• Here’s the Slideshow from today.
• In a change from last week, I was clean shaven and no longer sunburned. As a result, Quality of Life on this Sunday is much better than the last.
• Jesse, Chris, and Kelly have the first wrap-ups out. It’s Kelly’s Sunday Wrap-up debut so tell her hello. For whatever twisted reason, everyone’s Sunday reviews are named after food. Weird…it mostly just makes me hungry.
• David Corrado has a few pictures from the 4th that are worth checking out.
• Audio is here. Vimeo takes a while to render. Once it’s done, Jesse and his crew qill have it up here as well.
• It rained like crazy today. Buckets….mega rain. So far in the theater, we’ve done a service using only the emergency flood lamps and candles.
• Today, the lights only flickered briefly at the beginning of the 10:30 service.
• The cool thing about that is it reset the theater auto-schedules which set off the theater projector running the previews…didn’t last too long thought.
• I enjoyed the new setup…looked great. Our setup crew does a really good job and they do it fast…got to love that.
• Today, I talked about temptation as we finished off Philippians 2.
• Your mind is an airport. Temptation is an airplane. You can’t control whether the airplane lands or not. You can decide whether or not you will refuel it and go for a ride.
• Discipleship happens in community. We don’t mature by retreating. We mature by surrounding ourselves with people who know us, know our struggles, and know Jesus.
• If we give them access to our lives, the Holy Spirit can and will use them to help us grow.
• There are also some struggles that are only go to be overcome by praying and fasting.
• And, with all that said, temptation is here to stay…until the day you die. You simply need the power of God functioning in you to “guide you” in running away from it.
• We run away from temptation. We resist the devil.
• Don’t try to prove your will power by facing down temptation. You’ll lose. Just avoid it and/or run away from it.
• I ran out of time in both services. I need more time or I need to stay a bit more disciplined.
• Since we’re on a tight schedule in the theater, there is no “running over”…only running out of time.
• We got to some Q&A…two questions.
• It was a good day. I’m on my way now to finish it out at home with my fam…might have to pull out another already-been-seen movie and close it out with mind numbing rest. Peace.

Kelly and I had been married for less than a year. We had just moved to Chicago to start a church. I stopped by a public housing project to visit a guy I had met shortly after moving to Chicago. After walking into this guy’s apartment with my wife, I looked at Kelly and said, “Don’t tell your mom I brought you here.”

We both just had a good laugh about that tonight after watching “Gangland” on the History Channel. The show was partly about that housing project, Cabrini Green. Ah, yes…memories.

The lesson learned? If you’re a church planter, your wife has to be crazy enough to follow you anywhere…and you have to be smart enough not to do anything too terribly stupid.

We had a little shindig at my house yesterday for dogs and eats. Reina hooked me up with some seriously good home made salsa. We played Apples to Apples. I found out that James likes to win and he’s fairly expressive. Fun.

Then, we got out the Wii and boxed, played Tennis, and bowled. My shoulder still hurts from tennis. My brother’s back still hurts from a backhand that got a little out of control…sorry Phil. Glad to say my 4 year old knocked her 33 year old uncle.

Then, we headed over to the Homestead Sports Complex. Bill Finch and his life group came pulling up in what appeared to be a Redneck’s Paradise on Wheels (lawn chairs in the back of a pick-up truck, pizzas, cokes). We all found each other by looking for the flags that rock the outside of our theater…definitely came in handy. The fireworks were great. The crew from Life Pointe Church? Trouble as always…couldn’t have it any other way.

This year in the stadium, there was no band/no concert. The Saturn Project should have rocked it. Maybe next year.

Kelly does a great job keeping a journal of our lives.  Kourtney and McKenna already enjoy looking back to see what they used to look like and to see things they’ve done.  Blake?  He mostly drools on the keyboard.

Her blog is a treasure.  I love this video she put together that tracked her day.  Really amazing stuff for a guy like me to have a family like this.

We refuse to connect a phone line to our TiVo. We refuse to have a home phone.  So far, the TiVo police haven’t arrested us. Thanks, babe for the proof that we are living on the edge.

Getting ready for our Fall Semester of Groups, I read through Nelson Searcy’s book, Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. It’s a great read…one of the best practical ministry books I’ve read.

We’ve been working Nelson’s system for small groups at Life Pointe for one year now. We started last fall. The highest we’ve gotten our small group registrations to is 92% of our Sunday attendance. The best we had done prior to his small group system was just under 60%. Nelson has the mind and possibly, the heart of an engineer which makes him a great, direct talking coach to a lot of pastors.

Here are my Top 10 takeaways from his book:

1. Think larger, not smaller. Larger groups minimize the weirdo factor, mean less work for the facilitator, and anticipates that not everyone who signs up will show up.

2. The Four Spaces of Spiritual Growth are: a) public space, b) social space, c) personal space, and d) intimate space. Small Groups are not geared to creating intimate space but, rather social space.

3. Be simple in your approach to groups and ministry. If you give people too many options, their involvement will be so spread out that you won’t have their full participation or momentum in any one area.

4. Entry into a group must be utterly simple and fool proof. A one-step sign-up process, which removes barriers will greatly increase the number of people who decide to join a group.

5. Your small groups must function as a SYSTEM. Systems save you time, stress, energy, and money.

6. Every person on the church staff should have a hand in the development of small groups. Think full staff participation, not staff specialist.

7. Think decentralization, not control. As long as you have complete control over your small group system, you will only be able to go to a certain level before you plateau. Groups will multiply faster and be healthier when you trust God with your volunteer leaders and your volunteer leaders with your people.

8. The implementation of your small groups should go through four processes: a) focus, b) form, c) fill, and d) facilitate. Good ideas are common- what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about.

9. When planning for each semster, you need to have a goal of how many people will be attending Sunday mornings weekly during that semester. Then, you should have a goal to have 100% or more of that Sunday number in a group. Divide that number by 20 and that’s how many groups you should have giving you a basis for how many leaders, co-leaders, coaches, and managers you need to have in place.

10. When filling your group, you need to be strategic using multiple avenues for recruitment, tactics for getting the message out, and be singular in your message during that month of recruitment. Never underestimate the power of someone telling the story of their changed life through their group.

Ed Stetzer is one of my favorite speakers/writers on the Church in America.  He and Troy Gramling have a great podcast here on the challenge of the Church to remain faithful to the Gospel while remaining flexible in our presentation of the Gospel.  Great stuff.

I’m listening to “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang on a way cool tool called Tiny Song.  Listen to just about any song, build a playlist, etc…  I already love Pandora, the Music Genome Project.  This will compliment that site nicely.

• There was no shaving for me prior to church today. I’m a clean shaven kind of guy. But, my sun burn had me give my razor a rest. My back and chest is still torn up. I should be good to go by tomorrow.
• The audio for today is here.
• Phil and Kelly (my honey) have the only other wrap-ups I’ve seen so far. Check them out.  For what it’s worth, it’s Kelly’s first Sunday Wrap-up and she needs your help naming her Sunday blog.
• We had 446 people today. Our June average was 449 people. On our biggest day of June, we had 502. That was the Sunday of the month where TheCURE (students) had their service. No doubt about it. We have more people at church when the youth have a separate service…have to work through what to do about that.
• I was really excited to see all of the leadership developing in the band. Jesse did not participate on the stage at all. Leading in his place was Reina, Julie, Phil, and Alex.
• We should always be developing and deploying new leaders. There is no success without a successor. Great stuff.
• Alex lead an incredible song called “Devotion” by Hillsong United. During the 2nd service it seemed like God was doing something special throughout the auditorium…amazing moment. Playing through this during communion made the moment seem so real.
• My favorite lines were:

When you stand the tall trees and mountains bow

When you speak the fiercest of oceans is still

And I see the sinner seek devotion

The lost become chosen, and I fall to my knees

• A few weeks ago, we moved people over to the 9 am. It freed up room in the 10:30. The 10:30 is slam packed again. We should be going to three services on August 24th (8:30, 940, and 10:50). If we have to, we’ll start our third before then…we’ll see.
• We showed our baptism video from last week…almost always pulls a tear from me.
• Today, we picked up in Philippians 2:1-11 and were talking about humility.
• I have learned that if there is anything that can drive the pride out of you, it is having kids.
• I’ve been feeling that this week in every way possible. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
• After service, we met at the offices for a Life Pointe 2.0 seminar…pretty cool. We had about 22-23 people and picked up a few more bloggers, which expands our influence, develops community, improves Life Pointe Church search engine optimization, and gives opportunities for people in at Life Pointe to “virtually advance the Gospel in reality!

Tomorrow, I’m teaching on humility.  Ben Franklin said that humility was the one virtue he was never able to attain.  It’s a message I’ll be listening to more than I’m teaching.

That’s one of the challenging jobs of being a pastor.  You’re called to share enourmous truths from a holy God.  Leadership requires you to take people from where they are to where they should be.  A leader cannot take someone to a place they have never been.

On days like tomorrow, I’ll be challenged to admit my shortcomings and tell everyone that we’re taking a walk together to a place that we’ve not likely visited very much.