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The Barna group published results from a recent survey that had some predictable results, and some surprising ones. You can read the article here. Some of the predictable results included the fact that women drive most church participation and most church participants are not single.

Some other results that were fairly predictable, but interesting to read were:

• People in the Northeast (where I live) are “unlikely to be active in terms of small groups, Sunday School or volunteerism”. I think that is directly related to the next one.
• “Catholics are not particularly active beyond worship attendance, while evangelicals participate in many different forms of ‘group faith’.” The Northeast has a much greater Catholic presence, practicing or former, than other parts of the country so I think this one is related to the previous one in relation to involvement.
• “Attenders of large churches involve themselves in the broadest spectrum of faith activities”. By large churches, they mean 500 or larger, which would be the vast minority of churches in America. A lot of people have an unfounded bias against large churches but studies show over and over again how those churches tend to have more involved Christians.
• People who are involved in a small group are more likely to read their Bible on their own than those who simply attend church – 84% versus 67%.

CCC is in the Northeast, in a highly Catholic and former-Catholic area, and we’re a “large church” by this study’s standards. What can churches in our area do with this information?

On a different note, our area has one of the most radical, effective Catholic Churches I’ve ever heard of: Church of the Nativity

In the previous post I talked about how we all want things and often times there are specific people who have what we want. Obviously we need to guard against envy and selfishness but there is also something else we sometimes miss when thinking about what we want in life. If you’re like me, you want it NOW. Or, if we’re practicing patience….next week. We see somebody else who has what we want and we wonder why that can’t be us?

What I often miss is the fact that the person that has what I want, usually put in a ton of time and effort to get it. For instance, the pastor of a hugely influential church may have worked 10 years to get there, sacrificing countless things in the process. He may have saved money for years to prepare for not being paid for the first 3 years of the church’s existence. He may have lost friends in the process of growing the church, because they no longer believed in his vision. He may have gone through tough spiritual battles that typically come with leading a church. God may have done some hard work on him to prepare him for that journey. But, from my perspective, I typically forget about all that and wonder why that can’t be me…..now.

More common is the fact that we usually don’t even know all that information anyway. Most successful people haven’t documented all the things they went through to get where they are. We just assume it happened over night. In the business world Jim Collins calls this the flywheel concept. People inside the loop feel like it takes forever to get great momentum and success and people outside the loop feel like it happened overnight.

I want to never discount the journey and the hard work others put in to get where they are. In terms of a relationship with Jesus, the journey is where we are molded, developed and prepared.

The inspiration for these posts came from watching the video interview with Matt Chandler below. He talks about going from being a janitor to becoming a pastor and the importance of all of that. I’ll never forget my first time teaching middle school kids the Bible, and how beneficial the time I spent in that role was.

WHAT HAVE YOU WANTED….WITHOUT ALL THE WORK?

Regardless of what field you work in or what skills you have, you can probably identify some people you look up to. Maybe it’s a celebrity, an athlete, or one of the best in your field but we all know what it’s like to want something somebody else has. Often times we want it for great reasons, too. In church world plenty of people want a big church so they can be a strong influence in their city. Church planters (people who start new churches) want their church to explode with growth like Elevation experienced. Yeah, that’s probably 1 out of 10,000 churches, but why can’t they have that?

You may want the house, job, vehicle, vacation experience, influence, book deal, music album, acting job or wisdom somebody else has. I can tell you I will always want to be a part of a hugely influential church. I also have to acknowledge my pride and selfishness in that, even though my motives are mostly pure (I hope). I want to see cities in America, and particularly my city of Baltimore, transformed by Jesus Christ. The Church (universal, not just one church) is God’s Plan A for making that happen, so naturally I want to be a part of a great church that is making a big difference.

At various times I want a host of other things as well, mostly things that are selfish and material in nature. In the next post I’ll talk about something I miss or forget about in the midst of all that. It’s not going to be about envy or the fact that we have all received one blessing after another through Jesus. That’s all true and important but I’m going to talk about the work that it takes to to get what we want.

In the mean time…. WHAT DO YOU WANT, SELFISHLY OR NOT?

The old management adage that says “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” definitely has some truth to it. Ever since we started Community Christian Church I have tracked my time each week. For the longest time I tracked it in Excel, making my own list of tasks and categories that I spent my time on and listing how I spent my time each day. Unfortunately, that system made it difficult to look at multiple weeks, or months, at one time.

Last November I searched around and found myhours.com. It’s not flashy, by any means, but it gets the job done. I’ve tracked my time in there since the beginning of November. Basically you can create projects, and each project has tasks that you set up. I created a project for church, and all the tasks represent how I spend my time.

I ran a report to list my time by task, and then put that into Excel and grouped the tasks into categories so I could see generally where I spend my time. Here are the results with some of my observations below:

• Some of the 0% weren’t actually 0 hours, just so few that it rounded to 0.
• I’m glad leadership was the leading time consumer, as that’s my primary job
• Admin was mostly dominated by time spent on email
• Our children’s ministry is divided up into 3 environments, Preschool, Discovery Island and KidStuf. Having great leaders of those environments frees me up from spending time there. KidStuf is an exception because I have a part in it, which is like everyone else’s and involves a lot of time in rehearsals.
• Learning was high, but a lot of that has to do with just coming back from 6 days of conferences, so that will go down as the year goes on. But, I want learning to be around 10% because it’s directly affects the leadership category.
• I hope the 3% of time I’m investing in other churches is helping

Do you track your time? Where is it going?

As a heads up, this is just my opinion and could be completely wrong. But, to get this started I have to point out something first. I have noticed that most people don’t struggle with every sin (missing the mark in terms of God’s plan for our lives) but rather really struggle with a few, and are somewhat tempted, or not even tempted by others. For instance, someone may really struggle with gossip and lust, but have no problems at all with fighting against gluttony, greed, pride and other temptations and sin. Another person may struggle with envy and pride, but can resist losing their temper, gossiping, lust, and other sins seemingly without much effort.

With that said, I’ve also noticed that many of our sins are related to the weaknesses of our strengths. Often times the things that tempt us most do so because they prey on areas that our strengths expose us to. For instance, someone who is a a hard worker and is productive may struggle with impatience and anger, because their strengths create expectations and a need for control that isn’t always met. I don’t know if I’m that productive or hard working, but I definitely struggle with patience (our virtue for the month) and anger.

Someone else may be a great encourager, and part of that is because they struggle with finding their own self worth in God rather than in the words and affirmations of others. However, because they want that affirmation they are good at providing it for others.

Another person may struggle with gossip, and it’s because they actually have great gifts of mercy and helps but their concern for others isn’t always expressed in the best ways. Numerous things could cause that, including how they were raised and how much their closest friends lead them to gossip rather than serving and loving those in need.

Have you noticed any other examples of this?

Figure out your strengths and your weaknesses, and then figure out what tempts you most because of those weaknesses. Not every temptation or sin we struggle with is tied to our strengths, but some are, and knowing that is one of the best ways to fight against it.

I attended the Orange Conference before Drive, but blogged about them in reverse order for no good reason. Here are my thoughts and takeaways from Orange:

• The Gwinnett Center is a pretty amazing place.
• It was cool to hang out with Mike Kelly and his crew for much of the conference.
• There was obvious intentionality in having less of a “star worship leader” feel, and more of a focus on having a community of worship leaders lead the times of singing together.
• A lot of the guest speakers did not share a message or “talk”, and instead were interviewed by Reggie.
• The “tweet up” (coffee house meet up of folks on Twitter) was fun. Free smoothie’s were a plus, too.
• The Orange staff team works their butts off, and I’m amazed they can pull off a conference like that with a staff their size.
• Rev Run was a guest, and that was pretty cool.
• Perry Noble’s talk was tied for my favorite part of the conference. He talked about his 7 core convictions about Family Ministry. He killed it, and I laughed so hard I was in pain.
• My other favorite part of the conference was connecting with other ministry leaders and Orange staff.
• The new Orange website launched, http://www.whatisorange.org/
• The new Orange Parents website/blog launched: http://www.orangeparents.org/

I’m looking forward to the Orange Tour coming to Washington D.C. in the fall, and I hope a ton of our children’s ministry volunteers will be able to attend.

In the previous two posts (here and here) I shared some thoughts on my experience at the Drive Conference last week. In this post I’ll share the remaining thoughts and takeaways I had. You can see a highlight video of Drive 2010 here. You can see a bunch of the videos that were played at Drive here, including “Sunday’s Coming”, a hilarious spin on how most churches plan services.

Here are my final takeways:

• Andy’s last session was on tension. I won’t share too much, as it looks like that’s the theme for the Catalyst Conference and he’d probably appreciate not having the talk given away on blog world (although I’m sure it is outlined elsewhere). Essentially he said part of good leadership is knowing the difference between problems that need to be solved and tensions that need to be managed. Knowing the difference and making that clear for your organization can help you make the right decisions.
• I’m thinking about tensions we have to manage in CCC Kids, and in CCC in general. I want to make sure we aren’t viewing them as problems that need to be solved, thereby creating more problems.
• “New organizations need more vision than management”. I’m not even sure where I got that, but it’s so true.
• I attended the breakout that was a Q&A with Andy Stanley, his wife and assistant. That was pretty cool mostly because he shared some about his relationship with his dad, the issues they had to fight through and how they came through it. It was an transparent, vulnerable time for him.
• During the Q&A Andy mentioned that he thinks the senior leader in an organization should make as few decisions as possible, pushing decision making down to those who are directly responsible. He didn’t talk about that much but was eye opening as it’s clearly counter intuitive.
• I connected with and learned from a ton of ministry leaders, including the guys from True North Church, Kendra Fleming, Patrick Mitchell, Rich Barrett, Rob Marks, Casey Ross, and David McDaniel among others. I’m grateful for the time and wisdom they shared.
• I went to the Orange Conference alone, so it was even more cool to have a ministry partner with me at Drive. Huge props to Tom’s brother for letting us stay at his awesome house. I really enjoyed meeting his brother’s family and having dinner with Tom & his brother while we were there.
• There were some great quotes that came through the twitter feed that I should have saved. One example was “we cannot reach our full potential without learning to love correction.”

Well, now comes the difficult task of applying these learnings.

Yesterday I posted about key learnings I had from a specific session at the Drive Conference. This post will share all the other things I’ve been learning through the other main session and the breakouts.

Main Session #1

• In the opening session Andy Stanley noted that the Colosseum was dedicated to all the Christian martyrs who died there and now crosses hang over the 2 main entrances (the Emperor’s entrance and the VIP entrance). His point was that Christians who lived when it was constructed and used as a celebration of death, slavery, and all sorts of evil could never have imagined that one day it would be dedicated to Christian martyrs, that crosses would hang there and symbolize the resurrection of Christ and not murder, and that people all over the world would be celebrating Jesus.
• Andy’s point was that with God, all things are possible. He challenged everyone asking – What did you once think was possible, but the realities of life have led you to believe it is impossible?

Breakouts – Day 2

• The right people are the foundation of a successful creative process
• The breakout on the creative process made me think a lot about the tension between artists and non-artists, especially when a non-artist leads an artist. Obviously everyone has some level of artistic ability, but clear tensions exist between people who are project/task oriented and people who are not. Not every artist isn’t, but many aren’t. I’m wondering how can someone like me (total non-artist) effectively lead artists in a local church?
• Excellence is simply exceeding expectations or doing the best you can with what you have, in a sustainable way.
• Churches should hire leaders who are people magnets.
• When it comes to money – What do you want for your people (not from)?

This was the greatest quote, from David McDaniel, and it was in the context of financial stewardship but applies to everything:

Why would God allow you (the leader) to break his principles personally and continue to bless your vision corporately?

Over the last week I’ve been to the Orange Conference and I’m at the Drive Conference now, and I’ll share some of my thoughts and learnings from the 2 conferences in random order here on the blog.

In this post I’ll share some of what Andy Stanley talked about in session 2 of Drive 2010, which was titled Rules of Engagement and talked about how North Point Community Church plans their services/environments for adults, students and children. Here were my takeaways from the session, which was extremely helpful and practical:

• Churches must define “the win” for their Sunday services. For North Point it is when an unchurched person experiences helpful content, engaging presentation and appealing context and then comes back next week with a friend. Their long term win is for people to think and act differently in light of God’s truth.
• Andy showed a chart they use to plan their service. You can see that chart by downloading the Rules of Engagement PDF from http://insidenorthpoint.org/programming/downloads/
  • The red columns are every week
  • Yellow is optional, doesn’t happen every week
  • It’s like a funnel because the service hopefully captures everyone in the beginning and leads them somewhere on purpose.
  • The common ground is emotion, not information. They start by finding a common emotion among everyone who might be in the audience (unchurched, churched, men, women, high schooler, senior citizen, etc).
  • Andy essentially starts at the beginning of the funnel again when preaching, trying to re-involve everyone emotionally before leading them somewhere with the message.
• I think my favorite part was how Andy used Luke 15:1-6 to illustrate how Jesus started with a common emotion (feeling of losing something important), and tapped into emotion throughout, on the way to teaching a new idea about how God thinks.
• In planning and evaluating, they ask:
  • How will this make people feel?
  • What do we want them to feel?
  • When is it appropriate (in the service) to make people uncomfortable?

I’ve heard Vince Antonucci talk about how he would try to plan a service that would begin by making people laugh about something that they would eventually be emotionally drawn into and challenged about by the end of the service.

I’ve thought about how this can apply to our children’s ministry environments at CCC as well as our services.

What’s the win for your Sunday services? What process do you use to help people get there?

Sam Luce had the great idea of having everyone who is attending the Orange Conference post their breakout selections and why they chose them. So, here’s my Orange Conference schedule along with the breakouts I chose and why.

Wednesday, April 28

• Arrive in the afternoon.
• 7:30PM – Main Session #1
• 10:00PM – Tweet Up at Chocolate Perks

Thursday, April 29

• 9:00AM – Main Session #2
• 11:30AM – Breakout: Say What you need to say as a children’s small group leader - I’m attending this because small groups are the destination for our children, and we want them to be great!
• 2:30PM – Breakout: Leading through the budget crunch - I’m attending this because we can always use help with making the most of our resources.
• 4:15PM – Main Session #3
• 7:00PM – Family Experience Showcase

Friday, April 30

• 9:00AM – Main Session #4
• 11:30AM – Breakout: Difficult conversations in leaders’ circles – I’m attending this because difficult conversations are a part of leading and I’m interested in what Sue Miller has to say, because she rocks.
• 2:30PM – Breakout: Sticky volunteers for children’s ministry – I’m attending this because the Baby Dedication breakout with Kendra is full, and because I want all the help I can get with making children’s ministry a place where volunteers stick!
• 4:15PM – Main Session #5
• 6:00PM – Go home and get ready for KidStuf!

If you are going to Orange, what breakouts are you attending?