Archive - April, 2009

How People Grow

April 30, 2009 in leadership with 3 Comments

Last week I was able to attend the Exponential Conference in Orlando, Fl, which covered various topics of church planting and evangelism. One of the breakout presenters was Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Houston Texas, and he spoke on a really fundamental topic: how to grow people.

Well, it wasn’t actually called that, I can’t remember the title, but he broke down two main forms that different churches use to grow people. He shared some pro’s and con’s of each method, then spoke about a hybrid form that they’re experimenting with in his church.
The first is a “mechanical” model. This is the model in which there are specific discipleship classes, curriculum, homework to do, etc.
Here are some pro’s that he mentions of this model:
  • It’s a good way to disseminate information
  • Lots of curriculum available for this
  • It’s easy to measure how many people are going through the system
Here are some con’s:
  • Hard to sustain. In the beginning, it’s great and everyone is excited to be a part of it, but it usually slows down over time.
  • It can lead to coldness if the theology isn’t applied and remains in the context of just knowledge
  • Doesn’t reach a wide-ranging group of people. Usually this model is attractive to analytical thinkers and type A personalities
The second model he calls an “Organic/Relational Model”
Here are some pro’s of this model:
  • More people seem to stick around because people are connected in community
  • Appeals to a broader group of people
Cons:
  • It’s taken for granted that spiritual maturity will happen
So what did he give as an example of a hybrid system that he thinks works well?
For one, he wants to create a culture in his church in which every level of discipleship is celebrated. So they show video testimonies every week of people that are in different stages in their walk. Some are of people that quit smoking. Others are of people that failed and just picked themselves back up. You can watch some of those videos here.
Secondly, and this is one I’m really excited about, he seems to be a proponent of semester-based affinity groups. He feels that this is one of the best ways to grow people.
At Carrollwood Church we currently have elements of both of these systems. We have a system of discipleship classes, based upon the Rick Warren model. And beginning in June, we’re going to be launching our new semester-based affinity groups. As these groups take off, I foresee doing away with the other discipleship classes, as we’re trying to go for a very streamlined process of discipleship which is done through small groups. The only one I’ll keep, I think, is the membership class. But I think a model in which discipleship is done through the context of a semester small group is probably one of the best ways to grow people. Instead of having a four hour class on spiritual gifts or spiritual disciplines, how about spending 10-12 weeks together in a small group studying through and implementing these things into your life?
I think that seems like the better option.
What about you? How have you found that people grow? What are some models that your interested in or have experimented with that you like?
P.S. I think Matt Chandler is one of my new favorite speakers. His podcast will be given time on my ipod. Here’s a short click of him speaking so you could see what I’m talking about.

What A Church Was Intended To Be

April 20, 2009 in Evangelism with 0 Comments

This past weekend I was able to attend the SEEDS-Florida ’09 Conference in Orlando, Fl. SEEDS is a church planting and evangelism conference.

One of the standout presentations for me was that of Wayne Krause, pastor/church planter of Central Coast Community Church in New South Wales, Australia. Before planting the church he met with his core team for a little over a year to train, disciple, and prepare them for a paradigm shift in church thinking. Theirs would be a church that was “for the community.” I know you’re thinking, aren’t all churches supposed to be like that? True, but very few actually are. This is a church where people from the community actually come as they are. The “pastor’s study” is in a coffee shop. That’s where he meets people. He gives Bible studies there. He does counseling there. He holds his staff meetings there. He’s become such a fixture and been able to build such relationships, that employees of the coffee shop have asked him to do weddings for them.
Their church is across from a skate park and once a week their church makes lunch and brings it out to all the kids. Once a week (i believe) that also provide a breakfast to the kids in the public school nearby. It’s an impoverished school where quite a few often go without. Because of the trust that he’s earned in the community and in this school, they’ve asked him to become the school Chaplain. Yes, this being in a public school.
For me it’s very inspiring to hear of churches that are being “incarnational” and making a difference everyday. They’re not a mega-church, but they are a growing church that I believe is making a big impact for the kingdom. I believe God is proud of their church. Here’s a little youtube video where he was interviewed if you want to hear him share a little.
I also had the privilege of presenting in one of the break out sessions a seminar called “Engaging First Time Guests So They’ll Want to Come Back.” It was a case study presentation based upon the Fusion and the Assimilation seminar by Nelson Searcy. I couldn’t believe the level of interest. People were really interested and yearning to hear more. So yes, if you’ve never purchased the book or heard the Assimilation seminar you need to get to it. It will make a huge difference in your church.
Tomorrow I’ll be heading out to the Exponential Conference in Orlando. I’m looking forward to hearing from some of the big players out there and learning some good stuff.
What’s your dream of what a church should be like?

Easter Service Recap

April 16, 2009 in Evangelism with 0 Comments

We had a great Easter weekend service this past week at Carrollwood Church! On Saturday, April 11th, we kicked off a brand new series called “He Still Moves Stones,” which was well received. I got the graphic and idea for the series from Outreach.com.

To advertise the weekend we did a few things:
1. We put it on our website
2. We ordered a decent sized banner (with our custom info) that we placed outside our church
3. We ordered and passed out almost 2,000 door-knob hangers in our community
4. We ordered 750 business card size series invite cards that we placed in the hands of our church members to invite their friends and neighbors.
5. And finally, we did a special mail-out with a postcard invitation to anyone that had visited the church in the past year.
And while we didn’t break the attendance record I was hoping for (170), we still had our best attended service since New Years at 121. We also had a number of people that we hadn’t seen in a long time (several years in some cases).
We followed up the Saturday service by having an early morning Easter Sunrise Service from 6:30-7:30 sunday morning followed by a breakfast. We sang some songs, prayed together outside at the moment of sunrise, had a brief Scripture meditation on the resurrection, and then we had an anointing service. I was quite surprised by the turnout of those that came for the service (about 50). And I was even more surprised that almost all of them came forward to be anointed.
It was a huge blessing for our church as we fellowshipped together and with the Lord.
Here are a few lessons that are pretty common sense about Easter weekend.
1. Always begin a new series on Easter
2. If you’re going to go big, do it on Easter. As we all know there are two main dates that if an unchurched person is thinking about going to church they will go if invited: Christmas and Easter. So go all out in encouraging your congregation to invite their friends and family for Easter. I’ve heard some say that you should put up to 50% of your marketing budget to making Easter a big success.
3. Begin preparations as early as possible. I didn’t begin preparing for it as early as I should have, and because of that there were a few elements that we weren’t able to do. Next year I’m going to start preparing as soon as the new year comes!
I was told that this was the first time that our church had an Easter sunrise service, which I was surprised by. Now that we’ve done this one, I can’t imagine having a year without one.
What about you? Do you have an Easter service? Why or why not? How did things go and what are some lessons you learned?

Creating Excitement in a Church Service

April 15, 2009 in technology,web tool with 3 Comments

Want to create some excitement in a church service? Do something really different. Perhaps something you’ve never done before. So what’s something we (leaders) never do in a church service? We never ask people to pull out their cell phones and actually turn them on!

This past weekend we kicked of a brand new sermon series for Easter called “He Still Moves Stones.” And as an opening illustration we did an interactive social experiment where we asked people to pull our their cell phones, and to vote live on what their greatest struggle is.
Here’s a picture of what they voted on:
They would vote by sending a text message to whatever struggle they were dealing with the most. And how did they react? It was electric. It just took about 2 minutes, but it was a lot of fun for me (and for them) seeing the numbers change live. After all was said and done, this ended up being the final tally. And I told them that these would be the four topics we’d be covering for the next four weeks, so people already had an interest in learning more, since these were things that they voted on as being significant struggles in their life.
You can’t do do something like this every week, but the reaction and the interest it created in the series was priceless. To learn more about using this feature go to www.polleverywhere.com
What about you? Have you tried something that has helped to create some excitement in a church service? What about the opposite? Have you tried something and found it to suck the air out of the room in an awkward experiment gone bad?

The Importance of EQ In Your Leadership

April 1, 2009 in leadership with 0 Comments

We’ve all heard much talk about IQ in the past. IQ being your ability to really rock out on standardized tests. More recently (past several years) we’ve also been learning about the role and importance of EQ, with many falling on the side of the fence that EQ is the more important value in determining someone’s success as a leader.
I just started a book called Primal Leadership that highlights the importance of high EQ. In the opening of the book it gives a wonderful example.
The news organization BBC decided to do an experiment with one of their divisions. They had one of their executives come into part of the group and tell them that they’d have to close the division. He did so in a very brusque and insensitive manner, not taking into account how the employees might be feeling. He just told the straight facts. “The atmosphere became so contentious,” the author recounts, “that it looked as though the executive might have to call security to usher him safely from the room.”
They then sent in another executive to the other group. He gave the same facts, but told it in a different way. By the end of his talk to the group, they gave him a round of applause.
“The difference between the leaders lay in the mood and tone with which they delivered their messages: One drove the group toward antagonism and hostility, the other toward optimism, even inspiration, in the face of difficulty. These two moments point to a hidden, but crucial dimension in leadership-the emotional impact of what a leader says and does” (p. 4).
Which leads me to the question: how aware are you of yourself? When someone objects to something that you say, how do you react? When you’re sharing with someone some difficult news, what is your body revealing? Do you have the ability to empathize with what someone is actually feeling?
If you can’t, I wouldn’t try to fake it and try to exude the right body language from some book.
Perhaps we can all learn to be a little more sensitive to how we are coming across to people, and the power of the emotions involved, by reminding ourselves that we are all sinners ourselves. And that we serve Someone that is able to empathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15).
How would you rate your own EQ? Does this come easily to you or is it something you really have to work on?