I've Been Thinking About This…

Pete Wilson

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.

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• Pastor Ryan was away today in Minnesota for our denomination’s biennial convention. He’s on the technology panel there, and he’s visiting a multi-site church as well.
• The new coffee continues to be a hit. There is a dedicated crew that comes in around 8am to get it ready by 9am – a real gift!
• Worship music was great as always – Chris added in a new song, “Every Move I Make” – at the request of a couple of children. It has a chorus with NA NA NA repeated about 20 times, but we lived.
• I preached on Fatherhood (see my previous blog, ” Message: A Father’s Heart”), as the last of our series on “Love in New England”. I think it would be a breeze to build outlines for preaching on Fatherhood every week for a couple of months! There was so much I had to cut out.
• The Elders have joined the service during May & June, taking turns to pray – this is the last week of that, but I hope they continue. Phil’s prayer today spoke to children (and me!) powerfully.
• Attendance was lighter, as usual during the summer, but at the beginning it looked non-existent. Folks trickled in during the first 15 minutes and we wound up with a goodly crowd by the time we got to the sermon.

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Here are the supporting Scriptures from the message on ‘A Father’s Heart’, June 20, 2010. The audio message will be posted here: A Father’s Heart

… and the slides are here:

Download (PPT, 255.5KB)

Further readings on ‘A Father’s Heart’:

Want to know what your teenage kids are up against? This is an eye-opener:

… and here’s another …

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Wrapping up thoughts:

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.

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David Loveless

• 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.)

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Charles Stone

• 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.

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