2008 July | nickblevins.com

July 7, 2008 in CCC with 0 Comments

Mosaic Christian Church is a new church that is launching in Hanover, MD on September 14. Carl Kuhl is the lead pastor/planter. A bunch of churches and church planting organizations are supporting the launch of Mosaic and CCC is one of those churches. CCC gives 10% of it’s income to church planting efforts because we believe it’s important to reproduce and new churches and campuses cost money!

Mosaic is set to meet in the Muvico Egyptian 24 Theater in Arundel Mills Mall. Carl said the theater attracts about 63,000 every week! Talk about being in the middle of culture. Carl is having launch team meetings for anybody interested in this new church every other Sunday night and the next one is July 6. If you live near Hanover, MD or know anybody who does, tell them about Mosaic:

http://baltimoremosaic.blogspot.com/

http://www.mosaicchristian.org/

Friday Five

Here are my 5 favorite blogs from the week:

Steven Furtick – A cure for discouragement – Good thoughts from Steven about how to battle bad attitudes.

Perry Noble – Four Leadership Questions that Are Stretching Me – I love leadership questions that stretch and those 4 are going on my board!

Ben Arment – What Cultivated Soil Looks Like – A follow up to a series of posts Ben has been doing on church planting and the need for cultivating the soil before starting a church. Great stuff.

Tony Morgan – How the Creative Stay Creative – Tony shares and Inc.com story about innovation.

Carey Nieuwhof – Self-Feeders – Carey talks about the question of “Who is responsible for your spiritual growth?”

White Water Rafting

July 3, 2008 in Fun with 0 Comments

Jennifer and I are heading to WV tonight to go white water rafting with 12 of our friends. It’s our 4th time going, on the same river. It’s a blast every time (as long as the sun is out). I hate cold water but as long as the sun is out it’s all good. The 2nd time we went we had students from our student ministry with blue lips because the air wasn’t warm and of course the water never is.

I love white water rafting but mostly I love hanging out with friends. It should be a great time even thought it will be a short 2-day trip.

Orlando Vacation

July 3, 2008 in Fun with 0 Comments

I can’t believe it has taken me 2 weeks to post about our vacation in Orlando. Jennifer and I went to Orlando last summer with a bunch of friends. While we were there we didn’t get to use our SeaWorld tickets and we got free passes to Islands of Adventure because a bunch of major rides were messed up while we were there.

So, we planned a short trip to use those passes before the SeaWorld tickets expired. We left Tuesday night and came back late Saturday night. We had a great time. Here are some pics:

Jennifer petting a dolphin (this was my favorite part)

Dolphin

This would be awesome to do:

Shamu

We saw a bunch of movies while we were there. This was the best:

Kungfupanda

The theaters were extremely empty when we went during the day. Here’s me in the middle of an empty IMAX theater:

Meintheater

We also got a chance to eat at my favorite fast food restaurant that has no location near us at home:

Sonic

It was a great time to relax and spend quality time together. We’ll be heading to Aruba in late July, early August and I can’t wait because I love beaches. Jennifer, not so much.

Interns Rock

At CCC we had somebody that knows our lead pastor express an interest in spending a month at CCC interning in the children’s ministry. Her name is Katy and she’s been with us for the last few weeks. Katy has been a huge help in launching our Super Heroes series in Discovery Island. That project took a lot more work than we expected and there were about 7 people who really stepped up to make it work.

Katy is interested in working in children’s ministry when she graduates from college, possibly after pursuing a master’s degree. My hope is that we can pour everything we know out for her to learn. My gifts aren’t necessarily in children’s ministry as much as they are in leading and developing teams. It is for that reason that we rely on reThink (our strategy provider) to be the children’s ministry experts. Two of the people that lead that organization were the most influential people in children’s ministry in the last 2 decades.

So, I’ve spent time sharing with Katy what I know about leadership, teams, ministry, church culture and children’s ministry. That took about 5 minutes. Katy has also got to sit in on staff meetings and had the chance to have dinner with a bunch of families involved in children’s ministry at CCC.

She’s already done more than enough for us so at this point it looks like we’re benefiting the most, which I regret. It would be great if after her experience at CCC she felt like it was the best non-job job she ever had. I wish that for everyone that volunteers or works at CCC. With the short time she has left I’m hoping we can answer any questions she has and be more of a help to her than she has been to us. That will be difficult though.

How do you develop interns?