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Interns Rock

At CCC we had somebody that knows our lead pastor express an interest in spending a month at CCC interning in the children's ministry.  Her name is Katy and she's been with us for the last few weeks.  Katy has been a huge help in launching our Super Heroes series in Discovery Island.  That project took a lot more work than we expected and there were about 7 people who really stepped up to make it work. 

Katy is interested in working in children's ministry when she graduates from college, possibly after pursuing a master's degree.  My hope is that we can pour everything we know out for her to learn.  My gifts aren't necessarily in children's ministry as much as they are in leading and developing teams.  It is for that reason that we rely on reThink (our strategy provider) to be the children's ministry experts.  Two of the people that lead that organization were the most influential people in children's ministry in the last 2 decades.

So, I've spent time sharing with Katy what I know about leadership, teams, ministry, church culture and children's ministry.  That took about 5 minutes.  Katy has also got to sit in on staff meetings and had the chance to have dinner with a bunch of families involved in children's ministry at CCC. 

She's already done more than enough for us so at this point it looks like we're benefiting the most, which I regret.  It would be great if after her experience at CCC she felt like it was the best non-job job she ever had.  I wish that for everyone that volunteers or works at CCC.  With the short time she has left I'm hoping we can answer any questions she has and be more of a help to her than she has been to us.  That will be difficult though.

How do you develop interns?

Super Heroes

Yesterday was a our first Sunday of the Super Heroes series in Discovery Island, our K-5th grade environment at CCC.  It was great.  There was definitely a buzz going around with the kids being excited.  Since we launched we desired to change the pace over the summer in Discovery Island for two reasons.  One is to lean more on the large group side of things so summer volunteers don't have to be small group leaders, but rather facilitators.  The other is to provide momentum heading into the summer (when momentum usually sinks) and the change allows us to create new momentum heading in to the fall. 

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.  Here are some pics:

Jake opening up large group talking about super heroes:

Our over-sized super hero Bible:

Our video game stations with a little super hero flare:

Fulfilling Exhaustion

This week has been a tough one.  Coming off vacation is always tough because a lot of the stuff that wasn't done while you are away still has to get done.  On top of that is the fact that this Sunday we're starting our Super Heroes series in Discovery Island at CCC.  We've been preparing for this for a few weeks now, with tons of help.  But, it's been so much work that it has felt like the week we launched our first KidStuf......which felt like the week we launched CCC.

So, that's why this is the first blog since last Friday.  Hopefully I'll update more often again.  This week has been totally exhausting but very fulfilling.  Once we finish this week, we're almost set for the rest of the 10 week series and that will be nice.  On Thursday Jennifer went to CCC with me to help out and we were there for 14 hours!  The end is in site.  The other beautiful thing is that we can use this series over the summer next year at the Dundalk Campus once it launches.  We'll pack up all the printed graphics, banners, designs, decor, and store all the videos, audio, notes, and pretty much everything we used and have it ready to be used again and again.

I can't wait until Saturday.  What exhausts you in a fulfilling way?

Breakout Churches

Our staff recently read Breakout Churches by Thom Rainer.  The book was very similar to what Good to Great was for the business world.  That was done on purpose.  Thom and his research team set out to find some churches that broke out of mediocrity and had great success under certain conditions:

• They had to have a period of decline
• They had to break out with the same pastor leading the church the entire time
• They had to have at least 26 conversions/year after breakout
• They had to have no higher than a 20:1 conversion ratio (20 christians for every 1 conversion per year)

Here are some points that hit me:

• It's a sin to be good if God has called us to be great (my favorite!)
• When pastors grew in their leadership, the growth of the church was directly affected in a positive way
• The breakout churches consistently had a vision that was outwardly focused
• Breakout churches faced the brutal facts about their ineffectiveness and changed.  Churches that didn't break out were either in denial of those problems, or didn't have the courage to do something about it.
• Almost all of the breakout churches were influenced by conferences, books, consultations or other similar outside influences.
• Breakout churches had a culture of serious fun

As I read through the book I thought of the countless churches that are declining.  That's probably 95% of the churches in America.  At the Drive Conference Andy Stanley talked about the fact that their are tons of churches that have resources & people, but aren't effective, that are declining and aren't making an impact on their communities.  He said that somebody will figure out how to get those churches to take their resources and marry them with new ideas to actually make an impact. 

I've mentioned a couple times that my BIG prayer is for God to help Baltimore become known for strong, healthy churches, for His glory.  I believe a huge part of making that happen is church planting.  But, I also believe it will take a lot of churches breaking out.  Hopefully somebody can figure out how to do what Andy talked about, here in Baltimore. 

Confront the Brutal Facts

Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith) is one of the chapter titles in Jim Collins' book, Good to Great.  In that chapter Jim talks about the importance of looking at your current situation without any bias or lack of clarity.  He contends that companies that made great decisions regularly were able to do so because they always took an honest look at their situation, even if that look was extremely painful. 

Thom Rainer's book, Breakout Churches, is patterned after Good to Great but instead shares the results of churchesthat went from good to great rather than businesses.  In that book, Rainer talks about the ABC Moment where churches experience a wake-up call and realize things aren't great, or sometimes even good.  ABC stands for Awareness, Belief & Crisis which Thom says are the steps that church leaders go through during that wake-up call. 

Breakout Churches talks about interviewing numerous church members and leaders who denied that their churches had any problem when in fact their churches had been in decline for years.  But, they weren't bold enough to confront the brutal facts and as such will be mired in mediocrity until they do. 

At CCC we definitely confront the brutal facts.  We spent an hour last week in staff meeting talking about how to get the best information possible about something we do regularly.  We want to gauge the effectiveness of it.  As best we can tell, it seems to be a great idea but we never want to assume that.  Up until now we haven't been able to track the effectiveness of it but we discussed a plan for how to do that from now on. 

I wish more churches would have enough faith to confront the brutal facts and then have the courage to act on what they find.  I believe their denial will trap them into being ineffective and will waste a lot of untapped potential.  CCC Kids team members, plesae don't ever let me shy away from the brutal facts!

Whiteboard Sessions Tomorrow

David Robinson and I are heading to the Whiteboard Sessions in Reston, VA tomorrow.  It's a one day deal with 8 influential Christian leaders who will each have 30 minutes to speak on 1 topic.  I follow 4 of the speaker's blogs but I'm excited to hear from all of them.  Here's the line up:

John Burke, Ed Stetzer, Mark Dever, Darrin Patrick, Vince Antonucci (he's been to CCC), Mark Batterson, Tim Stevens, & Perry Noble.

You can read their bios on the Whiteboard Bio page.

I probably won't blog while I'm there (I hear there's no WiFi) but I'll Twitter as much as I can.  Twitter has been really flaky recently so we'll see how that goes. 

I'm leaving Thursday morning so it will probably take me 5 hours to drive the 68 miles to Reston because 95 & 495 transform into parking lots during morning rush hour. Seriously, I hope I can do it in 2 hours or less.

Leadership Community Gathering

Yesterday at CCC we had our Leadership Community gathering.  Leadership Community is something we do about 4 times a year where anybody who serves is invited to attend.  We cast vision, talk about what's coming up and break down into ministry teams for focused discussion.  For this round of Leadership Community we didn't have one all together as usual, instead each ministry team had its own.  Children's Ministry had ours yesterday after services. 

Here are my random thoughts about it:

• It was A LOT of work to prepare for.  I couldn't believe how much work it took to get that all together but the children's ministry leadership team is a hard-working bunch. 
• I loved the fact that we gave all kinds of stuff away - ipod, amex gift card, 15 movie passes, restaurant gift card, Ritas gift cards, scopes (my-scopes.com).  I wish we could give away a lot more but it was great to reward them in that way. 
• Tom is a great game host
• Kenny & Diane kicked but on the grill, in the rain no less
• Denise organized the entire food deal and it rocked
• Lisa helped the place look great and had great ideas that were used all over the place
• We announced that Melissa will be directing all of preschool.......which means it will be like 5 times better than when that other noob was directing it.
• We talked about Sue being our first coach and the fact that she'll play a big role in CCC Kids at the Dundalk campus.
• I like talking about our vision
• No matter how you present organizational information, it's still boring to most people
• I don't think people minded the fact that we went long since we had so much fun at group Jeopardy
• There are a couple of things we need to do a better job communicating

It was really cool having everybody from all the children's environments together since they don't get to meet each other often.  I had a great time and can't believe how many awesome people leverage what they have to help CCC reach people who are not a party of any church.

I Love Teams

Tonight our Children's Ministry Leadership Team had our monthly meeting.  But, tonight's was different because we added 2 people to the team.  We poured a lot into 3 hours, mostly in preparation to celebrate and cast vision with our children's ministry volunteers on Sunday at our gathering.  Those 6 people that are a part of the leadership team flat out rock.  As busy as they are, they carve out 3 hours to meet monthly in addition to the many hours they each put into the environments they serve & lead in.  They're high caliber producers, thinkers & leaders and CCC Kids wouldn't be where it is without them. 

In all of the jobs I've ever had until now, I was never really on a "team".  Sure, I was grouped in on the organizational chart with some other people that all reported to the same leader, but it wasn't a team.  In church world I've almost always been on teams, as a volunteer and on staff.  I never want to work anywhere again where I'm not a part of a team and here's why:

• Teams are fun
• Synergy is a good thing and can't be had alone
• Having multiple opinions and viewpoints is a good thing
• Teams accomplish more in less time
• Teams force you to think "we" and not "I"

Disclaimer:  When I say team, I mean healthy team.  There are a ton of teams that aren't healthy and the statements below wouldn't apply to them.

What's even better than that is the children's ministry volunteers, as a team, are like an extension of the leadership team.  What I mean is that they are high caliber producers, thinkers and leaders too.  I love their servant hearts, passion for our vision and their "mad skills".

Best Job You Ever Have

Yesterday I totally could have had a "case of the Mondays"  (Office Space reference - see here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3lfiuS40g8)

I slept an average of 5 hours/night last week because of having the Drive Conference & KidStuf all in one week.  Fortunately I love both of those things so it was a good tired that I was dealing with.  Then, Sunday night I totally shut down faster than Enron.  So, I made up for a lot of that lack of sleep but Monday I was still dragging.  It made me think about how happy I was that I got to go to a job I love.  I've been there before, where I hated my job.  I've also had jobs I didn't love or hate, but wasn't passionate about. 

In thinking about all that I remembered a quote Andy Stanley said at the Drive Conference.  He said that every few months he meets with all the new hires at North Point and one thing he tells them is that his goal is for their job with North Point to be the best job they ever have.  (Carlos talks about that here.)

That's making me think about what I can do to make sure everybody's experience volunteering in the children's ministry at CCC is the best "job" they have ever had.  Obviously I don't want them to view it as a job but you know what I mean.  Even if they love their job, I hope volunteering at CCC is even better.  So much so that when they have a "case of the Mondays"........on Sunday morning, they leave with a case of the FUNdays (yes - I just made that up and yes I know it's totally corny) because they just spent time serving in CCC Kids. 

Chase Elementary - ServeFest

Yesterday my dad, another CCC volunteer, and I all helped out at Chase Elementary as part of our 2 week ServeFest at CCC.  The project they needed help with was working on some gardens in their courtyard.  Knowing that's what it was, I asked my dad if he would help.  I know nothing about gardening but my dad is pretty much an expert so I knew we would be okay.  I'm glad he came too, because I really did have no idea what to do.  I'll post some pictures of the garden when I get them from the teacher we worked with.

It was a great experience and we made some good connections with the principle and some of the teachers.  The teachers we worked with were great and you could tell they really care about the kids and the school.  It's not just a job for them.  They have a team that meets regularly to talk about ways they can do an even better job training those kids and working with parents.  I might get a chance to sit in on that with them.  It will be great to learn from them and hear about the challenges they are facing.   

It almost feels wrong to enjoy serving others that much.