.Real.Greg.Lee.

Hey Suncrest,Happy New Year!

I sat in our first staff meeting of the new year yesterday and I’m excited about what is ahead for us.  We have our Leader’s Edge gathering next week which really launches us into the new year.  At these gatherings, we now have more than 100 community group leaders and ministry area leaders who come out as we talk through Suncrest’s next steps. 

I mention that for a specific reason.  We open the January gathering each year to the congregation as a whole.  It also serves as our “annual meeting”.  The night will both celebrate how God used Suncrest in 2007 and look ahead to 2008.  If you would like to attend, it is Thursday, January 10 (dinner at 6:00, presentation at 6:45) and you would need to RSVP to cindy.barker@suncrest.org.  The deadline to sign up for dinner is January 6th. 

I told our elders last night how impressed I am with our church every time we make a need known.  As you know, at the end of the year, we were in a tight spot financially.  The last two offering of the year were incredible.  Our average for the year had been about $21,500.  The last two offerings were almost $38,000 and $41,000.  That doesn’t even include the incredible Benevolence offering that was received at Christmas Eve either.  Thank you.  Let’s stay strong on this as we enter the new year.

You have got to be at Suncrest this Sunday and next!  I’m going to teach the last 2 weeks of our “Hooked” series and we are going to hear stories from 2 suncrest attenders that can relate how God has worked powerfully in their lives.  If you missed last Sunday, Doug did a great job of helping us all consider what is in our life right now that is holding us back – maybe it’s an addiction of some sort or a hurt, habit, or hang-up.  Come with something in mind –large or small – that keeps you from experiencing the full joy and peace in this life.

PS – The Suncrest mission trip that my wife is on is having a great time re-building in New Orleans.  They will get home Saturday night.  I can’t wait!

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I hope your Christmas experience has been rich this year.  The tradition at our house is to open presents on the morning of Christmas Eve…it was a terrific experience with the kids.  On Christmas Day we were with Jenny’s family and then mine on the 26th.  On top of that, I got to spend 4 Christmas Eve services with 1500 of you.  That was a real highlight. 

Get this:  Our Benevolence Offering on Christmas Eve was absolutely incredible!  I’m sure we have never had a benevolence offering approach $20,000 in past years.  This year…over $28,000 given generously to meet real needs of people.  It’s a great thing as we met a large number of needs at the end of the year to get close to the end of last year’s fund.  This keeps us in a pro-active mode helping people with health issues, single moms, the elderly, and other people who have life throw them for unexpected twists in our church and in our community.   

I love your heart on this stuff, Suncrest.  The Bible says “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things” and our Benevolence Ministry is a perfect picture of that! 

We started a new series today that should be perfect as we kick off a new year called “Hooked”.  It’s about overcoming the things in our life that hold us back from the life God has designed for us.  

PS – Pray for our mission team heading to do re-building in New Orleans this week.  This is Suncrest’s 9th trip…the work has continued even as it now exists without any publicity.  This one is becoming more personal for me as my wife Jenny is going on this trip.  Can’t wait to hear of the difference she makes and how it will shape her.

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Jenny is on her way to New Orleans.  Jack and Abby are at Grandma and Grandpa’s.  I’m home and getting a ton of work done.

The trip to New Orleans is awesome.  This is Suncrest’s ninth trip rebuilding down there since Hurricane Katrina.  Jenny has always wanted to go, but was pregnant at the time and it never worked since then.  I hope this becomes a regular occurrence for her and she’ll be able to have friends go with or me go with at some points in the future.  I can’t wait to hear about her experience.

This morning I attended the Legacy service at Community Christian Church in Hobart.  This church had a good run for 25 years and there were testimonies today that verified how God has been at work there.  Today, however, was the last day of their existence.  Along with the our local church planting ministry (the CDEA), Suncrest will be launching a new work in Hobart in the fall because this church had a vision for new life that could come out of them.  I couldn’t thank them enough this morning for that unselfish vision.  The people there are great and will be attending Suncrest over the next few weeks to get a flavor of our ministry.  I can’t wait to see how God uses us together.

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I just got back from Schoops and invited two waitresses there to our Christmas Eve Services.  I’m praying they will come.  We delivered cookies to some friends in our neighborhood with an invite to our Christmas Eve Services.  I’m praying they will come. 

I’m praying for the people you have invited…people who might be far from God, but willing to come to a church on Christmas Eve.  Here’s why…

I’ve seen it happen.  There is something magical about Christmas and the story of baby Jesus.  There is something compelling, undeniable, even indescribable that softens many hearts and opens many souls to the supernatural in a season like this.  And, that makes it the perfect opportunity to invite people to encounter Jesus.  I hope you’ll join me in that – it is our common mission – to be used by God to change lives.

As a final reminder, our service times are unique this weekend… Sunday, December 23

9:30am

7:00pm

Monday, December 24

4:00pm

5:30pm

Pick one and bring as many people as possible. 

Merry Christmas!

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I’ve had so many follow-up conversations on the message about criticism.  It’s good stuff when we really start to analyze where we are in those quadrants – High or Low Truth?  High or Low Love?

I’m typing this from just outside Louisville, Kentucky where I just finished a retreat with Bob Russell and 8 other pastors.  It was so good and so filled with opportunities that I talked about a lot of the life/leadership lessons below.  The week included visits with the CEO of Louisville Slugger and the President of Kentucky Fried Chicken – just too much to even start going into it here.

Jenny and I have started talking about what kind of gift we will make to the Special Benevolence offering this year at our Christmas Eve Services.  Last year I challenged everyone to make a gift that is at least equal to the regular weekly offering (and not one to Benevolence instead of regular offering). 

I know for us, this notion of giving to people in need has had the bar raised when we look at how much we are spending at Christmas on people we love, but already have all they need.  We are talking about the possibility of giving as much to the benevolence offering as the total we are spending on Christmas gifts for everyone else.  That would be in line with the true spirit of the season, wouldn’t it?  We’re still talking and it might take us a year or two to realistically get to that point, but we are definitely going to step it up again this year.  I hope you will to.

The most inspiring thing I heard this week at Suncrest is that our church planters and missionaries started receiving the Christmas cards you wrote to them over the last month.  Do you know we sent over 1300 cards to all of them?  Nancy Whitcomb, Lynn Schweitzer and Susie Smith  from our missions team did a great job pulling this together!  We got this response from our church planters in Portugal this week…

 “We are truly moved on a regular basis by all the prayerful support we continue to receive from Suncrest. Just yesterday, no less than 94 Christmas cards arrived. Wow! We have decided to read 3-4 every day all through the rest of December. Please do thank the mission team and everyone who participated in one way or another in such a meaningful effort.” 

I love you Suncrest.  You are used by God to change lives every day here and around the world.

PS…We start a Christmas series this weekend called “Indescribable”.  It should be…well, I can’t even really describe it!  J  Make sure you are here.

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This is a long post, so settle in…

For those of you who read this outside the ministry world, I probably need to help you capture how fortunate I was to be here this week.  You would know how I feel if…

If you were a golfer and got to spend 4 days with Jack Nicklaus.

If you were in management and got to spend 4 days with Jack Welch.

If you were in the news business and got to spend 4 days with Tom Brokaw.

You get the idea.  Bob Russell may be the most respected pastor in all of America.  He definitely is if you think in terms of those recently retired.  I told Bob last night that through listening to his seminars and staying in touch with Southeast Christian Church, he’s shaped my ministry…

-I do weddings in the format I do because I heard him suggest making the sermon centered around the vows.

-One of my favorite phrases to use in review of our sermons on Sunday or working with an intern preparing a message is “Apply the Bible to Monday, not to Sunday”.  That’s probably the best advice I ever was given in teaching and it came from Bob.

-I’ve heard him talk about being disciplined in your schedule as a church grows, making sure you still give time to sermon prep when everyone wants a piece of your time since teaching is where you get the chance to touch everyone.  He said, “If I keep saying yes to one person, I’ll start saying no to 10,000.”  (OK, for me it’s only 1000, but I find the same struggle!)

I could share a dozen more just off the top of my head, but last night we were sitting in his living room with his wife and three things struck me that will shape me for the next 30 years…And these apply to everyone (not just pastors).

1.  Humility.  Bob’s church ran 18,000 people when he retired last year.  The type of home he lives in, the car he drives, the way he gives credit to God and everyone else are all examples of his most attractive of qualitites — true humility.  Other pastor’s write books about how they have led their church to growth.  Bob’s book about Southeast is called “When God builds a church”. 

2.  Integrity.  In moral practices.  In financial practices.  In treating people fairly.  In letting your “yes be yes”.  It oozes.  Anyone can embody these values for a season of life, the inspiring part to me is that Bob has modeled them for a lifetime.  He was very authentic with us about temptations he faced, which was helpful also.  Nothing can give you credibility like living a life full of integrity.

3.  Family First.  Bob and Judy have 2 sons that are both Christ-followers today.  What could be more important?  Bob said things were always busy, but in spite of meetings, travel and other demands he scheduled the key stuff with his wife and kids first and forced other things to adjust around that.  Judy talked about how even when things were challenging they would never talk negatively to the kids about the church or the demands it placed on Bob.

Powerful stuff.  Thanks to our Suncrest staff, elders, and others who made it possible for me to come to this at such a busy time of year.

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We had a powerful day again leadership-wise.  We toured the headquarters of the Yum! – the company that runs KFC, Long John Silver’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and A&W Root Beer.  We spent about an hour with Greg Dedrick who is president of KFC.  There were lots of lessons there, but I was struck by one of his challenges being much the same as ours (or probably any church).

Walking through their headquarters, their culture and interaction just bled with the core values their company embraces…customer service (they call it “customer mania”), positive recognition, excellence…everything.  You could almost taste it!  I asked Greg about the challenges of getting those values all the way through the organization.  He said as good of a job as they do with it, there is always the challenge of getting those values to be lived out by the 16 year old kid taking your order behind the counter.  Hard…but outrageously important…because that kid is the face of KFC to the average person…not the corporate office.

True in church too, isn’t it?  Our mission and our approach to ministry (the 4C’s at Suncrest) are things I believe our elders and our staff would put their ministries and maybe their lives on the line for.  But how do we get this to continually move from the core of the church to the edges?  The face of Suncrest in our community isn’t me or Doug or one of our elders…it is all 1000+ of us who call Suncrest home and that is multiplied by the dozens of interactions we have with people each week. 

Gotta keep thinking and working to make this happen.

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This afternoon, we got a real treat.  We toured the headquarters and factory of Louisville Slugger (pictured above).  It ended up with a session in their board room with CEO Jack Hillerich.  (He even signed a bat I was given with my name engraved). 

The humility of this guy was striking to me.  Also, he talked extensively about their culture as a corporation, the importance of interacting with to your customers or potential customers (swim with the fish), instead of assuming you have all the answers by sitting within the 4 walls of your office. 

Great stuff.  I think there is value in that stuff for pastors in that we need to really — really — listen into people’s lives.  This is true of people in the church, but I think it’s even more important for us to do it with people outside the church.  If we really “care about people far from God”, we better be in touch with the real itches we can scratch.

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Our sessions with Bob Russell were excellent today and we processed our DISC profiles together with a person who does these assessments professionally.  I’ve done the DISC probably a dozen times, but it always teaches me something new about myself…and I see how my natural style has adapted to the leadership environments I find myself in. (For those curious/familiar with DISC, it seems I’ve adapted from a natural D/I to a D/C — I can see that, but not sure I like it.)

My best take-away today was that I can really coach people closest to me on how to communicate best with me.  It will be better for all of us in the end.  No doubt, I have a responsibility to try to listen well in any circumstance, but especially in leadership conversations, here’s the bullet points that were identified for how to communicate best with me:

Do:
-Be clear, specific, brief and to the point.
-Present the facts logically; plan your presentation efficiently.
-Read my body language–look for impatience or disapproval.
-Put projects in writing, with deadlines.
-Motivate and persuade by referring to objectives and results.

Don’t:
-Forget or lose things, be disorganized or messy, confuse or distract my mind from business.
-Ramble on, or waste my time.
-Let me change the topic until you are finished.
-Use paternalistic approach.
-Ask rhetorical questions, or useless ones.
-Try to convince by “personal” means.

I think this stuff is gold.

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I got to Louisville late this afternoon.  I definitely need to re-think some of my travel schedule.  It’s just been too much lately, but I know this one will be worth it.

I am here through Thursday to experience an incredible retreat with Bob Russell.  There are 7 other guys here with me coming from California to Georgia to New York.  Had a great opening session tonight hearing each others stories and hearing from Bob on the lessons he learned as the senior pastor of a large and growing church.  I’m sure I’ll have some great stuff to post from here.

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