What's Happening

I deeply apologize for my recent absence from the world of blogging. Someday soon I will be able to write about what has been going on over the last few weeks. It's been...uh...interesting. In the mean time, here are a few thoughts lately:

• We continue to grow...which is blowing my mind right now. God is sending some AMAZING people to join us on our mission.
  
• Some writer named Melville once said, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Oh boy, do I know what that means now. It always seems like when God is beginning to do something huge, Satan attacks like never before. The arrows have been flying fast and furious lately.
• As a pastor, never underestimate the value of having good friends that you can just hang out with. You need that release.
• The best leadership in your church are people that have been there with you and get the vision. We couldn't survive without those people.
  
• They moved Freedom Weekend Aloft this year from Anderson to 10 minutes from my house. It took us and hour and a half to get to the front gate this afternoon. :(
  
• My oldest child will be finishing 2nd grade this week. I'm old.
• After Chris was off of the show, we pulled for Jordan on AI. Seems like a genuinely nice person.
  
• The Office finale was great. 24 needs to pull it together next season. It's sad to see Studio 60 go out with hardly a whimper. It was a smart, funny show.
• Spiderman 3 was a really good 2 hour movie. Too bad it went like - 2:30. Can't wait to see Pirates 3!
• As crazy as things are right now, I kinda like it. I could not handle a normal 9-5 job! I tend to thrive on SOME organized chaos.
  

Argh!!!!

I am a very impatient person. I can't stand to wait on something. If a thought or an idea hits my brain, I want to do it right then. You are more likely to get something scheduled with me if it can happen in the next day or so. Better yet - that afternoon. I can't even think more than two weeks out.

There's is something going on right now that is causing me much, much anguish. God has to be building patience in me...right?!?

Thinking Differently

We had a discovery at our staff meeting on Monday. We were going through different issues that we are having right now, and we kept coming to the same conclusion: we have to start thinking differently as a church. We are not the same church that we were 6 months ago. Sudden growth is very nice, but it also causes wrecks if you do not start thinking more strategically. The questions we are having right now are:

• How do we get these people plugged into small groups quickly?
  
• Are we ready for people to jump into serving?
  
• How do we stop running out of everything every single Sunday?
  
• How are we going to handle Newcomers this Sunday?
• What are we going to do when we can't put more chairs out?

We kinda thought we knew what we were doing a few months ago. I don't think that's where God wants us to be. We are definitely out of our comfort zone right now!

So You Had A Bad Day

Ever had one of those days where you'd just like to start over? Where it's not one big thing, but several hundred little things? Today was one of those for me, and it ended quite nicely with the waitress at dinner dumping two glasses of sweat tea and water on me. I thought we might at least get free dessert out of it...but no. Just a, "sorry - are you guys ready to order?" Blurgh.

Prayers

I've never done this on the blog before, but we could really use your prayers this week. There are a couple of decisions coming down the pipe that need God all over them. I can't go into details right now, but the next few days could be extremely important.

Thanks.

Sickness

Man - I really, really, really hate being sick. :(

Canceled my trip to the ARC conference. I think I made the right call.

Trust me - You do not want to know the details...

Sunday Thoughts

I have to start this post with the disclaimer that I have been sick for the past several days and right now I am flying high on a couple tablespoons of Nyquil. :) Whatever is said after this may not make sense and will not stand up in a court of law. :)

In between coughs and snot blowing this week (just keeping it real...), I have been thinking about what God is doing right now with this church. For whatever reason, God seems to have put his hand of blessing on us to have an influence in this community right now.

I remember our first year as a church. In a LOT of ways, it was rough. You've read about the churches that go from 0-2000 in their first year...that was not us. My family and I dropped into this city in April of 2004, and we knew four people. Two of them have since moved back to Charleston! No one would return my phones calls - real estate people, schools, other pastors - no one! I had one local, influential pastor tell me that he would not trade places with me for anything in the world. That felt good. (Cue the violins)

The dream of starting with 300 people and the next week having 400, and the next 500...did not happen. We opened our first Sunday with 315 people and pretty quickly settled in at around 120 every week. Our first summer, we dipped under 100 on a couple of Sundays. I was on vacation for one of them...I almost didn't come home. I remember standing on stage on one such Sunday and thinking, "This is not what I signed up for God".

The weird thing was - we were not doing things a whole lot different than we are now. We've always had really good music, the teaching is very solid, the core team volunteers were awesome. But yet, we were not ready...I was not ready. I am amazed when I think about how much God has grown me in the two and a half years since we launched Seacoast Greenville. I needed that time to figure out why this church exists. I needed time for God to break me and use me how He saw fit - not how I planned it. I have given up a lot of pride since April 2004. It's no longer about what I can do to grow this church. I know now that I've got nothin'.

That's why it's kind of amusing to me now that suddenly - I get phone calls returned. In fact, I am now the one returning a lot of the calls. If they only knew! I do know one thing - I will always return those calls. I know that as quickly as God can bless, He can also lift His hand of blessing. I have seen it happen. We've all got nothin' without the power His Holy Spirit behind us.

I don't know where you are at as you read this. Maybe you need to let God break you. He needs to break you before He can use you. I wanted to give up several times (and still do on the occasional Monday :)), but I am so glad that I did not. God had a plan and it was so much greater than anything that I could ever dream or imagine. And He's not done yet...

Too Early To Fly

It's 5:30 in the morning and I am sitting in the Greenville airport waiting on my plane to Dallas. I am off to do one of my favorite things this week - hang out with a group of multi-site churches that are getting it done! These guys are doing things for the Kingdom that would blow your mind. The only downside is - it's 5:30 in the morning! Oh well, I could be on a treadmill or something. :)

Cool Sunday

Last week, we had the most people ever on a Sunday. That was to be expected - it was Easter. Normally, the Sunday after Easter is one of the lowest of the year. Everyone gets their church in on Easter and need to rest up until Christmas. :)

That is why I was blown away today when we had more people than last Sunday! I've never seen that happen before. It felt a little like when we first launched the church. Tons of visitors - tons of visitor cards to follow up on. :) We ran out of chairs and bulletins in the second service. Sarah was running off more notes between services and we still didn't have enough! We also signed up a ton of new people for small groups. Great job Chris and Joey!

Our First Touch guy, Scott Derrick, is my hero for the past 2 weeks. For the second week in a row, the parking team had to park people out on the front lawn to handle the crowds between the services. Scott told me today that he wouldn't mind if it calmed down a bit next week!

The interview with Chris was a lot of fun. You never really know what Chris is going to say... which adds to the excitement. The Greenville News came out and took pictures of the first service. You can check those out here.

I can't wait for next week!

A.D.D. Generation

When I was in college, I would literally read 3 newspapers from front to back every day. The fact that I did most of that during my geology classes was not a good thing...but none the less...

Since I started reading blogs a couple of years ago, I have noticed my reading attention span has gone WAY down. If your post causes me to have to scroll more than once - I'm gone. My daily newspaper reading consists of hitting UsaToday.com and our local paper's site, scanning quickly for the best stories, and moving on.

I suspect that I am not the only one who has this problem now. The internet is a wonderful thing, but I wonder if we are creating a generation of news clips and sound bytes? Maybe that's ok.

Sorry, I just lost interest...gotta go...

Marketing Jesus

We made a paradigm shifting decision this year that I think will shape how we market our church to the community in the future. We decided that the best way to invite people to our Easter services was to do an event that did not benefit us at all. Our Baskets Of Hope outreach was 100% designed to help homeless families in our community get back on their feet. We did not receive a single penny. Our fliers about the event did not mention our Easter services or even our normal service times. We had a chance to do a big flashy event that would have gotten a lot of attention, but I am very happy that we did not do it.

I am NOT saying that churches that go that route are wrong. We have done plenty of that in the history of Seacoast. My brother Geoff has a great post about how we need all kinds of strategies in the church world. I just think, for me personally, it's time to go a different direction.

We did get tools into the hands of our people to help them invite their friends and neighbors - personal invites, t-shirts, car decals...but our event was geared to simply love people like Jesus in our community. The one piece of marketing that we did do this year was a direct mailer. I think this will probably the last time we will ever do that. We received 5 mailers from churches this year! I have a hard time imagining anyone looking at those anymore.

Next year, we will do it again. We will love our community like Jesus. I think that is the reason to have a church. Don't you?

Big Sunday

This Sunday at Seacoast, Chris Sligh will be performing one his songs off of his band Half Past Forever's latest release: "Take A Chance On Something Beautiful." This will be the first time since leaving the show that he will be performing his own music. Sunday will also be the first chance to purchase the CD in Greenville.

We will be back to our normal service schedule of two services at 9:30 & 11:00. You will probably want to show up a little early this week to get a good seat!

Chris Sligh Interview Help

I am going to interview Chris during the services this Sunday about his experience on American Idol. Any suggestions on questions I should ask him?

Warning - Rant Ahead

One quick rant before I close the books for today. If you are a pastor, please do not ever say that your church is doing something, or about to attempt to do something, that no other church has ever done. One thing that I have learned after a year of working with Leadership Network, is that there are churches that you have never heard of, doing things that you had no idea were possible. I am continually going, "Why has no one heard of you guys?" I also don't see the point of pointing out how much cooler or more clever your church is than everyone else's. Who are we trying to impress?

End rant. :)

Easter Thoughts

I am so tired right now that about all I can say about today is - wow. God blew our doors off in a big way this morning. We had the most people ever...a LOT more people...but that is only part of an amazing Easter Sunday:

• It was unbelievable to watch Chris Sligh use his enormous talent to lead people in worshiping a risen Savior. God is going to use him to do HUGE things in His Kingdom.
• Several people gave their lives to Christ today and symbolized it by lighting a candle. That is what it is all about.
• I was blown away again by our volunteers and staff at Seacoast. They went way above the call of duty today. Especially Scott Derrick, who kept everything running smoothly through all of the chaos. I still have no idea where they parked all of those cars!
• 3 services in one morning is a lot of work!
• The worship was awesome. You could feel the energy building during the entire morning. Every service was the same. Chris, Kim & Lee had the Spirit all over them!
  
• Mitch & Rebecca did it again with the set. I am not sure when Mitch sleeps...:)
• Sarah was at the church at 1:00am this morning getting rooms ready for the kids. That was after being there all day with us getting everything else ready! I only found out about this because Mitch was still working on the set at 1 this morning. You guys need some sleep!
• I am now hiding with my family in an undisclosed hotel somewhere in America. It's time to unplug until Tuesday!
  

There are so many people that stepped up in a big way these past 2 weeks. I am so stinkin' proud of our church right now. Seacoasters - you are making a difference...let's charge hell with water pistols!!!