New years Revolutions…

It happens every year, you know, I know it. Every January first everyone decides to make some changes in their lives, ie: People decide that their New Year’s Resolution is to loose weight so they go join a gym, two month’s later they’re still paying on their contract and haven’t been there since January 9th.

Let’s face it, it’s part of human nature to fail on our new year’s resolutions, look up the definition of resolution and in regards to how we use for new year’s you’ll read something along the lines of “a formal expression of opinion or intention made“, it’s making a decision to change something in your life, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to do that. To decide to make a change in your life is a great thing, but how’s this for an idea, instead of just deciding to make that change… how about ACTUALLY making that change, why not, instead of making a new years resolution, make a New year’s Revolution?

Looking up the definition of revolution, and sure you’ll find it’s a turn, it’s also a political coup, but more importantly a revolution is a sudden, radical, or complete change. Isn’t that what so many of us need in our lives?

Happy New Years to everyone,
Matt

Check this post out!

Mike Harrison has a good post on giving here.

I guess the subject is at the forefront of my mind having just ready the go-giver, which is an awesome book you should read, yes you, right there, the one in front of the monitor. Go out a get a copy, in fact, get two and then give one away!

More posts to follow later.

Stories and statistics

I couldn’t tell you where I stole this line from, but I’m fairly confident I didn’t come up with it myself… for now I’ll give credit to the unknown source, but eventually I’ll get to the point where I’ll take credit for this expression, but here it is.

Behind every statistic is a story

Looking at the church overall, and speaking from personal experience, I know that all too often people look at easily track-able numbers like attendance when it comes to looking at our statistics as a church to see “How we’re doing”. While this isn’t the case at Lifepoint, I do know at churches I have been to in the past the focus seemed to be on attendance, and in force of habit, on occasion I have found myself regressing to see how we did on a Sunday by attendance, instead of focusing on things like that are nowhere near as easy to track such as salvations, baptisms, and/or as how we like to put it, Life Change.

But if you look at it even with attendance, how often do we really pay attention to what those numbers actually mean?

Every one of those “numbers” is a person with a story, that person? you know the one who was number four hundred ninety nine, do you know their story? do you know that their family was in discord before they started coming to Church and that it’s made such a huge impact in their lives? What about person number four? They’re the one who didn’t want anything to do with God or church before a friend dragged them in (kicking and screaming) and now after encountering God their life has turned around and they’re not only here every week, but helping with setup and now, bringing their friends!

What about volunteer number 49? They’re the one who had been burned by “Religion” and was done with church, who never knew a church like this could exist, where the purpose is to reach people far from Christ, and now are back on fire for the Lord?

Or Kid number 87, who’s parents brought them to kidspoint for the first time, who finally was told the gospel in a way that made sense to a 3rd grader and changed their life forever…

Those kind of stories go WAY beyond simple numbers, and this post is more of a mental reminder to myself than to anyone else and really help to drive that point home, maybe you’re the Pastor of a Megachurch with over 3k in weekly attendance, or maybe your the choir director of a church that has more people in the choir then on the pews… is Life change happening at your church? What are the stories behind some of your statistics?

Momentum….

Tonight’s the momentum meeting for some of our Volunteer leaders and coordinators. Having been off yesterday I had the chance to spend some time in the office while they were planing part of the meeting, It’s going to be an awesome night, full of inspiration and information to help us invest in our teams so that we can reach this community.

The Payout…

Recently (well a week-ish) ago I had the chance to talk to Pastor about the payout for volunteers. Looking at what was it that got our teams to do the amazing things that they do, looking at what they do is nothing short of phenomenal, but why?

Why would people give up their Sunday (Morning for some, whole day for a few others) why would they make time during their week doing things for free that would astonish most people. Why do a few put 20+ hours a week into this?

Submitted for your approval (Yes with the accent): a few reasons why our Volunteer army does what it does. This list isn’t all-inclusive in fact its quite short, and I’m sure that there are a lot of things that people would say that aren’t on this list… but I’m the one blogging here and this is what I managed to come up with.

Reason number one: Bigger than yourself, AKA wanting to belong to something. People join many organization, or volunteer for community services because they like to be a part of something that it bigger than just them.

Reason number two: Emotional beneficiary, AKA That warm fuzzy feeling. A lot of people get a warm and fuzzy feeling for doing things for others.

Reason number three (and this is the real one I told pastor that I thought the pay out was for our volunteers): Life change, AKA grabbing the net. Or I could say buying into the vision.

Lifepoint is about one thing, reaching people far from Christ so that they can experience God’s plan for their life.

That’s what I think most of our volunteers get as their payout, we get the humbling honor to see peoples lives change. The day we talked about this I realized that we’ve seen more people take a radical step of faith and forever change their eternal destination than we started this church with, THIS YEAR ALONE, and we’ve got 4 months to go before the year is over, I don’t think there is anything out there that compares to a payout like this, and I daresay that there isn’t a single core volunteer who would disagree with me.

Kaizen!

Is what I would use to describe our approach into creating an engaging worship environment, actually it’s something that I would use to describe anyone on Lifepoint’s staff (Both volunteer and paid). It’s something that’s part of our staff culture.

So what is Kaizen? (Okay, I know some of you are googling it at the moment, so I’ll wait). So now you know, at least I hope you do, for everyone one else who was waiting for my explanation allow me to enlighten you.

Kaizen, the literal translation for this term means improvement, however to the Japanese (irksome glare in the general direction of everyone on the Drive Conference… especially Clark, with the possible exceptions of Kristen, Ben and Ronnie) the word goes much deeper, it’s a term for a continuous (unending perhaps) quest for excellence. It looks at every part of an organization and analyzes not only the the results, but also the process that brought them about, and is always looking for ways to improve the systems.

I remember reading about PDCA Plan Do Check Adjust, and that’s something that takes place every week at Lifepoint, every week we plan the service (okay actually a few weeks out now, but work with me on this!) We then do the service, the following Monday we Check (review) how it went, and the Adjust our next Plan for the following week, we not only look at the results, (Life changes via salvation’s, baptisms, etc…) but on what went into the service that produced said results.

Applied to daily life it’s a quest for personal excellence in all aspects of life. One part of my life I know that I apply Kaizen to is drumming, I’m always studying different techniques grips, etc (which is actually what lead to me learning the tradition grip that I often use).

Content, but never satisfied, a never ending quest for excellence… How can you apply the philosophy of Kaizen into your life?

Is it really on your side?

Here at Lifepoint we’re gearing up for our fall semester with the kick-off series “One Month to Live” and the series in general has gotten me thinking, how often do we think of our lives as a clock where the hands go continuously around in a circle. It’s understandable to think like that as we go about our lives on a daily basis, but it’s perhaps more proper to consider time in the frame of an hourglass.

As maudlin as it sounds, we all have an appointment to die, (baring the rapture but that’s a whole ‘nother post)and every day we get closer to that appointment, our time on this earth isn’t infinite so the hands of a clock going in a circle isn’t as good an illustration of our time as the sands that fall from an hourglass.

I had the opportunity to hear Willie Jolley speak a few years ago and I still remember how he began his talk, it’s a poem that has, and probably will stay with me for the rest of my life, “I have only just a minute, only sixty seconds in it, forced upon can’t refuse it, didn’t seek it didn’t choose it, But it’s up to me to use it, I must suffer if I loose it, give account if I abuse it, Just a tiny little minute but an eternity is in it”

So what are you doing with the time that’s been given to you? 525,600 minutes in a year (With all due respect to the song) how did you spend yours?

Failing Forward

Author and speaker John C. Maxwell talks about the difference between ultimate success and lack thereof has to do with our view of and response to failure… and mind you that’s paraphrased and not a direct quote as I read the book several months (A year?) ago.

That being said, I realized I’ve dropped a huge ball, and it’s not something I’ve done, it’s rather something I haven’t really done.

One thing we talked about in our Volunteer staff meeting this morning is that there’s more to our jobs than just the systems we have in place, Like what are we pouring into the people on our teams?

After chewing on that thought all morning at work, I’m not quite sure that I really have spent time getting to know the folks on my team beyond the superficial “See you at Practice on Thursday/Church on Sunday” check that I’m actually quite sure that I HAVEN’T spent any time really getting to know the amazing people on my team.

I can’t tell you how many kids that everyone has, or what they’re names are, and it’s not like getting to know people is that hard to do, or something that I don’t already know, I once read (and I honestly couldn’t tell you where) is that we usually know what we’re doing wrong, we just need reminders of it from time to time.

Failure on my part? No doubt, response to said failure? Well beyond the immediate “duh” reaction of hey stupid get to know your people I’m still staring at my screen trying to think of things…

So…. If you’re on the worship team expect to be having coffee or something in the not-to-distant future, or heck maybe I just need to schedule something fun for the whole team to enjoy doing… hmmm that gives me a couple ideas….

The point of this post? (shrug) I’m not sure perhaps things for other people in my position as a reminder to TAKE THE TIME to get to know your team, or perhaps for my AMAZING worship teams (yes plural) to let you all know that I’ve been slacking, but I want you guys (and gals) to know I love y’all (egads I live in the south!) and respect your talents, time and ministry, I can say without hesitation that the practices we have and Sunday Mornings (and nights?) are the highlights of my week.

Or in other words…
Getting to know you,
Getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you,
Getting to hope you like me.

Getting to know you,
Putting it my way,
But nicely,
You are precisely,
My cup of tea.

EVERYBODY!

Getting to know you,
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you,
Getting to know what to say

Haven’t you noticed
Suddenly I’m bright and breezy?
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I’m learning about you
Day by day.

Sorry that was corny I admit it, but my point still stands.
Right, lunch break is over, back to work.

Lessons Learned…

Okay, so this post is going to both the Lifepoint Worship blog, (Check it out if you haven’t yet) and my personal blog (Which again, I would encourage you to checkout if you haven’t seen it yet).

But as this past week we did an acoustic worship set there are few lesson’s I’ve learned as music director that I’d like to pass along to you.

Point number one: It’s really important to be off stage and evaluating worship on a regular basis. (Ironically Reid just talked about this on North Point’s music blog, the same day I talked to Pick about the issue).

Point number two: Acoustic sets, are well recieved by the people attending the service (at least the few we’ve done have been), however, they are much harder on the music team.

Point number three: When you normally have a male worship leader, and switch to a female lead do not forget that every song will need to be re-keyed, and allow lead time for this to happen rather than wait for practice to role around.

We’ve had other churches come to see how we do things at Lifepoint and one person commented that it seemed like we had it all figured out, well we don’t but we’re always learning how to do things better, (hmm this gives me an idea for another post),

Minor changes, Major results…

It’s amazing what a huge effect you can get from a small change… well on second thought perhaps not so amazing, after all a slight shift of one or two millimeters can put your aim off by a huge amount 100 yards downrange…

Let’s try this again, it’s amazing what tweaking the way you do things can have a profound effect on the end result… bugger this just isn’t working out right, let me jump to my point.

I play both traditional and match grip when I drum, as I had loaned out my copy of secret weapons for the modern drummer I’d been working on rudiments, my only problem is my left hand (the one in the traditional grip) wasn’t working right, (well it’s the left hand, so I guess it shouldn’t be working right, but I digress) now I got it back and started watching and there I see what I’m doing wrong, I turn my hand somewhere between 5 and 11 degrees and bam, problem solved. I can now play just as fast (Arguably faster) with trad than match.

So why all the drumming posts? (As I’ve got two more I’m working on), well the drum-off is coming up and I’m debating entering.

Here’s the thing I’m not a technician, and I’ve never had much experience playing without a band, (IE solo work), on the other hand… it’s a chance to gain some experience and more importantly, from what I understand, contestants get special discounts…

Sorry getting of track here, this principle expands beyond the realm of drumming, what little adjustments can be made in your life to have a major affect on the way you live? I’ve been slacking a bit these last two weeks, but when I take my quiet time in the morning before I start my day, I always seem to be better equipped for the challenges (And accompanying stress).

So what minor change can you make for a major result in your life?