Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-21

February 21, 2010
  • Getting on the road, headed to perform a wedding for a girl that was in my youth ministry 8 yrs ago. #fb #
  • RT @flowerdust Please RT to media @CNN @andersoncooper @foxnews etc – This tent city needs food/meds 5k+ people http://flic.kr/p/7CYFZe #
  • @drewpowell congratulation Drew that's great news, we'll be praying for you and the girls in reply to drewpowell #
  • At our neighbors for a picnic. First we had oysters and now we are moving on to burgers and hotdogs. Happy Presidents Day! #
  • I just entered to win a Free Nexus One. Follow @YouVersion, retweet and register here~> http://bit.ly/c2hY76 #fb #nexusone #
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-14

February 14, 2010
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-07

February 7, 2010
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-31

January 31, 2010
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24

January 24, 2010
  • I watched Fireproof with my wife tonight, I highly recommend it! #
  • RT @ChristieSays: French RT @brucewagner: What language do they speak in Haiti? // Creole w/ French, Spanish & English #
  • @human3rror me too in reply to human3rror #
  • @scotthodge the port is ruined, the road is buckled almost 5 ft up leading to it, no ships or trucks to get them to the boats in reply to scotthodge #
  • To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • Hey @tomokachristian, Publix has 10 for $10 items till Wed, which are great items to donate to Haiti #
  • The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,… #
  • but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns… #
  • to the broader concerns of all humanity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism… #
  • or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?' Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin… #
  • but by the content of their character. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land!… #
  • I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #
  • If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values -… #
  • @sermonfire break em, be yourself, do you know of @manchildmega, @Djdust or any of the DeepSpace5 crew? in reply to sermonfire #
  • @human3rror when you pay taxes in reply to human3rror #
  • @RichStearns I noticed the cross a couple days ago in some pictures on Time Magazine's website, really surreal in reply to RichStearns #
  • RT @RejectApathy: U think u know disaster relief, but u have no idea. @WorldVisionUSA busts some myths here: http://bit.ly/85mr8r #
  • @ChristieSays these are pretty typical late Jan and all of Feb storms for our area, they spawned a terrible tornado n 2007 from Dland to NSB in reply to ChristieSays #
  • @MarketerMikeE if you are asking, @cruciformity is doing some great things w/ FB pages in reply to MarketerMikeE #
  • @cruciformity Happy Birthday Chris! #
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-17

January 17, 2010
  • Trying… http://twitpic.com/xl0on #
  • @loswhit if you're asking it's @manchildmega, if not do share #
  • @aaronmonts I know, I have performed 2 weddings for past YM kids and will do a third next month. But I would have placed you much over 30. in reply to aaronmonts #
  • RT @GuyKawasaki: 5 English slangs everyone should know http://om.ly/dzPt // this is really good laugh or the dog's bollocks #
  • Just got off the phone @TonyTSheng, so greatful for our friendship #
  • @problogger collect letters from thr children that you support thru orgs like in reply to problogger #
  • @problogger collect letters from the children that you support thru orgs like @compassion & @WorldVision in reply to problogger #
  • @mcleodj I need to drop you an email or give you a call in reply to mcleodj #
  • @brianmoll please share your results, interested to see different church planters results. Do you know what your Myers-Briggs results are? in reply to brianmoll #
  • RT @ArronChambers: "roses are red, violets are blue, Lane Kiffin's a low-class money-grubbing loser"….the end. // that's sweet #
  • I've carried a Haitian Goud in my wallet since '02 to remind myself 2 pray 4 Haiti, please keep #praying4haiti #fb http://twitpic.com/y5ass #
  • Reading in Luke 13 this morn, Jesus talks about tragedy not being tied to sin, it offers some comfort this morning #
  • A good friends of our's mother went to he with the Lord tonight. Please say a prayer for the Ashton family tonight. #fb #
  • So you see it everyday, changing your desktop image to something abt Haiti, I found a great 1 on Electricurrent.com http://bit.ly/8GCsHN #fb #
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Kick off 2010 right with Primal by Mark Batterson

December 28, 2009

Everybody needs a reminder. We write things on our calendars, set reminders on our computers, leave posted notes all over our offices all to remind ourselves of the important things we have to do any given day of the year. In “Primal”, Mark Batterson reminds us off the most important thing as a Christian, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength”. In the fast paced information age that we live in it is easy to lose sight of the Great Commandment. With Twitter and Facebook status updates from all our friends, news being blasted at us on TV, New Papers (the few that still exist), Magazines and Online it takes no time for our focus to shift to the endless stream of information from where our focus should be.

What I loved about Primal and all of Mark’s books is that it’s not just easy to read information but a challenge to get right with God and use our time and energy doing what we have been created to do, Love God. Primal breaks down the “love to the fourth power” into amazing descriptions of what it means to love God through compassion, wonder, curiosity and energy. We never break down the passage of scripture to really think about what it means to love God in these ways.

In chapter 2, I love how when talking about loving God with our heart do we every ask ourselves “Does our heart break for the things that breaks God’s?”. What a great question. As we look around our homes, neighborhoods, cities, county and the world there are hurting, lonely people who need real relationships and friends, they need resources to pick themselves up out of their situations or to provided the things they cannot. When talking about loving God with our soul, Mark talked about hiking the Grand Canyon and afterward flying over it and U2’s Beautiful Day playing in the helicopter and the wonder of God’s amazing creation coming over him. How often do we take time to thank God for the beautiful earth that He created? Every speck of sand, every rock, every layer of dirt it took to create the Grand Canyon God put into place. Some where along the way from adolescent to adult we lose that sense of wonder and really lose a big part of life because don’t stop to smell the roses, or let our jaw drop and the colors God painted in the sky to create the sun set.

Albert Einstein once said, “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has it’s own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiostiy.” While doctrines are set in stone, how we do them shouldn’t be. Throughout history what else could be has driven our faith as we have reached different generations, composed new music and written libraries of books. None of these would have come if we didn’t allow creativity though loving God with all our mind. I loved the chapter called “One God Idea”. We forget that it’s not our own effort that always pop ideas in to our head. The work of the Holy Spirit is to influence our thoughts. If we are honest with ourselves we have all asked why him or her, how did they come up with that great idea, or how do they have so many great ideas. Mark would argue having a system in place to capture the ideas that God sends us and not let them get a way. What if God sent you a great idea but you weren’t prepared for it. Having some way to capture the idea: a notepad in your back pocket, a moleskin in your bag or typing a note into your phone.

The last but not the least way to love God is with your strength. Mark says, “pray like it depends on God, work like it depends on you”, I would slightly modify it to say pray because it depends on God and work like it depends on you. In the book of James in the New Testament, he (James) said “show me your faith and I’ll show you my works, faith with out deeds in dead”. Obviously it was a problem in the early church but unfortunately is still a problem in the church today. Comfort out weights our biblical call in American Christianity to the tune of irrelevance in our communities. We have no more time to waste, loving God with all our strength is the last key to fullfil the Great Commission, Go!

To say this a great book would be an understatement. While kicking off the New Year with a Bible Reading Plan is of utmost importance, Primal should be the first non-biblical book you read in 2010!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/1/if7sqc

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Thoughts on Volunteers – What are some options

December 20, 2009

The other day I saw a youth minister on Twitter ask what should he do with an immature Christian who wanted to be apart of his ministry. Now of course, there is always more to the story and this is no way a stab at him or the decision that he has to make in the best interest of his ministry. This problem comes up plenty in all of our ministries and though they may never approach us, when we are short on volunteers we face it as we discount people who just aren’t there.

So the dilemma is finding the right volunteers, the right amount of volunteers and creating a pipeline of volunteers for the future that already understand your DNA and culture.

So what are the options?

-Do nothing
This is where most ministries find themselves as they hustle at the last minute to plug warm bodies in to holes in our programs. I’ve been here. It’s not a pretty or healthy place to find yourself year after year. People are people, so we will always have times where we have to plug people in at the last minute. But this is not the right option.

-Search & Destroy
Every year we have ministry fairs and display our ministry goods seeking new volunteers or suckers that don’t what our ministry is really like. We ask people to sign up and then go through the list and talk with those we think fit in our ministry and ignore the rest. Maybe they aren’t right but how many in all actuality just aren’t there yet. For the record I was a sucker for youth ministry and fell head of heals in love with ministering to youth.

-Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships is ultimately a better option. To many times people come to our ministries who aren’t ready to be a lead volunteer. A lot of times we just place them in that lead role (warm bodies) and some succeed but others fail and miss the opportunity to serve. So people will click and some people aren’t gifted for your ministry and need to be encouraged and have help finding a place to serve with the gifts God gave them. Some people who see something in you, your ministry, or who you are ministering to and want to be a part of it but just aren’t ready. Why dismiss these people when we can mentor them into the volunteers we need and ultimately the Kingdom needs. Apprenticeships are great opportunities to create a leadership/ volunteer pipeline who are trained the way that you would like them to be trained, have spent time being taught and understanding your ministry’s DNA and culture. This takes that immature volunteers and gives you an opportunity to dangle the carrot in their face and here is where you want to be and this is what it is going to take to get there all while building in accountability.

What if every small group leader had an apprentice? Every ministry leader had an apprentices? What if you had an apprentice? How better off would your ministry be, how prepared you ministry be for the future and just think of the Kingdom workers you would have prepared whether they stay in your ministry or move away to another.

I’ve done the first two and believe me it was not fun. But today is a new day and 2010 is a week away. Why not start the year off with a new plan for developing new leaders through apprenticeships ?

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Movements, Leadership Residencies & The New Thing Network

December 10, 2009

New Thing Networks' Infrastructure of a Movement Diagram


On December 7th-8th, I traveled to Knoxville, TN to attend a gathering of church planters, potential church planters, and church interested in partnering with the New Thing Network to plant reproducing churches. The whole team from New Thing, Community Christian Chicago and all the New Thing Affilate churches were great hosts. They were so interested in hearing your story, your dreams and also shared theirs with anyone who’d take the time to listen. Everyone was great and so easy to talk with it was like talking people you had known most of your life. It was really great to connect Eric Metcalf, director of New Thing, Pat Masek, Dave Ferguson, Lead Pastor at Community Christian in Chicago, Aaron Mounts, who just planted Ikon Christian Community in San Francisco, Matt Larson who just planted Anthem Church in Thousand Oaks, CA and Nate Bush who I went to college with who is launching New City Church in Albuquerque next year plus so many other guys and gals.

If you are thinking about starting a church you have got to check out New Thing to see if partnering with them might be right for you.

About New Thing
from a talk by Dave Ferguson

New Thing is a transdenominational catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches relentlessly dedicated to helping people find their way back to God.

Values: Reproducing, Relationships, Residencies, Resources

Their Goals: 1. Restore the foundation and acknowledgement of apostolic leadership. Ephesians 4:11
2. Develop apprenticeships for emerging apostolic leaders.

How: Infrastructure of a Movement

Apostolic Leadership
This was a very interesting discussion. In the past many have shied away from the word because of past abuses in the church. But in doing so we have lost visionary/ entrepreneurial leaders out of the church and in most church lack the gifts, talents and passions they bring to the table. Those gifted in these ways are able to see the future clearly, desire to start new communities of faith and embed and guard the truth. Dave said most of the time when we talk about apostolic leaders we talk about big names in big churches but he said every church needs leaders with these gifts and talents.

Shared Dream
There is a vision behind the movement that stirs in us and gives us a dream for tomorrow. We’ve heard it said people don’t give to an organization they give to a cause, well people won’t get behind a movement because of their mission statement but because they can see tomorrow through the vision being shared and they have a dream to cling to.

Common Ideology
“Our dream comes from Jesus Acts 1:8, and our ideology comes from the Apostle Paul. Paul is explaining to a young church planter, Timothy how to accomplish this big dream and he says, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” II Timothy 2:2. He explains that the strategy for accomplish Jesus big dream is to start small by continually reproducing. Paul lays out multiple generations of reproduction: 1. Paul – Timothy; 2. Timothy – reliable men; 3. reliable men – others. So the common ideology we share is helping people find their way back to God by reproducing at all levels.” -Dave Ferguson

Genuine Community
“These communities of Christ Followers will not be merely lifestyle enclaves that exist to further the betterment of the life of the community and their own lives. These communities will be a “communitas” (community with a cause); a coming together of Christ Followers who are willing to trade their life to accomplish the dream of God by following Jesus.” – Dave Ferguson.

A diagram Dave drew:

Community
+Trust
Communitas

Decentralized Reproduction
This is all about setting boundaries and letting go capable leaders to reproduce churches. We have to model it, give permission to these leader to reproduce, set expectation and hold them accountable. Dave talked about the difference between a spider and a starfish. Cut the head off a spider and it dies, cut a piece of a starfish and it reproduces.

When we align these things the result we get is: Reproducing Leaders, who reproduce churches, who reproduce networks all who impact the world.

Leadership Residencies

New Thing knows that reproducing successful leaders that are helping people find their way back to God through reproducing churches takes trained leaders who understand their values, their DNA and has time to experience leaders who are getting it done. So they have developed leadership residencies (like medical residences) 12 to 18 months in length to shadow and learn from New Thing Network pastors prior to launching their new church. Eric Metcalf spoke about how more and more church planting organization are coming to see the great benefit of church planters doing leadership residencies first and how the failure rate among churches where the lead guy went through a residency is substantial lower than those who do not. They know that a movement of reproducing churches cannot occur without more leaders being trained, they are seeing it makes the church planters residents serve under are better because the resident is there and with a much resources as it take to launch a new church it is more responsible for the church planter to participate in a residency program. Would you want a doctor fresh out of medical school operating and prescribing you medicine, no we know they go through residency programs to learn under great doctors and we to empower and offer opportunities to church planters for these kinds of leadership residencies.

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Advent Conspiracy Book Review

November 30, 2009



I first heard about this small band of churches that were thinking about Christmas differently a few years back. This group had come together to rethink the modern day Christian response to December 25th, the day we celebrate Jesus Christ’s birth. What a novel concept I thought as I browsed through their website, intrigued, but at the not much else. Some thing sat with me since that time as I look around at “Christmas” spending, splurging and indebtedness that has come to be a regular part of the holidays and as is normal, the Christian way is the same as the non-Christian way. But for us that was about to change.

I have been fortunate enough to be changed by two short-term trips to Haiti that were way more beneficial to me that the Haitian people. Seeing extreme poverty up close and personal will not leave you the same person. Interacting with the people, learning about their culture and heritage and also seeing the destructiveness of greed and corruption had upon them as a people. Walking away I knew that my selfish, materialistic behaviors were not right and had to change. Honestly I still struggle with those demons most days as I click on the Charity Water picture of the day from my iPhone. But today hundreds of churches are banding together to as the book explains to “remain in the gospel of Jesus and worship Him- no matter how strongly the cultural demands of Christmas pull at us”. Calling God’s people to give relationally to those around us (family and friends) the gifts that really matter so we can send the money we spend on people who have most everything already, to those who need it for the basic needs, like clean water.

Advent Conspiracy is more than an idea, concept or book it’s a movement of Christ following people who are using a time of year set aside for receiving, to give like they see the example Jesus left for us through coming to earth that night and giving us what we could never have on our own, a relationship with God. If we allow the hustle and bustle of this time of year to distract us from it’s real meaning we have lost more than a month out of the year we have lost an opportunity share with others the whole reason Jesus came to earth in the form of a baby to unlikely parents, announced by angels to lowly shepards 2000 some odd years ago.

Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More and Love All

A few of my favorite quotes.

“Our worship has to be reborn. The wise men show us what happens when someone glimpses the true worthiness of Christ. We will travel around the world to meet Him, confront dominant world systems and give our King, our all.”

“What transformation would occur as God’s people moved across the globe loving Jesus with our time, attention and money?”

“We spend less at Christmas, except when we should spend more.”

Quoted of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, “There ought to be things we would like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them.”

“The conscious giving of our time and presence to another is not a new concept, but a neglected one.”

“We cannot allow the broken and vulnerable to become invisible.”

“When God’s people serve the poor in humble, generous ways, the story of Jesus is told again and again. The poor in our world will be touched by God through how we choose to celebrate Christmas.”

“Clean water for every person in the world. That is our dream, and, yes it’s a big one.”

This is a must read for every person who longs to celebrate Christmas in meaningful and long lasting ways. Which is all of us, who have started a the new year after celebrating Christmas wishing it had be different and meant more.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/2

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