My Worship Revolution

Wow.
Long day.
But good.
I’ll try to give you another quick snapshot.
Then I’m off to bed.
Well, maybe after watching 24.

The morning started with worship.
The team that led did a good job.
Unfortunately, call me unspiritual, but as a worship leader I sometimes struggle to worship in these contexts cause I’m thinking about the sound or how I would lead.
Also, call me unspiritual, but the truth is, while I recognize I can worship and connect to God no matter what, I think we’re foolish to think that certain types of music or songs don’t affect us differently.
All that to say, they started with Friend of God, which is a song that just bugs me.  A little too happy clappy for my blood.  Then More Love, More Power.
So I struggled a little to get into it from those, but it was a good warm up into some really good songs – Desert Song and Everlasting God.
So overall it was great.
Then a really good devotion from the executive director of the southwest district about Lance Armstrong and the peleton of protection.  Basically the idea that we need a team to win.
Good start for the day.
At 8am.

Mini-sermon/Call To Church Planting

In our group this morning we got to kick off the mini-sermons.  10 minutes to teach a message.  I did a very abridged version of a message I gave back in the summer about creating and cultivating culture.  Unfortunately it wasn’t quite abridged enough as I got cutoff before I hit the end.
Then we were to go into a 5 minute explanation of our call to church planting.  That was fun.
After that, Rachel joined me and we each shared 5 adjectives about each other.
My 5 for her…
Dependable, Meticulous, Gracious, Encouraging, Hospitable
And then I was able to sneak smokin hot in there too.

Finally it ended with the assessors asking us questions.
This group of assessors were consistently tougher than the last with their questioning.
There’s one dude with a doctorate who is obviously the preacher man.  He’s kinda scary.  No lie.
He asked what books have impacted me in the area of preaching and what the point I was trying to get across in my sermon was.
It’s easy to read into those sorts of questions.  Maybe just cause of my own insecurities.  But we expected some tough questions from him more than any.

Overall, I didn’t come away from that experience feeling so great.
It kinda brought me back down to earth.

Small Group Exercise – Plant City

From there, we were broken up into small groups of about 6.  And spouses were separated for this.
We were given a scenario about a bible study that wanted to become a church and the process they went through.  We had to discuss pros and cons and come to some consensus on whether not we would accept a call to lead the plant.  I said no way, but was outvoted by my group.
We then received more information as time went on.
Just for the record, it didn’t turn out pretty.  Not to say I knew it, but… lol.

This really was pretty fascinating to see different personalities interact.
Just imagine getting a bunch of opinionated leaders who are the type that want to start new churches and ask them to try and agree on something.
As one candidate said, it was a case study on alpha-males!

As we went through this process there was a group of assessors just watching and taking notes the entire time.  We basically had to pretend they didn’t exist.  They couldn’t help us in any way.  Just there to observe and judge us.

Right after that was some debrief on the exercise.
This is worth mentioning cause there was some good stuff shared about leadership there.
In a nutshell-
4 groups of people and how to handle them
Like you, like the church – leave them alone!  It’s working, keep  it that way.
Like you, don’t like the church – short term mission.  Give them a place to serve to gain ownership.
Don’t like you (oddly enough), like the church – Connect them to another leader.
Don’t like you, don’t like the church – LET THEM GO!  Help them find a place they do like, but don’t let them poison your church.
In relation to that last note, here was a great quote I got down.
“If you don’t want to protect your church, you’re not a leader!”

StrenghtsFinder 2.0

This is a pretty cool tool you may be familiar with.
The idea is to find your top 5 talents that you possess and that have the most potential for you if you cultivate those talents.
I took this test about 4 years ago.
This time it was almost exactly the same with the exception of the last strength.
My 5 strengths…
Woo, Communication, Adaptability, Belief, Futuristic

And that got us up to lunch.
Hopefully the rest of the day later, but I’m toast for now.
Just remembering the day is making me more tired!
Peace out!