Unleash Recap (Part 2) – The Practical

I want to focus on the practical things I learned at Unleash today. Everything I learned was practical, but  I want to focus on the systems I can implement into our ministry. Hope this adds value to you and your ministry. I went to two sessions 1.)  Triple Threat Youth Ministry with Brad Cooper (This was awesome!) and 2.) Hiring, Firing, and Creating a Staff Culture with Jason Wilson (their Executive Pastor).  Here we go:

Services:

• Run Through an Entire Service during mock service as if you were having service
• Worship – Use Planning Center Online - Record Tracks early in the week – send them to team
• Countdown’s with the Series Graphic on it
• If it doesn’t point people to service, don’t do  it!
  • They Worship, Preach the Word, and do Small Groups – Period. No events except Summer Camp
• 2 Invitations: Salvation and Prayer – Leaders take students who raise their hands for both and either lead them to the Lord or pray with them then follow-up with them

Weekly Schedule (Youth):

• Sunday – All staff goes  to all 4 services
• Monday – Critique of Sunday (Brutally honest) / Focus on Area of Specialty
• Tuesday – Plan Services 4 1/2 weeks out / Afternoon off
  
• Wednesday -  A.m. Off /  Set-up tear down/ Relationships / Youth Service
• Thursday – Critique of Service
• Friday – Off until 5 p.m. – then Youth Service
• Saturday – Off

Follow-UP

• They use Fellowship One
  
• Small Group Leaders do the Follow-Up
• They TextSignal.com to follow-up with Text Messages

1st Time Guests

• Have Adult Leaders Escort all 1st time Guests around all night and follow up with that student
• They have a first time guest party – the Jump off – Every 1st timer gets a wrist band that gets them in there
• They get a letter at the 1st time guest party

Volunteer Process

• To be a member – you have to serve
• Observation Night
• Interview
• Application

Staff

• They have staff getaways just to pursue God together
• Evaluations every 6 months – great conversation times, feedback,  rating employees

This is just a touch of what I learned and look to implement into our ministry. I definitely recommend following Newspring and seeing what they’re doing. They’ve helped me out several times – they’re more than willing to pour into others and share anything they can that will add value to people and ministries.

You Should be like Shaun White

¹⁰ God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. ¹¹ Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ.    I Peter 4:10-11

Watching the Olympics has been awesome. Nothing has impressed me more than watching Shaun White on the Half Pipe! He is amazing!

I started thinking though… why is it so awesome to watch him? Because he found out what his gift was, dedicated himself to it, and now he gives his gift to the world to enjoy.

Sadly, while Shaun White gives his gift away for the world to enjoy, too many of us sit at home watcing people do remarkable things, and never entertain the thought that we could give something remarkable to the world.

Here is a truth: YOU have something remarkable to offer the world. I don’t know what it is, but the people around you do. Ask people what your good at, discover the gifts that God has placed in you, dedicate yourself to developing those gifts, and then give something remarkable to the rest of the world.

The world will recognize when they see something remarkable – make sure when they see the remarkable in you- you  use it as an opportunity to point people to God, because the reality is, without the gifts and gracings He’s put in our lives, we would never be anything near remarkable.

Don’t neglect what God’s put in you. Be remarkable. Give Your Gift Away for the World to Enjoy.

Tiger Woods and Accountability . . . Who Can Tell You No?

¹⁷ As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. -Proverbs 27:17

This is not a post bashing Tiger Woods. If you got all the money and influence he received at such a young age, there’s no telling what you’d of done with it. My prayer is that God will bring people into his life to love on him and lift him, and he’ll  come back and use his influence for the Kingdom of God. However, I do believe if Tiger had people in his life that could tell him no that he’d listen to, he wouldn’t be in the position he is in today.

I once heard a pastor tell of a time when he got to counsel Deon Sanders. The pastor said, “Deon, all your life, you’ve been able to have anything you want, when you want it. My question to you is, Who can tell you no that you’ll actually listen to?”

Anybody who has ever struggled with lust, sex, affairs, or pornography knows how tough of a battle it can be. Nobody plans on having an affair, becoming addicted to porn, being publically humilated, and having to apologize to the entire world.

However, these are just outcomes of untamed thought lives. The truth is, if people who struggle with these things would have had people in their lives that could tell them no, and keep them accountable, they could have missed out on a world of hurt.

I encourage you to find someone in your life who you can be honest with and share your heart with. Make sure it’s someone who will have the courage to tell you NO.

Have them ask you these questions:

1.) Have you been thinking about anything you shouldn’t be thinking about?

2.) Have you been looking at anything you shouldn’t be looking at?

3.) Have you been going anywhere you shouldn’t be going?

4.) Have you been hanging out with anyone you shouldn’t be hanging out with?

5.) Have you been doing anything you shouldn’t be doing?

Who in your world can tell you no? You better find them and listen to them – they can save you from a world of pain.

Things I Need to Remind Myself of Everday

“Discipline is Remembering What You Want”

There are so many lessons in life that are timeless and that we need to be reminded of on a continual basis. These are some of the lessons I try to think on daily to keep my life in order, focused, and going somewhere:

• My Life isn’t My Own, it’s God’s, I surrender what I want my day to look like for what He wants it to look like.

• God is My Source

• Spending Time with God is the Most Important Thing I do

• I can’t Make Up Tomorrow what I fail to Pay For Today

• Success is a Journey, Not a Destination

• Because of God – I’m always in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people!

• God thinks I can Do Anything so I’m going to Dream as Big as I can!

• Pay Now, Play Later, or Play Now, and Pay Later

• Interruptions can be Divine Appointments
• 
• I can Change the World One Person at a Time

• If I don’t take control of my schedule, someone else will.

• Everybody I meet is Going Through Something and Needs Encouragement

• Financially – if I live like no one else lives now, later, I’ll live like no one else lives.

• Success is when those closest to me, respect me the most -> Connect with Family

• If I don’t Workout and Eat right – I’m going to get Fat

• Look for ways to create memories that you’ll never forget!

• Connect with 5 people you haven’t talked to in a week -> Send a text, facebook, etc.

• Life is Short ->ENJOY THE JOURNEY – HAVE FUN

What are some things you remind yourself  of daily to make sure your life is going in the right direction?

The Rule of 5

²He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes^[a] so that it will be even more fruitful.                                                                         -John 15:2

I want to have a life that counts for God, so I’m always looking for ways to become more productive with my time. I recently listened to a John Maxwell leadership lesson on how to get more done in less time. He spoke about the rule of 5. The rule of 5 is taking an area of your life and doing 3-5 things daily to improve that area. He related it to cutting down a large tree, if you’ll take 5 swings a day at the tree with an axe, eventually it will come down.

It is the same way with our goals in life – the rule of 5 is picking an area of your life and saying, “Ok, what are 3-5 things I can do on a daily basis that will allow me to make progress toward my desired outcome?”

John used the example of writing books. He said because one of the most important things he does is write books – his rule of five for writing are:

Everyday I read, Everyday I Think, Everyday I write, Everyday I file, Everyday I ask Questions.

Since one day, I want to write books, I’ve adopted these into my daily routine. I have a rule of  5 for my walk with God, my relationships, networking, work, every area of my life. I know that if I can do 3-5 things everyday in the area of my priorities, I’m going to make a lot of progress over the course of a week, a month, a year, etc..

It’s said that if you’ll spend 15 minutes a day studying a subject, after 5 years, you’ll be an expert in that area. Little things really do add up. I encourage you to take all of the major areas of your life and make your “Rule of 5″ in each area. Everyday do those 3-5 things and watch as over time, your results start to compound.

Everything I do is Pointless, I want to do Something with Purpose

Ever feel like this? I know I have. When I was 18 I started interning at my church. It was an unpaid internship and I had no  idea what to expect out of the behind the scenes work at a church. For almost a year the biggest responsibility I had was washing pitchers of water and organizing bins for youth group. That’s what everyone dreams of when they think of working at a church, right?

“God is more concerned about developing your potential than you are!”

I would sit in meetings and hear my mentor delegate “significant” tasks to the rest of the team only to end with looking at me and saying, “Bubs, organize the bins and wash the pitchers.” After two months of that, I had enough. So when my mentor left for his 8 week sabbatical, I e-mailed him telling him I quit. I didn’t sign up to work for free and wash pitchers.

He got me in contact with another mentor and had him talk to me. He said, “Bubs, have you prayed about this?” Of course I hadn’t. He said, “Give God a chance to speak to your heart, if you come back and still don’t want to, then quit.” God had one chance – if he didn’t speak to me in my devotions, it was over. I opened to Isaiah 49:3.4:

³ He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, and you will bring me glory.” ⁴ I replied, “But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;I will trust God for my reward.”

This verse changed my life forever. I felt like my work was useless, done for nothing, and for no purpose. YET…I leave it in God’s hands – I trust Him for my reward.  I developed this mentality and decided to stick with the internship.

One Thing Leads to Another

For an entire year, I set up bins faithfully every week. At the end of the year, I got asked to give my first offering. I started getting more responsibility. I interned a second year and at the end of my second year, I got asked to speak for the first time ever. Which led to more speaking engagements, more responsibility, and eventually 4 years after I interned, I got hired on staff at my church.

What Would Have Happened if I Would Have Quit Because I thought Everything I did was Pointless?

I wouldn’t be writing this, I wouldn’t be on staff, I probably wouldn’t be living for God. My Conclusion? God has you where you are for a reason, for your development, and if you’ll learn to trust Him for your reward instead of people, in His timing, He will promote you and allow you to do great things for Him, but first, you have to be faithful in the things that seem absolutely worthless.

Social Media Could Change The World… and Your Life

¹⁷ And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. – Colossians 3:17

Yesterday I covered how Social Media could ruin your life, today I want to focus on how it could benefit your life, in addition to changing the world.

Social Media Can Inspire the World – People often downplay tweeting inspirational quotes – does it really matter? Well, all quotes can do is inspire someone. When the inspiration turns to action – it makes a huge difference. My take: inspire as often as possible – you never know who you’re inspiring and what will happen if they act on that inspiration.

Social Media Can Encourage the World- Everybody needs encouragement. Social media provides an avenue to encourage everyone often.  Encourage everybody you can!

Social Media Makes the World a Better Place – Again, it comes down to who is using it. But what if we’re always encouraging and inspiring people with what we do through social media? You can’t tell me the world wouldn’t be a better place!

Social Media Can Expand Your Influence – You have an opportunity to build your reputation and increase your influence for good or bad with everything you do through social media. Build a great platform – I recommend reading Michael Hyatt’s Blog – he is a master at this. He posted about building your online platform here.

Social Media Can Cause Your Product or Business to Thrive - If you’re consistent and continue to provide products, ideas, inspiration, and encouragement that will benefit others, word will spread and you’ll benefit.

Social Media Can Spread Your Message around the World - What are you passionate about? What is the one message you want to communicate to the world? For me, I want people to know that the best life they could ever live is passionately living for God everyday. Everything I do is to spread that message. If it’s a message worth spreading, it will get around!

What am I missing? What other ways are social media beneficial?

Social Media Could Ruin Your Life

¹⁷ And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. – Colossians 3:17

Yesterday I said that social media is like money, it’s neutral. Whether or not the use of it will result in a positive or negative outcome is entirely up to the user. Today I want to focus on the negative aspect of social media. Here are my thoughts:

You Could Waste Your Life - How much time do you spend on Facebook? How much time do you spend on other people’s pages wishing you were them, could date them, had as many friends as them? How much time do you spend building a reputation online that isn’t even close to what your real life is? Just some thoughts…

You Could Destroy Your Reputation – Ultimately – this really comes down to how you live your life on a daily basis. If you don’t live a life of integrity and make unwise decisions, most likely whether it’s through pictures or people talking through social media, the entire world is going to find out, and what’s worse, once it’s out there, you can’t get it back.

You Could Miss Out on Your Dream Job - Resume’s are boring -> companies would rather google you.  What does Google say about you? Twitter? Your Facebook account? Your pictures? Social media will tell more about you than a resume ever will. If you were an employer and you saw your pictures or googled your name, would you hire you?

You Could Destroy Relationships - There is danger in how connected we can be through social media. Married people  could connect with lovers from high school, you can send love messages to people who are in a relationship and see if they’ll leave who their with to be with you… Basically: it’s a place that could lead to some very bad decisions if you don’t have boundaries in place or apply wisdom.

It Could Kill Your Business, Church, Organization - How often do you check what people said about a product or restaurant before you bought it or visited? When people visit your business, church, or organization, they will talk about  it. They will talk about it online and over time, the more people that talk, the more your companies reputation is effected through viral marketing of your customers. It’s either going to be good or bad, if it’s bad and you don’t do anything to change that… you’re not going to last very long.

These are just a few ways social media could ruin your life…..What am I missing?

God can Do a Lot with Your Little

⁸Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, ⁹“Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”                           John 6:8-9

Do you ever look at where other people are at life, and feel like where you are is insignificant? Or to get where they have gotten in life would be impossible? I promise you they didn’t just arrive at that place. Everybody who is doing something great had to start with something small, with what they had.

God will take what little we do have and make it much

The reality is, we more to offer than we may think. When we offer what we have (our gifts, our talents, our money, our service) with everything we got, God will take what little we do have and make it much.

Jesus took the boys 5 loaves and two fish and used it to feed 5,000 men plus thousands of women and children.

What we may consider insignificant, is significant to God. He said if you’ll be faithful in little, He’ll make you faithful over much.

So wherever you are in life, no matter how little you may think you have to offer, give everything you do have. Give God your best and watch what He does with it.

In time – being faithful with what seems little now, in retrospect, will just be a small step into the bigger things God has planned for you.But God can’t bring you into more, until you’ve valued and proved yourself with the little you have now.

Zachariah 4:10 says, “Don’t despise the day of small beginnings.”

What is before you that you could give to God that you deem insignificant, but could be used to bring glory to God? That could reach people? Don’t miss out on opportunities to minister to people just because you don’t think you have anything to offer – because God will take your little, and make it do much.

The Quote of the Week

With these posts I usually like to post the best quotes from what I read and listened to throughout the week. However, I had a lunch with a mentor, and he shared one quote with me that is going to challenge me for months to come. He said:

“Giving theory that doesn’t produce an outcome,  is never an accomplishment.”

For someone like me, who loves principles, I always have to purposefully check if I’m actually applying them. In this situation, he was telling me that about when I spend time developing others. If I just give people theory without a process that produces an outcome, then I didn’t accomplish anything.

I’ve typed this quote up and laminated and now I carry it with me everywhere I go and pull it out often, so I can always be asking myself – is my theory producing an outcome?

Are you a theory person or an application? Application will always trump theory.

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