Staff Retreat & Back to School Party

We had our first staff retreat this week. I referred to it as a "pray and play" retreat. The goal was to rest, have fun, debrief the past year and prepare ourselves, physically, mentally and spiritually for the coming year. We invited staff and families to attend.

It was a huge success in my opinion. It seemed like everyone really did relax, which is not always easy considering several of us have workaholic tendencies. We also had some really good discussions about how to prepare ourselves and how to put some spiritually displines in our lives.

We have an awesome staff at our church. We don't always agree on how we should do things. In fact our staff meetings can be pretty intense at times. But we are always unified and that unity is reflected in the rest of the church.

By the way, we accidentally double booked our retreat with a major event at our church. We were hosting a "Back to School Party" for 90 kids from low income families in our community. We collected school supplies for them and at the party we helped them pack their new backpacks with the supplies they were going to need for school.

With the execption of one, our entire staff was on the retreat during this event.

Some churches have staff that are willing to give up control and let lay leaders have ownership of ministry. And some churches have lay leaders who want to take ownership of ministry. Our church is fortunate enough to have both.

Water Wars

We have an annual tradition at our church that started about 4 or 5 years ago. The concept is simple: grill some hot dogs, hook up a bunch of sprinklers, slip-n-slides and the inflatable water slide and finish it off with a huge water gun fight.

We had our Water Wars this past Sunday afternoon. What a blast. It's great to serve in a church that is OK with having some serious fun.

Open Source Leadership

I love studying leadership models. I'm working on a sermon series for the Fall that I'm calling Open Source Leadership. If you don't know what "open source" means, look it up on Wikipedia.

I'm reading three, what I hope will be, great books on the subject of leadership:

• How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins. Jim serves as a teacher to leaders in the corporate and social sectors. The book is the result of tons of research on major companies like Circuit City, Bank of America, Motorola and Ames, and how they went from being at the top of their game to being in decline or shutting down.
• The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. Gary takes a look at some of the most innovative companies and their management styles including Google.
• Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels. Hybels is the Lead Pastor of Willow Creek Church outside of Chicago. I had a chance to hear him speak two weeks ago and was impressed with his passion for helping others be better leaders.

Found this video on the WashingtonPost: On Leadership: Evan Wittenberg, Director of Google Leadership Development

Worship at NCC

Our family was on vacation this past week. Yesterday we worshipped at National Community Church where Mark Batterson is the Lead Pastor. I loved the simplicity of their worship service. Great music and a great message.

NCC meets in the theaters at Union Station in DC as well as four other sites in the Metro area. They have a heart for reaching their city and the world.

Mark is also the author of In A Pit With A Lion on A Snowy Day, and Wild Goose Chase. Both books are great reads. His third book, Primal is due out January 1.