I am spending the bulk of this week in Orlando for the Exponential Church Planting conference with my pastor Jimmy Holbrook and our worship leader Justin Mann. We are having a lot of fun and I can say that we have broken many laws, but have not been arrested…YET.

I have learned many things on this trip

• We have too many chiefs in this car
• Jimmy eats 5-7 meals a day
• There is a reason that Jimmy has so many traffic tickets, really there are MANY reasons
• 5 Guys Burgers in incredible
• Orlando is an amazing place

I have learned a lesson about why you don’t eat with your elbows on the table. Jimmy eats so often that I have developed a blister on my right elbow from lifting my drink and food to my mouth. Ouch.

I had great time hanging out with many friends last night. We went to downtown OKC to eat at Rooster’s Chicken, go o see Date Night at Harkins in Bricktown and then we ended the evening with a stop at Cuppies and Joe for cupcakes.

It was good to spend some time with our friends Justin and Amy Lester and their baby girl Cash. Rooster’s Chicken was really great. The friend pickles were on the hook. I will definitely be going back soon.

Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carrell was funny. It stumble a bit just after the half way point, but our group laughed hard. I really enjoy going to the movies with this group.

Next couple of movies on my schedule to see are The Losers and Iron Man 2.

I really enjoy listening to music while I work. If I am traveling around the church I turn my iPhone on for a little traveling music. I wanted to listen a few of the CDs that I have really enjoyed over the past few months and ask you what you are listening to.

• Matt Maher, Alive Again, amazing worship album
• Visqueen, Message to Garcia, This one is infectious
• Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, sensitive-man-music to chill out to
• John Mayer, Battle Studies, Great album and the bossa nova track is a favorite
• Lady Antebellum, Need You Now – Single, I really look forward to the album

So what are you listening to? What do you recommend?

I have been working really hard these past few weeks to develop some websites for http://HarrahChurch.com. We will use these sites to resource  and educate our people as well as providing me an outlet for casting our vision. I have used Wordpress.org as the CMS for these sites and really like what we have ended up with. The themes for the sites came from Elegant Themes who is a great place to find good themes at a very affordable price of $20 per year for access to all of their themes.

These sites are still a work in progress but we are going live with them as I continue to introduce myself to our volunteer and leadership teams and as a hub for learning about each ministry’s strategies and goals. Here is the list.

http://harrahkids.org

http://harrahgroups.org

http://renovatestudents.org

http://harrahchurchproduction.org

http://harrahchristian.org

I like that I was able to tie the sites together and still provide each with their own personalized theme. Though I have spent many hours on the sites and their configuration the theme subscriptions only cost me $20 and I am using the lowest 1and1 hosting package at ~$4.99 per month. I think we have a pretty great set of sites.

How is your church using multiple sites to leverage your reach? Is it necessarily a bad thing to spread your ministries out over several sites? I don’t think so. I don’t think people will have any problems searching us out and think that each site will lend itself well to a saturation strategy designed to help us dominate search.

One of the great hindrances to leadership growth in your church or organization will be your failure to provide growing leaders with spaces to ply their skills and talents. If you don’t create spaces for young leaders to work then they ARE going to leave you. They can’t help it. They must lead or they become frustrated. These frustrations will either lead them to seek new opportunities, undermine your leadership, or stall as a leader.

At some point in your own personal leadership evaluation you must ask yourself which leaders your have put a lid over and are you that lid? If the answer is yes then you need to carve out a greater role for that leader and get out of the way.

How are you giving growing leaders an opportunity to spread their wings? What new directions are they taking you?

This year has been a whirlwind. I have:

• Become a father
• Moved
• Started a new job
• Sold a house
• Purchased a house (hopefully this Friday)
• Traded my Honda for a Buick
• Lived with my parents for a couple of months

The year has gone by really fast but as I end the year I want to list a few things that I am thankful for.

• An incredible small group community in Broken Arrow
• Serving with Mike, Rich, Sheila, and the AHBC crew
• A wonderful wife
• A new house and lower mortgage, buyah!!!
• Getting to work @HarrahChurch and the most fun office environment ever
• The volunteers @HarrahChurch who are working so hard
• My parents for letting us crash in their spare room
• This amazing MacBook Pro I am typing this post on
• My Rhythm in Twenty crew who helped me move from burned out  to overflowing
• God for letting me experience all of this and keeping me from going off the deep end
• and last and most certainly topping the list is Baby Margot who is more fun everyday

We are having a blast here @HarrahChurch and I hope to post a picture of the new house next week. Stay tuned.

Tonight in our Children’s ministry program we began using some new curriculum from the Rethink Group called 252 Basics. The lesson that we were using tonight had to do with Faith and came from Hebrews 11:1. We are splitting the kiddos into three different group and running them through three stations in an hour.

During my second group, 4-5th graders, we were exploring some things that can not be seen but evidence points us to the fact that there is something there. I can remember seeing Billy Graham on TV talking about the wind. You can’t see the wind, but you can see evidence that the wind is there. Gravity. You can’t see gravity but you can see gravity at work. It was at this moment that I asked the kids if they could think of any others. around the time I finished the sentence one of the two girls sitting near the front and wrestling over the Teach notes leaned into her friend and let out a pretty loud fart. Everyone in the room started laughing, including the girl who dealt it. At the end of the laughter one of the kids said, “You can’t see a fart, but there is evidence that one is there.” We all started chuckling again.

Kids say and do the darnedest things. We had a great lesson and it provided a moment that I will remember for many months to come. Can not wait until this weekend to see what else they will have to say.

You have to work really hard in America to starve to death.

We are far more concerned with our standard of living then we are about others living.

What constitutes any emergency? Is it only an emergency if it is affecting you?

(The Big Red Tractor and His Little Village Video)

The original church was An Unstoppable Force

Today’s church feels like if the pastor left or the music was crappy or the service times changed then the church would cease to exist.

Are you trying too hard “at church” to “be the church”?

How is your prayer life? Are you begging God for something supernatural to happen?

WE don’t create anything. The Holy Spirit does it all.

We don’t make waves to ride. God does.

Sometimes we just try to hard and get stressed out, then when it doesn’t happen for us we start trying harder, and harder, and harder instead of getting on our knees and praying for God to move.

God uses dependant people.

2 Peter 1

Do you feel honored to serve God?

Do you believe that your faith is of equal worth as Peter’s?

The righteousness of Christ puts us all on equal footing, because it is all about what Jesus did.

“May grace and peace be multiplied to you…”

God doesn’t want His kids to be stressed, He wants them to walk around in grace and peace.

People should be jealous of your relationship with God.

Grace and peace are multiplies to your through the knowledge of God.

What are you seeking when you go to church? Are you seeking God alone or are you chasing after large attendance, big budgets, rocking worship, etc.

We have a generous God. “No mind has conceived, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, …”

You can defeat any sin in your life through the knowledge of God.

This knowledge is about a DEEP relationship, not a system of beliefs.

When you know Him you will have everything that leads to life and godliness.

I’m afraid that the Good News will become Old News.

Are you making every effort towards a divine nature or are you just trying to fill a room?

Don’t try to fix the church if you aren’t trying to fix your character.

Worry about yourself before you worry about the church.

Stop trying to “make it happen” and simply teach the Word of God.

Obey God and pursue the character that He wants you to have.

What is it in your life that if everybody found out would embarrass you?

Are you lacking that peace in your life?

Growing the church is not about methods. It is about abiding in Him.

What is one of your fantasies?

What are you passions?

Why We Need Leaders to Step Up – Observations

1. The more selfish our society becomes, the more critical Godly leadership is.
   1. Leaders need to engage people with a compelling future
2. The more choices people have, without a biblical worldview as their foundation, the more confused our priorities become – and the more crucial godly vision and strategy are.
3. In times of rapid cultural change, the rules are different, the competition stiffer, the stakes higher, the opportunities greater – necessitating superior leadership to guide us forward.
4. Recent poor decisions and behavior by high-profile leaders have ushered in an era of criticism, skepticism, and mistrust, requiring a new generation of wise and godly leaders to restore public trust and confidence.
   1. Leadership has to be proven
5. In a culture that rejects absolute more and spiritual truth, and that esteems extreme choice, the results are confusion, stress, distraction, busyness, and chaos – the antidote to which is focused leaders who can make sense of reality, provide vision, and deliver direction to make the vision a reality.
6. Our culture has adopted a hyper-individualism that undermines community, nation and persona relationships, raising the need for an emphasis upon team-based leadership.
7. Churches have given lip service to leadership but suffer from a paucity of genuine leaders who are guiding people toward true Christ-like transformation.

What’s the difference between the ministry of teaching and the ministry of leadership?

Don’t confuse passion with vision.

Six Leadership Checkpoints:

1. Leaders can strategically change reality, but they cannot intentionally change people.
   
   1. Once a person reaches the age of 13 they change very little
   2. Children’s ministry is the most important
   3. Are you creating the leadership roles to meet your vision or God’s vision for your church?
   4. Are you molding leaders into what YOU need or who GOD has designed them to be?
   5. If you want to change lives then work with children
2. Nobody is the “complete leadership package” – so it’s important to work in a leadership team.
   
   1. A team always out performs the individual
   2. “None of us is as smart as all of us” –Ken Blanchard
   3. Great Teams
      1. Has to be small in number 4-6 leaders
      2. They have to spend lots of time together
      3. There is a captain of the team
      4. Built around shared vision, values, and passion
      5. Vulnerability and communication
      6. Strive to empower people to achieve the vision
3. One of the most under-value and least common skills among leaders is listening
   
   1. “I think God wants us to listen more than speak, otherwise he would have given us two mouths.” – KB
   2. “We should lead with our ears.” -KB
   3. You cannot listen effectively unless you are willing to have your mind changed.” –KB
   4. If we are going to change reality then we must listen to find out what the current reality is.
   5. “I never learned anything by talking” –Lou Holtz
   6. Bad listening leads to bad leadership.
4. Leaders must master conflict and confrontation
   
   1. Expect it, address it
   2. Seize the initiative
   3. Do your homework, know the facts, think very circumspectly about it
   4. Position yourself as a friend
   5. Ask clarifying questions and listen to what is said
   6. Seek a win-win outcome
   7. You may have to be the one to create conflict in order to change things
   8. Do people appreciate your leadership because it is safe or because you represent truth and justice and they will not tolerate anything less
5. Success is helping people achieve their potential
   
   1. What are you measuring?
   2. Make people the very best that they can be by getting them out of their comfort zone.
   3. People are going to have to change to reach their potential
      1. What got you here won’t get you there
   4. Do people understand what success in your organization is?
      1. Do they know how they are going to benefit when the organization reaches their goal?
6. Do not accept a leadership position unless you’re ready to pay a stiff price. The more significant the outcome you seek to achieve, the more substantial the price you can expect to pay.
   
   1. Pressure is having to make a decision that matters when you are not prepared to do so
   2. Pressure is valuable for a leader because it purifies you and prepares for a higher level of leadership
   3. Leadership is a full-contact sport
   4. Address internal pressure because it is probably based upon real concerns
   5. Foundations for Decision Making Under Pressure
      1. God
         1. Make sure God called you to this
         2. Is this your vision or God’s vision
      2. Convictions
         1. Know what you stand for
         2. Refuse to fold
      3. Family and close friends
         1. People you trust
         2. People who will give you the feedback you need because they love you

Mac Lake – Seacoast Church – http://maclakeonline.com – @maclake

7 ingredients to a healthy leadership development strategy:

1. Confidence in people
2. Connection with people
3. Content
4. Coaching
   1. You of little faith, why did you doubt
   2. Teach them to endure the entire experience
5. Challenge
   1. Principles + experience = transformation
6. Cluster Learning – 4 times a year
7. Conferences – twice a year

Questions for meeting with your small group leaders:

1. How are you doing personally?
2. What are your priorities?
3. What problems are you encountering?
4. What’s the plan?
5. How can I pray for you?