to say that 20,000 of those people are in church. And it disturbs me....I think about those 25-30 thousand people and what their eternity may hold. That is why we brought our campus here. It is going to be so different than any other church in this area. I believe in a way that reaches those that are not being reached...and if it doesn't...we will adapt and find what does.

We don't want to do what the church down the road is doing...we want to do what changes the eternity of those in our community.

What are some things that you are doing different?

Out Of The Box

"If you want to reach people that no one else is reaching, you must do something that no one else is doing."

That is a great quote from Craig Groeschel the pastor of Lifechurch.tv. It is interesting that so often pastors will go off and start a church and do what others are doing to try and reach those that aren't being reached. They often feel it will work because they are different from their last pastor.

I often wonder if we are just replicating a mediocre attempt to pacify our own need as church leaders to be in control. Do we think that just cause "we" do it, God is going to use us?

If people who are not being reached are already not coming to our churches what makes anyone think these people will come just because they start a church.

There are ways of doing church that God is going to bless that no one yet has thought of. We are on the cusp of what God wants to do. We must be willing to go outside of our box to do it.

Green Grass

They say "The grass is always greenest on the other side"

I say "The grass is always greenest over the septic tank"

Have you ever found that to be true like I have?

[photo credit flickr.com]

Why Churches Fail

With over 3,500 churches closing down each year....the population rising and the churches not keeping up...question is....Why Are So Many Churches Failing?

Let me give you two reasons I think so:

1) Leaders Don't Know How

2) No Longer Relevant

What can you do to begin to turn-around your church?

1) Admit There's a Problem

2) Do Something About It.

Read and study what some of the growing churches are doing. There are business books, especially entrepreneurial business, that you could read. Never stop learning and growing. Ask questions. Take a risk. Try something new. What more do you have to lose.

Leading In Uncertain Territory

One of the things that you can be certain of is that as you lead you will encounter uncertain territory.

If you are pushing forward there will always be a measure of uncertainty in your leading. For example...even though I have worked on staff at a church of 3,000, and I have worked in ministry for 14 years, right now I am leading in unknown territory for myself.

Daily we are pushing forward to launch a church. I've never done construction...I've never lead a church full of adults...and at each level of growth that we will experience it will be a new level I've never experienced.

The price of leadership success is greater uncertainty. As you gain more responsibility your uncertainty level increases. As each level increases it is vital for you to learn to thrive in environments that are uncertain.

Isn't that what faith is all about???

[photo credit flickr.com]