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5 Weeks Away from Kenya

Five weeks from today our team is scheduled to leave for Kenya. My excitement keeps growing in anticipation. Got my passport Monday night and that really made it seem like reality for me.

Last night we worked out some of the final expense details for the trip. Now we just need, money, tickets, visas and our luggage.

Can't wait to see what God shows us next when we meet with our friends in Nairobi.

Criticism 101

I thought I would pass this on from Mark Batterson. He's a local pastor and writer.

Evotional.com

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Kenya Project

We had a meeting last Tuesday about the Kenya project that our church has been talking about and working on since last April. Back in May we realized we needed to take a fact finding trip to meet with Nairobi Gospel Centre, the church we are working with. So we met to begin working out some of the details for that trip which we plan to take in November.

Here's the genesis story for those of you who haven't heard it. We had a leader in our church, who after reading Kay Warren's book Dangerous Surrender last winter, had a God-given dream of serving children in Africa who had been orphaned by AIDS. Our staff and her small group began praying about the dream God had given her. The Polaroid of that dream became a little clearer last April when a small team of three went to Kenya to do children's ministry training.

I asked the team to be sensitive to God's leading while they were there. I felt strongly that it was not by coincidence that they were going to Africa just as we were talking about how to help orphans there.

They were there for a week and looked and prayed everyday for God to show them something about this dream. And then, on their second to the last day God did something amazing. He introduced them to some women who had had the same exact dream. Here's the link to the team's blog and the post they posted that literally left me in tears at God's awesome power: http://kenyamission2009.blogspot.com/2009/04/this-is-our-last-contact-from-kenya.html

And so in November another team, of which I am honored to be a part of, will go back to Nairobi to meet with church leaders to discuss plans, details and to pray about how to help the orphans in that community. My prayer for myself, our church and the people in Kenya is that God would break our hearts for the things that break His.

This is a 12 year project, broken into 3 year phases. It's going to require a lot of time, work, expertise and of course money. If you want to be a part of it, join us. You need not be a part of the FCBC family to join in.

I can't wait to read this verse a year from now: “Come and see what God has done. See what amazing things he has done for people.” Psalm 66:5 (ICB)

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