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My testimony and the vision of our church in 1 shot!

It was probably a little ambitious to share both the God-sized vision of our church and my wild, personal terstimony in one message, but I did it anyway! Check it out here if you're interested:

 

"Go Big" series kick-off

This Sunday at Calvary we start a brand new series called "Go Big" ---I can't wait! It will be a faith-building, vision-casting series which I trust will prove to be inspiring and challenging.

While I am excited, I am also a bit nervous. This Sunday, I am going to share a bit about my personal testimony in more detail than I have with our church in the past. The purpose is not to be provocative, but rather to give God the proper glory for His power to change even those that many would consider too far gone. It is my hope that, in addition to God being glorified, that our church would would be inspired to 1) really put their faith in God to radically transform our own lives and 2) that we would really step out in faith and proclaim the gospel to those who are broken, bruised, rebellious and raging; in other words, those who desperatlely need Jesus. If you're reading this and if you'd take a moment to pray, that would be phenomenal.

Series promo here:

Stopping to celebrate

If you are a leader you love progress. That is a good thing, but it can work against us sometimes. As leaders some of us have this crazy tendency to reach a goal, and hardly take any time to celebrate. We don't have time to celebrate because we're too busy getting on to the next goal (which we made 1/2 way to the one we just reached!).

We must fight this tendency and take time celebrate important achievements in the life of our church for several reasons important to us and those we lead:

1. It gives us a chance to rest, reflect and rejoice.
2. It gives us time to appreciate progress and enjoy the journey.
3. It gives us an opportunity to express gratitude to God.
4. It gives an opportunity to express gratitude to everyone who made the ahcievement possible.
5. It shows people what we value and consider to be important.

There are many things you can celebrate and many ways you can celebrate them. As a leader you need to determine what those things are and determine to make a big deal out of them.

Speaking of this: Calvary Fellowship (the church I pastor) has our 6-year anniversary coming up this Saturday, and we have an awesome outdoor celebration service planned, and you better believe we're going to party this weekend!!!

Our Staff Needs to Change for Our Church to Grow

A couple days ago in my post,"Easter: A Vision of what our church could be" I talked about how our Easter experience could be our regular Sunday experience if we as a church body would commit to doing the things we did in the lead-up to Easter regularly.

So I challenged our staff and asked them what WE needed to do for that to happen. We discussed it and came up with a list of things we need to keep doing, start doing and/or get better at if we want our church to be healthy (which is the source of growth). So if my post title freaked you out, relax. Nobody is getting fired! We are simply committed to change  in the following areas (in no particular order) so that we can be most effectively used by God at Calvary Fellowship:

1. Change our thinking -Once you do something repeatedly over time it is easy to get in a rut. We need to challenge our current processes and our thinking that got us where we are, but might limit us from getting where we need to be.
2. Develop a deeper culture of serving -We already have many great men and women serving at Calvary without whom we could not function. Just imagine if  everyone (or ALMOST everyone) was on board!
3. Challenge commitment -It is easy for apathy to creep into a church, and it is DEADLY! Paul and other NT church leaders regularly challenged people in the churches to commitment to Christ and other members of the church. We must do the same as church leaders.
4. Cast vision consistently -People must know where we're going, what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, and who we're doing it for. Otherwise, everybody loses focus and we all experience mission drift (Consistence is the key).
5. Leadership development -The staff cannot do all of the leading alone; we must train others and equip them to lead. We need to develop men and women to take on keys roles and responsibilities in the church or we're dead in the water!
6. Personal-development -We all need to get better at our core competencies/responsibilities by reading the right books, networking with the right people and pushing ourselves to become more effective.
7. Delegation -If we don't release some of our responsibilities to the people God is raising up we will be ineffective at the things we are called to do and frustrate those who should be doing we need to release to them.
8. Intentional outreach -We don't have a church building so we need to keep our name out in the community through service, personal invitation, press and promotion so that when God touches someone's heart in our community to pursue Him, they know where to go.
9. Improving assimilation -We have to continue making it easier for new people at church to take next steps, grow in their faith, and get connected to our church body.

There are always more things that can be done, but these are the things we know that our staff needs to work on, change or improve if we want to see our church healthy and ready to handle any growth that God may choose to bless us with.

Easter: A vision of what our church could be

I know that many in our church are excited about our Easter service yesterday and the tremendous turnout. So am I. We should be! I am also truly grateful for everyone who came together and did their part to make our Easter service such a success.

However, we also have to face reality - not all the people that joined us yesterday will be back next week (though some will). However, while we need to face reality we also need to be optimistic about the future. Let me summarize my thoughts this way:

Easter was not a picture of what our church is now, it is a picture of what it could be soon.

The great turnout, the excitement, the energy during the singing, the sense of God at work...all of it! In fact yesterday's experience could be our regular weekly experience by the end of this year. For yesterday to be our regular experience, we simply need to keep doing the things we did in the lead-up to Easter regularly (by the way, these are basic elements of the Christian faith, not radical things!):

1. We need to pray regularly -We had so many people come out for intercessory prayer, praying for guests, the services, the staff, etc. Let's not stop!
2. We need to attend regularly -Part of the reason Easter is so packed is that in addition to all the guests, all the regulars come at one time. If our regular attenders simply committed to making church attendance a priority & a regular habit, we would experience 50% growth immediately.
3. We need to invite regularly -We mobilized and boldly asked our friends and family to come to church on Easter -well done! The reality is we don't need to and shouldn't wait for Easter to do this. Don't badger people, but there is nothing wrong with gentle reminders at opportune moments.
4. We need to serve regularly -In the lead-up to Easter, we had people coming in throughout the week, tons of extra people serving on Sunday morning -it was awesome to see all the willing hands hard at work! We can create excellent experiences EVERY week if we have enough people willing and ready to serve one another regularly.
5. We need to give regularly -We purchased some extra stage gear, signage, lighting and other things that improved the overall Sunday experience going forward as we prepared for Easter because many really stepped up and gave. Let's keep fueling God's mission and steadily improving what we do.
6. We need to trust regularly -We trusted God for big things on Easter. We asked Him to work and we acted in faith like He would come through on Easter -and He did. We need to maintain this kind of faith and expectation that God wants to work all the time; He doesn't just come out on Easter! :)

By all means let's take some time to celebrate what happened yesterday, but let's also determine to keep moving forward together. We could settle for Easter once a year...but wouldn't it be fun to experience what we experienced yesterday EVERY Sunday (except perhaps the egg hunt)?!?

“With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for all time, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20–21, NCV)