Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

Kicked off our leadership retreat with an amazing worship experience. Do you ever have a distinct impression during worship? My distinct impression on Friday night was: I'm ready to storm the gates of hell. We get fired up about a lot of things. We ought to get fired up about the kingdom of God. God deserves our exubberance.

Awesome to worship together. Awesome to play together. We broke our leaders into ten teams and did a relay race that involved making a human pyramid; bible trivia; and paper airplanes! I really think the best thing about the weekend is the fellowship. So great to just hang out with our leaders!

Loved the retreat metaphor: some assembly required. That metaphor got weaved into everything we did. My session was on blueprints. We had lego sets all over. And even a Mr. Potato Head video.

Serious props to Heather Zempel and our Zone Leaders who put the retreat together. And our admin crew and production crew went over the top. I really think it sends a message to our leaders: we take leadership seriously!

For me, "the moment" was having our leaders stand up based on tenure. We did our first leadership retreat five years ago at a 4H center. The seven leaders who were at that first retreat stood up. That was a memory and a moment for me. So proud of and so grateful for those leaders! Then we did two leadership retreats in Baltimore and a couple dozen leaders stood. Then all the leaders at last year's leadership retreat stood up--it was about half the group. And finally, we had everyone at this year's retreat stand up!

I did that for two reasons. To honor our pioneering leaders. But I also wanted to make a point. In keeping with the "Some Assembly Required" metaphor I reminded our leaders: "You are the foundation." The foundation of NCC isn't our philosophy of ministry. It's not our creativity. It's not even our values and convictions. It's our leaders. Our leaders are the foundation.

I honestly believe that we'll keep growing as long as we have enough small groups to accomodate our growth. And the key to more groups is more leaders. So the quantity and quality of our leadership determines our potential as a church.