leadership training....

Leadership training seems to be the theme of my week starting after Labor Day weekend.

I will be kicking off the new ministry year with a Tech Team Leadership meeting. We will be gathering our volunteer and paid leaders on Tuesday, September 8th to share vision, discuss the upcoming launch of the multi-site campus, Christmas, team structure and for us to brainstorm some other team issues.

On 09/09/09, I will be watching over 75 church leaders share their passion during The Nines The theme? "If you had nine minutes to talk one-on-one with thousands of church leaders, what is the one thing that you would tell them? The result is a series of passionate and personal messages that will help you and your church navigate into the future."

I will finish up the week attending The Forum, Life Church's leadership conference featuring twelve dynamic leaders in our culture.

These two leadership training opportunities happen online and are FREE. Yup, almost 100 leaders speaking into your life and sharpening your leadership gifts from the comfort of your location for the price of $0.00. I can not wait for this week....spending it with my tech leadership team and then the three days of some of the best leaders around.

As I type this, I am in an email conversation with leadership @wcrossing about how we set up an area within our church that staff and lay leaders can come be a part of both online events...it makes it even better.

Will you be attending?

authentic worship production....

It seems we are at the beginning of another shift in church technology. The cause of this shift stems for the desire in churches across the country to move from production focused to authenticity based experiences in their services. That doesn’t mean that the production aspect is less quality, it just becomes less showy or ‘ta-da’ and more solid in expressing that authenticity. It takes vision and sensitivity to accomplish that…and a lot of hard work.

Agree? Disagree? Join the converstion...

random stuff with lots of links....

A week or two ago LV Hanson from Catalyst swung by @wcrossing and hung out for a few chatting with some of the team. It was fun to be reminded why I love this place. Afterwards, Randall and Andy continued the conversation about how we deal with conflict and gossip with LV on video. Watch it here.

A few days ago, it was announced that a new book entitled ADVENT CONSPIRACY will be out around the first of October. Written by the three pastors that started the revolution that provides a lifetime of clean water in third-world countries, this book will tap the life changing passion that flows out of giving differently. The vision of @wcrossing lead pastor Greg Holder, Rick McKinley and Chris Seay is becoming a world wide initative – find out more about it here. Pre-order the book here.

Coming to @wcrossing on October 9, 2009… Donald Miller. Don is the author of Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, To Own a Dragon, A Million Miles…, and a few more. Catch up on Donald before he gets here by reading his blog. I'm sure more info on his appearance here will follow.

the last two years....

Here I sit, thinking about the last two years here at Windsor Crossing. Tomorrow, July 23rd marks two years ago I started here. It is pretty surreal to think that I have only been here that long and the things that have happened over that time. (Actually, it’s pretty surreal that I get to serve at a place like this along with some crazy awesome staff and volunteers.) I started this blog about two weeks after getting settled in back in 2007. It’s been fun taking a look over the past two years of Christmas and Easter’s and everything in between.

We’ve come a long way….in some areas. In other areas, I look forward to moving further in the coming year. So there is my annual evaluation for myself.

For the upcoming year. One glorious thought as I begin gearing up for the upcoming ministry year is that I am leaping in with an Associate TD. This will help me focus on some of the extremely important aspects of my job....

People.
We now have over one hundred active volunteers serving in the technical and design teams. All the logistics, leadership and pastoring that goes into maintaining and growing this team is what really fires me up. I cannot wait to get back to being able to better focus on it.

Process.
There are a lot of things that we have had to adjust and reengineer over the last two years as the team has grown, technology has changed and needs of our worship services and ministries have evolved. I want to develop what we need, improve what we have and document everything so transferring our ‘performance technology and people DNA’ to our multi-sites will be -easier-.

There’s more…I’m sure. I just don’t want to bore you.

let me ask you this....

...what is exciting you the most about your ministry in the coming six months?

excellence....

cleaning out some files of my hard drive and found this from some vision and mission documents for my team at the previous church. I found some other goodies that I will share in the future.

This is how our crew defines excellence…
Excellence is fully using your God given talents, abilities and resources to glorify Him.

Excellence is not optional; it is required.
God requires us to live and give Him the best of each of us - our life, our relationship, our finances, and our ministry. He deserves it. Could it be considered sin if we are not obedient in this area?

Excellence is not occasional; it is consistent every week.
God does not show up only on our Holiday calendar or when a guest speaker is booked…nor does He take summers off. Each Sunday we have sixty-five minutes to join corporately and worship. We must be intentional, focused and consistent about how technology is used creatively, effectively and appropriately in each worship service fulfilling our vision

Excellence is not mediocrity; it is not perfection.
Good enough is not enough and God knows that we are not perfect, however we must give one hundred percent in each area and every responsibility of our ministry. Almost anything in life is easy to do with mediocrity, it's doing things with greatness that takes effort.

Excellence is contagious.
Comparing our desire for excellence to other ministries or other people is not acceptable. We have been called to do the best we can do in our ministry, not judge others.

sacred reminder

Scott Hodge gave us a sacred reminder which I really needed to hear this time of year. Thanks Scott.

do you hear what I hear....

…down the hall - an accordion playing Feliz Navidad.
It must be Christmas time at The Crossing…..

go team.....

Invited 'my staff' over for dinner last night… Clark and his wife, Jessi, and their kids and Intern AJ had lasagna with us. The food was great – as always - and the time hanging out and talking was even better.

While we are still praying for God to bring the right players to the team to fill the holes we have I am so grateful for what He has already provided us. Not only with the hundred of amazing production volunteers but these two guys that help me lead and carry the load every week.

At the end of the night and even into today, I keeping feeling so blessed as I think how great the production team staff and the volunteer leads are. It’s pretty cool to get to serve in that place.

kidz weekend recap.....

As a former children's pastor and with two daughters involved in the service, I was looking forward to this weekend. The Kidz Ministry here at the Crossing took over the weekend services and did a kick butt job. It was amazing to see a ton of kids on stage leading worship for all four services....and the adults in the room worshipping right along with them!

The feature song included some dance in black light which was cool. All of the kids chorus, adult leaders, the drama and the adult band were awesome....and the design was a big home run. Awesome weekend all around!!!!!

passion church....

It is official.  Louie Giglio is launching a church in Atlanta, GA called Passion Church.

Check out Louie's story about and vision over on the Buckhead Church blog interviewed by campus pastor Jeff Henderson.  Chris Tomlin, Nathan and Christy Knockles and Matt Redman are living in ATL now and are mentioned in the interview.  I'm interested to see how this all develops.