SBC Adoption Fund for Ministers

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!

Orlando Trip

Wow, had an awesome time in Orlando at the Pastors’ Conference and Southern Baptist Convention along with some extra time for family vacation.

Some of the highlights from the Conference and Convention…

Great music…

Our kids loved the Watoto Children’s Choir…

Loved the emphasis on adoption…many of the leaders this year were adoptive families themselves…a new adoption scholarship fund was launched with the conference and one couple received the first gift…powerful…

Fascinating hearing the great mind Ravi Zacharias teach…

 Ed Stetzer always has deep stuff about the missional church…

Francis Chan is so powerful…and yet so humble…spoke about the importance of “knowing Christ” and so much more…

Andy Stanley has such great leadership insight…definitely provided some stuff to chew on for awhile…

After the Conference came the Convention…

A very interesting experience as a first time attender…11,000 messengers…where a major emphasis was on the adoption of the recommendations of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force…

Got to hear the lead singer for Sonicflood sing…

Also got to hear Casting Crowns in concert…

Of course, there was so much more…

Enjoyed the opportunity to represent East Side as well as our family time away together.  Thank you East Side!

Seattle Trip

Two Sunday afternoons ago we headed up to Tacoma, WA for a few days for the Northwest Baptist Convention.  We decided to go up a little early on Sunday so that we could catch the 7:15pm Mars Hill Church (Ballard) service in Seattle.  Mars Hill is a great multi-site church that is effectively engaging the Northwest culture with the gospel.

I thought I’d post a few reflections from our experience there:

• It’s encouraging to pull up to the church at 7:10pm on a Sunday night and see the intersections and sidewalks around the church flooded with young people…the place was a-buzz with people either coming to or leaving from worship.  It’s inspirational because we live in a day in which most churches are simply resigned to think that young people (20’s and 30’s) just aren’t interested in church and there’s not much the church can do about it.  I think Mars Hill is disproving that perspective.  I’m not sure how many people were at that fourth service, but I know that something like 8,000 to 10,000 people attend the church…so I’d guess there were somewhere around 1000 people at the 7:15pm service (give or take a couple of hundred).  I think Mars Hill is demonstrating that when a church contextualizes the gospel for the culture…people can be reached.
• I’ve known that Mars Hill intentionally focuses on training young men…but it was great to see it in action.  The greeters, roaming security, offering takers, and worship leaders were all young men.  And more than that, Jamie and I talked at great length afterwards about how many young men there were there just in general…they seemed like the majority.  Again, this is inspirational because we live in a day in which men (particulary young men) seem to be absent from most churches.  Mars Hill is proving that young men can be reached as well as demonstrating the effectiveness and impact of a church that intentionally deploys young men to lead out.
• The music was refreshing as well.  The atmosphere of worship had a nice blend of excellence and authenticity.  Today, churches seem to fall on one end of the spectrum or the other…either focusing so much on excellence that the atmosphere seems impersonal, or focusing so much on authenticity that the atmosphere ends up being distracting.  Mars Hill is demonstrating that the church can worship with excellence (equipment, technology, lighting, musics, etc.) and not have to give up a comfortable, casual vibe. 
• Mark Driscoll preached from Luke 2 about Christ The Lord.  His sermons tend to be about an hour in length, which is about the length of most other entire church services…but everybody seemed to be engaged the whole time.  Mark is currently taking three years to preach through the Book of Luke.  I think Mars Hill is also demonstrating that the Bible can be taught in such a way that real depth and cultural relevance are complimentary…not mutually exclusive.

Anyway, Jamie and I, as well as Kendra and Micah, had a great time.  The experience spurred a lot of discussion about the excellence and atmosphere of worship as well as how to more effectively reach young people with the gospel.

Mountain Biking Fun

Thought I’d post a little video for your amusement of some recent mountain biking.  Now, I’m no mountain biker, in fact, it’s been a LONG TIME since I’ve even been on a bicycle.  I did grow up racing motocross, but after peddling that bike up hill I think motocross is a whole lot easier and a lot less work.  But, I still had fun.  During a recent family camping trip (we call it cuzn’s camp), Jamie’s brother (Levi) and two cousins (Ben and Byron) invited me to “ride” the Siltcoos Lake Trail with them.  I said…uhmmm…sure.

Byron took this awesome video with his helmit cam and posted it for our enjoyment.  Pretty cool.  If you wonder where I’m at in the video, well, I’m trailing behind these guys…just a little bit .  Enjoy!  Thanks Byron.

Southern California Trip

I’ve meant to blog some pictures from our recent trip to Southern California.  We went down to San Diego to visit some friends and the weather was awesome.  We also got to check out the beach, Sea World, California Adventure, and Disneyland as well.

We also had time on Sunday to check out two big churches, Harvest and Saddleback.  Here’s some pics from Harvest.  What was pretty cool was their outdoor amplitheatre and courtyard which served as an overflow area with a big outdoor screen.  Pretty fun.

Saddleback was interesting as well.  We especially enjoyed their themed children’s area…The Reef.

So there you have it.

Worship Northwest

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.

Blazer Game

I wanted to give a shout out to Greg for organizing the Blazer game trip to Portland…everyone had a blast. There were 43 East Side’rs and friends that made it to the game. And of course, it made for a great daddy/daughter outting for a four year old. She had a blast riding the MAX, screaming at the game, snacking on her snowcone and licorice rope, and chowing down a Chalupa from Taco Bell on the way home (since the Blazers scored 100 points, everyone got a free Chalupa coupon after the game). What a great time!

Pastors Conference Video

I had the wonderful opportunity to serve as the President of the 2008 Northwest Baptist Convention Pastor/Layman Conference in Portland last month.  East Side’s worship team led during both the afternoon and evening sessions and they did an awesome job!  I so appreciated their hard work leading up to the conference and their great presence that they brought to the environment.  I thought I’d post some video that Dan got of them leading one particular song.  We had a great time of fellowship and worship and I am so proud of our East Side team.  I heard an amazing amount of feedback from attendees about how much they were impacted by what our team “brought to the table.”  So, I give a shout out to Wayne (he’s in the back…you just can’t see him), Dan, Len, Rob, Bill (he’s in the mix too…can’t see him either), Jamie, Estella, Gena, Katie, Opal, Barb, and of course Liz who did a great job helping out with running the computer off camera.  Thank you guys!

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I themed the conference SHINE because that’s what the people of the Northwest need, the churches of Jesus Christ to SHINE brightly as we hold out the word of life.

Barnabas Project (California Trip)

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.