I Love the 80's: Risky Business - Feb 16th/17th

Granger Community Church creates and exists in a high risk/high reward environment. I love that about our church; especially because our focus audience probably has "risk taker" on their resume. This aspect of our culture helps us make decisions and move quickly to execute them. As a result, we are able to accomplish a lot of great ministry with few staff in minimal amounts of time. We are enabled to innovate.

Successfully functioning in a risk-taking environment requires the following from you and your people:

• Being unafraid to fail.
• Being able to think on your feet.
• Being able to synthesize and improvise.
• Tremendous commitment to the mission, vision, and values.
• Outrageous Faith.

This Saturday our volunteer guitarist, Dave showed his tremendous commitment and outrageous Faith. This Saturday Dave was in the hospital. We got a call Saturday afternoon that he wasn't going to make it for the service, that he was in a lot of pain. Of course we were concerned for Dave's health. We were also concerned about the weekend. Dave is an amazing player. We had specially selected the song "Beat It" for Dave because it contained an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. We knew Dave would be able to nail it. Suddenly, no Dave and no practiced backup guitarist. Oh, no.

Well, if you watch the service you will see Dave playing his amazing solos. Dave has a strong commitment to Lord and his ministry. He came in to play all five services this weekend. I heard he slept on our couch downstairs between services because he had to take a lot of pain medication. I am sure it's one of the few times I will be glad to hear the statement,"Your guitar player is on drugs."

I guess what I like most about risk-taking is that it forces us to rely more on God and each other more than even our best laid plans. It's a beautiful thing.

Any Question About Who You Are You Trying to Reach? Part II

I received an email a few days ago with a concern about my February 6, 2008 post that our the scope of who we are trying to reach was too limited. I think that post deserves some followup for the sake of clarity.

The truth is, we want to reach all of Michiana for Christ, all of India, and really, the entire World. However, rather than trying to program our services for all the different people in our community, we try to make our service helpful and relevant to a smaller, subgroup audience; our focus audience (marketers would call that a target audience.) So, when we program the weekend, we try to consider how a 35-55 year old, entrepreneurial, cutting edge, “I don’t need Jesus,” man would feel about the service. He is the "up and outer" as opposed to the "down and outer" (the Church has traditionally been quite successful reaching the "down and outer." )We feel this person is the hardest to reach because he already feels successful by the World's standards but is still far away from Christ. He needs a savior, but doesn't realize it. We feel that if we reach this person, he will plug in to the mission of the Church; bringing all of his talents, influence, and resources to help us reach the rest of the World for Christ. So, if we focus on him, he better enables us to reach the rest of the World.

The Core Twelve

In our Creative Arts staff meeting today, we discussed how we are doing at leading our voluteer ministries. As I was considering some of the key factors in leading volunteer teams, I recalled the book "First, Break All the Rules." I am fan of Marcus Buckingham because he couples insightful management theory with a strong commitment to data. Marcus unveiled 12 questions that measure the core elements required to attract, focus, and keep the most talented employees in the marketplace. Here they are:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the equipment and tools I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my work make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the past 6 months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had the opportunity at work, learn, and grow?

We discussed these questions in the context of the volunteer experience we offer. Would our volunteers answer "yes" to these questions? If not, are there some things we can do to improve in these areas? I am looking forward becoming a better leader and turning any "no" into a "yes" for both my staff and our volunteers.

Movie History Is Made!

I am a movie fanatic. I am a quoter - anything from the 80's and 90's I can probably quote with the best of them. I specialize in stupid comedies. Anything written by Harold Ramis, I liken to a Shakespearian sonnet. If its got Ben Stiller, Will Farrell, or Jim Carrey, I think it should automatically nominated for an academy award. I love spoofs, too. Anything like Airplane, Scarey Movie, Naked Gun, Hot Shots, Police Squad trips my trigger. So, when my son asked me to take him to his weekly movie, I thought, "Alright!... Meet the Spartans!" (This is a spoof about the movie, 300.)

Here's the trailer.

Yep. This could be it. I can now die peacefully knowing I have seen the worst movie of all time. Here is my review: (a quote of a review from another movie) This is a movie that "barely treads water in a sea of retarded sexuality."

What's the worst movie you have ever seen?

Vision Weekend Feb 9/10: One Church ... Where You Are

It was an amazingly painfull, Jack London, Call of the Wild kind of cold here in Granger this weekend ... -4 degrees. Ouch. Still, despite the extreme cold and 50 MPH wind gusts, over four thousand people came to hear about Jesus.

This weekend, Mark announced to the church our multiple-campus growth strategy for this Fall. One of Mark's greatest strengths is his ability to cast vision. This weekend, he proved that to me again. There was excitement and electric anticipation in the air. I can't fathom the blessings God has in store for our church as we move in this direction. I love the challenge before us.

Message Highlights:

• Mark's interweaving of "open door" scripture into his message, making the delivery of those scriptures so seamless they seem pratically transparent, yet were clearly present.
• Mark's use of video technology to support the vision. Check out the Google Earth presentation he uses to explain the viral spread of a church with a mission.

Arts Highlights:

• Angie Henry singing "Set the Worl on Fire." Amazing. I have told Angie that she must sing at my funeral someday. (I hope that is in about 50plus years - when I am 92 and she is ... younger than me.)
• Kim Volheim's Ministry Snapshots video. This is a chance for our church to see the breadth of our ministry. We try to use as many photos as possible in these and these types of videos are Kim's specialty.

If you missed it, please watch: One Church ... Where You Are.

The 50th Grammy Awards

Ah, Yes ... the Grammies! I love them. They help me to understand what is happening in our culture in all the musical genres. Chris and I watched most of them ... up to Amy Winehouse's performance ... it was 10:30 and I needed to get back to rehab before curfew.

Here are some thoughts on the night (at least the parts I saw):

Amy has great style ... feels like I have been teleported back to the 60's every time I hear her songs. A new version of the old seems to have been the theme this year. It always amazed me how we are so infatuated by the "bad boys" (in this case, the bad girls) in our society. The audience really seemed to resonnate with her.

Kanye West as a performer .. pretty good.

Kanye as an award recipient (imagine "please wrap it up" music starting now) ... probably needs some work on the humility side and brevity side.

Kanye as a vocalist ... Kanye's Stronger lyrics really sum up my thoughts:

"N-n-now th-that that don't kill me can only make me stronger .."
(And BTW, what's Daft Punk doin' rippin off his hook?)

I am SO glad we did the The Beatles for Christmas this year. The Beatles are on every one's radar (yet again) ... Check out Let It Be ... Christmas at Wired Churches. I recently saw the Circue du Soliel "Love" show in Las Vegas. It was an amazing experience. The Grammy performance was helpful but didn't do the large show justice. It's a must see.

Carrie Underwood meets "STOMP" .... pretty cool. We have had a lot of success whenever we do something related to stomp/rythym. We need to do that again.

I always love the Foo Fighters ... I was cheering that someone over 40 was still making cutting edge music ... then my wife said Dave Grohl was in his 30's ... I of course argued with her only to find out he just turned 39. Bummer. I hope they have a great album next year when he's 40. Forty-something misery loves Forty-something company.

How Old Is Your Vehicle?

I've gotta say that I love this vehicle; the classic VW microbus. I saw it in a parking lot and couldn't resist a photo. I am sure it has delivered a lot of people to many incredible destinations and been a part of countless adventures. It looks like this VW is still going strong, but I bet the owner is constantly checking on it to make sure it's running smooth.

In the next few weeks we will be looking at our programming "vehicle" as a team; examining all the parts (song specials, announcements, etc.) to make sure we can still deliver our message effectively and continue taking as many people possible on our Journey toward Christ. Dan Vukmirovich will be leading that disscussion and I am most excited. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Any Question About Who You are Trying to Reach?

I saw this while I was driving last week in Florida. I love it. No ambiguity - no tryin' to please everyone. Not worried too much about the women (probably not the sissies either.) Just a church for men: a plain, simple, beautiful, focus audience.

I think I get hung up the most as a leader when I forget who we are trying to reach at GCC (which, by the way, are 35-55 year old entreprenuerial men.) Things get pretty rough when you try to program worship services to make everyone happy because in the end, no one is happy with your service.

Desire Series: Justice Feb. 2/3

I loved this weekend at Granger Community Church. As we wrapped up our Desire series based on NT Wright's Simply Christian our church continues to reach newer, higher places in understanding who God is and what He wants for our lives.

Message Highlights:

Rob Wegner was simply in his "zone" and his passion for Justice in the world was clear. His story about a time when he saw someone unjustly beaten was riveting - I felt like I was there with him. It moved me viscerally.

Arts Highlights: (There were a lot of things that inspired me this week!)

• Adam Tarwaki playing drums on "Let's See How Far We've Come" until his arm spasmed and J Aquila, Laura Waltz, and Trace delivering such great vocal energy ... wow.
• I loved the passion of our vocal team this week for worship. They modeled a true connection with God that made me want to engage along with them. Tim Prugh, Michelle Bythrow, Trace, Laura,J simply rocked.
• The Closing Song by Trace Rorie "Our God Reigns" with the accompanying video created by Ben Sanders was nothing less than life-changing.
• Dustin Maust leads our teams in song selection and I loved all his choices this weekend - wonderful!
• The audio mix ... Adam Calender continues to amaze.
• Trent Runyon's light show ... he's gotta be as much a musician as a technician.

Check out the service on line if you missed it:

http://www.gccwired.com/webcast/WeekendMedia.html