.Real.Greg.Lee.

Good-byes are never fun, but in this line of work there is at least one kind of good-bye that is very, very good.  Anytime we see a staff member or intern go and head out into the world of church planting, we feel like it is a huge win!

This Sunday is Nathan McConnaughhay’s last one with us.  He’s been our intern in Student Ministries for the last year and we will definitely miss him.  By the end of June, he’ll be working with a church in North Carolina helping them launch a new campus as their worship guy.

Nathan is super-talented and as genuine as they come.  He’s going to make a huge impact in ministry so I’m thrilled he is investing himself in starting something new.

Here’s the other thing I’m thrilled about…Nathan asked our leadership if we would be his ordaining church as he goes out into ministry.  Our elders went through a process with him and will ordain him Tuesday evening.  A very cool marker for him…and for our church.

If you want to follow Nathan’s journey, he’s keeping posts updated here:  http://natemaclifepointe.wordpress.com/

Posted in Suncrest

Jack graduated from preschool last night.  He will be in Kindergarten this fall.  Seems simple enough.  It’s not like he’s leaving home.  Still, it was enough to stir something in me. 

I talked this week with one of our staff who’s oldest is also going to school in the fall.  Can’t decide if we are overly sentimental or acknowledging a real shift in life…or just realizing WE are getting old.

Even if I’m just getting old, there are plenty of things that bring out “the boy” in any of us guys.  I mentioned the real 737 flight simulator I got to take off and land last week.  Just got this picture sent to me.

Posted in Suncrest

I had breakfast this morning with a doctor who attends suncrest.  He’s a down-to-earth guy, but his profession is as white collar as they come.  I was glad to meet with him because I’m always trying to understand the different worlds that people live in and he was very transparent about his struggles.  He started to tear up more than once and was also very kind in his words about the difference suncrest had made in his life and referenced how much Jared’s message meant to him on Sunday.  More than once, he used the phrase “If you would have known me before…”

I had a meeting this afternoon with a guy who knows how to do almost anything with his hands.  His job is as blue collar as they come.  He sits in the back row every sunday at our 8:00 service…except for this coming Sunday when he’ll be on stage getting baptized.  His life had a lot of hurt and pain and ANGER…and for a long time the attempted relief was alcohol.  No more.  He started to tear up telling about how he had re-encountered God at suncrest and referenced how much Doug’s message at our passion services impacted his heart.  He kept coming back to the phrase “If you had known me before…”

Suncrest, you inspire me as you are used by God to change lives.

Posted in Suncrest

You gotta love our staff.  We have a great support staff that handles office/custodial stuff, but here are some random thoughts on our ministry staff team.

–Always in transition.At our staff meeting today, we had one new person at the table (Andy, our Leadership Resident) and one in his last meeting (Nathan, our student ministry intern).  Next week a new student ministry intern begins.  Last month we said good-bye to Kevin Richardson and Patti Richardson.  Coming on board was Jason Paradis.  We are searching for a part-time children’s staff member to replace Patti.

–Amazing Stability.  That last paragraph might have sounded like we have high turnover, but everyone of thsoe positions was part-time or a designated internship.  Among the 7 full time staff, everyone has been with us between 2 years (Bobby Jackson) and 15 years (Sue Hertzfeldt, who helped start the church).

–Carrying the load…we are always coaching our staff to be leaders/equippers instead of doers.  It is Biblical, but it is also a practical necessity.  We have less staff now than we did 2 years ago, but we are serving a congregation that is 30% larger. across 2 locations.

-Enjoying life.  There is a lot of laughter in our staff meetings.  I can’t say we all love everything we do, but there is always a sense of shared mission and great purpose.  That makes it fun.

-A dash of conflict.  I thought today was one of the best staff meetings we have had in a while.  Why was it so good?  There was candid disagreement among people.  Obviously conflict can go in an unhealthy direction, but I love what we have pretty frequently:  Two or more people with very strong convictions about how God might work through our ministry…and able to disagree without being “disagreeable”.  It’s through these conversations we get to the best solutions.

Posted in Suncrest

I love getting back to the small town for a while and I need my fix of extended family.  I’m getting it this weekend.

Yesterday we spent most of the day at my 3 year old nephew’s birthday party.  It was at a camp site out in the woods where we roasted hot dogs over a fire for lunch and we rode 4 wheelers through fields, woods, and creeks for much of the afternoon.  Jack is pictured on the one we rode…though he never got to actually drive.

Saturday evening I got to go see my 12 year old nephew play a little leage baseball game.  He’s super-talented…as their lead-off man he had a couple big hits.  In the filed he plays shortstop and gunned out a guy at third on a relay throw.  Oh yeah, he came in and pitched the last inning to close out the game too.

This morning we went to Jenny’s home church and got to talk about our Liberia trip.  It was great seeing eyes light up all over again when we told the stories and showed the pictures.

Around noon, we went out to the local cemetery where 2 of my grandparents and one of Jenny’s is buried.  I think we also have a total of 8 great-grandparents buried there with lots of other extended family.  We went out for the memorial day service and Jack got to see the 21 gun salute and hear taps played.  One of the veterans who was part of the salute gave Jack one of his empty shells after the service.  Cool stuff…and meaningful.

Tonight we had Abby’s birthday party.  She doesn’t turn 3 for a few weeks, but it was our chance to have the extended family and about 35 people here.  She had a blast and that same 12 year old nephew challenged me to a mile race (after he heard about my half-marathon).  I knew he had run the mile in 6th grade track…and he smoked me.  His personal best is 5:59 and he ran it tonight in 6:08.  I was more than a minute behind.

These weekends are good for me.  Still, I’m looking forward to being home tomorrow.  We have a couple big weeks ahead.

Posted in Suncrest

I think I’m checking out from this blog for the weekend.  We’ve got big family plans for the weekend in our hometowns.  Maybe I’ll get some pictures up on Monday.

As I drove into my hometown today, we got stuck behind a tractor.  I mentioned it on my twitter/facebook update.  Here’s the funny thing.  Within an hour, this technology had interaction with…

-a person from the church I grew up in

-a childhood friend who’s dad was the minister for a few years at the church I grew up in (now in North Carolina)

-a suncrest person who is from near my hometown

-a childhood friend who I grew up across the street from (now in Iowa)

-a college friend who misses Illinois

I know Camp Point, IL is a great town, but who would have thought it would generate so much conversation.  It’s just amazing to me how technology gets us all talking to each other…I’m pretty sure people have it all wrong when they say today’s technology makes us less relational.

Posted in Suncrest

 After much discussion with our elders and staff I asked our ministry leaders and group leaders to think and pray with us as we clarify our large scale expansion plans/ideas for the future.

I’m going to share them here, at the same time knowing that things can always change and unforeseen opportunities can arise, especially since we are a community of…FAITH.

   1.  Launch a 3rd campus somewhere on the 20 minute radius circle around St. John.

   2.  Make a major investment of $$$ and leadership into our ministry partners/church planters in Liberia, Africa.

   3.  Launch an online campus.

   4.  Begin a non-Sunday morning service at the St. John campus (possibly Saturday evening, but open to other possibilities).

A few reflections of my own on this:

-all of these would take significant resources.  This includes finances, but are also about volunteers, leaders, time, and energy.

-At our best projections,we can likely only do 2 of these 4 as we look to 2010 and push the others deeper into the future…

I’d love your feedback on this with one qualifier.  Don’t give me your feedback on your personal preference.  Give me your feedback based on which initiatives you think would best fulfill our mission — to be used by God to change lives.

Thanks!

Posted in Suncrest

 This, of course, is the picture of 5 of us from our community group after we finished the race.  It was a great feeling.

So I have people keep asking me if I’m going to run more.  Truth is…I don’t know.  There is a part of me that wants to build on what we did and run a marathon, but I can’t run Chicago this fall.  (Sunday mornings are at a premium!)  I’ve been looking around at what else is out there.

My issues:

-If I’m going to run something I don’t want to take a break and then re-train, I just want to keep building from the half.  That means I’d like to do it sooner rather than later, but with the heat in the summer it isn’t really prime time to run one.

-The training time/coordination.  I’ve learned I do much better running with others than by myself.  And, every long training run from here on out (once/week) would be at least 2 hours of running….so 3+ hours out of a day.  Don’t see that in my calendar.

-Finding a date I can run with a marathon close by.  Sundays are automatically out and I have a lot of Saturday commitments.  There is one in South Bend in 2 weeks that could work and it’s the only one I found all summer.  I would definitely NOT get in the whole training program if I tried that.  But I might go for it if someone wanted to run it with me…anyone???

Posted in Suncrest

I’m in Dallas with my learning community through Leadership Network.  I have the chance again to learn from some other young pastors who are peers and some incredible pastors who are so far beyond where we are in terms of experience.  I’m the luckiest guy in the world to get chances like this to hang out with people who are smarter, more seasoned and more spiritually sensitive than me.

Most of the topics are of interest only to pastors like me.  We talk about leadership issues, staff meeting dynamics, staff development and staff structures, trends in churches – spiritual and otherwise.  (Sounds boring, eh?)  We’ve been together enough now that – thankfully – most of the pride is gone and we are often sharing our mistakes hoping to save other pastors the pain we experienced (or caused!) 

The truth is…most of us got in to ministry imagining a simple calling to help people personally connect with God, but we find ourselves at the point positions of multi-million dollar organizations with a couple dozen employees who are navigating growth curves that we want to continue because (we think) have the most critical mission on planet earth. 

I’ve been to seminars and conferences.  I’ve learned from many owners and managers who attend suncrest and grew up seeing excellent business leadership modeled by my dad.  Those have all been a gift to me.  Still…church isn’t business and lead pastor isn’t CEO.  No matter how many parallels work there…some don’t.  And again this week, I’m having those gaps filled for me.

Posted in Suncrest

I finally took the plunge to get a blackberry about 2 months ago and this is the first time I’m using it to update my blog. My apologies if the formatting is off.

Thoughts on the blackberry:

1. I don’t know how I ever existed without a full keyboard on my phone before.

2. It is amazing for efficiency. Short email replies and staying current with calendar and twitter are the best features.

3. I can see why people call them “crackberries”. This little thing can be addictive.
4. I know all you iPhone users will have some comments for me. They usually start with a “welcome to 2004” reference. Feel free to put your best reference in the comments.

Posted in Suncrest