I can’t wait to finish the following story with the words, “But God.”
We have our next preview service this Friday. Thats like, four days from now. . . and I don’t have a location. I have spent another day not getting anywhere on trying to find a meeting space. Where we have been sent does not have hotels, conference rooms, civic centers or anything of that sort. There are a few liquor stores and bars but they are being used on Friday nights.
There are plenty of churches, but they must have a collective voicemail issue because I can’t seem to get a single one to call me back.
Would you please pray that we find our location? When it happens, I will finish the following sentence.
It seemed like we were down to the wire. Even though I know I was sent to start a work in downtown Delray Beach I did not have a location four days before the meeting. I could not even send invitations because I did not have a place to invite people. But God…
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I have been publishing a series of posts about the “things I learned” at the first preview service of The Mission.
The third important thing I learned at our first preview service can be summed up in one word: Systems. If your plan for your service is to show up and you will tell everyone what to do, you are in for a rude awakening.
I thought I had a plan for what to get done at the service but was sadly mistaken. I had not clearly communicated with key people what I wanted them to accomplish and I had not trained and equipped them to figure it out on their own.
Next week I will have a breakfast meeting with my staff and we will have a clear chart of what needs to get done and who is in charge of making that happen. In a word: systems.
I was in charge of everything because nobody was delegated the authority and responsibility to make sure anything happened. Lesson learned. Guarantee it will not happen again.
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The second lesson I learned at my first preview service was that no matter how hard I pray for gifts to manifest, my people cannot read my mind.
The majority of my gifts are in the revelatory realm. I kind of pick things up by the Spirit and sometimes assume that everyone around me is getting the same thing I am getting. I have learned in the past week or so that this is not the case. If everyone was getting the same thing I was getting I would not be needed.
Near the end of worship I felt like we were on the verge of a breakthrough and i wanted to linger in worship a little longer. I had given Wes some pretty clear instructions before the service multiple times. I changed those instructions with a little more than a sentence. Poor Wes found himself with the microphone in his hand and had no clue where we were going.
I could have easily given him some clearer instructions but I didn’t. Praise God he pulled though and I doubt anyone noticed. The anointing just thickened at the end of worship.
But my team wants to serve the vision we have received from God and they can’t do that if i don’t articulate it. I don’t want my people to think that they are on their own and I don’t want them to think that I don’t care about their part.
I just have to schedule in enough time to educate people on expectations and have a clear enough picture of what we are going to do so that others know exactly what their roles will be.
If your people do not know where you as a group are heading, it is not their lack of discernment, it is your lack of communication. And we are supposed to be professional communicators.
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Does anyone here know anything about the Epson PowerLite 77c 2200 Lumen Multimedia Projector? We need a projector and the $2k models are like fantasyland for us.
This one has really good reviews and is 2200 lumen. I know all the cool guys have 4000 lumen but all the cool guys have some sort of financial sponsors. Watch how they label me a church planting heretic when I make my own screen!
If you know anything about these could you comment or shoot me a message?
Thanks
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I was reading an analysis of the Mitt Romney campaign in the midst of his ending his presidential bid when I came across this,
Mr. Romney spent more than $35 million of his own money trying to get himself elected, but his campaign faced challenges from the start, some from obstacles beyond his control.
Now, as a church planter who is looking for used equipment on eBay, $35M seems like an enormous amount of money to spend on something that amounted to nothing.
On Sunday I am driving six hours to pick up a beat machine so I can save .00002% of that.
But it’s just money, right?
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Do you have one you can send me? I downloaded one somewhere on the web and someone used my master and now I cannot find my digital copy.
Can you email it to me?
revivalblog [at] gmail dot com
Thanks
admin: Found it! Here is the one I use from here. I am going to begin an online repository of documents for this very purpose.
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I received my call to ministry pretty quickly after conversion. I distinctly remember years of begging God to allow me to preach and pleading with Him to use me in His service. When no public door opened I witnessed to anyone I could get to listen to me. I lead small groups, did the offering, prayed after worship, and preached to anything that would stay still long enough but still, my only ongoing preaching engagement was the shower.
I honestly wanted to fulfill the Call of God on my life. I don’t think I wanted the spotlight, I just wanted to be used for the purpose I was created. I used my vocal gift to earn a living as an account rep but I wanted to preach.
I hear this same line of reasoning for the drive behind most Christian musicians. Most of the good ones I talk to say that they feel created by God to lead worship and they want to do it as not only a ministry but want to be in vocational worship ministry.
But what boggles my mind is that many of these journeymen worship leaders use the first opportunity to lead worship as a way to make a buck off of smaller congregations. Church planters often have to spend hundreds of dollars to pay someone to “lead” a congregation in worship. A guy recently told me that a worship team said they would lead his brand spankin new church in worship for $1,000 a week. Are they crazy?
I am not ashamed to call that sin! REPENT!
We know that music is a huge part of a small church getting established and growing. But your ability to charge a fee does not come from the leverage you have on someone. Trust me worship leaders. You would be doing your ministry career far greater help by volunteering to lead worship. The little money you put off now in favor of being a blessing will be a far greater investment into your ministry in the long run.
If you decide to continue being a minister for hire, know that the pastor’s main goal for your ministry is to have you replaced as quickly as possible.
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Took some of the team on our first church plant tour down the road at InDependence Church in Weston Fl. pastored by Nathan Griffiths.
When we walked into their facility on of my guys said, “Wow!” and that kind of sums it up. It’s really easy for Spirit-filled folks to get lazy and depend on the anointing at the expense of excellence. It is our desire at The Mission to have an anointed service that is done with excellence.
Nathan and his crew show up like four hours early to set up and the place looked really good. A special award should go to the nice girl who braved the cold to welcome people in the parking lot.
Travis Johnson has some pix here.
Congrats on the great launch Nathan! Lokin forward to hearing you make some noise!
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You would be surprised how much your people will love you when they find out you are human.
Chris Elrod is posting a series telling how things almost came undone for him and his ministry last year. Here in the blogsphere I am one step away from Benny Hinn’s microphone. You may be one step away from mega-greatness on your blog also. Chris has lots of great things to say on his blog. But that does not mean that the same is manifesting right now in his, or my, or your ministry (or life for that matter).
I can just imagine what this will do to his church. Now that he has decided to be who he is, the church ought to explode with people who need a pastor like him.
It’s like that church planting adage. The people you are going to attract look just like the guy you see in the mirror. Luckily for me I like the person I see in the mirror. That and my family is incredibly diverse.
(btw . . . if you know Chris, could you tell him to get a new pic for his blog header? The one he has looks like he just ran out of zoloft).
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Here’s a handsome gallery of amateur photos of 100 Brooklyn storefront churches, a study in grand awnings and signage surmounting humble brick buildings.
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I design websites so there is absolutely no way I am willing to drop a grand on an outside firm to create a site for The Mission. I have a bare bones site made from Wordpress but am thinking about further functionality.
I came across Web Empowered Church which is based on Typo3. Here are the extensions it comes with. Has anyone used it? I would think that an open sourced web package would be built on drupal or Joomla given their prevelance but have not found one.
Can anyone recommend any such package? I need all the basics, sermon dl, directory, calender, and the likes with the additional functionality of a shopping cart capable of selling digital products.
This is where that church planting forum would come in handy.
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My research of Church CMS software fell into two categories:
- Ridiculously Expensive
- Crappy
Since I was in the market for neither I decided to go with Quicken for financial tracking and a simple spreadsheet for attendance. Problem solved. Maybe some day in the future we will go with something more high tech but for now I have to be a good steward of my time and ministry finances. The learning curve on the crappy ones was too steep.
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