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I gave birth to a sermon this past Sunday morning. I realize if there are any ladies that read my blog, you may be offended, and tempted to write me flaming comments about how I “Don’t even begin to understand…” and you’re right, I don’t. It’s probably a bad analogy, but the only one I can think of.

The short story is that God has been doing some remodeling of my heart the past few months. It’s pretty easy to trace the starting point back to my trip to Guatemala with Journey Church in August. That was the beginning. Another key landmark on this journey has been the reading of Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. It rattled me to my core… I still haven’t dealt with all of the ramifications from this book. More recently, I came across the Advent Conspiracy video which I’ve posted on this blog twice in the past couple of weeks. I was inspired by the words, imagery, and music. I was shaken by the keynote statistic that Americans spend $450 Billion Dollars on Christmas each year, and it would only take $10 Billion Dollars to provide clean drinking water to all of earth inhabitants. The lack of clean drinking water is the #1 killer of human life in our world today. I actually planned to use this statistic as one of the primary illustrations of my talk on Sunday, and completely forgot about it. When I realized that Monday afternoon, I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and share it.

So basically, God has been working on me in this area of poverty, wealth, America vs. the world, rich & poor, and my place in all of that. This past Sunday I had the opportunity to give birth to some of what I’m wrestling with, and what God is teaching me. If you were not

 at Journey Church on Sunday, I encourage you to listen to this talk. Not because it’s me, but because the Message God is sharing with me, and wants to share with you is so important. It could change everything…

Click here to visit the CincyJourney media page and listen to the talk. You’ll find it as the uppermost link in the list of talks. You can also search for “Journey Church West Chester” in iTunes and subscribe to our podcast.

I normally wouldn’t announce in advance when I’m preaching for Tom at Journey Church. It’s actually our “policy” to not announce the weekend speaker in advance. I can’t help myself today though. I trust that this blog probably won’t be picked up by the Associated Press, and be on the front page in any local markets.

I’m really excited about sharing with Journey Church on Sunday. We’ll be wrapping up our current series entitled: Make Change. It’s always fun to be the “closer” for a series (hey look, two baseball analogies in one post in November… when do pitchers and catchers report?). I feel like God wants to do something special in and through our community in 2009… I’m praying that this Sunday can serve as a launch-pad towards 2009.

I leave you by saying…. if you haven’t watched this video, you seriously need to.

“Don’t Be That Couch” Closing Session

- Around the church, programming begins as an answer to a question, over time it becomes part of the organizations culture. The problem with this is that as culture changes, many of the questions remain the same, but the answers don’t. The tendency is to institutionalize our answers. If we institutionalize an answer, the day will come when it is no longer a valid answer.

- We must continue (or begin) to be more committed to our mission than to our programming or our model. Over time, sustaining the model can become the unrealized mission. Over time, the model can work against the mission.

- In the for-profit world, any product that does not have a significant market/buyers will be taken off the shelf in rapid fashion. Yet in the Church we have spent (and continue to spend) enormous amounts of time & money on programs & products that have no meaningful market.

- “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he/she do? Why shouldn’t we walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves?” - Andy Grove (Only the paranoid survive)

- We can not afford to fall in love with dirty old couches. The message & mission is too important to allow something to block it.

‘Creating Personal Spiritual Momentum’

- “The way I was doing the work of God was destroying the work of God in me.” - Bill Hybels (via Craig)

- The single greatest thing you can do to create momentum in your church or ministry is to bring about spiritual momentum in your personal life.

- I will do TODAY what I can do TODAY, to enable me to do TOMORROW what I can’t do TODAY!

- Four things to do today:
1) Do something to defeat your dark side (your sinful self).
2) Create artificial ministry deadlines.
3) Delegate what someone else can do.
4) Do something only you can do.

- (On delegation) You can have high control and low growth, OR you can have low control and high growth.

- Pastors who don’t take time off do so for two reasons: Pride & Poor Leadership.

- If you come to these events, and see these big churches, and think that all of this success comes from anything other that a deep burden born in the heart of a leader to see people enter into relationship with Jesus, then you are severly missing the point. (WOW)

*Craig knocked it out of the park on this talk. He closed by saying: “If you have put the success of the ministry above your relationship with God, and/or your family, then you need to repent today.”*

“Busting barriers with mindset changes.”

- The longer your ministry is stalled, the more dramatic & drastic the mindset change will need to be.

- “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” - Romans 12:2

- Think differently about these 5 things: Church culture, Programming, The Mission, People leaving the church, and Limitations.

- Think different about your church culture. What needs to change about your church culture?

- Your people will not go where they are not led.

- A church will always be a reflection of the key leader(s). Their character, heart, generosity, passions, dreams, goals, etc…

- The old school thought is that we have to do MORE to reach MORE. Maybe a better model is; We can reach more by doing LESS things, and doing them with excellence.

- “Do the thing(s) that you are uniquely called by God to do.”

- We can’t allow a good/nice/loving person to hold the church back from fulfilling the mission of the church. “You have to love the mission of your church enough to make the painful people decisions.”

- Go DO these things, and make these changes. It’s good to pray about them, and talk about them, but you MUST DO them.

Session 1 - Andy Stanley - Creating and Sustaining Momentum

- Three components of sustained momentum. New, Improved, Improving

- Negative circumstances are fertile soil for a burst of positive momentum.

- Organizational momentum is often triggered by one of three things: New Leadership, New Direction, New Product.

- If something new is not a significant improvement over the old thing, don’t impliment it. Make it significantly better, and then launch it. The bigger & better the improvement, the longer the shelf life of the momentum.

- *Side note* I am continually amazed by how Andy Stanley absolutely mesmerizes a room. It’s unbelievable. Jaws are dropped & inks pens and keyboards are flying.

- Staff & Leaders are the R&D department of the church… Evalute early and often. Unfiltered evaluation is required for improvement to happen.

- Manager types are critical & important, but there is the potential to over-manage, and thereby manage away creativity & leadership.

- “I’ll take a couple of things with momentum over several things that are decent anyday!”

- “Ask yourself; ‘What are the behaviors we like or dislike, and what are we doing systematically to either foster or eliminate those behaviors?’”.

*Awesome session… Can’t wait to take in more content. This event is a power packed 8 hours; no fluff and little break-time. I will be mentally exhausted at the end of the day.*

I am currently sitting at Granger Church near South Bend, Indiana. Tom and I are up here attending the Catalyst One Day conference. Go to www.gccwired.com and www.catalystconference.com to read more about both. I am going to do my best to do some microblogging from the Wordpress iPhone application. I hope to capture some if they key principles from two of the greatest leaders (Andy Stanley & Craig Groeschel) in the church today, and pass them along to you. Enjoy, forgive the typos, and jump into the conversation in the comments.

Forgive the delay in my series of “Live Big” posts. I’ve been out of town quite a bit the past two weeks. Nonetheless, I’m jumping back in with some thoughts on what it really means to “Live Big”. See previous posts for details on the concept of Living Big.

*Warning, there is a good chance this post will make you uncomfortable. You’ll likely squirm in your seat and feel like you need to do more…. like you are called to do more. At least that’s what I’m hoping you feel. It’s how I feel….*

In this post, I want to present a simple idea. Something that seems obvious, but we often fail to realize. Something that should be second nature for any Christ Follower, but something that is often ignored and overlooked. Those who carry the banner of Jesus are called to be radical, extreme, over the top givers. There is no way around this truth that God expects, requires, commands us to give. Give our time, money, effort, resources, etc… to those around us. To those less fortunate. To those who have need. To those far away from us. To our neighbor’s. To our enemies. We are called to give. Look no further than some of the following scripture:

• Luke 12:33 - Sell your possessions and GIVE to the poor.
• John 3:16 -  God love the world so much that he GAVE….
• Deut. 15:10 - GIVE liberally and ungrudging when you do so….
• Matt. 25:40 - … Whatever you did for the least of one of these, you did for me.
• Isaiah 58:7 - Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you se the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh & blood?

If one hundred people represented the world’s population, fifty-three of those would live on less than $2 a day. Do you realize that if you make $4,000 a month, you automatically make one hundred times more than the average person on this planet? Simply by purchasing this book, you spent what a majority of people in the world will make in a week’s time.

As promised, I’m going to be devoting some space on this blog over the next few days regarding the phrase: Live Big.

For those unaware, first let me give some context for the phrase “Live Big”.

Way back in the spring of 2005 the lead pastor of Journey Church, along with some key leaders set out to define through words what a new church in West Chester might look like. Like any good church or business for that matter, they set out to create a meaningful, inspirational, life changing set of mission, vision & values. What they ended up with was quite good… it was also a lot for the run of the mill new church visitor to retain. They decided that they needed one good phrase that spoke to the heart of this new church, and summed up all of their core values. The outcome was: “Inspiring People to Live Big”. As if this wasn’t short enough, it didn’t take long for the phrase “Live Big” to rise out up and become the motto for Journey Church.

The phrase and the thought behind “Live Big” comes from a couple of places in scripture. The first is found in 2 Corinthians 6:11-13 which in The Message paraphrase simply says this: 

Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

The second, and the more oft repeated passage from which Live Big was comprised is found in John 10:10. In this passage, Jesus is talking to a crowd of people that includes a group of Pharisees, Jesus’ disciples, and a man who was just healed from a life of blindness. Jesus shares a truth that is a must for each of us to hear if we are going to grasp what God desires for us in terms of our lives:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

So if this is the background of the phrase: “Live Big”, then what does it mean? Check back here over the next few days and I’ll do my best to put into words my understanding of what Living Big looks like in our daily lives.

Our motto at Journey Church is: “Inspiring People to Live Big”. While simple, it is still rather vague in the sense that people can often find themselves asking: ‘What does it mean to Live Big?’

Over the week or so, I’d like to devote some digital ink to defining what it means to LIVE BIG!

To kick things off, I must share the following video with you. When I saw the text on this link, I couldn’t believe it… the video is awesome. The actions displayed by the person in this video are a quintessential example of living big!