June 2008 Archives
Week 2 Complete
Their strategy is exactly the same as RPCCs strategy; "Leading people in a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by creating irresistible environments that encourage intimacy with God, community with insiders and influence with outsiders."
A snapshot of our last week:
Sunday: Met the N.P. (North Point) staffer guiding us through this internship and also met the Lead Pastor of another new partner church from Jacksonville, Fl. We all met at the crack of dawn and drove two hours to visit Rock Point Church in Chatanooga, TN. This is one of 13 N.P. strategic partner churches. We helped them set up and generally hung out to observe and learn from them. Our job at these partner churches is also to critically evaluate them with our 'fresh eyes' and give feedback to their staff. We spent lunch debriefing and learning from their Lead Pastor. Very cool portable church!
Monday: Drilled down on Small Groups, lunch with a key N.P. staffer, then more Small Groups.
Tuesday: Wrapped up Small Groups and jumped into "Starting Point". Lunch with the N.P. staffer who heads up Starting Point. Wrapped up Starting Point in the afternoon and met the owner of the company we'll be outsourcing our accounting to. This company understands the unique needs of churches. I'm personally excited about this company as it will allow our accounting and administrative practices to be top notch and will free us up to focus more on our mission.
Wednesday: Studied "Foyer to Kitchen" strategy. Lunch with a Lead Pastor from a Strategic Partner Church. Spent the rest of the afternoon at Brownsbridge Community Church.
Thursday: Listened to the message "Everybody" and discussed. Lunch with Andy Stanley's administrative assistant. We gave her a gift from us to give to Andy as a "Welcome to California" gift. The gift? A pair of flip flops. Spent the afternoon in two different meetings. One with a staffer in the Strategic Partner department and the other with the CFO of N.P.
Friday: Began overview or "7 Practices" and had a great time of reflection and prayer.
Saturday: Our 2nd day off in two weeks! Yaay!!! John flew to Northern California for a week-long speaking engagement. He's had this camp and the following three Sundays of preaching in a church just north of San Francisco booked since last year. He plans to fly back and join us for four days next week. (Pray that their house will sell soon!) The Laings and the Delillos spent the morning at the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. It was fun and very crowded!!! We got up close and personal with some whale sharks. I took my family to lunch at the largest drive-in fast food joint called The Varsity. The food tasted good but my gut is still churning 5 hours later. :) (I prefer The Habit!) That probably has to do with the fact that we ate breakfast at another classic southern 'greasy spoon' called The Waffle House. The Delillos spent the afternoon at Stone Mountain. This amusement park and laser light show will entertain them for the evening.
Wow, full week! Two great resources we are studying and encourage you to check out: "Creating Community" and "7 Practices".
Tomorrow starts another six-day week with a 2.5 hour drive to another partner church in Auburn, Alabama. We look forward to getting back on the ground with our team in Oxnard around the second week of July. We appreciate your prayers!
North Point Internship
The campus expansion team has put together an intense internship schedule based upon the cumulative experience of their 14 other strategic partner churches. We will be visiting a different strategic partner each Sunday. This Sunday we will be visiting Cumberland Church in Chattanooga, TN. We will be learning the portable church set-up and tear down drill in four different strategic partners over five weeks. Afterwards we will meet with their lead team and debrief our experience.
Monday thru Friday are spent discussing various aspects of North Point philosophy and meeting with Campus Expansion team members. Over the next three weeks we will hit small group strategy, Sunday programming, finances & budgeting, big picture strategy and family ministry. If you are interested in pacing with some of the resources we are reading check out the books “7 Practices of Effective Ministry” and “Creating Community”. We are reading them this week and will discussing them next week.
Day 1: We heard the stories of the first 14 strategic partners. Here are some facts: the oldest strategic partner is 4 years old, (Wiregrass Church.) Nearly half of the strategic partner churches launched in 2007. We are one of two launching in 2008. We are the furthest West--the next furthest is Colorado Springs, CO.
Day 2: We had our first River Park Community Church staff meeting at North Point Ministries. They have set up an office for our use. I’ll have to take some pictures—it is quite a step up compared to my garage. Tuesday afternoon we watched a leader training DVD that sparked a 90 minute discussion--we are pretty confident we determined how to bring peace to the Middle East. Or at least, a few more things about small groups.
Days 3 & 4 were spent with Sanford Levings, the financial think tank on the Campus Expansion Team. Sandford represents 20+ years of experience as a CPA, venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Did I mention he has an MBA from Duke University, and knows the financial picture of a strategic partner? He will be walking the financial journey of River Park Community Church with us. What we have been learning is invaluable.
Today we will be debriefing what we have learned this week. We will be brainstorming ways to keep friends of River Park Community Church and launch team members abreast of the financial resources needed to impact our community in powerful ways.
We covet your prayers for how God will be guiding us in the coming weeks. I hope that you are each able to connect with each other this month. Our prayers are with you and your families
Atlanta Road Trip Days 6, 7, 8, 9
Day 6: Butterfly Palace & Dixie Stampede
Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede: the south meets “Medieval Times.” The North and the South tied: I wonder if it always works out that way. Our family had a blast. There was some great horsemanship—our kid’s favorites were the stunt riders. It is amazing what you can do on a moving horse. They had several different horses: a Belgian as big as a house. They had one Friesian—1 of 500 in the US. I didn’t know they were so rare. Imagine a black Clydesdale a little larger than the average horse. A Friesian has a long full black mane and hair on it’s hooves. They are allowed a small white diamond on the forehead—however all black is preferred. This one was all black and in excellent shape—like all of the horses at the Dixie Stampede. You can see a picture in the photo gallery. See if you can guess which is the Belgian.
Day 7: Hanging out with the fam.
James and Shanna joined us today, having spent the a few days in Madill, OK. We spent a leisurely, 93 degree day at the Branson Landing and a 90 minute paddleboat cruise on the Tanycomo (formerly White River.) It is amazing how you can get so little accomplished when it is hot as blazes. The day flies by and you wonder what you did only to realize that you did very little. Anyway, the Landing is Branson’s attempt attract a younger demographic. The city has realized that its clientele is dying off. The Landing is an outdoor mall/boardwalk on the Tanycomo. It has both National Brand stores and local shops, high priced condos that look down upon the open air mall and more expensive condos that look down on the lake. There is a Bass Pro Shop with a fresh water aquarium. The Landing boasts a choreographed fountain designed by the same person who designed the fountain at the Bellagio, Las Vegas. (8.5 million worth of fountain.) It is pretty spectacular. The Lake would be a great skiing lake if it weren’t for the near frigid temperatures.
Day 8: Silver Dollar City
A few degrees cooler, long walks pushing children in strollers up and down hills . . . lots of sweat and “fire in the hole.” That water blast at the end of “Fire in the Hole” was more than welcome at 3pm in the afternoon. Anybody know what a “baldnobber” is? This was our third time at Silver Dollar City. The boys’ favorite place is still the air launcher’s and foam balls. This is a three story barn with air launchers on the second and third floors. Most of the balls end up on the ground floor, where contraptions operated entirely by children move the balls to the upper floors, all the while they are being pelted by the launchers from above. Somehow the system doesn’t break down all day. The contraptions are fun enough to keep the launchers fully loaded and who doesn’t like shooting foam balls?
Day 9: Nashville, TN
Just arrived in Smyrna, TN at 6:30pm after an 11 hour drive (lots of stops) . . . sitting in the Hampton Inn foyer, watching Fuse TV while my children run around like crazies at the indoor pool. We crossed over four state lines today: Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. Tomorrow we will be at end of the Atlanta Road Trip, but the beginning of a one-month internship.
Here is a first: I will have the opportunity to discuss how to “do” church with a group of people that agree on first principles. I can’t tell you how important this is. Think about the sort of clarity a group could have it agreed on one thing: nothing is sacred but the mission of Christ to build a bridge to God. That means ministry everything we do in church is in service of the mission of the church. So often we get this turned around—we begin to reach people in order to disciple them, rather than disciple people in order reach others. When we get this turned around, church becomes more about what we do for those already in, rather than what we do to reach those on the outside. It is hard to make any decisions about how to “do” church until this first principle is clarified. I have seen churches bog down on crucial decisions because there was confusion over the priority of mission and ministry.
Day 4 & 5: Branson, MO
The land where every show has a billboard including the churches and the local pet motel: the most famous billboard of all being Yakov!—the only one not happy to see the end of the cold war. However, I’m sure there are enough people who visit Branson that still remember what a red is.
Today, we went to the Hamner Barber Variety Show. I realized that it must be difficult to compete in Branson. A show doesn’t survive off of the Branson locals; there are not enough to go around. A show has a short window of opportunity to attract the vacationer who is here for a few days. The most common mode of attraction is the brochure and the billboard. No one does a billboard as well as Yakov. While others have pictures of themselves that look like they were taken for a spot on TBN, Yakov has a billboard with feet sticking out of it and a board with babushka’d Yakov with a lit stick dynamite in his mouth. They are unexpected and they stand out from the rest. So much is the same in Branson, the unexpected could go a long ways. The principles of "Made to Stick" come to mind.
This morning we visited Woodland Hills Church. It is a portable church that meets at Celebration City, a Christian amusement park. Madeline L’Engle once said that to call a particular work of art Christian is presumptious; all we can know is whether a work of art effects us personally and causes us to move closer to Christ. I presume that is true of amusement parks. In any case there is something at Celebration City that is moving people closer to Christ, Woodland Hills Church.
Yesterday we went to Noah the Musical at the Sight and Sound Theatre. Our whole family went for $20. People were giving away tickets at the door. The 50 million dollar theatre and wrap-around set was overwhelming. It is one the first times that I have seen a production where the set upstaged the actors. They used both animatronic and live animals. The trained goats were hysterical. I want to know how you get two live geese to stand in the same spot for 20 minutes. They did a great job making the parallel between Noah and Christ, despite the disco Jesuss at the end. Who can complain; after all we are in Branson, where theaters double as churches on Sunday morning.
Tomorrow we are off to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.
Madill, Ok
5-31-08 - Madill, Ok
He was born September 1915.
She was born August 2004.
His name is “Papa” (Shanna’s [my wife] paternal grandfather)
Her name is Carissa (My daughter) ***Check out the photo of them in the photo section.
He remembers guarding German P.O.W.s in the 1940s.
She remembers “Chick-a-wa-wa!” from the recent “Alvin & the Chipmunks” movie.
2004 – 1915 = 89
Born in the same country yet different worlds.
It’s not often that you get a chance to bring together bloodlines 89 years apart. It gets me thinking… In the last 3.5 years my daughter has literally filled my heart to bursting. I’m honored to be her daddy, to play with her, to discipline her, to teach her, to pray with her, to laugh with her, to be called her ‘daddy’, etc… she has filled my life with indescribable joy and new purpose.
Papa was 3.5 years old in 1918. My guess is that he brought that kind of joy (if he didn’t he should have!) to his parents. Yet his parents are gone, those feelings are gone and eventually my daughter may barely recall sitting on his lap way back in 2008. Mortality and time can get you depressed… but right now it drives me to the immortal and timeless. To the one who’s common grace was at the birth of Papa in 1915 and at the birth of Carissa in 2004. To the only one who remembers every detail about you and me and passionately loves all of us… forever.
Ps 100:5 For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations.
Shanna and I and the kids are having a great weekend with Shanna’s family in southern Oklahoma and Dallas. Tomorrow we meet up with the DeLillo’s again in Branson, MO. We’re going to drive through the small town of Bentonville, Ak which is the birthplace of a company everyone loves or hates… Wal-mart. Apparently there is a museum in the first Wal-mart store and some kind of shrine to Sam Walton… I’ll take some pics and fill in the details in a blog coming your way soon.
We appreciate your prayers as we have 1,000 miles to go. James