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Archive - August, 2008

Friday Five

August 30, 2008 in Friday Five with 0 Comments

Here are my five favorite blog posts from the week:

Kevin Stone – Service Design – To Plan Or Not To Plan? – Kevin talks about the tension between the lead communicator and the creative team when it comes to planning.

Bobby Gruenewald – Risk Takers and Risk Makers – Bobby says risk takers need naysayers.

Tim Stevens – Brian McLaren and Kirbyjon Caldwell Endorse Obama – Tim shares his thoughts on whether or not pastors should share their $.02 about politics publicly.

Nelson Searcy – Where There's Slack There's Lack – Part 7 of 8 - Nelson talks about the leadership system – how churches develop leaders at all levels.

Perry Noble – C-H-A-N-G-E – Perry talks about what's involved with change.

Friday Five

August 22, 2008 in Friday Five with 0 Comments

Here are my five favorite blog posts from the week:

Catablog – Secrets of the Catalyst Concierge – That's an awesome work culture

Ben Arment – Call Me an Unreasonable Man – I want to be unreasonable – how 'bout you?

Ragamuffing Soul – Creative Chaos 24 – Upper Green Room – I can't wait until we can have an awesome green room for our children's ministry volunteers. Anybody want to buy a building for us?….or just land?

Darren Plummer – There's Always Room… – Darren welcomes a new church that CCC supports, Mosaic Christian Church. Gotta love Darren's selfless heart for the kingdom.

Perry Noble – A Church Growth Rant – Interesting perspective on the house church movement.

Saddleback Civil Forum – Part 1

August 20, 2008 in Church Culture, Church Planting, Leadership with 0 Comments

I watched the Saddleback Civil Forum with Rick Warren interviewing Obama & McCain and am writing a series of blog posts about the questions that were asked, spinning them a little to the topics of leadership and church culture, and sharing my opinion on them (which isn't worth much but hey, I'm out of ideas here). Here you can read my initial thoughts.

The first question that was asked was in relation to leadership. The question was:

Who were the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration?

In terms of leadership and church culture, I would spin this to say:

What 3 types of people would you want on staff if you were planting a church?

Somebody who was excellent at creating a memorable environment for adults, from parking lot to parking lot.
Somebody who was a great systems thinker and could implement great systems while taking on another role (groups most likely).
Somebody who could create irresistible environments for kids with an Orange strategy.

In addition, all 3 would need to:

Have strong character
A great work ethic and commitment to the vision
Be leaders of leaders
Have great chemistry with the team

Saddleback Civil Forum – Initial Thoughts

August 17, 2008 in Church Culture, Current Affairs, Leadership with 0 Comments

So, I watched the Saddleback Civil Forum with Rick Warren interviewing Obama & McCain on Saturday night. Actually, I watched the re-run because my boys were playing a preseason game during the live airing. I think that says a lot about my interests, especially considering I had never heard more than 2 minutes of Obama or McCain talking before Saturday night. I usually wait until crunch time to research candidates and come to a decision.

Listening to the questions and answers prompted me to plan a series of blog posts about the questions that were asked, spinning them a little to the topics of leadership and church culture, and sharing my opinion on them (which isn't worth much but hey, I'm out of ideas here).

Here are some general thoughts I had after watching it:

Rick Warren has major influence. I'm glad he's using it for God's purposes (had to sneak that word in). He handled the forum well.
Obama isn't the orator I heard he was. My guess is that he's pretty good when giving a speech but isn't good at shooting from the hip. Most people (including me) are in that category but it was down right difficult to listen to him at some points with the stuttering and stumbling.
I'd love to see a detailed plan (with numbers) of Obama's tax plan. Simply because his plan made me wonder what percentage of U.S. income is brought in the by the "rich" and what is brought in by everyone else. Im a nerd and love to crunch those numbers to see what we're looking at in terms of tax revenue if there was a change.
Both candidates talked about their faith a lot, and I wondered whether or not that was common or was more of "when in Rome…."
McCain is like a poster child for Republicans……old, fundamental, decisive, tough.
McCain had answers quickly. Most of the time I was thinking about how much trouble I would have been in if those questions were posed to me (can I get a lifeline?).
McCain told a lot of stories. Stories help speakers connect with their audience and help people remember what was said. I wonder if that was planned because of those reasons.

Friday Five

August 15, 2008 in Friday Five with 0 Comments

Here are my 5 favorite blog posts from the week:

Shane Craven – A Reminder For All Of Us – Great reminders about the importance of church planting

268Blog – The Cape of Good Hope – Update on the end of leg 2 of the Passion World Tour

Ben Arment – Empowering Leaders, Pt. 1 – Our children's ministry leadership team talks all the time about the importance of delegating responsibility and leadership, not just taks.

Bobby Gruenwald – I need more…. – Great thoughts about being responsible with what we have as a church

Perry Noble – What Do You Do When There's Tension In The Room – Perry talks about the importance of being comfortable with tension and conflict in a team environment. Most teams are afraid of conflict.

Leadership Lessons from College Football

August 11, 2008 in CCC, Church Culture, Leadership, NFL, Sports, Strategy with 0 Comments

To be honest, I don't watch much college football. I watch the Terps whenever I can, and will watch just about any football if it's on, but I'm not a real fan. But, I hear that great college football teams don't rebuild, they reload. What that means is, when all the star talent heads to the NFL, instead of having to rebuild from scratch which takes a few years, the great teams reload with the talent they already have on the team. Most colleges teams don't have that ability, but some do. USC & Ohio State come to mind (remember: my knowledge of college football is not so great).

Churches should learn to reload rather than rebuild as well. In football they're reloading with talent. The church should be reloading with new talent and leadership. It's critical for a college football team to be able to reload because they're talent leaves in 3-4 years whereas most churches can sit content because people aren't going anywhere. But, healthy things reproduce and healthy churches should reproduce as well. Reproduce talent, leaders, campuses and churches.

If a church is like a great college football team, the talent and leaders are there waiting to be called on. They're there because the church is intentional about getting new people involved and developing leaders. They're there because the church creates space for them to serve and takes risks on people. They get opportunities to grow and take on more responsibility because the church is growing and/or sending people out to start new churches and campuses.

If a church is like a bad college football team then nobody is going anywhere and there probably isn't much to reload with anyway. So, if for some reason they need more people to step up, they have to rebuild. That takes time and limits how quickly a church can respond to an opportunity.

Hopefully more and more churches will be able to reload, and not rebuild.

Friday Five

August 8, 2008 in Friday Five with 0 Comments

Here are my five favorite blog posts from the week and I'm posting them on 08.08.08 at 08:08pm (yeah, I'm a nerd).

Ben Arment – Cast Out Your Net One More Time – Great post about not giving up.

Seth Godin – Should You Ignore the n00bs? – This makes the cut simply because he said n00bs

Mark Meyer – Session 5: Craig Groeschel: How Leaders Can Get IT and Keep IT – Mark's notes from Craig's talk at the Leadership Summit

Mark Batterson – Baptism Video – Baptism videos rock

James Laing – Vision – Great reminder about the importance of communicating vision

Leaders Moving On

August 6, 2008 in CCC, Children's Ministry, Leadership with 0 Comments

One of our key leaders is moving on to another opportunity. Lisa Molite, our Discovery Island Director, will be the Director of Family Ministry at Mosaic Christian Church, a new church that launches in Hanover, MD on September 14. At this time the move isn't permanent, as Lisa has committed to Mosaic through the end of the year only. But, who knows what God might have in store.

This transition made me think about moves like this that happen all the time in churches. Most of the time, the person looks for the new job without their church knowing about it, submits a resignation, and leaves in 2 weeks. That's the standard in the business world as well, but the local church should be different. We are all on the same team. Churches should make it clear that if their staff wants to seek another job, they'll help, because it's all about the kingdom of God, not one church or denomination.

That's how it worked in Lisa's case, even though she wasn't on staff, there was no "cloak and dagger" involved. In fact, we recommended her to Carl Kuhl, the lead pastor of Mosaic, when he asked about her. In light of the opportunity, I really just had 2 options for a response….. I could show support or be selfish. Not too difficult of a decision really, especially when that's the culture of our team. I'm praying for Carl, Lisa & Josh and for the launch team that's helping start this new local expression of the Church.

24: Exile – Movie This Fall

August 4, 2008 in Fun, NFL with 0 Comments

I was randomly looking up a character from the show 24 and realized there’s a movie coming out this fall! I love the show 24. Jennifer and I got hooked on it when we started watching the DVDs after season 5. We watched the first 5 seasons in less than a month (that’s 90 hours, insane). 24 is easily my favorite show on television. After watching the DVDs of the first 5 seasons, I hated watching season 6 on TV week-to-week.

Apparently the movie is a prequel to Season 7, but stands alone from the show as well. It’s set to air on Fox on Sunday night, November 23. You can find more information here and here.

NFL & a 24 movie on the horizon……I’m pumped.