CHOG Migration

December 17, 2008

Catalyst 1 Day - Goeschel 2

this is the third post about Catalyst One Day if you're lost.

Before I jump into Craig Groeschel talk #2 I want to mention a Q & A that he and Andy Stanely did before lunch. It was awesome, to have them ask each other stuff. I didn't catch it all, but here are the one's I did catch. I think these were enough for me to chew on so I stopped.

Q Craig: When you teach it always seems fresh. How do you keep personal spiritual momentum?

A Andy: I just spend most of my time there. I spend most of my time in my giftednes. The more time you spend outside of your giftedness less time you have for the most important things, and the more drained you'll be.

Q Andy: When do you go multi-site?

A Craig: 1. when you've absolutely maximized your space. 2. to go out and be missional. Do something somewhere that others arent. 3. a partnership with others who can't. (Craig partners with other church's with his sermons.)

Creating Personal Spiritual Momentum

Genesis 31: 43-44

[underlined words were blanks in the notes.]

I will do today what I can do , to enable me to do tomarrow waht I can't do today.

If you want to make movies someday go out and shoot today with your Sony handicam. No you may not have what you need, but you'll never get the oppertunities if you're not any good at it.

Four Things To Do Today

1. Do somthing to defat you dark side.

Craig's if fear of not enough. He saw that his church wasn't being generous and he was upset by that then God told him he wasn't being generous. He was giving more tithing, but his heart wasn't generous. He even has a polocy at his church, if you need some money go ahead and take back out of the offering plate. No one will say anyting to you. (That is awesome!)

I thought of something when he was talking about this. He's over compensated, he's become really generous. I thought of Batman. As a boy he was afraid of bats. when he became a ninja, he learned to master his fear, so much so, that he used it to fight evil.

2. Create artificial ministry deadlines.

artificial deadlines force you to:

*make faster decisions

*Intentionally delegate

* disregard unimportant activities

3. Delegate what someone else can do

* don't deleagate responsibilities. delegate authority.

(wow, have I really learned that this one is true. to see the look on someone's face when You tell them that it's they're ship to stear.)

*delegating responsibilities creates followers.

*delegating authority creates leaders.

4. Do somthing only you can do.

1. you're the only one who can care for yourself.

*care for yourself with refreshing activities. (LOL, hobbies or personal life when you're in ministry? Craig's right guys!)

*care for yourself by taking time off. (Ministry is busy and you're gone or busy certain times of the year. you know when it's coming, plan time off after those busy times.)

* care for yourself by spending time with God.

*care for yourself by eating right and exercising.

2. You're the only one who can lead your ministry.

3. you're the only one who can do somehting that privatley honors Christ to you.

4. You're the only one who can be a husband/wife to your wife/husband or daddy/mommy to your kids.

in the Q & A after Craig spoke he talked abou his schedule. He leaves the office at 3.45 every day and heads to the gym.

Someone in our group asked a great question after that session: "so he leaves then, when does his staff leave? Sometimes the leaders, get to leave but the support staff have to stay if the work isn't done. I would ask him that question if I had a chance.

Labels: catalyst, conferances, leadership

Posted By Randy | 2:55 PM | Permalink |

December 08, 2008

catalyst 1-day [groeschel]

here’s some notes from another of the sessions that we experienced at the 1-day conference…

craig’s session was addressing how we think in relation to what we do. some good mental gymnastics on why we do what we do & how to get our “thinking” to the next level so that our “doing” truly matters & has impact.

5 places we need to “re-think”
think differently about…
…your church CULTURE
…PROGRAMMING
…the MISSION
…people LEAVING the church
…LIMITATIONS

…the church CULTURE
if we’re always putting the blame of what’s going on in the church we’re serving we’re simply not doing our job. to some degree people are stubborn & will have difficulty moving into new directions. however, some of the cultural issues are yours as the leader.
LEADERSHIP QUESTION: what am i doing as a leader to change & redirect the culture?

…PROGRAMMING
so much of what we do in life [work, school, family, church] is built around what we’re “doing”. are we making the grade, producing enough, meeting quotas, providing the right programs?
is it possible that we need to scale back all the ‘suff’ that we’re doing [& doing half-way] & focus on a couple of things that we can do well; i mean really well?
the axiom says “if we do more, we can reach more”
i’m becoming less & less convinced that it’s not true.

…the MISSION & people LEAVING the church
so many times the mind-set is that we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings because they might just get up & go to another church. anyone felt this way or heard this said?? yes, i see that hand.
the biggest problem here is that when we begin to become so focused/concerned on those who are considering leaving because the music isn’t just right, or they didn’t get to have a leading role in something & or they just don’t like the way that another is leading – when they become the focus of the leaders we’ve lost sight of the mission.
it almost seems like we’ve become focused on the pharisees & have forgotten about the tax collectors & prostitutes.
Jesus seems pretty clear on this issue. he says, in 21century language, “I’m going this way. if you want to be with Me come on.” he doesn’t seem real concerned with trying to chase down those who don’t want to be involved.
the other thing that pops up here is this notion that if people leave our church we can’t possibly grow. that is a soiled notion!
i heard, quite while ago now, that who is ON the team is as important as who is NOT on the team.
that is to say that there are some that simply are not going to help the cause reach it’s potential & are going to drag their feet at every turn.
help them find a place that they’re going to be happy & productive.

…LIMITATIONS
we often see the possibilities around us as hurdles & impossibilities instead of places that God can move. the churches we serve will often cast a dream as “we can’t do ______, because we don’t have ______”
our job in changing the mindset is to get them to say “we can do _____, because we don’t have _____ obstacles to overcome.”

so, loads of good stuff. too much to put into just a couple of postings here.

is anyone considering catalyst in the ATL for next fall? i’m definitely on-board & would be interested in sharing hotel or vehicle costs. let me know!

Labels: catalyst, change, mindset changes

Posted By nathan | 12:54 PM | Permalink |

November 23, 2008

Catalyst One Day 1

You've probably heard of the Catalyst Conference. In true trail blazing fashoin as you'd expect from Catalyst comes Catalyst One Day. A paired down "accoustic" version. The venue I and some other ChOGers went to [5 others from Saint Joseph, Dave and Nate from Ithica, Lynette from Muskegun, and a few other familar faces that I don't recall at the moment] was Granger Community Church. I guess there were around 1100 there, which is paired down from The Gwinnett Center in ATL. Which holds about 10,000.

This post is a synopsis from the first main session with Andy Stanley. His talk was called "Gaining and Sustaining Momentum." He hung on 3 words, New, Improved and Improving.

New: New things always trigger momentum. People want to check out the new thing, they just do. New events can be posetive or negative. They can also cause posetive or negative results. One time he had in this section of the notes is "Negative circumstances are the fretile soil for a burst of positive momentum." In organizations momentum can be created by new leadership, new direction, new programs. These three thing can help you when evealuating something that lack momentum. This thought hit home with me "Momentum is never triggered by tweaking something old. it is triggered by introducing soemthing new. Minor improrvments in something old will not create momentum."

Improved: "The new must be a noticeable imporvement over the old." this must be a signifacant change in order for it to create momentum.

Improving: "momentum is sustained thourgh constant imporvement" He said it's important to build into your system or organization the imporving of that system or organization.

Momemtum stoppers: "diengaged leader, overactive manegment, complacency, complexity, a breach of trust" Complexity hit home with me. He also said that complexity grows with age. 2009 is our 100 aniversery as a church. the management point hit home too. We tend to like thing neat and tiddy and he said that there needs to be some messiness for creativity and space for God to work. [Caordic is a word that's been typed here before I believe, that's what he was after I think.]

another takeaway was somthing he said about the people that work with us or our congregations. If people are behaving in ways that we don't like, ask your self, what systems have we created that foster that behavior?

All in all a good talk. Andy is on my short list of speakers. Every time I've heard him speak he's really hit home. I really apprecaite his openness and honest to share his mistakes and what he's sturggled with.

On thing I really liked about this format is a Q & A after every talk. They got to expand or clarify and points that they talked about. I didn't realize that there were pages in the Catalyst One Day booklet for that too.

Labels: catalyst, change

Posted By Randy | 10:58 PM | Permalink |