Cross Street LIVE / this Sunday @ 1:30 >> BE THERE!

Our team at GCC is excited! This week is the big time change for our monthly family experience called CROSS STREET LIVE. At 1:30 this Sunday afternoon we will open the theater doors at Rossview High ready to see kids and parents laugh, learn and worship together. The plan for Sunday is to have a lunch option ready for folks at 12:30 then the doors for CSL open at 1:30. We do this each month so we can help families in our city connect. This month the virtue we are talking about is honesty and we all know what a struggle it is live this character trait out! Spread the word, invite your friends, and make sure your family is at CSL this month.

3 VOLUNTEER Paradigm Shifts

This week we had the chance to hear Jenni Catron talk about some critical volunteer shifts we need to make as we lead our volunteer teams. We all need volunteers but we also need them to do what they do with excellence. We also always need more volunteers! We take a ministry job and suddenly we not only have to manage ourselves, now we have to manage others who choose to work on our teams for free! Jenni pointed out that leading volunteers is not just a part of our job, it is our job. Everything we do in our ministry setting rises and falls on the leadership of our team...staff and volunteers. Since this is such a huge issue for our ministry settings here are some volunteer paradigm shifts we need to make:

1) From ASKING to INVITING // there is an honor and nobility when we ask people to be a part of serving God’s kingdom! We are not begging, we are giving people an opportunity to use their gifts for God.

2) From HANDING OFF to HOLDING HANDS // when a person volunteers we get the chance to mentor that person and resource them! We walk with them, help solve problems, and vring clarity to their role in the organization.

3) From DOING to GIVING // give people the chance to LEAD! Give volunteers the credit they deserve and the opportunity to have ownership of the dream. What could be better than making a difference in the Kingdom of God?

why CONNECT with another church staff?

This week Ron Edmondson and Jenni Catron got the teams of Cross Point Church and Grace Community Church together for a day to connect, think, worship, and equipp. We were all wondering what this would look like, how it would work, and if the experience would be worth our time! Honestly, as long as I have served on a church staff I have never had a time where 2 churches came together just to connect and learn from each other. I could go on and on about why we refuse to learn from each other but I am sure you know the real reasons boil down to pride and tunnel vision. To excel at leadership we have to be consumed with learning...why not learn from other churches doing an amazing job at reaching their community? Why should churches choose to connect and learn from each other...here are some things we discovered...

• Shared PASSION inspires fresh perspective // each church is different but our passion to reach people and see changed lives is shared. That passion provides a bridge for each team to view ministry from a different perspective quickly. Our shared passion allows us to let our guard down and see a different side of ministry quicker.
  
• We inspire each other // hearing how God is stretching each other inspires us to stay focused on the mission. It is great to be reminded that God is on the move outside of our ministry setting!
  
• Fresh voices help learning happen quickly // because we trust each other and we believe in the mission of each church we learn from each other quickly. Many times just hearing a leadership principle from a different trusted voice helps us make progress.
• Collaboration is taken to the next level // because our staffs spent time together each area of the church now has a new connection to collaborate with. Each church has important insight for the other and now when we need to work through an issue we have new connections to collaborate with and share ideas with.
  

CHURCH collaboration

This week the staffs of Grace Community Church and Cross Point Church are getting together for a day of collaboration. Our 2 churches are located about 45 minutes apart and share a passion for reaching people who may have given up on God and the church. This is the first time both teams will set aside a day to invest, dream, think, and imagine what might be next for our churches. What will come out of a day set aside to be together....not really sure. Will it be productive? Maybe! What I do know is that there is value when you can work closely with another church with a similar strategy, vision, and mission. Going to be great to see what God does this week. If nothing else it will be a great time to connect, encourage and play corn-hole during lunch! I am just glad I serve on a team that is always looking to learn. Stoked about the day.

Everybody...EVERYWHERE

We started a new series this week called Everybody, Everywhere at Grace Community centering on how we help our community and our world hear the message of Christ. This week Chad Rowland asked us if we would be willing to fight for the spiritual lives of our friends. Would we have the courage to not give up when it comes to helping those we love the most hear the message of Jesus? We talked about this process last night in our community group. How do we lead those who are around us to Christ? In our group we landed on the truth that helping people see and understand Christ has to be more than words or a formula that we try to work through with people we know. It got me thinking about the process of engaging people with this message. How do we make this happen? I think we have to live lives of authenticity, look for who God is leading us to serve, and have the courage to engage people around us relationally.

LIVE >> People measure our faith, our God, or hope by the lives that we live. Authentic faith is revealed by people living authentic lives. When we live lives impacted by love and grace we will become people that God can reveal Himself through. People are watching us...do our lives reflect the fact that we have been made new by Jesus Christ. This has to be our continual goal, to be more like Jesus.

LOOK>>When I talk about looking I mean we should allow God to open our eyes to the people in our world He has for us to impact with His message. Why not invite God into this process through prayer? When we are looking around for God opportunities, God will make His plan known to us. Let's allow God to open our eyes to the people he has for us to serve.

ENGAGE>> This is the step where we have to act in faith. This is where we serve people with no agenda but to display God's love. This is where we invite our friend to go to church with us. This is where we give advice we have learned from God to a hurting coworker. This is where we explain our faith to a friend who is asking questions about God over coffee. This is the part where we never give up on people. We can do this...we can engage this culture with the hope of Jesus Christ.

Live, look, and engage...it is a process that never ends and it is a strategy we will never get perfect. I think if we adopt this process we might be right in the middle of God's plan to redeem this broken and hurting world we live in. We might just begin to love people the way God loves people. Thanks to the people of Grace Community Church for partnering with us as we try to reach our city of Christ...you are an amazing group of people serving an amazing God!

Don't be DERAILED

Just got finished reading DERAILED by Tim Irwin. This is a great book from a great leader and I hope you will check it out. The basis of the book is looking at how competent and successful leaders get off track. We see this happen in leadership at all levels. People have all the ability, make a difference, then lose focus and lose their effectiveness. Tim suggests that a leader can be qualified and have tons of ability but if they lack CHARACTER then they are likely to falter. The mark of a great leader are the choices that the OUTSIDE never gets the chance to see. The book was a great reminder to strive for character, not control as I lead. Whatever size or shape organization you lead, this is a great book to check out. Thanks to Tim for reminding us off how to lead for the long haul.

My next read is Seth Godin's LINCHPIN and it is rocking my world...check it out also!

Sharing your faith...WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

It is one thing to think about telling a stranger a few facts about who Jesus is and what Jesus did for them but it is an entirely new level of pressure when it comes to talking about Jesus with our friends. This week at REMIX we asked teens to consider what it might look like to talk to their friends about their faith. We even gave them a tool called the Lifebook (click to check out the lifebook project, a great idea!) to give to their friends to start the conversation. As I spoke last night I was reminded of what a big deal it is for all of us to have spiritual conversations with the people we love the most. We wonder what might happen! We wonder if we will be embarrassed. We wonder if they will ask us something we do not know. At the same time, we know we want our friends to discover Christ...to belong...to find hope...to discover a new beginning. Here are some of the ways we are trying to help teens at RELEVANT and people at Grace Community Church share their faith.

• Create environments where people are safe to ask questions and discover truth. // every environment around GCC is aware that each week might be the week someone brings a friend who they have been investing in. We promise we will be ready to help people hear clear truth every week. If our message is confusing it is our fault not our guests fault and not God's fault. We expect people are going to invite friends so we prepare for that!
• INVITE<> //we stress the power of the invitation. Never give up on people, never stop looking for people to invite. For most people they do not come because they have not been invited by someone they trust.
• Serve, Love, and value people...then share and invite // we are not selling something when we talk about our faith with someone. When we talk about Christ we are simply telling the story of how God gave us new life. We all need to focus on loving people, understanding people first before we share our faith. People will listen when they can trust us.
• Pray // God cares more for those who don't know Christ than we ever could. Why would we not make prayer a major part of sharing our faith? God can work in ways we can never imagine or dream of. We need to continually invite God into the process.
• Never give up // if sharing our faith is about relationship then that should drive us even more to not give up on people. We never know when someone might be ready to cross the line and follow Christ. We need to be known as a people who don't give up on people.
  

SECOND CHANCE parenting

I had a hard parenting night Tuesday. Ready for the truth...here goes...I lost my cool with my 3 year old and have been losing my cool with her in the past few months frequently. Our youngest is an amazing little girl who is confident and passionate about life...those traits are such a blessing and at the same time hard to deal with when a kid is three and she simply wants her way. Here is more of my problem. I tend to give in or get mad when problems arise. The best part of all of this is that my amazing wife pointed this out to me last night with a few loving questions and then she let me think about it. I have an amazing wife, she could have lectured but she asked questions and let me process. Bottom line with my kids...I have to be more patient, strategic, calm, and consistent when dealing with problems.

Of course I am not just blogging about this just to confess my pitiful parenting online, there is a bigger principle that I am learning to embrace. When it comes to parenting I constantly have second chances to step back, refocus, and get better. I will blow it from time to time but I do have the chance to get my act together and make a better decision. Today is a new day to do things different. Our kids already know we are not perfect and what they need to desperately see is that we are always trying to get better at being mom or dad. We will get things wrong. What really matters is what we do with the second chances God gives us with our kids.

Why change the time for CROSS STREET LIVE? (our monthly FX)

Our monthly family experience is one of the favorite things we get to do at Grace Community Church. There is nothing like seeing kids and parents come together once a month to worship. This month we are experimenting with our time for Cross Street Live by moving our family meal to 12:30 (right after the 11:30 service at GCC) and CSL to 1:30. Why moves times? That is a good question! Here is what we are thinking...

• We don't want to distract from Sunday night Community Groups! // many of our moms and dads have community group on Sundays and we hate to distract them from their normal time of connecting with their group. It is difficult to miss group once a month so we are trying to make it flow better each month for your family.
• Afternoon CSL helps families not have to have kids out late on a school night!
• Sunday afternoon STUFF is pretty normal. // Parents make time to go to birthday parties and the park, why not a family experience in the afternoon?
• CSL is primarily designed for kids K-5...not many of these kids are napping. // For those of you who have preschoolers also try sending one parent with the older kids and one parent rest with the preschooler. We always welcome our younger friends but the environment is for k-5 kids.
• We want to reach as many families as possible! // This is an experiment to see if we can get more families to this experience. From all of us who share CSL with our kids each month, we promise this will be a blessing to your family. For all of you who attend our 8:30 or 10 Am service...feel free to grab lunch as a family on your own and come to CSL at 1:30.
• Laughing, Learning, and Worshiping God with your kid is so important! // I know this is a new concept for many of you, but a family experience can open up so many avenues for significant conversation with your child. This matters and we hope you family will try it out! We promise to make each month's experience worth your time!
  

At least you know what we were thinking, THANKS IN ADVANCE for those of you who have been coming to CSL and loving the night format. Give this a shot with us and lets see if we can make a bigger impact in families here in Clarksville. For more info check out www.crossSTREETlive.com.

Who takes your back when people say crazy things about your ministry?

Who takes your back when someone says something untruthful about you or the ministry you lead? Recently a trusted volunteer came to one of co-pastors and informed him that someone had said some hard things about our student ministry and a decision we made months ago. The comments this volunteer had heard were simply not true and guess what...because I had walked my c0-pastors though the situation months ago one of my pastors was able to speak up for our ministry team and the decision we made! Did you hear that? One of my co-pastor's was able to stand in the gap for our student ministry. That is such a blessing but it did not happen by accident. My co-pastor was able to speak clearly about the situation because our family ministry team kept our senior leadership in the LOOP. We choose not to lead in a vacuum. We choose to inform key leaders about what was going on so we could have accountability, seek advice, and ask for prayer as we walked through a hard choice. Preschool, student, and children's pastors out there, please make sure you keep your senior leadership in the loop when major issues arise. Whether we like it or not, many times people in our church will bring problems or concerns to senior pastors first so why not give them the info to speak clearly about concerns that may come forward. Keeping senior leadership in the loop empowers them to speak up for your leadership moves when concerns are brought up. Your pastor can't clear up confusion if he is just as confused as the person bringing the concern. Keep the staff and key volunteers around you informed...they might just be able to take your back when you least expect it!