Vision or Relationship

What is vision?

I think vision adapts some as we really seek to get in that place God wants us.

I think it is about faith and walking the walk with God. The vision for our lives gets shaped and molded.

Vision really is about faith. We ultimately don't know. I know that people will say that they know that they know but we just sense what we think God is telling us and then we go after it. Then God changes it a little here and there and we just keep hearing from Him going after it.

Really it's about relationship.

Could I even say that vision is relationship?

Life Church Website

As we seek to build momentum to our September 7th, 2008 launch date, I have worked on creating an internet presence. I had a great friend walk through it all with me to look at the "brand" we are beginning to establish.

Today I completed and added some pages on the site. I also want to give you my philosophy on this. I have always believed in doing the best job with the resources you have available. Currently all of our sites are free sites that we are using to spread the word. As our resources begin to come in, be on the lookout for a revamped version of our website.

You can view our internet presence at the following links:
lifechurchwired.wordpress.com
www.myspace.com/lifechurchwired
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7419532292

Make sure you stop in and add us as a friend. I also have one more secret site that I have been working on that I will be revealing in a couple of weeks.

Bet You Can't

I've had about 10 students and teachers try this....one guy told me he could, but I'm not believing him....I emailed it to this guy and he had already posted it right when I sent it...we laughed...Thanks to Bill for enlightening me through his Google Reader shared posts via Frostfirefizz.com

All These Questions

So of course I've been thinking again. That's why I have all these questions roaming through my mind. Maybe some day someone will answer them.

What if the focus was more on making disciples than on altar calls? How would that look?

What if the altar call was more like Acts 2??? repent and get dunked...NOW!!!!

What would the community look like if we put 9 million into it rather into a building?

How can we streamline church to it's simplest form to make the greatest amount of impact possible?

How can we put a reproducing church culture in place from the beginning?

What if a church launched two sites from day one??? Or three??? Has that ever been done?

How much vision is too much vision?

Will too much vision scare people off??? Am I fine with that?

What would reaching ONE BILLION for Christ look like?

Marketplace Ministry

Michael had some interesting questions in his "What if?" post. It totally flips the question of what and when to build. His questions were:

1. What if, instead of building a church building, we built an elementary school? Or build a school tailored to our needs and let a charter school or at-risk school utilize it to meet the needs of the community.

2. What if we built a new boys and girls club or a YMCA and let that non-profit operate programs all throughout the week? Partnering with an existing non-profit would create a win-win situation for both.

3. What if we built a movie theater? Everything could be built and tailored to meet the needs of the church but would be suitable to show movies during the week.

4. What if we built a giant family fun center, like a Chuck E. Cheese or a Fun World? Not only would this be suitable for our children's ministry needs but could be a way to service the community with a positive environment.

Wordpress Problems

For a brief moment I was thinking about a transition to Wordpress. Unfortunately that is on hold right now.

Reason why is that I have been using it temporarily for our church site. It has many great features that blogger doesn't have. One is being able to create separate pages that make it look more like a website vs. just a blog. Another is creating a static home page which I think is really cool when you want to use it like a website.

Today, as I was working on my pages each time I saved a page, one other page would disappear. In fact all of the work I had originally done is now gone. Which honestly bites. I didn't realize I should have exported all the pages so that I would have it. I wasn't doing anything unusual or out of the ordinary. In fact, I was doing things I had done before on the site.

If anyone else has experienced this through wordpress let me know. For now, I am evaluating everything until we purchase our web hosting.

Life Goal

One of my life goals is to go to Italy. That's Amore

Our Values Coming Soon

Several things that I believe are important for a church to know are: vision, mission and values. Of course once you know these then you need to develop them down into goals and tasks to accomplish your mission.

Next week I am going to break down our values each day with their own post. I have placed them in the form of an acrostic - TO DOMINATE. That alone is our greatest value and vision. Be on the look out for that next week to get to know Life Church a little better.

What are your organizational values?

Embrace It

Great guest post by Gina McClain who posted on my leadership blog Making Difference Makers. She really brought it when talking about Children's Ministry and church. Bold, brash...just my style. Gina is the LifeKIDS director for LifeChurch.tv.

Make sure you read Embrace It...if you already haven't.

Awaken The Giant

A very powerful prayer you can pray. Check out what I wrote in my post at Relevant Christian called Awaken The Giant.

My Shirt Dilemna

I can't believe that my wife wants me to sale this shirt,



and this shirt,


in a garage sale. What is she thinking?

Come on...disco may come back.

The Questions Continue

How can we see the greatest level of influence as possible?

Can we be a church that, if suddenly closed down in 10 years, would be missed? And not just by the 100 to 500 people who attend. Would the community abroad even know it?

We marvel at a church like Lakewood...but 47,000 in a metropolis of 5,500,000 is only .85%. Less than 1%. Do you really understand that number???????? Yeah but they own the old Compact Center... point-eight-five-percent folks. (BTW...I respect Joel and what they do tremendously....I worked for his brother-in-law in Victoria...we were reaching about 4 - 5% there) I'm just talking pure community impact here.

What good is it to sit in our pews and behind our pulpits and say God bring 'em in? When are we going to start going out? What about impacting poverty? Teenage pregnancies? Homelessness? Substance abuse?

Does outreach need to be re-invented? A friend of mine who will remain nameless had an idea for an outreach to rent a big facility and have a crusade. A crusade???? You know hire this big Christian speaker...with a praise band....and have every Christian in town come and then say we had an outreach to the community. Gimmie a freakin' break.

Is creating culture possible and what would that look like here?

How big is too big in thinking what we can do?

Just a few questions I'm thinking about....how about you????

Life Goals Process

This guy has me thinking about my purpose and the process of achieving my goals.

This guy has inspired me to write 101 life goals.

I created a section in my google notebook that is broken down into categories I'm putting goals in. To start they are broken into the categories of 1) family, 2) travel, 3) ministry, 4) influence, 5) experience, 6) accomplishment, and 7) physical.

What or are you going to do anything about it as I am?

Famous

Can we make Jesus so famous that He is known all throughout this world? To where He is more than cuss word?

Is the church making Him famous or infamous?

What "are" we making Him famous for?

Just some questions I'm filtering.

Subjective Innovative Church List

With the innovative lists being released I thought I would release my list of the 10 from that list. Of course every list is subjective based on the people who create it.

My list is made up of those on the list that are innovative to my world.

1. LifeChurch.tv, Edmond, OK, Craig Groeschel
2. Community Christian Church, Naperville, IL, Dave Ferguson
3. Granger Community Church, Granger, IN, Mark Beeson
4. North Point Community Church, Alpharetta, GA, Andy Stanley
5. Flamingo Road Church, Cooper City, FL, Troy Gramling
6. NewSpring Church, Anderson, SC, Perry Noble
7. Elevation Church, Charlotte, SC, Steven Furtick
8. National Community Church, Washington, DC, Mark Batterson
9. Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL, Bill Hybels
10. Crossover Church, Tampa, FL, Tommy Kyllonen

Life Church Wired

Short one here....we are calling our internet experience Life Church WIRED!

I've spent the better part of the last few weeks working it all up to launching it this week. I'm using all free resources to start with as one of my core convictions is don't let money stand in the way of you doing anything.

We are using wordpress to begin with on our website. http://lifechurchwired.wordpress.com

We are using myspace and facebook for our social experience...and will be also quickly working twitter into the mix. www.myspace.com/lifechurchwired Search for "Life Church Wired" on facebook and you should find it.

Nothing Is Impossible

There are days when I sit and watch my students come in and wonder is there anyway to reach them. Are they already that far gone? (I have a rough crowd.)

Reality is...nothing is impossible with God. It just may not be the way I picture it.

Welcome To

Life Church

It's official...this weekend we have release our name. Check out our launch video below.

You can also check out our myspace which I got up and running tonight.

Be on the lookout this week for our wordpress blog site.

Our First Launch Team Gathering Of 2008

Tonight marks the first launch team gathering of 2008. I'm so pumped for it. We will be studying through Visioneering by Andy Stanley for the next few months as we gather speed for our September launch date.

I spent all day yesterday shooting video and then editing it into a video for tonight. I was up until 3 a.m. working on it. I am using it to launch the name of our church to our team as well as using it to serve as a little vision casting.. (Don't worry...I'll put it up here for all of you sometime this week) I might even let you in on our name.

Be praying for us as we continue taking steps towards DOMINATING this area with the life of Christ.

Getting On Rhythm

I'm a little off rhythm right now. I set out to journal more on this blog and with the holidays I got really out off track. We also started back to work at the school today so that has me busy. I'm getting ready for Sunday evening which is the kick off to our launch team gatherings. Then there is the reading and visioneering I've been doing. All that to say...I'm busy and need to get on track with a schedule. Of course this weekend we decided to do a garage sale.

A couple of things on my block are to get our pastor round table started, secure all the paper work for our church that will initially get it going, spend more time with my family and continue working on our initial strategy.

For all of you out there be praying for us. Pray for God to lead us in every decision we make. Pray for the right people to partner with us. Pray for the resources that He has already made available for His vision.

Values

A couple of weeks ago I started posting on our ethos which is the DNA values we will be as an organization.

After prayer and meditating on how God has fashioned the way we have done ministry we are going to state are values as such. I will be adding the last two over the next month.

T
O

Deliver Unprecedented Truth
Oriented To Seekers
Market-place Ministry
Innovative Thinking
Non-stop Reproducing
Allegiance To God
Team Approach To Ministry
Everything An Experiment

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all. May the year 2008 be your best year yet. May you be blessed and highly favored in this new year.