Random Thoughts

Been doing a lot of soul searching and thinking over the last few months and some things have really come full cricle and others are still their floating around in my heart and head. I am starting to get some clarity on some things. So here are some radom thoughts I have had:

• Over the last few months I have had people and pastors ask me if I would ever plant a church again. As of right now the answer is no, and yes. I can't see myself doing another plant that rises from nothing without the support of a mother church. It's simply too hard to have enough support and workers to be viable. I would consider planting again if the situation were correct and we had proper support from a mother church.
• That said, it would be a long time before I was ready to do it again, and even if I were I am not sure I would take on a lead pastor role. I am better suited to be an executive pastor that serves as a church planter then allows someone else to take on the work once it is established.
• I see, at least right now, my next vocational ministry being more along the role of an executive/teaching pastor.
• When you're in ministry you face a lot of criticism. Everyone has a better idea than you do about how you should be doing things. A few things I have learned about criticisms:
• First, unless a person is willing to step up and take a share of owning the problem and the solution, their criticisms are hallow and stink of personal preference and possibly an agenda.
• Second, and this I think rings true whether you're in ministry or not. Never trust a person who isn't willing to sit down man to man or woman to woman and discuss their issues with you. If they are willing to tell their problems to other but not you watch your back.
• Since we closed Real Life I have had 3 offers to come help out other ministries. I am flattered and humbled for that. But really, I just don't feel released in my spirit to do anything right now. At some point I hope and pray God puts that passion and his anointing back on my life but I just don't feel it's their right now. Until that happens April and I are content to sit and wait on God.
• We have however begun the process of trying to find a new church home. We are taking our time and looking for the right place for us.

Quiet Time

Over the last year or so I have had very, very little quiet time. I talked a good game about it but I just didn't find much time for it. God has been really hitting me over the head with how much of a junkie I am. Internet, TV, books, music, and a host of other things take up my time and I couldn't seem to find quiet in my life.

Last night I finally broke out of that mold. After April went to bed I just turned it all off, and sat in a room alone with God. I told myself I wanted five good minutes with God. I was amazed at how hard it was to get five good minutes. My mind kept racing, thoughts kept pouring in, it was hard. I am not going to lie, it took almost a half an hour to get five good minutes. Every time I'd get myself out of the way something else would pop into my mind, or a thought would race.

Those five minutes, were awesome. Felt God speaking to me for the first time in a long time.

Lessons Learned: Part 1

We are two years into church planting now. There have been some great times and some tougher times. Both of which with some big time lessons learned. We've done some things right and we've done some things wrong. I get emails from church planters all over that ask questions as they are trying to learn. I thought I would share some of the lessons I have learned as it relates to Real Life. This things may or may not be appropriate for you and your church but they were for us.

What we've done right:

• We've done everything for God. In doing so, we have devoted ourselves to reaching people that could not be reached by other ministries. We have never asked a person to leave a church to come join us. In fact, every person that has ever come here from another church has been a problem. They have had an agenda that did not match with our vision and have left.
  
• We choose to focus on people who need a relationship with God and with each other. We are overly social and almost always have food around. We made the choice to not offer a program for everything because we want people to connect in small groups and serve at church. Not having lots of programs has COST US some people who look for a program based church. It also means saying no to people way more than we say yes. Because we've done this we see more people than ever getting connected at social events and through small groups. Our small groups have not only become a discipleship program, they have become a steady tool for ministry and healing.
• We've kept it simple. We do 4 things...Good messages that everyone can understand, great worship that is culturally relevant, a great kids ministry, and we intentionally build up relationships. We do have one more thing coming in the fall but it's still a big part of our DNA.
  
• We accept everyone as they are no questions asked. We believe that if we can connect people with God that the Holy Spirit will draw and convict a person from the inside out to become more Christlike.
• We have shared leadership in the church. Church should never be a one man show. I will not do it all.
  
• We allow people to try out serving opportunities with no strings attached.
• We have never solicited funds from outside our church. If God doesn't provide we simply will do without or wait until he has provided. As a result, we have made budget every month but one (December of 2008.) We are actually ahead of budget for 2009!
• We got outside counsel. I cannot see how anyone could ever plant a church successfully without a coach. You cannot afford to not have one. Our coach saved our butts more times that I can could ever thank him for. Keith you were awesome dude...I seriously owe you man:)
• We waited on God. I got the vision for planting 2 years before I left my previous church and started the process. Wait for God to clear the way. Trust me, when it's really time you'll know it....
• We took no one from our old church with us. Unless your church sends you to plant. do not take their people. God isn't going to honor that. If he's calling you to plant and he's gifted you to do it he'll bring people your way and you don't need someone else's sheep.

Over the next few days I'll talk about some things I have done wrong.....cause it hasn't always been pretty :)

Now and Then

Every now and then it is a good thing to remind yourself and others about what it is that you are here to do. For us at Real Life it's simple. We want to bring people into a meaningful relationship with Jesus, train them up to serve others, and then send them out to serve God's people. For us, we try to keep things simple and fun. That's why we aren't doing tons of different things as a church. We try to do four thing and do them really well:

• We have great worship that most people in our culture and community would enjoy and get something out of.
• We have a simple straightforward message everyone can use.
• We have awesome kids programs.
• We build each other up by providing a place for relationships to happen.

That's it. That is what we are here to do. We do it all in a coffee house environment. Reminding ourselves of why we are here every so often helps keep a person focused and helps make many decisions easier. If it's not part of the mission we don't have to spend much time thinking about it!

Really Proud

I am really proud of how so many people have stepped up to the plate over the last few months at Real Life. From the cleaning of the church, to the bread ministry, to small groups, to music, to kids ministry, to everything else that you guys do. It tickles me pink to see so many people stepping into service at Real Life!

Our future growth is directly tied to how well we all step up to the plate in terms of our service to God through serving him at church. The hard work that has been done so far is laying the foundation for the harvest that is coming. We are going to start seeing some big changes over the next six months. I can hardly wait.

Random Thoughts.

I was thinking today about how blessed we are as a church. We have been given so much for a church that is so young. We have tremendous favor is so many areas its an honor and it's also a little scary.

Think about this.

• We have a kid to adult ratio of 1:1.5. In other words, for every 1 and a half adults we have 1 kid. Most churches have somewhere in the neighbor hood of 1:12. That is awesome. It does present us with some challenges but. I 'll take that any day.
• We have more musicians than we can use on any given Sunday. Most churches struggle to have enough skilled musicians to field a whole band. We can fill two whole bands and both would be better than 90% of the churches out there. Again, it presents challenges getting people enough playing time but I'll take it.
• Giving has ALWAYS been higher than the budget. We have NEVER had to decide what bill we were not going to pay.
• In the last three months we have been given three computers. we now have four computers for the church.
  
• We are a few weeks away from being able to web cast our worship experiences. Two weeks. Wow.
  
• We have a killer kids ministry. I could not be happier with it.
• We are going to be making some changes to the look and feel of the church to help with the coffee house aspect of our church. It's going to be sweet.

We have only been holding monthly worship for three months. Three months. We are a baby church and we have been given so much. I thank God everyday for all he has trusted us with.

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We're Close To Something Big

Over the last few months I have felt a stirring in my soul about Real Life being close to some really big things happening in terms of ministry and growth. I am sitting here at the computer this afternoon and I am really overwhelmed at just how close we are. All I can say is man God is so good. He has provided some amazing things.

How about this for a first year recap:

1. We held our first practice worship service a year ago today. All but a small handful of the people at that first practice service are still with us. Many of those people have taken on new ministries and are leading them with amazing success.

2. We have more than doubled in size. If you take the core group we started with and add in the new folks that call Real Life home we have more than doubled in a year.

3. We have exceeded our budget in terms of income every month since we started. Even in the midst of a bad economy we are doing quite well.

4. We have a great band. Churches 10 times our size wish they had the talent we do. Trust me, I have heard them say it.

5. We have some of the coolest people on the planet as members of our church.

6. We have a great building at a killer price.

7. We have been given so much in terms of technology it's almost scarry. Wait until we really get cooking on it. We will be the MOST CUTTING EDGE CHURCH IN TOLEDO. I can promise you that.

8. In terms of numbers, we baptized half of our church in 2007.

9. We have one of the best kids ministries in town. Period. I have never heard our kids come out of kids church saying they didn't have fun.

10. We have some of the best volunteers in the world. Most people never see what Shelly, April, Shelly #2, Carla, John, Martha, Jackie, Chelsea, Jake, Tony, Aaron, and everyone else I forgot to mention do. I am humbled to be your Pastor. Thank You!

Leadership Vs Pastoring

Been thinking quite a bit this week about myself in ministry. Six months ago I made a decision that I was going to focus more on becoming a better pastor. I wanted to focus more on people and focus less on tactical things. The problem is, if you're not careful, you can pastor yourself right out of church growth.

For me there has to be a balance between loving people and pastoring people and leading God's people to take more ground than they thought they were capable of taking.

Over the next few months and years my struggle is to find a way to pastor God's people while leading them. I have made a personal commitment to spend quite a bit of time over this next year focusing on just that. Over the last week God has hit me pretty big with some stuff.

I sat down and wrote two messages out of it. One is a leadership message. The first Sunday in January we are going to spend the morning talking about where God is going to me taking us over the next year and years. I can see that picture clearer than ever. The third Sunday in January I am going to do the pastor thing and stretch your faith big time.

If you can't tell. I am pretty fired up about it too!

Church Planting

I read a new study put out by Ed Setzer today and I have to say if it's accurate it rocked my church planting world! His group did a study of church planting over the last ten years and they really made some sense of what most church planters are looking at. First off, according to the numbers the days of being able to send out some mailers and see large amounts of people show up are over. I can echo that. We have seen slightly less than a 1% return on them. For example if we mail out 20,000 mailers we'd see fewer than 20 people show up......for most churches the return rate is 1/3% meaning they'll see about 4-5 people per 20,000 mailers. What they were getting at is that unless God does something supernatural you can plan on growing slower than churches that were planted 15 years ago. I am feeling really good about were we are BTW!

Here are some other factoids I picked up from the study:

• The average church plant sees 10 conversions/baptisms it's first year.
• Most church plants are running under 100 people after 4 years
• Most church plants are just getting to the point where they are financially self sufficient at the 4 year mark.
• The success rate for new church plants is much higher than it was 15 years ago.

I won't tell you exactly where we are on all this yet other than to say we are beating their numbers in every area! If you want details you'll have to be at our vision 2008 service the last Sunday in December.

Why church people are not friendly.

First off, let me say I love all kinds of people. Whether you go to church or not. I am just a common kinda guy. In fact, as I write this post I am sitting here in my Michigan shorts eating a bowl of cheerios and thinking about taking a nap. Thats just how simple I am. I like football, music, and comedies. I am as simple and predictable as they come.

So why are church people not friendly. First off, because the people that visit our churches tell us we're not. Visitors can look around and they can see that we love each other because we share a warmth and fellowship with each other that is obvious to anyone looking. That is very different than creating a culture of friendliness. Every church I have ever been a part of thought they were friendly, in reality not much about them actually created a warm and friendly environment.

So then why do people think that we are unfriendly. Because most of us haven't learned how to relate to people that are not yet part of us. We ask shallow awkward questions that make a person feel like an outsider. We might say "So is this your first time here?" or "You're new here what do you think so far?" or worse yet "you look new, let me introduce you to the pastor!" not that I am a bad guy mind you, but really? Who wants to be taken before the pastor?

So how can we actually go from thinking we are friendly to being friendly. Well first, we can start by actually knowing how to have a conversation with someone that makes them feel valuable. Instead of saying "you look new." You could always say "Hi, my name is Jeff, I don't think we've meet yet." Instead of pointing out that a person is new we are introducing ourselves.

So being the practical teaching pastor dude that I am I wanted to pass along some helpful pointers for starting conversations with people that you don't yet know. Again, I am a simple guy, I didn't come up with this stuff our church planting coach, who is far more creative than I am passed them along to me. Here is a great tool that is easy to use and remember ask about H.E.L.P.

• Home: Where are you from and how did you arrive here?
• Employment: What do you do for a living?
• Loved ones: Ask about their families.
• Pleasures: Ask what they like to do for fun.

Our goal is not to interrogate people it's to make them feel comfortable. We make people feel comfortable by making them feel important. A person makes up their mind about a church within the first 10 minutes of their first visit. If we don't care about them, we'll never be able to reach them.

Getting really excited

I have to admit I am getting really excited about the next few months at Real Life. We are getting ready to start the new series (My Secret) and I am just pumped about it. More than ever people are checking us out and wanting to come. We are getting ready to run some radio ads that will promo the church....This is an exciting time!

It's the little things.

Way to often in church we think it's the big things that we do that bring people and keep people in church. The reality is that it's the little things that count. Taking the time to thank everyone that brings a dish, sets up a chair, or sings a song will go a long way in keeping your church happy and healthy. It might not seem like a lot but the fact is people will not invite their friends to a church if they feel like there is a risk they'll get burned.

I learned the hard way that we have to go out of our way to make sure that people know that they are appreciated. Take the time today to thank someone who has come along side of you and helped you with whatever it is that your doing.

Fall Bad. Football Good.

As much as I dislike leaving summer behind I love the start of the football season! For those of us who love football, and I know I am talking to 99.99982 % a male readership on this one. Is there anything better than Sunday? Getting up (not too early), going to church, worshiping God, then coming home stretching out on the couch or your favorite chair and watching the king of all sports NFL football!!

I also note. My wife has become a huge football fan over the years. Not because she cares one bit about the game. What she loves about football is that she gets a three hour nap when the games are on.

This weekend I'll be into the Tampa Bay vs St. Louis rams game. Course this weekend I'll have to TIVO the game because the band is playing in Blissfield today for another new church plant. Which by the way is pretty exciting for me. I love church planting and I get so see another one start up on day one.