Pete’s job – teaching, vision & discipling the other pastors. Pages of notes here about Crosspoint’s experiences (‘MS’ stands for Multisite; ‘CP’ for campus pastor.):

Regarding the campus plant:

• A launch team is essential
• Launch takes a massive amount of work
• Missions are a great way to bring multiple campuses together to help cement connections in the whole church
• Crosspoint has 4 ‘Serving Saturdays’ each year
• MS makes any DNA problems more evident
• MS appears to demand matrixed management, but it doesn’t work very well (something that’s become very obvious in the business world).
• MS has the advantage of making a congregation become less building-centric (cool insight).
• Launched new campuses with mailers, but word of mouth has always proven most effective. Not too much with Twitter/FB. Social media good for communication and assimilation; not so much for growth.
• Target is to have campuses self-supporting within 1 year
• Also give an offering to churches that are planted nearby

Regarding the CP, he must be exactly the right fit:

• same as the lead pastor except for the preaching – Crosspoint’s CPs report to Pete and Jenni Catron (the executive pastor) and meet twice each week.
• Qualifications: heart, commitment to the DNA, be a strong leader, strong communicator.
• Top passions: leadership and spiritual development.
• Every campus sees the CP as their pastor rather than Pete.

Regarding video teaching:

• Video teaching is working well – used to be a 1-week delay, now down to same day (actually about 10 minutes, and could be pulled down to a 2-minute delay if they chose).
• There are 2 backup messages ready if needed.
• Regarding the switch to video teaching –
  • it was hard to stop looking at the people locally and focus on the camera, and
  • gets feedback from the CPs about the video teaching.

Regarding the week’s schedule:

• Mondays: every visitor gets a handwritten card; volunteers get a card as well.
• Tuesdays: meeting day
• Wed/Thu CPs do counseling, visitation, meet with volunteers & staff

My takeaways here:

1. The way Pete talks about it sometimes, you might think that Crosspoint is a well-oiled machine that everyone else is running, and he’s just a figurehead wandering around. But it’s clear that he does an incredible amount of work behind the scenes. Until recently, for instance, every new person coming to the church got a handwritten note of welcome from him – as the church growth rocketed upward, that alone was a huge amount of work.
2. Choosing the right people and investing them with the right vision is evidently an essential constituent of the growth – almost as vital as consistently great teaching and an environment of fellowship.

A wonderful talk to listen to – hard to miss the excitement he feels for the church and it’s people.

(‘MS’ stands for MULTISITE; ‘CP’ for campus pastor.)

Terry Broadwater

Director of the Chi Alpha Network

• Go where the people are.
• Lead the elders through a study of Acts – what should we be doing? Where should we be going?
• We must raise up and release a generation of church planters
• We should be people like Philip, who left the Jerusalem church and traveled to the desert, overtaking the lost eunuch in his search for Life.
• David’s attitude and praise in 2 Sam 6 – an example of NT worship in the OT
• Accountability is relational now, not legislated.

The question coming out of Terry’s talk for me is – are your elders or deacons so connected to the pastor that they want to spend time with him? … are they personal friends? … have they bought into the vision he has been given? Or are they ignoring or resisting what he’s trying to do? The founding pastor of a church plant gets to choose the elders, and they generally follow his vision and lead. When the founder leaves for whatever reason, the elders look for the replacement – and from that point on there’s always the concern that he’s bringing in change that they don’t agree with and that wasn’t part of the original pastor’s vision. After all, if they’re hiring him, then he reports to them, right? So there’s often an expectation that he should do the things they want the way they want.

But people and culture inevitably change, and so God’s desire and path for the church will change; can the elders grasp that if they haven’t had formal training? In general I think they can, but a real spirit of unity and humility must be present. Further, there must be a joy in the yoke. I think the proof of that is – do the elders enjoy doing things with the pastor (cookouts and hang times just for the lead team), or do they only get together at official meetings? If the latter, I’m pretty sure the church is in trouble.

Apart from the heat, though, this was an incredible trip. The Assemblies of God (http://AG.org) had laid the church planting conference on for free. I caught wind of it from Twitter, since I follow some of the presenters, and Pastor Ryan & I managed to sign up relatively early. (Some good responsiveness and follow-up from the AG staff during the leadup to the conference – thanks to Debbie Armstrong & Nicolle Rockenbaugh)

As it happens, there are a number of interesting events intersecting for us on this topic – first is the conference itself, of course; secondly the fact that we have just started a series called GOING – something very missional to encourage a more personal level of ministry and outreach. I’ll be taking the sermon “Mission (to the Promised Land)” based on Joshua’s invasion on 7/18 and then doing the follow-up to VBS on 8/1 (“Tidy to messy”) – pastor Ryan is covering the other 5 weeks. The third of these events is an elder meeting next week where Pastor Ryan is sharing God’s vision for Praise Christian Fellowship’s church growth.

So the timing of this was great for us. We’re also thinking of going to the Sticks conference (Nov 9-10) and considering a Grand Tour of a number of the churches whose blogs and pastors’ blogs we’re tracking – Mark Batterson at NCC, Pete Wilson at Crosspoint, Greg & Geoff Surratt at Seacoast, Dave & Jon Ferguson at CCC, Shaun King at Courageous Church and Andy Stanley at North Point and one or two others. It’ll be interesting to see how many we could fit into a weekend. Sadly we’ll not make it to Zak White at Revolution Church.

The other vital accomplishment during this trip was to get Ryan hooked on Doctor Who. All right-thinking men should be, so we watched the episodes written by Steven Moffett – one of the two best writers of current production TV (the other is Bob Larby, but you knew that).

More notes to come…

1. An excellent conference and opportunity – worth a lot more than the price of admission. You sometimes do get more than you pay for.
2. There wasn’t a whole lot of new information for me – its value to me was in what was repeated and confirmed. Sometimes you need to hear something over and again for it to sink in (well, I do anyway).
3. The single most frequent repetition was – “Spend less time ministering to your congregation and more time ministering to your family.” (Perhaps a third of the speakers said this, either in the form of regretting they hadn’t or glad that they had.)
4. I was deeply impressed by the honesty of the speakers. Many of these people had made mistakes that they were sharing – that was gold they were mining and handing out.
5. I was also struck by how many speakers there are out there – people I’ve never heard of – who are excellent teachers.
6. One note hit a chord in me: the speaker (and I’m afraid I don’t remember which) said that people – including pastors – think that the most important job a pastor has is to lead the congregation. Not true. With every pastor, the thing God is building is the pastor, not the congregation. (That is: The most important relationship is the one a person has with God, not with the people God has called us to work with – and this applies as much to pastors as to anyone else.) This was a heavy thought, since we have always heard that the shepherd must be willing to sacrifice everything for the sheep.
7. Sound quality has been improved a little over the original “The Nines” conference, where the level was not balanced across the videos. This time it was – for the most part. However, the sound control for the live portions was very poor, and between that and the 4 or 5 videos that were not recorded at the same level as the rest we were running back to the sound board more than a dozen times during the session.
8. There were also some transmission issues that surfaced, which – considering the complexity of the project, and that it was pretty much a one-off – were understandable; they also gave us a chance to catch up, so they weren’t as frustrating as the sound issues.

My one wish for future conferences: Youse guys run all the videos through level-balancing software to limit the sound levels to one range (an easy step to improve the quality of the presentation). I’ll set up closer to the sound board. Next time will be even sweeter!

All in all, an experience that I (and others at Praise Christian Fellowship) really appreciated. Thanks, Leadership Network.

• Don’t overload people with change – Gen 33:13
• Don’t be a person more convinced about outcome than the way to achieve it.
• Ask yourself – do we really need this change? Is this the right time? Are the right people involved in the change, or are acting ‘So Low’? Is this sustainable – can others keep up?

Robert Lewis

• Concentrate more heavily on foundation-building. I’d be ruthless about developing Godly men & women; Godly marriages; a children’s program that trained parents too; evangelism programs.

Dale Burke

• less really is more – be a boxer rather than a street-fighter (skillful)
• please others less, but focus on pleasing God more.
• Do less, but focus more on the main things.
• Do less, but focus on YOUR main things (gifts).
• Do less, but focus on the main people. Jesus spent most time with the 3; then with the 12; then with others.

Eric Swansen

• Talking about sin and the fall – didn’t really catch anything about what he would have done differently.

Mike Slaughter

• People are bringing Christ into their world-view, but not moving into Christ’s world-view.
• wish I’d shifted from attractional model to missional model earlier.
• There are 2,000 passages dealing with justice and the poor. If it’s not Good news for the poor, it’s not the Gospel (Luke 4:18).
• Make a commitment to put marriage before the church.
• Make connections with Godly mission people.

Elmer Towns

• Dream big, but look at the downside of the dream.
• Sometimes chasing what you think is the dream takes you to other places you don’t want to go – there’s more to the reality that the dream represents.

Michael Duduit

• I’d spend a lot more time making my sermons clear and less in making them clever.
• I’d leave out the impressive bits, no matter how much I liked them.

Walt Kallestad
‘Being the church’ vs. ‘doing church’
Simple, sustainable, significant.

• I would keep it simple – loving God, building community and being missional.
• Make sure that ‘doing church’ is sustainable. Teaching people the Bible and praying. (I’d pray more and work less.)
• Move toward significance – transformed people who move to Christ.

Carl George
Wrote “9 keys to an effective small group leader”

• (didn’t catch anyhing about what he would have done differently.)

• Half of all pastors act like a turtle with problems – they process pain and hurt alone. Became closed, guarded and protective. Wish I’d found a couple of men with whom I could share and have speak into my life – mentors.

Anthoney Trufant

• place a premium on being open and honest.
• invest in the stewardship of self
• Keep your family first.
• develop some holy friends
• you may be the key leader, but you’re not the sole leader
• take risk.
• learn that the first ‘no’ may not be the final ‘no when you propose something.
• learn that conflict is not an enemy, but an ally
• learn different styles of coping with conflict.
• enter your ministry with an exit strategy – don’t leave baggage behind.
• deal with your own baggage immediately. Otherwise it will come up at inconvenient times.

Andrew McQuitty

• Success in ministry is not defined by numbers & money
• focus on faithfulness not results.
• obey God, don’t work for Him. Otherwise, God becomes your PR agent – it’s His job to make you look good.

Jim Herrington
3 wrong steps:

• We need to stop seperating sacred from secular.
• We need to stop thinking that information transforms – only experience transforms.
• We need to stop condemning failure.

Cal Jernigan

• Have a mentor.

Dennis Keating

• Can’t be father to the world. Can’t ‘do it all’. Just because the ministry calls you, doesn’t mean God is calling.

George Cladis

• It’s about management
1. Self-management – loving God & loving your neighbor
2. Family & friendship relationship management
3. Calling management – know your gifts and those around you; what makes for good team management?

Mel Lawrenz

• move close to the office ASAP
• Read ‘Getting things done’
• work with worship tema more
• connect with other pastors locally
• be more selective in reading
• be more regular in days off – with family
• handle criticism more directly
• delegate more organizational leadership
• collect more stories

Dick Alexander
A gravelly voice and some tremendous honesty!

• Make absolutely sure your focus is on family; seek counselling when necessary; protect your marriage and children.

• do you want speed to reproduce or strength in generating leaders?
• Develop 2 bars of leadership – a speed bar & a strength bar.
• Have yearly increments to move speed people to strength.

Tammy Kelley

• Ask more questions; make fewer declarations
• good things can become intoxicating; intoxicating can become toxic
• live a life more ‘fool for Christ’ and less ‘impress’.

Jason Barr

• I wish I’d never compromised
• I hired people too fast; should have done more due diligence; wish I’d hired on chemistry more than credentials
• noone can teach to be good stewards better than lead pastor – Don’t delegate this.
• I would rather do things for people than with people; I wish I’d been a better shepherd. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Craig Strickland

• church plants tend to be a magnet for dysfunctional people
• I seriously underestimated the importance of generous giving
• It takes 3-5 years to change the DNA of the church

Matt Hannan

• Avoid unnecessary wars
• lead from the middle not the edge, even though the edge is attractional because it looks ‘edgy’
• Don’t think that spiritual leadership is distinct from strategic leadership
• God’s core agenda is ‘YOU’
• People who model false values instill false values in their disciples (if you teach that prayer is important without actually being a prayer warrier yourself, people will learn to say prayer is important without actually being prayer warriers themselves.)

Jeff Jones

• Wish I hadn’t tried to do it all. Missed out on a lot of things, so did my family.
• Wish I’d tried to do only the things no one else could do, instead.

Kevin Harney

• Having people keep sending money and prayers is fine, but not enough.
• Having committees that plan outreach is fine, but not enough.
• Organic Outreach is the target lifestyle.
• Elders should be held accountable for outreach themselves.
• Budget needs to reflect giving and outreach – what God’s call us to do.
• Train and equip all people – youth, men & women.

Steve Stroope

• Wish I’d guided the church to live that ‘family’ is the spiritual formation driver
• Church must remind, resource & equip the family to do it
• Developed kiosk & online to resource the family
• Ensure that no ministry unintentially left the parents out

Jim Shepherd:
Passion = generosity
FAT thinking means we don’t bother about right priorities.
Scarcity environment clarifies priorities & identities. What do you put on the back burner.
When money is plentiful we need to be prepared with good plans.
The challenge can be an opportunity.
3-point litmus test for priority setting:

1. Urgent
2. compelling
3. aligned

Luke 14:28 – planning & strategy go hand-in-hand with the Gospel.

Brian Boyle:
Character matters to 10-year-olds, let alone adults. Can bring down sports figures, politicians, ministers.
Character counts.
Character – moral or ethic strength.
Who are you when noone is looking – before God and noone else – Prov 10:7
Revealed in pressure situations.
Prov 4 – guard your heart.
Truth about character: if you lack it, it can ruin your life and that of those around you. Or it can guide you.
Ps 84:11 – For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

My character can bring blessingh to my children and theirs.
Prov 2:7 He is a shield.
Pastors are desperate for their lives to count.
Character = God’s Holiness + our humility + honesty
How do I get it? Pursue it.

Naeem ?:
Story of a muslim who converted to Christianity and became a pastor, who travelled back to Pakistan. Met a woman on the plane; didn’t want to talk to her (in Pakistan they execute people like him who convert to Christianity).
Do we recognize God out of context of our normal environment?

Eric Bryant:
Advocating for the rights of those who do not yet believe. The church is not here to meet our needs – we are the church, and we must meet the needs of the world.
We shouldn’t expect others to adopt our values.
Kids don’t believe, but we make space for them until the time is right.

Nancy Ortburg:
Leadership is about managing tensions. Think of people who poured themselves into you. What would they do?
Although you can be mentored by that person, you can’t be that person.
1. David & Goliath story: David is frustrated at the Israelites’ cowardice; get’s Saul’s armor; then takes it off and returns to who he is – a shepherd boy.
2. Work with passionate people – get things done, attract people, build teams. But they can hide narcissism & insecurity. Humility gives you confidence, peace, freedom from worry over results. Humility always elevates others who you see are better than you at something.

The big lie: one size fits all – journal; confess; read your Bible every day.
God’s response to rules – I restore them with wonder upon wonder.

Rick Warren:
Care about our churches growing larger through evangelism; warmer through fellowship; broader threough ministry; wider through missions; deeper through discipleship.
But most churches don’t have a structure that moves from “come and see” to “come and die”
Need to be more intentional; should get back to catechism.
Jesus’ first words – “come and see”.
But you don’t leave people there.
you’re my disciple if … you bear fruit.
Right before He dies – take up my cross and follow me.
Church has to have a plan.
Make disciples not just converts.
Know your flock.
cultivate, channel and commission new people.

Brad Powell:
We need to reflect and represent Christ in whatever we do.
Answering questions that noone was asking.
We are suppoed to be about ‘revolution’. But it’s odd that it’s odd to say that. We have turned to the world.
To stop the revolution, we get rid of Jesus.
We need to let Jesus back into the church so revolution can begin.
Commit to a present mission, rather than the history.
93% of the churches in our world are stagnating.
Need to lead people to Rom 12:1-2.

Ken Fung:
Inasmuch as “familiarity breeds contempt”, the preacher has to overcome familiarity in his audience, but even more so in himself.
Confess it and find new ways to see it afresh.
For some read different passages. Also try Buechner (Peculiar Treasures and Wishful Thinking); listen to other preachers.
Avoid predictable patterns of preaching to help congregation stay fresh.
preaching isn’t a lecture, it’s a conversation.
Zero in on one point.
Book – Made to Stick by by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

John Coulombe & Bambi Encarnation:
Don’t assume that older adlts have no room to grow
1. We need a sense of purpose with this age group (ps 78; 1 Tim 4) – they have a lot of skills
2. Need a sense of mission and service for the lost.
3. A sense of honor toward their age
4. A sense of humor (doing youth ministry with older people)
5. A sense of completion
6. Wrap up their lives so they move into the next life with grace

Darren Whitehead:
My 3-year-old daughter’s imagination was taken captive by the world.
(Dreamed about Elmo)
Matt 6:34 – Ask, seek, knock – what would you ask for?
Are our desires hauntingly similar to the world?
We’re called to eat delicious ripe fresh apples; are we going to be content eating the rotten ones?

Matt Williams:
Big challenges at his church in gender issues.
Gen 1:27 – both genders are part of God’s nature
Is 66 – Nurturing is part of God’s nature
2 Sam 7 – Masculine is found in God
from Bible, being equal is not the same as being the same.
Men don’t carry beauty the way women do
God is beautiful
Males are powerful – the average male is 60% stronger than the average female.
God is powerful
The idea of becoming one flesh cannot happen unless they wren’t one before.
the one-ness idea is foundational to understanding the rest of thge Bible.
Our gender has everithung to do with our identity, intimacy, roles in the marriage, for him to honor w/out abuse, for her to respect.

But then he moves into passivity by Gen 3 & she moves into independance by Gen 4 – the Gospel redeems.

Milton:
Within 20-40 year Hispanics will become the majority in many states. Will we reach out the the Hispanic community?

“Keep your hands off the money, keep your pants up and stay out of the hot tub” – and you’ll at least be the last person standing.

Eugene Peterson’s book title: “A long obedience in the same direction” – may God give that to you.

Brian McClaren:
(mostly on the phone)
I hope the pastors in the US would ask themselves, “What is the Gospel?”

We tend to think that the Gospel is all about getting to Heaven; Jesus says it’s all about bring Heaven to us.

The Gospel is not an evacuation plan, it’s a transformation plan.
It’s not about numbers, it’s about change.

Bob Roberts:
For the first time in history, we are global, no matter what types of church you’re in – house church, mega- or otherwise.

1. Talking about moving from interfaith (compromise) to multifaith.
2. Changing from critiquing others’ faith to critiquing ourselves.
3. Need to explain it so that everyone (not just our followers) ‘gets it’
4. We must live out our faith at its very best.
5. We must live out our faith in front of others
6. We move from focusing on the preacher & the church to on the disciple

Brad ?:
1. How many pastors have forgotten what it means to be a disciple.
We as pastors have to read our Bibles for ourselves, not just for message prep.
If the pastors says the people have to bleed, the pastor has to hemorage.
2. Pastors need to take care of themselves. Eat right, work out. Be Mach 1 to the detriment of your soul.
Stories of men & women who have flamed out in ministry are a dime a dozen.
3. Take care of your marriage – nobody carries the torch for that ministry.
4. If you have kids, the greatest church you pastor is at home.

John Ortberg:
The gap between me 1.0 and me 2.0 can be filled in Jesus. Just don’t quench (grieve) the Spirit. Too many times we think we must manage the gap.
Disciples are hand-crafted, not mass-produced.

Judy West:
If you’re leading a church but not leading in your life
Pete Scazzero’s “the emotionally healthy church”

Rick McKinley:
God still has the power to transform me – this wasn’t a one-time thing, but one that goes on throughout my life.
At the end of the day, my hope isn’t that I get my life figured out, but that Christ continues His work in me.
Live your life before God and before your community.