As I mentioned in my earlier post about our trip to Orlando for the Southern Baptist Convention and Pastor’s Conference in June, one of the cool things was the emphasis on adoption. Here’s the video testimony they played during the conference that tells a little bit about the launching of the SBC Adoption Fund for Ministers. Pass it on!
Well, a few months ago I got the staff guys good (at least I thought) by using Yearbook Yourself to create some hilarious pictures of them which I then subsequently shared with the church on a Sunday morning as a illustration about transformation. Well, Dan told me they would get me back at some point…which they did last Sunday night. Payback I guess. At our Valentines Comedy Fellowship Night everybody got a good laugh out of this video of some Wednesday night teaching from 1 Samuel that they had spliced together with some of their “questions”:
So I guess they think they’re pretty funny (it was funny…I do have to say). I guess they’re up for some friendly competition… : )
It’s awesome to get to serve East Side with a great staff. Phil, Dan, and Wayne bring some excellent skills to “the table,” but I especially appreciate their sense of humor…as they were unexpectedly the center of some humor as a recent sermon illustration. (If you also want to have some good laughs, go to Yearbook Yourself).
Eleven folks from our worship and tech teams headed up to Salem/Keizer last Friday and Saturday to attend the Worship Northwest Conference. I wasn’t able to make the Friday night Big Daddy Weave concert, but everyone else said it was awesome. Saturday was great…I got to take some guitar breakout sessions from a pretty phenominal guitar instructor and everyone else said they got a lot out of theirs as well. Tonight at worship practice we’ll all take some time to talk about what we learned in our breakouts. Thought I’d post a few pics.
I got the Olson family off to the Portland airport yesterday. We had a great time hanging out with Phil, Heather, Grace, and Anna all week. They stayed with our family…so we had many great discussions and the kids had a super time playing together. We are so excited for their family to move back here in January and work with our church on staff in the areas of discipleship and outreach. Pray for them as they spend time in the Chicago area for the Christmas season before coming back out. I know they are going to bring a great mix to East Side’s leadership and future…particularly with the depth and passion of their faith.
Phil and I met six years ago while teaching together at Lifegate Christian School. He was fresh back from the mission field of Mexico and was in the States for the year to get married (he and Heather met on the field in Mexico) and prepare for moving to South America. While hanging out that year with us at East Side we were able to develop a great friendship together. They then spent the last five years serving as missionaries to Ecuador. In his (their) new role at East Side they will help us become even more effective in the areas of discipleship (a large part of their ministry in Ecuador) as well as outreach (specifically Hispanic outreach as he is pretty good in his Spanish and has a passion for those cultures).
Here’s a few quick pics…for more check out Jamie’s blog as she did an incredible job with a photoshoot for them.
Last week I had the privilege of being able to spend the week in California as part of something called The Barnabas Project. The project is an effort by the Northwest Baptist Convention to expose 20 NWBC pastors to larger healthy growing congregations in the West. An all expense paid trip to visit some awesome churches and rub shoulders with some incredible leaders was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. Jim Fitzpatrick and I paired up and went to Clovis, California. Jim is the pastor of Crosspointe Baptist Church in Vancouver, WA. I consider Jim one of my mentors so that was an added bonus. Being in that part of California in mid-August meant some hot weather…108 degrees our first day. We basically were down there from Saturday through Friday. We visited four amazing churches over the weekend and then interviewed their staff and participated in some of their staff and leadership meetings throughout the week. I’ll give you a quick overview of what we discovered.
The first church we visited was Clovis Hills Community Church (the one SBC church we visited). CHCC was started about 17 years ago with a vision to reach the unchurched. Since that time, they’ve grown to a weekly attendance of about 1200. Their dedication to the mission was expressed by something their pastor said to us, “We make everything about the next person.” CHCC is a leading SBC church in baptisms.
The second church we checked out was First Baptist Church of Clovis. FBC Clovis is led by Tim Brown. Tim came to the Northwest and spoke at one of our recent Pastor Cluster groups in Vancouver. In the last decade Tim has led the church from about 70 to 700. Tim gave us a lot of ideas for growing our churches, everything from staffing to leadership to ministries. We also got to hang out with their staff and ask them a bunch of questions. They invited us to participate in their staff and leaders meetings.
The third church we visited was First Baptist Church of Reedley. FBC Reedley is a church that’s grown from about 260 to 600 over the past 6 years. Led by Gilbert Foster, a guy with an awesome Scottish accent, they have sort of a postmodern feel to what they’re doing in ministry. Gibert graciously invited us into his home for lunch on Sunday and we spent the afternoon with him and a few of his staff talking about church growth. They also gave us some great ideas for reaching the unchurched.
The fourth church we visited was The Well Community Church. TWCC started as a college ministry but in the past 6 years has grown into a church with a weekly attendance of about 2000. They currently have four Sunday services…9 and 11 and 6 and 8. We checked out their 6pm service and it was packed out. TWCC is a church that is effectively engaging young people through solid teaching, authentic worship, and a strong small group ministry.
What did we learn from our trip? Tons. But I’ll synthesize it all into a couple of principles that were evident in all four churches.
1. They are extremely focused on reaching new people (especially the unchurched).
2. They are effectively shepherding and discipling people through their small groups.
3. They are staff-led (both paid and unpaid) and driven by huge visions.
4. They are effectively engaging their culture through relevant worship and teaching.
Well, that’s all for now. In the coming months I’ll be sharing what I learned in California and working with our leaders to implement these and other ideas so that we too can be as effective as possible.
Tonight was powerful…really powerful. At our LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE DINNER, the tone was set for this Fall at ESBC. About 116 (16 or so little kids) folks tried to pack out our fellowship hall…it doesn’t work so well in a room that holds 50…especially when it’s as hot as it was today. I haven’t blogged for awhile but we recently decided to step forward in faith, to seek to build a new building, and allow God to take us individually and corporately to the next level…spiritually and numerically. There are exciting days ahead. We are praying for a miracle…we are praying that as we seek the Lord’s provision in financial resources to build this new building…that He will provide. As Cecil shared tonight…when God gives a VISION…there is also His PROVISION. All I can say is…the air seemed electric with enthusiasm.
Well, I finally have a little bit of free time to talk about our Staff Retreat to Portland. We were able to visit four different great churches. Our big picture goal was just to experience the “atmosphere” of these churches and their worship environments. What was the music like? How did they handle announcements? What were they doing with lighting and video? What was the mood? Each church was different, but all in all, we took a little something, or a lot of something, away from each church. I’ll give you a little bit of the low-down for each church:
The first church we went to was Abundant Life Church in Happy Valley. We checked out one of their Saturday afternoon services. While talking with Joe Flegal (with the Northwest Baptist Convention) and telling him about this trip we were putting together, he recommended that this would be an good church to add to our list. Abundant Life has been experiencing a lot of growth (a couple thousand in attendance now) and they do some creative stuff in worship. They did a great job with lighting, staging, video, and environment, but we were especially struck by the quality of their “Welcoming Team.” Their level of “customer service” gave us a lot of food for thought.
The second church we visited was Greater Gresham Baptist Church. We checked out their Saturday night service. GGBC is one of our great Northwest Baptist Convention churches and it was awesome to connect with some people we know there like Keith Evans and Sam Fort. They are a very strong church and it was good to see what they have going. We were especially reminded of the importance of friendliness in church as they definetly exuded this.
The third church we spent time at was Athey Creek Christian Fellowship in Tualatin. We checked out their 10:00am Sunday service. Jamie’s cousin Ben and his family are part of that great church. Ben is a deacon at Athey and we’ve always heard great things about what God is doing there and the tremendous growth they’ve experienced (thousands). Wow! Phenominal teaching by their pastor Brett. He’s just a great Book by Book Bible teacher…I definitely took some stuff away to chew on in terms of improving my own teaching and preaching.
The last church we experienced was Southlake Foursquare in West Linn. We checked out their 12:00pm Sunday service…that’s right, Noon! Southlake is known for their video and audio capabilities and facilities planning, but we also have another friend Rob who goes there. The worship was “incredible.” They definitely have a cool sound system and some amazing video and lighting stuff on top of it. Southlake’s music and worship gave us a vision of some great stuff to work towards.
All in all, it was a very refreshing and inspiring trip. It generated a lot of discussion and will help us further improve our own ministry at East Side. It’s really amazing that we get to worship the Creator of the universe, and God deserves nothing less than our best.
I’ll do another post hopefully with some pictures of these church’s children’s and youth ministry environments. That’s all for now.
I’m getting pumped about our upcoming Staff/key Leader and wives retreat this weekend. We’re heading up to Portland overnight to check out some effective and fast growing Northwest Churches. We’ll be hitting one (possibly two) churches on Saturday and two other churches on Sunday. One of the key purposes of the trip is to experience the “Worship Environments” of these churches, generate discusion about how to improve our own environment, and further cast a vision of “what could be, not what has been for our church”…to steal a phrase from Dr. Crews of the NWBC. I’m looking forward to blogging more about our experiences in these churches.
On a family note, my 3 year old’s main expectation from the trip is plenty of time in the swimming pool and hot tub at the hotel. Well now, that sounds pretty good to me too…along with getting to hang out with my family and some really great friends from our church.