I want to invite you to join me on Thursday, January 20 from 11:00 am – noon (EST) for an online creative coaching meeting. I’ll do my best to answer your questions from my experience at Seacoast and from connecting with other churches. We’ll also have some other Seacoast staffers online (and maybe even some other church communication proffessionals) to help field questions. I find that a lot of us are asking the same questions, this will be a great way to connect with other churches, get some answers and maybe if we are lucky even some more questions.

There is no cost for the meeting, but you will need to sign up in advance. I want to keep the size of the meeting pretty small so we can have space to get to everyone’s questions and learn from one another.

Apply Here

You don’t like change.  You say you do and often you think you do, but truth is we all have a place on the change journey that feels like we have gone far enough when (to quote the great Karen Carpenter) “We’ve only just begun”.

I have been thinking a lot about change recently.  How does it happen?  Why do we resist it?  Why is it so easy to tweak – and does that ever lead to real change?

One observation that I have made is that there seems to be a curve of sorts related to change that looks a little like this:

During the low-hanging fruit stage (LHFS) we all like change (except for those just adverse to change at all).  That is why the board hires the young new pastor to come “change” things but are blown away when he moves out of the LHFS, they think he will stay in the safe zone and tweak away. Tweak land is comfort land.

But at some point we have to actually make real and radical change (if we want to actually change) and leave behind the low-hanging fruit.  That is where most of us (me included) stop.  That is fun, safe and everyoine like you.  You gave them their tweaks and no more.  Good job. Now go away. We think we have changed.  We think we are making continuous improvements when in reality it is  just starting to be “go time”.

That is when it gets very hard.  The number of followers excited with with you reduce drastically.  It actually goes to bottom at some point and you may be the only one who believes in the change – until you have success.

Success then breads success and in an uptake all of the sudden there is growth and lots of adoption to this “new idea” (most people will never know the whole journey thta’s ok) until we ultimately make the drastic change so successful that is becomes the base-line and we plateau – thus needing to change again…

Have you found yourself dropping out too soon on an idea?  How do you motivate yourself to push through?  What is a big change you have made and seen this play out?

I have been married to my “helper fit for him”, best friend and sweetheart Connie for almost 15 years and we dated for nearly 5 years so this October we will celebrate 20 years together. We have been through a few seasons together in life and ministry. There are some things I have learned as it relates to our marriage that I think may be helpful to note:

Season One: In our early days of ministry Connie was very involved in every aspect of THE ministry. She was a key volunteer for ministry areas outside of the area I was responsible for and sometimes we would even “pass in the night” in our ministry efforts. In fact for a couple of months each summer we would spend 12 weeks speaking and teaching at camps and she was a Bible study leader on the same team, but as a completely separate functional team for the camp. We did not have a house (we rented a very small apartment) so there was not a lot of house work, we did not have children and for most of the time we did not even have a dog. We were very flexible and thus she was very involved. This was a cool season, but I don’t miss it. It drained our relationship in many ways because we were not sharing in the same struggles together so we were bringing separate baggage and issues and then combining them. That was exhausting.

Season Two: When we moved to Seacoast Church in 2001 we moved into a new phase of our ministry life. Connie became a key leader in MY ministry. I differentiate this from the earlier “THE ministry” in that she now filled roles that I needed her to fill as a part of the ministry area that I was leading. She changed roles several times based on what I needed someone that I really trusted to do. We still did not have a house, no kids and high flexibility. Our time was spent in late-night conversations with leaders, teens and even sporadic decision to go to movies with other twenty-something after group meetings at 10:00 pm…it was fun and we were in some ways doing ministry together so it was very rewarding. I would not give that season up for anything – but I must admit I don’t miss it. It too was exhausting.

Season Three: In 2005 we enetered in to a new season that we are still figuring out. This season came about because we bought a house, had a child (now two) and started to see that we were running a sprint and needed a shift. We prayed and made the decision that we felt that Connie should not work outside the home so that she could be a full-time mom and so we started on a journey to get to that place. We started building relationships with older wiser people instead of hanging out with only people our age because we realized that the blind could not lead the blind and Connie stepped out of most of her church ministry roles to become Mom and my helper. It honestly has been the the most rewarding season. Looking back I realize that I had not been man enough to admit how much I needed Connie to be MY helper. I am a high “D” personality on the DISC scale. Basically that means I don’t need a lot of people’s praise and I really don’t care a whole bunch about what you think. Connie is the exception. I care what she thinks about everything. I need her to come and see me and tell me that she and the kids prayed for me before I speak. That makes the difference for me. I need her afterwards to tell me I did a good job and then I need her to tell me what I can do better. She is the helper I need. The helper fit for me. I know this may be slightly controversial, but I think that is what she was created to do.

If you are married, what season are you in? Does it fit your family values? (post of our family values coming soon)

I had the honor in May of 2010 to preach at my home church, First Baptist Church of Moncks Corner, for their 90th year anniversary.

As I looked back over the last 36 years of my life and reflected on the events that God had chosen to allow to happen for me in that church I was struck by the incredible influence that God has had over me through this church.

I was born (not literally but almost) in this church and attended every weekend of my life, I was baptized, preached my first public sermon, licensed to ministry, saw the first person I ever led to Christ baptized and then married the same women in this church. I attended the funeral of my grandfather, my best friend in the world at that time, and preached the funeral of one of the best men the world has ever known (my uncle Herbie) in this church.  I would say that I have left pieces of my soul in that church.

As I reflected on this place what I saw was that since 1920 this place had been in many ways a movement.  But I also warned that just as quickly it can be a museum.

Then I remembered Hard Rock cafe Dallas.

In 1999 I first went to Hard Rock cafe in Dallas and immediately knew something was up with this place.
As I looked around, there were stained glass windows (of King Elvis, but stained glass all the same) and the place just felt like a church.  A little research showed me that in fact this had been just that – a vibrant fast growing church. Planted in 1906 and quickly growing to over 1000 in attendance this place had been the location of Mckinney Avenue Baptist Church.

Now I was eating buffalo wings and French fries while I stared at Madonna’s pointy breasted costume.

What had happened? Somewhere along the way the church had declined, merged with another local baptist church, moved out of the city and rented and then sold this building.  Other churches had used the building but finally worship had ceased until finally in the early 1990′s Hard Rock cafe had moved in and worship had resumed.  Worship of rock-n-roll – but worship all the same.

So the question for the church as we stand at this place in history is will the church continue to be a movement of artists who are working in a studio creating great works of art or will it become a museum where we stand back at look at the monuments of the old days.  Will the men of the church rather encouraging young Rembrant’s to paint in ways that has never been done before in fact simply become curators of the old art protecting it all costs.

If we are just curators of old museum relics of the past – good gracious lets cancel this stuff and find something better to do – church is an awful hobby.

When Church is a hobby…

- Methods are valued over principles. HOW we do something over the outcomes.

- Programs are valued over progress.  We sure aren’t going anywhere but at least we know where we are going.

- Policy is valued over people. Roberts rules of order become more important than Robert.  Jesus died for Robert, not his rules.

- When evaluating anything new we ask “who will leave” rather than “who will come”.

Curators protect methods, programs and policies.

I believe with all my heart that the Church is one generation away from losing an entire generation of young people, maybe even less time if we do not do something.  That something is to be a movement.   Create new songs.  Create new works of art called revitalized families and regenerated individuals.

I pray we are always artists and never curators, God help us.

In 2009 I wrote a series of posts on the “10 Commandments of a Weekend Experience”. As we draw near to Easter Weekend I thought that we could revisit these to make sure we are ready for guests…

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