Part of our staff threw together a little home-cooked rap for our volunteer appreciation dinner. Props to Jeremy Sexton for the lyrics. We laid the sound track last week. Shot the video this week. And voila!
Kicked off my author coaching today.
This weekend we kick off a series titled Last Words. We're going to spend three weeks looking at the last words of Jesus. I think it'll be a great lead up to Easter. We kick off with It is Finished this week.
I spent part of my day with Andrew McCourt and Brian Somerville from Cornerstone City Fellowship in L'Derry, Ireland. They meet in a theater in the city center and they are looking to open up a coffeehouse! What is God up to? So many churches setting up shop in marketplace environments. And to see it happening in Europe is awfully encouraging!
I'm speaking at the Whiteboard Sessions here in the DC area on May 22. The early bird deadline is February 29. I love the format of the conference. Each of the speakers has 30 minutes to throw down!
One of the highlights of my day was having lunch with Kent Williams who pastors Christian Fellowship Church, a high-impact church in Ashburn, VA. So nice to talk shop with a local pastor. I know I say it all the time, but the kingdom of God is the most amazing relational network on earth.
Just finished up a sampler for my next book, Wild Goose Chase. Should get printed in the next month and it'll consist of the introduction plus two chapters. The goal is to give people a taste of the book so they want to read the whole thing.
Just came across an online bookstore called BooksChristian.com. They are selling In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day at a 22% discount. Just thought I'd share the link.
This week an NCCer gave me three cards for my three kids. It was their last Sunday and she wanted to say thanks. So she wrote three messages in three cards and gave our kids a gift card to Target. I was so blessed by that. As a parent, nothing blesses me as much as someone blessing my kids!
I think there are moments in our lives that seem insignificant at the time, but years later you look back on it and realize it was a defining moment. I had a flashback as I prepared this week's message. Several years ago I was rebuked by an intern. And I'm so grateful. It was a little embarrassing getting lectured by a nineteen year-old kid, but I'm so grateful he had the courage to speak into my life. He said he detected some pride in the way I talked about other churches. And I hate to say, but he was so dead-on. So apologized to him and repented to God.
Wrapped up our Love U series today.
Some of our pastoral staff spent the afternoon working on a little rap. That's the way we roll at NCC. We've got some lyrisologists on our staff.
I thought I wrote In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day for twenty-somethings. I was wrong! Of all the stories I hear from readers, I think the most encouraging are the fifty and sixty-somethings that aren't done chasing lions!
Yesterday was a marathon meeting day! I try to schedule the majority of my meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I call them my meeting days. Mondays and Fridays are my focus days. I went eight straight hours yesterday without coming up for a breath.
I flew home from Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon following the Evolve Conference. Thoroughly enjoyed it by the way! I got off the plane, drove home, hopped into our minivan, and we drove right up to Wisp Ski Resort on Tuesday night. Spent Wednesday skiing with friends and family. Parker and I snowboarded our first black diamond.
This morning I'm doing a session at the Evolve Conference titled The Secure Leader. I'm going to use Saul as a case study in insecurity. Two verses represent two defining moments in his life.
After the last session today, I went out to dinner with some of the conference delegation. Thanks to Shawn Lovejoy and David Putnam for setting it up. Really enjoying hanging out with my Catalyst homies, Brad Lomenick and Chad Johnson. And the impromptu brainstorming session with Steven Furtick and Bil Cornelius was as good as the prime rib. They ooze creativity!
It's been so good to sit and soak today at the Evolve Conference. Sat in on Steven Furtick's breakout session. So anointed. Love his energy. Love his passion for the kingdom. It's hard to describe, but I need to be around people that make me dream bigger dreams. Steven has that effect on people. It's a unique anointing.
Steven talked about a principle in II Kings 4. All the widow had was a little oil. And some of us are discouraged by how little we have. I've been there. I remember when NCC's income was $2000/month. It's so easy to get focused on what we don't have. But all she had was all she needed. As long as there were jars to be filled, the oil kept flowing. There is no shortage. The thing that limits us is not God's capability. It's always our capacity. As long as we keep bringing an empty jar the oil will keep flowing!
Ironically, the thing that really encouraged me in my spirit was Steven sharing about one of the defining moments of his life. I'm in the throes of trying to finish writing my next book, Wild Goose Chase. It is hard. And it is lonely. But I write because one sentence can change the life of someone I'll never meet forever! Steven read Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbala when he was sixteen years-old. And page 23 changed his life. One sentence: I despaired that my life might pass me by without seeing God move mightily on my behalf.
Timely encouragement!
Hopped an early AM flight to Atlanta this morning for the Evolve Conference. Today I get to sit and soak. Really excited about hearing some of the other speakers. Tomorrow I'm doing a workshop for churches looking to go multi-site. And then I'm doing a main session titled: The Secure Leader. I'm going to use Saul as a case study in insecurity. I'll blog some notes.
We kicked off our Love U series this weekend. The big idea was one of our core values: love people when they least expect it and least deserve. It's hard to describe, but it felt good going back to the basics. But it's also challenging. The love of God is beyond words and beyond logic so it's extremely difficult to communicate.
I had a really cool supernatural synchronicity happen this week that I can't resist sharing. These kinds of things don't happen very often, but when they do I want to make sure to give credit where credit is due.
Parker's basketball team moved to 5-2 on the season. We had a tough loss last week. And I beat myself up after the game because I felt like I made some poor coaching decisions. They were killing our half-court press and I should have dropped back into a 2-1-2 zone defense because we were much bigger. But we bounced back. Feels good to put one in the W column. And it was a great team effort. So cool to see kids playing unselfishly.
Have you ever felt blessed beyond your ability to reciprocate?
When we opened the door to Ebenezers we did it with a multiplication mindset. It was a quantum challenge getting Ebenezers off the ground, but I always hoped it would turn into a chain of coffeehouses. The thing that caught me a little off guard was the volume of interest from churches around the country. I'm guessing we've dialogued with a couple hundred churches over the past two years that want to do something similar. And we've been asked if we would consider franchising.
Once a church planter always a church planter. I love the church planting tribe. Excited about speaking at a couple church planting conferences in the next couple months.
I've got my fair share of idiosyncrasies. One of them is that I never read a book I don't own! And the reason for that idiosyncrasy is this idiosyncrasy: I never read without a pen so I can underline. If I don't have a pen it's not worth reading! I'm an underlining machine! Anywho. I'm passing this idiosyncrasy on to my son as we read through the New Testament. If he reads without underlining it doesn't count. Then at our FSMs we discuss the underlined verses.
Really enjoyed my time in Minneapolis. Short but sweet. Very cool to reconnect with some old friends! Loved speaking in chapel. And the conference was a blast.
I'm headed to Minneapolis to speak at the Missional Church Conference at North Central University. I love speaking to students. Very few speaking contexts are as energizing to me as college chapels! So many dreams. So much potential.
This weekend we wrap up our How series. Next weekend we kick off a new series titled Love U. It's a two-part series on the Great Commandment. We'll talk about loving God and loving people.
During Lent our prayer team at NCC is doing a prayer blog. It'd be a great way to start the each day during Lent.
On September 6, 2008, National Community Church is hosting a Convoy of Hope. Convoy is an amazing ministry focusing on physical and spiritual needs. NCC actually hosted a convoy when our church was about fifty people! We gave groceries to about 5000 people that day and I'm convinced the Lord blessed us because of it. I've always felt like God will bless NCC if we 1) give to missions around the world and 2) reach out to the poor in our city.
As our staff grows larger, leadership gets more complicated. More people equals more synergy. But more personalities also equals more tension if you aren't intentionally building morale and coaching your team. And the more players you have on the team, the harder it is to keep everybody on the same page. So I'm really trying to be more intentional about team building this year. I want to do a quarterly event where we stop working and focus on personal development and team building.
I remember exactly where I was six years ago today. I was at the hospital. Our son Josiah had just been born the day before. And the day after, our lawyer delivered a contract and we became the proud owners of 201 F Street, NE.
What a beautiful day in DC. Gotta love 70's in February! Wednesday is my day off so Lora and I always hang out until the kids get off of school. Today we ate outside at a sidewalk cafe.
"I'd rather die than embarrass Jesus Christ."
As part of our discipleship covenant, Parker and I are going to fast TV for forty days. That is quite a commitment for a kid. I also want to use this time to help my son develop the daily discipline of seeking God via prayer and Scripture.
I'm writing feverishly these days. Lots of very early mornings! I've got about three more chapters to go and Wild Goose Chase will be ready for editing. I'm running a little behind the deadline which I feel bad about. But I feel great about the content. I feel like I'm coming out of the writing forest.
Man, if Rick Warren came to DC and gave us a pep talk every Monday ministry would be so much easier! That was one of the most meaningful conversations about ministry I've ever been part of it. So much great stuff.
Had a blast playing some football on the National Mall. That is when you've got to love living in Washington, DC.
NCC kicks off it's Spring Semester of small groups this week! So excited about the opportunities we're presenting to NCCers. Check out our online catalog.
This weekend we timed our How to Fast message to coincide with the beginning of Lent on Wednesday. We wanted to capitalize on the church calendar and really challenge NCCers to fast something for Lent. So excited to see the way God will use it to help our church community become what God wants us to be.
I spent 12 hours in the air the last two days! Wow, that is a lot of flying back-to-back days. Of course, the upside is that I got off the plane and walked through our front door in seventeen minutes! I love living close to an airport. It's a life saver!
II Timothy 3:2 says, "The overseer must be above reproach."
