AND FINALLY

One last word before I retire for the night. Our small group was great this evening.
Ken & Lenore Swaner are excellent leaders and the JWATR material was superb - informative, encouraging, challenging.
Pity we have to wait a whole seven days for the next part.

Footnote: If you're part of our church and haven't got into this small groups' cycle, late as it is, go for it. Call the office, call Lesaya, call Town Hall, but get the details of the group nearest you and don't be stupid enough to miss what's left of an outstanding series.

MY MAN PERRY

On Day Deux of the church planters' conference hosted by Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, GA, I checked the schedule and opted for a double dose of Perry Noble(http://www.perrynoble.com). This 35 year old pastor of one of America's fastest-growing churches - located in the middle of a field off a minor road in Anderson, SC - is an outstanding communicator and he really is getting the job done.

His church has gone from a handful of people to over 7,000 in just seven years and there's no question that his down-to-earth, totally non-religious style has played a great part in that growth. Gill and I took in a Sunday night service there at Newspring last July and the place rocks. Here's a link to their website - http://www.newspring.cc - sorry, Blogger has changed a few things and I can't work out how to do a proper hyperlink!!!

Here are a couple of bits and pieces I scribbled down from his talk -

FIVE THINGS A LEADER MUST ADMIT

1. I Must Champion The Vision
Most churches are like planes where the pilot has to go back to first class and ask for permission to follow a course of action. Then first class goes back to coach and makes sure everyone likes the idea. Meanwhile the plane crashes.
Leaders must lead and must drive the vision.
If you don't lead your church, Satan will.

2. I Cannot Please Everyone
Whatever you do, you will upset some people.
People will leave the church.
Things have to fall off the space shuttle for it to get into orbit.

3. I Must Fully Trust God
If you're taking risks you're going to have plenty of Oh crap! moments.

4. I Cannot Do Everything
Keep it simple for the church and for yourself.

5. I Am Not That Smart
Two solutions -
Follow Scripture
Talk to a lot of people who know what they're talking about


Perry's stuff was brilliant. As you can see I didn't really write a lot down, but that was by design as I wanted to be focused and take it in - plus I ordered the CD later of course!

AS THE MAN SAID

Here's a great quote from Bill Hybels -

The goal (of the church), is to slowly make believers independent. We (as a church and pastors) should focus our attention on introducing people to Christ, and then helping them grow to a certain point. After that--they should feed themselves and focus on helping the church introduce more people to Christ.

Couldn't have put it better myself!

ENOUGH!

Okay, that's it - I'm done!

On November 27th I was on a plane from JFK to Mumbai, India and last night, February 27th I flew up from Atlanta to LaGuardia. In that span of exactly three months I have covered 44,000 miles, give or take an odd one here or there and man, am I glad it's over!

It has all been good - I'll tell you more about the incredible second day of the Church Planters' Conference later - but it's enough.

That's mainly because I'm itching to get more fully stuck into where we're headed this year right here at home. We're in the process just now of sharpening our skills at communicating with those who don't yet know Jesus and we're building up to one of the main outreach events of the year - Easter.

Tonight I'm going to get my first chance to join a Just Walk Across The Room small group. I missed the start but plan to be there for the rest of the teaching and then I'm getting ready for our A.S.Q. series - Answers to Serious Questions - which is designed to help deal with those really tough questions that genuine seekers sometimes ask.

One thread that ran through the conference was the importance of sticking with the vision and for us, part of doing that is creating steps to help people see it happen. Since our goal is to seek and save those that are lost, we're really homing in on how to see that become a reality.

Exciting weeks ahead - plenty of time now to simply focus on things at home.

THAT WAS GOOD!

Over the weekend I was pondering what insanity had led me to register for a church planters conference just six days after coming back from India. I was so tired after our service yesterday that I went home instead of to the airport and told Gill I wasn't going to take the trip.

This evening I'm glad I did. After two full weeks of giving out over there, God knew I needed to sit back and get refuelled and that is precisely what is happening.

I could have left for home about mid-afternoon today and this brief journey south would have been worth it, but there's still a whole day to go.

The conference kicked off with host pastor Shawn Lovejoy talking about Resisiting. His church has grown from nothing to more than 2,000 in attendance in little more than six years, so I guess he knows a thing or two. Resisting what?

Well, Shawn talked about the fact that a few years into their journey most churches are not what they originally set out to be. He talked about how they get pulled off course and how the only solution is to constantly be mean with the vision.

I know what he was talking about. We started our church with one goal in mind - To seek and save those that are lost. Over the past eight years there have been plenty of people who have suggested we should take a detour and do something else. But the "What about me?" crowd have quickly discovered that we won't be moved from our stated purpose either. I'm mean with the vision too because the stakes are too high, people's eternity is in the balance.

There are hundreds of thousands of churches out there doing church for the Christians, but last time I checked, our consuming passion is meant to be reaching those who are lost.

Shawn talked about those whose self-centredness is hidden behind the complaint that as mature believers they need to be fed and made a very sound point when he said mature believers should know how to feed themselves and should be on board with the mission of bringing others to Jesus and helping them to mature.

I like that guy!

Another guy I like is my friend Gary Lamb. He was doing a breakout session on Going All Out For The Disconnected and I got a front row seat for this one. Gary's church has gone from four couples to over 700 every Sunday in less than two and a half years and 70% of those people did not know Jesus at all when they first came to Ridgestone Church.

Gary's young, passionate, direct, unapologetic and hilarious too. I love listening to him and spending time with him. We're in touch all year round, but it was good to hear him at the conference and see him sharing his heart with others who are serious about church planting too.

All in all, an excellent day, topped off with a couple of hours in Outback, chewing on a (small) steak and picking the brain of another friend, Tony McCollum who leads Mill Creek Community Church in nearby Buford, GA. Man, does that guy talk a lot of sense!

GOOD MORNING CUMMING

Today I woke up in Cumming, GA and there's a good reaon for that - this is where I went to bed last night!

I am attending a church planters' conference being hosted by Mountain Lake Community Church and will soon be joining around 600 other leaders involved in this extreme sport of pastoring.

The word that church planting is the best way to reach those who don't know Christ is old now. It's well proven and I'm looking forward to getting together with hundreds of others who are seeing that happen and listening to some of the most respected new church pastors in the country.

Will be home to snowy NY tomorrow evening, but for today I'll enoy the sunny 68 we've been promised for the Atlanta area.

CAN THE WOMAN TEACH OR NOT?

Lesaya was brilliant this morning!

It was so good to be home after spending the last two Sundays in India. I love it there of course, but it's not here. It's not Church At The Movies and it's not our folks. It was great to be back in the thick of things today and what a great morning.

Since last Sunday's service was cancelled, today I got to listen to Lesaya teach the second part of our series Just Walk Across The Room. I'm pumped about this series because it's about what we're about - reaching out in a relevant way to people who don't yet know Jesus. What a lot of insight she brought today.

She was challenging, inspiring, practical ... and funny. I loved the story of her doorbell evangelism in California as a teenager when a guy in his birthday suit responded to her knocking at his home!

She brought some great stuff out of Luke 15 about the lost sheep, coin and son. I really liked the thought that none of them was chided for where they were at or how they'd got lost, people who cared just looked for them, found them and celebrated. God deliver us from judgmentalism and condemnation and help us to love those who are still lost regardless of where they're at and how they got there.

Lesaya Kelly is a great asset to our church and a valuable part of all that we're expecting to see God do as we continue to press forward.

SUNDAYS OFF

There has been some interesting feedback from the Sunday off that everyone got last week because the theater's heating went kapput.

The bottom line is that everyone who has talked to me really missed being able to worship with the Church At The Movies gang. Some went to a different church for the day and got a reminder that there's quite a difference between us and any other church in the county.

Others just enjoyed sleeping late and didn't even think of going elsewhere because it wouldn't be the same.

We don't have it all together. There's plenty of scope for improvement. We're not better than any of the other good churches in our area. But we definitely are different and I love that. It isn't just that as a relic from the rebellious 60's I thrive on challenging the staus quo. There's more to it than that.

Truth is 1.3 million people in our county have never opted into established church. They don't want normal. So since we're offering an alternative style, we have a good chance of drawing some of them in. They don't want church as it is - so we offer church as it could be! And that's why we are the way we are and why we do what we do.

FOREIGN TOILETS

Spend any time talking to someone who has been on a missions trip and sooner rather than later it is inevitable that the conversation will come around to the facilities available for relieving yourself. Here are a couple of bathroom snippets from our recent visit to India -

1. On our last morning there, I heard a piercing scream from the bathroom where Gill was showering. Turns out there was a fair size frog clinging to the tiled wall and for some reason my good wife had an aversion to sharing her personal time with the creature! Enter Sir Galahad.

2. During the pastors' conference I was teaching we touched on how it is important that our facilities look their best for the sake of our Sunday guests. The state of the bathrooms was mentioned in this segment, after which the pastor of a large church in Hydrabad thanked me for the insights and said he had decided that from now on they would ask for the use of the toilets in the building they rent on Sundays. Turns out they had never had them opened up because it would cost more!!!! Short services there, I guess!

3. I cannot for the life of me work out why in the men's room of the business class lounge in Mumbai airport there are two urinals and no stalls. I guess posh people don't ... okay, you get the idea!

GETTING READY TO WALK

I'm pumped that so many of our folks have already purchased their own copies of Bill Hybels' new book, Just Walk Across The Room. We just bought in a load more, because now that I've finished it myself I want to be sure that everyone in our church gets their minds around what's being taught in its pages.

We've set this year as the one when we break through the 500 barrier, but wishin and hopin and thinkin and prayin won't make that happen. There has to be a plan.

The first part of it is that we spend four Sundays talking about influencing people for Jesus, at the same time our small groups watch Hybels on DVD and discuss each week's theme, then we all read the book and finally - we start to do all this!

This is a great book. It's liberating, guilt-destroying, innovative and best of all has very few big words in it. It is very, very readable.

Just Walk Across The Room sets the tone for our year. It's foundational and I'm loving it.

EATING INDIAN

Suffering withdrawal symptoms after two weeks of spicy and flavorful Indian food, I ate lunch at the House of India restaurant in Centereach today. It has to be the best deal in town - $8.75 for all you can eat and trust me, the food is really good. Yes I did pig out, I did eat more than I should, but a person has to do that now and again. Let's face it, I wouldn't be normal if I didn't!

Anway, just when you thought there wasn't one, here's the real point. I was eating with a guy who's the salt of the earth - the kind of person who's the backbone of our church. He isn't too conspicuous, definitely isn't seen on stage, but he's committed, involved and as excited about all that is going on as I am.

Gene Holland has been helping with our Saturday afternoon mobile soup kitchen ever since we started it five years ago. He says it's one of the highlights of his week and although I started off leading the outreach myself, the fact that I often only get there 50% of the time nowadays has meant that he is now the person who looks after things faithfully and well.

Gene's a great guy. His Jamaican roots mean that he follows cricket avidly - used to play when he was younger - and so among other valuable contributions he makes, he scours the internet every week to keep me informed on what is happening in the game worldwide.

Our church is made up of hundreds of people just like Gene. They're not looking for the spotlight. They've just caught the vision and are willing to do whatever they can to help make it happen. I'd like to take them all to lunch, but since that's not feasible I do want to salute them right here.

LUNCH WITH LISTON

I took a ride to Flushing, Queens today to meet up with my friend Tony Liston who leads Adventure Christian Community - http://www.adventurecommunity.org - in Davenport, Iowa.

Adventure launched four weeks before we did and any chance to hook up with its progressive pastor is worth seizing. So as he and a couple of guys from his church got off a plane at LaGuardia early this afternoon, I sat down with them at the Paradise Diner to anjoy some good food and fellowship.

The guys are in town for a conference on reclaiming the arts that is being held in Tribeca over the next couple of days, all of which is a bit out of my league but kudos to them for wanting to make a dent in the arts community in darkest Davenport.

I am grateful to God that throughout the years I have been in ministry, I have had good friends around me that I could rely on, bounce things off and laugh with too. Tony's one of them - he's a special guy.

SUNDAY IN GOA

WHO'S HOT?

Good news - the heating system in our movie theater has been fixed, so we are able to get back to normal this coming weekend. Seems there was a small fire in one of the boilers and then there were fears of a gas leak, thus the last-minute news that we couldn't get in there last week.

There's something of an irony in the fact that while service was cancelled here through lack of heat, Gill and I were sweating throughout the morning as I preached at Covenant Blessings Church in Goa, India. It was around 95!

The congregations there are both growing - one in the town of Cangalute where we were staying and the other in Vasco, around 45 minutes from there.

This is tourist season in this vacation state and it seems that Cangalute is to the British what Port St. Lucie is to New Yorkers. It's the snowbirds' winter hangout where anyone under the age of 374 feels very much out of place. I have never seen so many Brits abroad - what a scarey looking bunch!

Anyway, as I say the churches there are thriving, but since so many of their members have to work Sundays throughout the main tourist season, it was decided to have a joint service when we were there. There were still over 100 worshipers and it was great to see them all again (this was my fourth visit to Goa). Encouraging the pastor there is an excellent investment of time and energy.

VIVE LA FRANCE

Got back home this afternoon and will post something reasonably intelligent once I get out of this jet lag induced stupour.

Meanwhile, since I have been accused of being a bit hard on my former neighbors, the French, in the past, let me say that having spent 45 minutes in Paris this morning, I have a new appreciation of these wonderful people.

Wondering whether we would make the connection in such a short time, with a change of terminal involved too, we were contemplating the results of missing the flight, which would have been a seat on an Air France plane to Newark six hours later.

So imagine our joy when we were met off the Mumbai flight by a chirpy French lady as dawn was breaking over the Eiffel Tower and discovered her sole purpose as an airline employee was to drive us directly over to terminal 2E and escort us through security and onto our ongoing flight. Nice work mes amis, we made the connection.

I also need to say a word about French cuisine. While airline food stinks the world over, our friends who gave the world noveau cusine really could show the peanut toting US carriers a thing or two about how to serve their passengers. The food on these flights was outstanding - though of course we were flying business class, courtesy of frequent flyer miles and not in the cattle truck we generally occupy - but I must confess being offered a choice of wines for breakfast was a first. Do they really do that in France?

Good job my French friends. I always loved your country!

STIRRING THINGS UP

Just got back from the pastors' conference we have been conducting over the past three days and have succeeded in setting the cat among the pigeons. I taught Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Church Conference material and really stretched the minds of some of the guys who were there.

All of them were very appreciative and they certainly had a lot of questions. One of the pastors leads a network of almost 700 churches and he wants me to come back next year and teach the material to all of his pastors, so we'll see how that works out.

Have had no internet access for days, so am catching up now. Will take Gill out to dinner tonight - Valentine's Day! - and then tomorrow we fly to Goa for a few days which will include ministry in the church there and a lot of meditation on the beach!!!

Very purposeful trip so far. Thanks to all who are praying for us.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

India is a remarkable country, with some of the most obliging and capable people you could ever hope to meet. It's a place where they offer you tea or coffee when you walk into a store, treat you like you matter and don't talk on their cell phones while they're ringing you up at the checkout.

I brought some artwork with me to have banners made for our upcoming series and a few other odds and ends and could hardly believe the sequence of events. The graphics were given to the printer yesterday afternoon and by 9.00pm, I was looking at quality 8 x 6 banners, all good to go. How long would that take back home? And by the way, you get them here for around one twentieth of the price!

We went into a leather shop today and Gill was looking at jackets. They didn't have exactly what she was looking for in black, but explained apologetically that they could measure her, make it and have it delivered to us free of charge tomorrow - again at a fraction of the cost in the U.S.

Talk about customer service!

They're smart enough to know that they are here to serve people and that is something they do real well. It's not all about how good they look, how well their products are displayed or whether they themselves are having a good day. The store owners know they exist to meet the needs of the men and women who walk in the door.

That's a dying mentality in the west - sadly.

It's a dead mentality in the self-absorbed American church too. Mercifully in recent years God has been reminding a lot of people in our own country that our purpose has to be his purpose, which is to serve those that are lost.

Customer service needs to be our first priority.

SMALL WORLD

Twenty four hours from now I will be sleeping soundly (I hope!) in Basil and Cathy D'Souza's apartment in Mumbai (Bombay), India. Less than 20 hours door to door - can't be bad. I am so glad that Delta finally saw the sense of introducing a direct flight instead of dumping their passengers somewhere in Europe and letting a partner airline pick up the cash for taking them the rest of the way.

This will be a good trip, with four major focuses -

1. Participating in Basil's church's 25th Anniversary Celebrations over the weekend as the keynote speaker.

2. Teaching the Purpose Driven Church conference to 40 key pastors next week, who lead networks totalling 2,000 congregations. This with the understanding that they will take the material and teach it to these network pastors.

3. Visiting the church in Goa that has been doing so well.

4. Sitting on the beach in Goa and reading a book for a day or two.

Looking forward to Gill traveling with me on her first visit to this great country. My ministry in India has often coincided with her missions teams going to South Africa, but February is clear for her so we're jetting off together.

Will blog along the way whenever I get chance.

THE DAY AFTER

They said he was too nice to win. They said he just didn't have what it takes to succeed on the biggest stage of all. But last night in Miami Indianapolis Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy became only the third man in the history of the NFL to hold aloft the Vince Lombardi Trophy as both a player and a head coach.

I guess "they" aren't as smart as they thought they were!

He doesn't scream on the sidelines, doesn't rant and rave and no one has ever heard him curse, apart from one occasion when he used the title of a TV sports program - The Best Damn Sports Show Ever. Teased about that, he gave the assurance that it would never happen again.

I'm glad the Colts won Super Bowl XLI. Not just because they're a good football team, not just because Dungy and Manning have been slagged off for too long as big game losers, not just because I'm fed up with seeing the Patriots swagger to the podium.

I'm glad because it was a victory for values and a great triumph for a coach who makes no secret whatever of his faith.

The quote of the night goes to Coach Dungy -

You can win doin' it the Lord's way.

I love it!!!

GO COLTS!

Tomorrow is a huge day - imagine church and the Super Bowl both in a twelve hours timespan. And in case anyone is not sure where I stand on the latter -

GO COLTS!

WHAT A TEAM!

I just got home from a daylong meeting with our ministry leaders. With a couple of exceptions, we had everyone who heads up an area of ministry with Church At The Movies together for fellowship and teaching.

Our Volunteer Coordinator, Debbie Ingino did an outstanding job of pulling everyhting together for the day and my good friend Douglas McIntyre from Indianapolis shared some excellent material on subjects like Leadership Styles and Coaching Your Team. All very inspiring and thought-provoking stuff.

One fascinating part of the program was when Doug asked the group what they thought we should do to help us reach our goals if we found an extra $100,000 in the budget. After getting a number of replies, he suggested we think again and come up with non-religious answers - answers that were "outside the box" (he didn't use that phrase and I don't like to either as it has been worked to death, but it conveys the idea).

Folks, there is great cause for concern about the welfare of our church. Going on today's evidence and the ideas that surfaced, our ministry leaders to the very last person are as insane as I am. You should have heard their suggestions!

You would not believe what they would do with that $100K to help us accomplish our purposes.

Since the presence or absence of money must never be the deciding factor in the kingdom of God, I suggested that we should sit down with that list of craziness anyway and check out what we could actually implement in the coming months.

We're going to do that on March 4th.

Be afraid. Be very afraid!

JUST WALK ACROSS THE ROOM

Ever since the success of Rick Warren's 40 Days Of Purpose campaigns, preachers and their publishers have been constantly scurrying to put together packages they can sell to churches, generally comprising a book, some Sunday teaching suggestions, small group DVDs and study guides. I can hardly believe how many people are jumping on the bandwagon and are kind enough to send me samples that I have no intention whatever of using.

However when Bill Hybels writes a book about connecting with the unchurched, I take note and when he puts it out in a format that can be used for the whole church, I am especially interested. Because if anyone knows anything about building bridges to reach the unreached it's this guy, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois.

He doesn't know it, but Bill Hybels played a huge part in the establishing of our church. In the summer of 1998 Gill and I spent a week out at Montauk talking, praying and thinking about the future. After almost 30 years of pastoring, we were looking to see what God wanted us to do with the rest of our lives.

During the course of that week I read Hybels' book Rediscovering Church, which tells the Willow Creek story and explains how their church is structured. It touched a cord with me.

Willow was started with the express purpose of winning people to Jesus - a rare concept in church circles today. Most congregations are social clubs of varying sizes catering to the whims of their exclusive membership while paying lip service only to the needs of those that are lost and could well spend eternity that way.

The book re-ignited a flame that had burned brightly within me when I started out pastoring at the age of 20, but had been slowly extinguished as I spent my life playing nursemaid to Christians who were going nowhere and whose sole focus was their own well-being.

What a great concept - reaching the not-yet-Christians.

Could we do it?

Should we do it?

Yes we should!

And that's how this adventure started. Hybels doesn't just talk about bringing people to Jesus. He does it. He pastors one of the largest churches in the country, but on a personal level he still works at building relationships with people who do not yet know Christ so that in time he can introduce them to the Savior.

In a year when we are looking to take major strides forward, the focus on Just Walk Across The Room will make sure we are headed in the right direction.

The action starts on Sunday February 11th and the small groups registration is open right now.