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This week

This week has been an incredible week in our church's history. It is a week that we look forward to every year to see what the fall holds and I can say that the fall looks awesome! It has been, by far, the best back-to-school week in our 7 years. So the question is: What makes it so great?

• Each ministry is functioning at a high level!
• Each ministry is operating off of strategic ministry plans that are producing long-lasting effects.  
• Several of our worship experiences are near capacity! That doesn't mean that we can''t squeeze more in, but we really need some people to move to the 8:30 or 5:30 worship experiences at the North Campus. Plus, there is room at the East campus, but things are starting to grow. 
• People are not only attending weekends, they are getting connected! That's what makes the difference!  
• There are hundreds of people volunteering!
• This past week we had more than 1000 college students! 
• People are giving their lives to Christ! 
• This past weekend we had our highest, non-holiday attendance ever! 4,350 people -- and we're only 7 years old! That is miraculous! 

Momentum Stewardship - Part Six

Strategic Processes

I think one of the greater mistakes that many leaders make is that they misalign momentum. It is easy to do! You get caught up in the rush of the moment and you allow excitement to drive you instead of vision. I know in my own life that when we see large growth seasons, I have to be disciplined in being strategic versus basking in the success.

What I have learned, the hard way, is that I have to predetermine what I want the result of our momentum to look like. In other words, what is the next step past the excitement? After the crowds have come and gone, what am I left with? What do I want to get accomplished during the season of momentum?

Example: I used to be very excited about all the new people we would reach in a a big growth season. For me, at the time, there was nothing more satisfying than seeing people commit their lives to Christ at the end of our experiences. It was, and is, HUGE!!!

Today, while I still get overwhelmed by that, I know that there has to be more to the process. While we have seen hundreds of people give their lives to Christ, we were struggling with following up on them all. So now instead of our goal being to reach people, in a particular season, it is to reach and connect with people! So in everything we do, we talk about both things equally. Long term, for a person to have a healthy relationship with Christ, they have to have a healthy relationship with the church.

The practical point is that everything I do in writing and leading during this season is focused on those 2 things. As we wrap up this season, I will shift my leadership and processes to spiritual growth and serving.

What are the strategic processes you have in place to steward your momentum?

Momentum Stewardship - Part Five

Priority Conversations

If your life is like mine, you can get hit with hundreds of different "items of interest" on any given day. With an organization that sees any success, there are always new issues to be dealt with. The problem is that many times those issues become the focus of most conversations and rob the opportunity to build momentum.

Recently, we identified the priorities for the next 4 weeks as a church as we walk through this natural season of momentum. That doesn't mean there aren't other issues to deal with, but we will be disciplined in not getting distracted. The bottom line is that there are real crises in our lives and perceived crises. To keep momentum we have to discern between the two.

Here are some of the questions I'm asking:

• Do my conversations reflect what I'm focusing on at this time?
• Am I leading in my conversations or simply responding? 
• If I postpone this issue, how will it affect our momentum at this time? How will it affect it in the future? 
• How long do I have to sufficiently deal with this issue? 
• What are the things that I need to be talking about on a daily basis to build on what God is doing?   

Weekend Recap

Every few weeks I like to recap my weekend to keep everyone updated on what is going on. This weekend was an absolute blast! God is doing so much right now!

• FIrst of all, it was great having everyone back today! The North campus auditorium was packed wall to wall at the 9:45 and 11:30!
• We kicked off our new Jr. High worship experience at the North campus and it was a huge hit.

• There we college students everywhere and I love it.

• East campus attendance continues to grow over the past 4 weeks. Because of its great start, we can do some new things at that campus that will help it rock even more.
• It was amazing to see hundreds of people come to the front to nail to the cross those circumstances that were robbing their joy.
• When we ended the experience with "Counting on God" it was overwhelming! To see that many people trusting God was awesome!
• The new series "IF" spoke to me big time! I have really enjoyed writing it.
• I drove to Dallas yesterday to have dinner with a mentor of mine, Clark Whitten. Clark is one of the greatest guys I have ever met! He has influenced my ministry philosophy in a big way. He is a great teacher.
• Tonight we went to small group to celebrate the ending of the Olympics with our own Family Olympics. It was fun!!! If you are not in a small group, you need to get in one. It makes life a lot of fun.

Good night!

Momentum Stewardship - Part Three

Natural Seasons of Momentum

While supernatural seasons of momentum are an absolute blast, natural seasons of momentum are what create ongoing, sustainable health for an organization. I have watched many leaders believe that they were always going to remain in the supernatural season, and it simply doesn't happen. 

I have learned that it is what we do in the natural seasons that set us up for the supernatural seasons. The Bible is clear about God pouring out more as you are faithful with the regular.

Here are some things I have learned:

• Determine your cycles - This blew me away moving from Edmond to Norman. While they are only 30 minutes apart, they are two totally different beast. In Norman we literally have 12 out of 52 weeks that are considered "growth" weeks. But the upside, if I lead well, we have 40 weeks to prepare for those 12! It shouldn't be that hard to hit our cycles.
• Know your culture - Norman is a college town that has its own set of rules. Edmond is over 28% churched, while Norman is under 14%. Norman's culture is centered on OU, so to do Saturday night services flies in the face of the culture. We would basically be saying, "We don't care about the sports culture in this town." Study your culture - whatever your organization is! 
• Prepare for the cycle - If you don't get ahead of the curve you will miss a lot of opportunity. We are planning our experiences 8 to 12 weeks out now to make sure we don't miss a natural opportunity. (We are planning a series starting September 28th that could be the best thing we have ever done!) 
• Motivate people at the appropriate times - Build a guiding coalition to help create the momentum. Allow people to be part of what is happening in the organization. It brings great ownership and momentum! 
• Take care of people - It doesn't matter what your organization is, if you don't take care of people, the momentum won't be sustained! For the past 2 weeks our staff has been personally calling hundreds of families and people. That is a huge amount of work! But how arrogant are we if we feel like our weekend experiences are good enough to keep people engaged long term? At the end of the day you can strip away all of our lights, video, etc. and if we love on people, take care of their needs, and connect them to a God filled community - our momentum will be sustained.  

Momentum Stewardship - Part Two

Seasons - Supernatural

Supernatural seasons of momentum are an absolute blast! They are seasons of growth and momentum that can only be pointed to God. You know that all the work in the world could simply not pull off what you are experiencing. What is unusual is while they are a blast, they also take a lot of intentional stewardship and leadership to sustain what God does.

Journey has had 2 or 3 of these seasons so far in our history. I personally think that we are on the front side of another one. Here are some thoughts about Supernatural seasons of Momentum:

• Beware of arrogance! It is easy to get caught up in "how good you are" in this season, don't do it!
• Beware of false humility! Totally on the other end of the spectrum! This is when we act like we don't deserve what is happening and become apathetic in our leadership because we don't want to be arrogant. Don't do it! God chose to trust this momentum to you, so lead!
• Stay humble! Give God all the glory, treat others better than yourself, and watch your words.
• Lead confidently! Give God all the glory, treat others better than yourself, and watch your words.
• Be realistic! This season won't last forever so you have to be asking God for wisdom all the way through it. The biggest mistake most organizations make is that they focus more on the continual growth than taking care of the people walking through the doors. No matter what type of organization you lead, if you don't do a good job of connecting people to the community of your organization, you will be disappointed in the end.
• Trust God to do great things! Believe BIG! And don't underestimate what God can do through you!

Tomorrow we'll talk about leading through natural seasons of momentum.

Momentum Stewardship - Part One

Anyone who leads an organization of any kind will tell you - momentum helps! Momentum is something that is easy to take for granted, challenging to jumpstart, and strategic for long-term growth. Over the past 7 years of leading a church, I have found that one of my greatest responsibilities as a leader is being a good steward of momentum.

SEASONS

I love this time of years because we are quickly approaching what we call "Swing Sunday". Every year in August there is a 2-week window that our attendance will swing up anywhere from 700 to 1500 people! It is a rush! There are great problems everywhere! Where will we park all the cars? Where will we put all the people? How do we care for all the children? But most importantly, how do we connect people to what God is doing in the local church? I'll talk more about some of the answers in the coming days.

The main 2 seasons of momentum can be summed up as Natural and Supernatural. Each season requires a different approach to leadership, but the common thread is stewardship. Another thing to remember is both are designed by God and can be used greatly.

We'll dive in a little more tomorrow on how to lead through a season of Supernatural momentum.

This Weekend

This weekend we wrap up the series OUR HOUSE. The past six weeks have been some of my favorite in my ministry life. God has done so much in my heart through this series! I think this weekend's talk will be my favorite out of them all, so you don't want to miss it.

I want to encourage you to get here early Sunday as we begin the swing back into the school year. Our attendance this summer has been great, which means this next few weeks will be really full. Don't forget that we are adding an 8:30am experience at the North Campus for you early-risers.

I also want to challenge you to take advantage of all the great opportunities for your family to partner with the church. Each ministry has a strategic ministry plan that partners with you! While Sundays are great, we want to give you the tools to continue to grow every day of the week.

I'll see you Sunday!

Strategic Friendships

One of the most important things we can do as parents is help our children learn how to pick their friends. All research shows that the older our children grow the less influence we have in their lives. So we basically have 15 years to invest truths and values into our children that will help them form strategic friendships.

Here are a few things we (Robin and I) have learned, realized, and taught:

• My strategic friendships will model to our kids what is healthy. I can't challenge them to do something I'm not, so I categorize my friendships. (If you're a friend of mine don't try to over-analyze this.)
  • People that pour into me. These are the people that make me a better person, a stronger follower of Christ, a greater husband, etc. These are people whom I feel their investment into my life and I enjoy what I learn from them.
  • People I pour into. These are the people that I see God's potential in, and I also see ways that I can help them discover that potential. These are people who sometimes don't even know Christ, but they are incredible people with a tremendous future.
  • I define my time spent with these different groups. If I am always pouring, but never being poured into, at some point I burn out.
• I try to help my children understand the good and bad about humans, that we can not outrun hurt and rejection. The key is finding our identity in Christ and being a light in all situations.
• We try to help our kids end on a high note. In other words, we observe their friendships and try to add parameters to them that will help them succeed. Example: If we have noticed that one of our children gets really hyper hanging out with a certian friend, we will only let them hang out for 2 hours. We want them to split up while things are good and the police aren't involved.
• We want our kids' core friends to have our same values. If we see something different, we'll talk to them about the opportunity to be a light without compromising our values.
• We want our kids to form great friendships through church. This is our spiritual house, it is more than just going to church, it is the community of people that we have chosen to do life with. With that in mind, we want our kids to have a great foundation within the church community.

Those are just some thoughts to get started. How do you teach your kids about strategic friendships?

Family Partnerships

This is going to be fun! As we continue to talk about strategic family partnerships, let's tear the lid off and talk about a fun one: what school should my kids go to? There are people all over the board on this topic. People are passionate about their opinions and count them as the truth, when in reality they really are opinions.

Robin grew up going to public school and finished high school home schooling. I went to public school all of my life. I really do see pros and cons with both, landing on that there really isn't one right answer. The key is to find the solution that best reinforces God's legacy in your family and through your family. With that in mind, here are some thoughts that Robin and I recently processed through for our family.

• What is our responsibility as stewards of our children's lives? It is to establish the legacy of God within our children. Does the school environment do that?
• If our kids remain in public schools, which they are at this point, how do we reinforce the values we have that aren't reinforced at school?
• Does the environment teach our kids leadership or does it foster a protectionism mentality?
• What do we want for our kids long term? Do we want them to know how to survive in the world or change the world?
• Do they have the opportunity to flourish in who God has created them to be?
• Do they need small class sizes or large class sizes?

Those are just a few of the thoughts. I can tell you this has been a big issue in our family this past year that we are trying to figure out. I think there are great public school options, private school options, and home schooling options. There is nothing wrong with any of them, you simply have to decide which best fits the long-term vision for your family.