A Shift In My Thinking

Well, that time of the year is upon us. It's the Easter season and many church leaders are expecting lots of people to check out their churches. Many of us are spending a ton of money to put on a huge production. Will you reach our goals? Are you going to be effective?

Yesterday, I read a blog by Tony Morgan that talked about reaching people at Easter. He pondered whether we're really reaching the unchurched. I've served in the church for over ten years now. During that time, I have never thought about this question. Are we really reaching the unchurched? I just assumed that we were reaching people who don't go to church because our auditorium was full.

Morgan maintains that we are probably reaching the churched and people who are already connected to our churches. I will have to pay more attention this Easter. I want to see if we're really reaching people who don't go to church. I don't want to be the kind of church leader who assumes that we're being effective because we have full auditorium. In my mind we're ineffective if we have a room full of people from other churches. Jesus didn't call us to recycle, he called us to disciple.

What do you think about Morgan's blog? Is he accurate in his assessment? How will you pay more attention to people who show up this Easter?

You Play To Win The Game

"You play to win the game!" is now a legendary soundbite in the sports world. Then NY Jets coach, Herman Edwards, went on a tirade about playing and winning football games. These words echoed in my mind as I traveled home on Sunday after church.

Our male youth leader, Michael Coffin, preached on Sunday and did an excellent job of preparing people for our prayer ministry part of our service. All of our prayer teams were busy praying for people. We had people who haven't come up in a long time. We even had a few people who were 1st timers that got prayer. The song the band sang coupled with the message made our ministry an encounter with God.

Here's the tie in! We don't do Sunday service just to do Sunday service. We used to do that but not anymore. Our Sunday service has a purpose. We want people to encounter God every Sunday through music, the arts, multimedia, and a biblical message. All the elements in our service are designed to lead people into the ministry time. The ministry time is the high point of our service because this is everyone's opportunity to respond to their encounter with God. We 'win' when there are people responding by coming up to receive prayer. The 'win' tells us when we're successful. Everyone wants to be on a winning team!

Sunday was a win for the CRV corporate worship service. We play to win the game!

If you're a pastor or church leader, what's the purpose of your corporate gathering? How do you know when you're successful? If you're in the business world, how do you know when you're successful in meetings? Do your meetings have a purpose? Do you spend a lot of time wondering why your in a meeting?

Leading With 20/20 Vision

I really enjoy hearing someone else clearly articulate my thoughts. I just finished listening to some audio from the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. The talk was about communicating your vision convincingly. Two of the three points I already incorporate into my leading with vision.





The three points were:

Define the problem you vision will solve (CHECK)

State your vision as the solution (CHECK)

Answer the questions: Why us? & Why now? (NEEDS IMPROVEMENT)

By nature I'm a problem solver, a troubleshooter. You can call me crazy, but I get a natural high from solving problems. So the first two points come naturally. Unfortunately, I never think about asking those last two questions. People have to see why they need to be part of the solution and why the problem needs to be solved now. It's important to get them to feel the burden of the problem. This is one of the few times when feeling a burden for something is a good thing. Bill Hybels calls it holy discontent; which at its simplest level is no more than having a burden to fix a problem. Of course, the assumption is that your burden is God-driven and not man-driven or just plain ol' bellyaching.

When I followed the first two points, I saw amazing results. The last time I remember doing this well, is when we launched our first membership class last year. I did a message about church membership.

Problem: It's not good for man to be alone

Solution: God has adopted us into his family

Needless to this was our highest attended membership class. It also helped that it was our first but the point was made.

Recently, we placed more emphasis on our prayer ministry time at the end of our service. I don't think I stated the problem or the solution well enough. It's something that I will need to work on. I'm also looking at some changes in our Life Group structure. Its time to put into practice the things I have learned.

Casting vision has a lot to do with change. People don't like change and rarely see a need to changed. This is why communicating your vision is so important.

Are you a problem solver or a goal setter? (According to Bob Biehl most leaders fit into one of these two categories.) How do you cast vision convincingly? What tips would you give someone who is about to cast their vision?

Lights, Camera, Action!!!!!

Yesterday I got the opportunity to do a camera interview for the Virginia Beach City Public School system. The interview was related to our work with Salem Elementary School. Last year because of our work with Salem we were asked to become a Partner In Education. We humbly accepted even this invitation. Our invite marked a second step in our ever growing relationship with Salem.

The purpose of the interview was for us to tell what we do for Salem, why we do it, and tell others about getting involved. We do work for Salem because we want to be active in our community. It's important for us meet the needs of our community. We meet these needs spiritually, physically, and emotionally. We decided before we can meet needs spiritually and emotionally, we need to meet physical needs. Meeting physical needs helps to build our relationships and it builds trust. Jesus modeled this wherever he went. He didn't only meet spiritual and emotional needs, he met physical needs as well.

Our philosophy is pretty simple. If you want to really impact a community for the long haul, then reach out towards the children and youth. They have their whole lives ahead of them. It's like brand new candle versus a candle that only has 1/2" of wax left. You can guess which one is the child and which one is the adult. Our aim is to put life back into our community by impacting our community's children and youth. Help us to make this impact.

What is your long term plan to put life back into your community? Who are you intentionally trying to reach and meet their physical needs?

Doing Life

One of the biggest reasons why we place a high priority on Life Groups in Crossroads Vineyard is because we know the power of community. God said early in the Bible, "It's not good for man to be alone." This was the first time He said something wasn't good.

In our groups you get the opportunity to read the Bible, learn about the essentials of the Christian faith, and grow deeper relationships with people in the church. Many times people come to a group not knowing what to expect but they leave feeling connected to others.

There's a connection through like thought or like experiences or even like attitudes or like upbringing. You simply can't duplicate this on Sunday mornings. Don't get me wrong...Sundays are important to the life of the church but it's limited. It's hard to go deeper on Sunday. But during the week we can go deeper. We can get our relational needs met. We can get others to pray for our seemingly bleak situations.

I will always advocate being in a small group of people to share my life with!

Cluster Group...What's That?

Last year I read a book called The Big Idea by Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, Eric Bramlett. It wast a very good book, I highly recommend to it to church leaders. After reading the book, I found that we already do a lot of the stuff in the book. This was a huge sigh of relief. Then I began to ponder the idea of going full steam with the Big Idea concept. Then I ran across a guest contributor to the book Hank Brooks of Coastal Community Church. I was overjoyed that he was in Virginia Beach as well.

I met with him and began to discuss the concept of the Big Idea. After some time he invited me to check out a cluster group for church planters. I couldn't have been more excited to accept such an invitation. Last week I went to the cluster group and thoroughly enjoyed it. For me it was an answer to prayer. I was already praying for some kind of coaching/mentorship. God used the Big Idea to lead me to this group.

I know your wondering, "What exactly is a cluster group?" I got the same question when I posted on Facebook that I was at a cluster group. Here's what the group is in a nutshell. It's a group of pastors, church planters and established churches, who come together once a month for teaching, lunch, accountability, idea sharing, and coaching. The teaching is based on the homework, a book, from the previous month.

In our first meeting we had the teaching and then we did introductions. Our homework is reading Effectiveness By The Numbers by William Hoyt. This has been an excellent read. I can't wait to discuss this book later this month. MAN!! This is a serious answer to prayer!!

The accountability consists of four questions:

How are you doing as a person?

How is your relationship with Jesus going?

How is your ministry going?

How is your marriage doing?

This is a closed, confidential group and what gets said there, stays there!! As a man, it can be hard to share this kind of things out fear of being seen as weak. The confidentiality is important.

Thank you Lord for this blessing in my life. You continue to give me what I need, when I need it!

As a leader in the church or marketplace, how are you doing in those four areas above? You don't have to share here but at least begin to think about these questions. Where do you look for mentorship/coaching and accountability in your life?

Moving Into The Next Chapter

We finally had our first formal leadership meeting. We've had launch team meetings and Life Group leaders meetings but never a leadership meeting. This first meeting served as an opportunity for us to let people know what leadership means to us and how we see leadership in our church context.

We base our leadership on the following three (3) principles:

Leadership is a stewardship

Leadership is temporary

We are accountable to God for how we lead


Anyone familiar with Andy Stanley knows these are the principles he teaches for leadership. These three principles break leadership down to its simplest form. Leadership opportunities and authority are given to us from God. He establishes leadership and authority in our world. He uses this leadership and authority to perform his will in our world. Since, leadership is given to us, it can be taken from us. He gives and takes away! Additionally, we move on to other things while this leadership journey. Its imperative that we never leave leadership voids in our ministries. We should look for our replacement from day 1! Finally, since leadership is given to us by God we're held accountable for the way we lead. In everything we do in this life, we're going to be held accountable to God and the gift of leading others is no different.

What leadership principles guide your life? How is God using your leadership gift to impact his Kingdom? What are some characteristics you look for in leaders?