I Love This Job...

It's Almost 11:00 on Thursday night. It's been an amazing day packed with amazing experiences. Heather and I left the house this morning at 6:00am, dropped Jeremiah off with Autumn Lineberger - the most generous, loving and wonderful person on the planet - and headed off to Billy Graham for our staff field trip. At BGEA I got to hear Pastor Furtick deliver a killer devotion in less than 20 minutes (Yes, that is a 2 not a 6) and then I got to sit in on a meeting with some of the head guys at BGEA who shared some pretty amazing leadership principles that will undoubtedly come out on this blog in a week or so - once I've had a chance to process them. I got back to the office just in time to spend about an hour continuing to plan for the Community Groups Current coming up Monday and I have finally landed on the main point: I will be answering every group leader at Elevation's biggest question...but you'll have to wait until Monday night to find out what that question is...

After that I went into a sermon planning meeting where I got to sit on the front row of Pastor Furtick's sermon preparation - something that always reminds me what a privilege it is to serve under such a great communicator. Finally, I closed out the day in a meeting with Chunks Corbett and the directional guys discussing some plans for this week's worship experience.

In the morning, I will get to the office early and jump right into the discussion questions for this Sunday. Although I haven't heard the sermon yet, Pastor has given me all the tools necessary to write what I hope will be a good resource for your groups. By tomorrow at about 2:30 when I leave the office my brain will have completely shut down. In fact, I often have to leave it in my office over the weekend to let it marinate and recover. That's why if you ever see me on Sunday and wonder why I can't remember your name...

The best part about this schedule is that I can't imagine doing anything else with my life! I love this job! I love this Church! I love seeing God move in a tangible way right in front of me! I feel like I have a box seat at Pentecost and Peter has asked me to help with the baptisms! Who am I that you are mindful of me? Yet, before I was born you knew me! Amazing!

Leading My Group

So I'm actually packing up my office and running out the door to go lead my small group - which I will likely be late for...

Even though I have been running the Community Groups Ministry at Elevation Church for a year and a half and have seen those groups grow from 8 groups in July '06 to 82 groups at our peak last November. Even though I have personally lead 12 different groups since July '06. Even though I have had a combined 200+ people in one of my groups since I started leading, and, even though I get tired and overwhelmed and feel like I'm too busy to lead my group well, I still look forward to getting together with MY GROUP.

There is nothing like building relationships with people that can hold you accountable and drive you to become more like Christ in a real and tangible way. I hope no matter how busy I get and how big our ministry becomes that I will always have MY GROUP to rush home for.

To MY GROUP: Thanks for being a great group!

To my group leaders: Thanks for making this a possiblity for hundreds of other people at Elevation Church!

Staff Evaluation

This is going to be my shortest blog ever:

I just came through my first quarterly staff evaluation. I'm not one that tends to shy away from criticism shared in the right environment which is good, because that's what we do around here. We deeply and passionately celebrate the victories and then get back to work because it ought to be better next time... Besides, I believe so much in the men that God has placed over me that they could say just about anything in just about any tone and I would receive it in the way it was intended - as a gift!

You can't ever fix stuff if people don't point out that it's broken to begin with. Pastor Steven, Chunks, thanks for holding me to a high standard. I thrive under the type of direction you guys provide and because of your insight I can see things in me, and in my ministry that I might have missed otherwise. I can't believe I get to work here!!!

Pour It All Out

Pastor Furtick preached an incredible sermon yesterday from Jeremiah 1:4-10. I won't go into it here, you just need to watch it yourself when it comes up (check it out here). At the end of the day there were 135 people who checked the box indicating that they received Christ. I am floored! Since I want you to be just as floored as me, let me tell you a little story.

In November, Joey Smith called me. His group, lead by Will and Kerri Ross, wanted to do something for a family during Christmas. Since we have partnered with Crisis Assistance Ministries and CIS - Safe Journey, and have asked them to provide us with the names of families in need, I actually had a stack of potential families on my desk. One of those family's greatest needs was a new vehicle.

Joey and his small group decided to reach out to this family for Christmas. They raised hundreds of dollars in their group and took the family Christmas shopping - the social worker told me that they wouldn't have had a Christmas otherwise. The gifts they bought at Target, however, were only the beginning. Joey had already worked it out behind the scenes to surprise the family with a new car, purchased by Elevation; it was waiting on them when they got back from Target. It wasn't just a beater that we picked up at a local mechanics shop either, it was an '07 Ford Taurus with less than 20,000 miles on it.

I suppose that someone, somewhere is probably thinking that the way we did this or the fact that we bought this nice of a car was too much. To you I point to this principle and leave you to wallow is smallness and self-righteous pride. For those of us with functioning hearts, however, we're going to keep reading and celebrate at the conclusion of this story. Yesterday, the new owner of this car used it to drive herself to her first Worship Experience at Elevation's Butler campus where she was confronted with the truth of the Gospel and checked the box to receive Christ.

God moves when we leverage all that He has entrusted to us for His glory and His fame. He moved Yesterday! Only 134 more stories to go. Praise God for His faithfulness! Praise God for making a way!

Chinese Food With Raisins

Welcome to this installment of Friday's Fun Family Facts.

Disclaimer: My mother is a fabulous cook. Even when she makes foods, such as the ones I'm about to describe, they are still made very well. The only way you will truly understand this blog is to read it through the eyes of a 7 year old boy that would rather be eating ice cream and cookies...

My mom was notorious for making outlandish meals for dinner. I can remember nights where I would innocently come to the table to partake of the days nourishment only to find that we were having rabbit. Now, I know there is nothing wrong with rabbit. Many people eat rabbit and love it, but I, being a boy of active imagination, could not help feeling like I wanted to run and check on Floppy in the next room. You see, we had rabbits for pets -- I just couldn't stomach the thought...

Anyway, this blog is about the food so let me get back to it. One thing that my mom was very good at making, but that I was very bad at eating was an assortment of stir-fried dishes. Looking back I see that these dishes came from a variety of different ethnicity's ranging from your classic American/Asian stir-fry to an authentic Thai, but to my uncultured 7 year old brain it was all Chinese food.

On this particular night we were having "Chinese food". Accept this night, for reasons that are so far removed from my ability to comprehend them that they seemed to be the musings of a crazy person, Mom decided to put raisins in it. So the concoction consisted of tofu, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and raisins (or something like that...).

Now, I ask you, what was I supposed to do with that? Obviously, I wasn't going to eat it. There was no chance that I would be able to pawn it off on one of my siblings. And, if my memory serves me right, my dog opted to stay in the living room during dinner that night.

You can look down on me if you want, but desperate times call for desperate measures and I saw no safe exits so here's how my plan unfolded: I ate the tofu! Since tofu is absolutely tasteless, or rather, since it, like a dish-sponge, absorbs the taste of whatever it touches, I soaked it in soy sauce and threw it back. The water chestnuts made it to the toilet in a napkin that was sacrifice for the good of the cause. The bean sprouts and raisins, in a move of sheer panic found there way to my sock. After dinner, when the crowd had dispersed, I went outside and did what any normal person would have done; I emptied my sock behind the propane tank.

Tune in next week for something that matters!

Community Groups Current

Last year in July all of the group leaders and potential leaders got together at the Providence Country Club for a meeting called Community Groups Current. In my opinion, it was a raving success. We established some foundational talking points for Community Groups and had a great time together. This year we are planning four Currents - one per quarter.

The first Current is right around the corner on Monday, January 14th from 6:30 - 8:30; the topic at hand: Communication!

Being a mobile church it is not always possible to get all of the group leaders together in one place to communicate face-to-face. Not only that, we are all bombarded with so many emails and phone calls on a daily basis it is sometimes difficult to get a message out. So we are going to work hard during this first quarter to figure out how to more effectively communicate the visioin and direction of Elevation Church through Community Groups. I think it will really help us as we gear up for our next GroupLink on March 2nd.

Group Leaders I'll see you there!

The Overreaction

My 7 month old son has recently developed an extreme distaste for his car seat. I can understand, I think. After all he is strapped down so he can't move freely to a plastic bucket facing the opposite direction of everyone else in a reclined position that keeps him from being able to effectively play with the toys dangling just out of his reach...But let's just say that all of these factors do justify his distaste for the car seat, the other day's reaction to being placed in his seat seemed a little extreme.

I mean you would have thought we had strapped him into a pan of burning embers with cold chains. He was so upset that we felt compelled to check on him several times in the coarse of our fifteen minute ride home to make sure he wasn't hurt. Of course, as these things go, the very second we took him out of his seat he snuggled into our shoulder and stopped crying. In fact, by the time we got him into the house he was back to his normal self - laughing, smiling, and enjoying life!

This little episode left me wondering what God must feel like with me sometimes. He puts me through a little challenge to try to help me or keep me safe and I react so extremely that He wonders if He pinched my finger in the harness. Maybe you're the same way! We've got to quit that, we look ridiculous...