I have nothing against the Miami Herald or the Sun Sentinel. In fact I love them because they have helped us in the past with some free publicity. But we are trying to get a few more people to hold out on reading the Sunday paper until the afternoon.
So with a little help from one of our college students currently attending Full Sail University in Orlando, we prepared this little video to help promote what we affectionately call the Fit Club. The reason why we call it that is because if you slowed the tape down a little you would see these grown men sweating, especially as we roll in “the beast”. That is what I have begun to call the +/- 1400lb cart that carries our staging.
So if 7:30am rolls around this Sunday and you’re thinking I would love to take in a good work out and do some service for God… join us at InDependence Church and help us with this…
At breakfast this morning with my buddy Carl we were discussing some of our challenges. This time could easily turn into a one up or simply a complain session. (you thought I was going to say something else but I am working out my salvation) To this point we have been successful in making it an opportunity to encourage one another and offer feedback.
This morning I was telling him about my desire to establish some priorities and boundaries between ministry and life. I know some really “holy” people just said there is no difference; God has called you to be a pastor, so it is your life. No, it is only a piece… God has called me to be a man, a husband, a father, a friend, a witness, an employee, and a pastor so it is up to me to establish the priorities of these things and establish boundaries.
I have always been aware of the time vacuum that is ministry. I grew up with it and have vowed hundreds of times not to loose site of my priorities. Well, seemingly no matter how conscious I am or how hard I have tried I am missing the mark. God has a way of reminding us of where we are falling short. Sometimes they are subtle redirections and other times they hurt like a dull knife cutting out your heart.
So, I used the word Purpose Driven because that is one of the church planting models that includes the “launching large” concept. Obviously there are others, but I want to share today a price to “launching large” (especially if you don’t make it). The Bible talks about counting your costs and this was one that I didn’t consider and maybe you haven’t either so let me help you learn this so you might not have to pay the same price.Continue reading ‘Purpose Driven has a Price’
It took somewhere in the neighborhood 26 surveys before we got our first really negative comments. To be honest I didn’t expect it to take that long, but I am actually happy that we got some. It had to do with their experience at InDependence drawing them closer to God and being able to enter worship easily.
Granted those are two pretty critical things but what I was reminded of as I read those things… simply, InDependence isn’t for everybody. At first glance I wanted to dissect every other response and try to figure out why. After so many positive responses especially in these areas and then this one person… why?
At the end of the day it isn’t realistic to believe that we are going to appeal to everybody in Weston and the surrounding areas. Not everybody is going to get into Hillsong United worship and respond to a pastor wearing jeans.
God has given us a vision at InDependence and it is our job to do the very best job that we can to reach the people that our “style” is going to minister to. Sure I want to win the whole city but in reality God knows that we aren’t for everybody. That’s part of the reason there are a few more churches in town.
So if one of your ministry goals is to win the entire world for Jesus Christ, I’m not going to say not to try, but you might want to set some more realistic goals because there are some people in Weston, FL and the surrounding areas that we are responsible for.
I am getting some great feed back from the survey we put out. There are a lot of encouraging things, some surprises, and confirmation that some of the changes that we are working on are needed.
I am keeping a close eye on a few of them and one specifically is the ranking of factors for deciding to attend InDependence. “Worship style” and “casual atmosphere” were on quite a few peoples top three. Location was an important part as well. I am hoping for a few more “sounded like a cool place” people because my mom always said I was cool and I want to plant a cool church. But I guess core values and beliefs are important too and many of you agreed.
If you haven’t taken our little survey yet please take a look in your e-mail inbox because even though it is anonymous I would like to track how many people from our e-mail list took the 10 minutes to take it.
I will post our findings in the next couple of weeks and once we have exhausted our efforts to get information from the people who have a personal relationship with InDependence, I will open it up to public view via this blog and our website.
I am getting ready to celebrate 6 official months at InDependence. We launched on January 20th of this year. God has enabled us to do some incredible things and we have learned some valuable lessons along the way. So today I heard the audible voice of the Lord and it sounded a lot like a church planter friend of mine that suggested I do an e-mail survey.
I had heard of people doing church surveys and being blown away by the information that they received. I found some good examples to work from here and I plan to put an InDependence twist on it. We are in the people business… more specifically people’s soul business so the thought of asking the people that your ministry has reached their opinion, seemed like a no-brainer.
To be quite honest I needed some reminders that we are being effective. I was looking here and was encouraged because God really has kept us on a faster learning curve. But I don’t want to be just average, or even above average, I want to our ministry to be exceptionable.
I have been somewhat disappointed by the numbers of new life commitments that we have seen at InDependence because that is really what it is about. I know that we have helped to facilitate renewals and recommitments but I am praying for some flat out radical life changes. The ones where people say I can’t believe that so and so just gave their lives to Christ. We didn’t advertise here and with this on Y100 because we wanted somebody’s disgruntled church members.
So we are going to figure out what we are doing right, and we will take it as a pat on the back. We are also going to figure out how we can improve inside of the vision that God has given us and fix what is wrong. I want to reach our community and introduce them to Jesus Christ and if that causes a blow to my ego, so be it. So if you are on our e-mail list be looking for the survey and please take it. If you want to be on our list go here.
The fall has always been my favorite season. I know I live in South Florida where I am not sure if that terminology even exists but… Maybe it is because my birthday comes in the fall. Maybe it is because that is when “football” season kicks off. Now that I live in South Florida I need to clarify, “American Football”. Specifically it is the time when the Buckeyes of The Ohio State University take the field under the fine coaching of Jim Tressel. O-H-I-O
Maybe it is because I remember taking great yearly trips as a kid to the mountains to enjoy the changing of the leaves. Maybe it was because I was married in the fall. Maybe it is because of Thanksgiving which is one of my favorite holidays. Maybe it is a little of all of that, but now that I am a church planter I have found a new affection for the fall.
I am anticipating the return of all of our vacationers in the next few weeks. As kids return to school and schedules begin to settle I am looking forward to making this fall our season of spiritual growth. We will trying to find out what sort of impact a New Testament church can have on our community.
So starting in September we will be taking the New Testament Challenge. We are going to read the New Testament cover to cover during the course of the next three months. We are going to be challenged to live out the life of a New Testament follower of Christ. We have taken off our lousy t-shirts and we are getting on with our own amazing journeys.
This last Sunday my family and I, along with our guitarist, and his girlfriend, made the trip to West Palm to hang out with our worship leader, David and his family. Our bass player was there also so I found myself surrounded with some very musically talented people. Other than experiencing some incredible food… and by incredible, I mean incredible, I enjoyed spontaneous breakouts in music and song.
David has a music room with a drum kit, keyboard and about 1500 guitars. OK so it wasn’t 1500 but he did have a ukulele. I almost asked for a little “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”but I didn’t want to have my man card revoked. Probably just mentioning that on the internet is going to cost me some points.
The amazing part was that he would just hop from instrument to instrument and just start playing. So then Sebastian (our guitarist) gets in the mix and started playing random tunes. The experience brought two thoughts to my mind:
It was either like being the non-musical kid adopted by The Partridge Family or watching the making of the “Viva Viagra” commercial.I am glad to announce that jingle was never sung but if you ever get a chance ask David and his family to sing their jingle about cheese.
Congratulation to our new Worship Leader, David Quiles (keyless,) for winning Song of the Year from KCCM. What did he win? Hopefully sleeves to his shirt! LOL
Man, are we excited to have this guy and his family at InDependence. Week two with the band was great. God really is setting us up for some great things.
I purchased a new domain name today for a little project my family is taking on. We got a little sidetracked this last week but we are back on course and moving forward. This project ties right into the series we are in at InDependence.
We are getting ready for week two of the “I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” series. This series is basically about us as Christians no longer reading or hearing about somebody else’s exciting journey and settling for a souvenir t-shirt. For more information on the book it is based on click here.
This project is certainly going to be an exciting journey for us. It is going to involve faith, risk, and even a little danger. (Written with my best Australian accent) I am sure there will be moments were it seems impossible. I am sure there will be moments of joy. I am sure that this little project will probably feel a little like the emotional roller coaster ride that accompanies planting a church.
Can’t wait to share more but for the next month or so you will just have to anticipate hearing about the ridiculous thing God is asking us to do.
We had debut of the InDependence Band on Sunday and they came out of the box strong. They opened with this song from Switchfoot and followed it up with an original song written by our lead guitar player Sebastian. I knew our worship leader David Quiles (keyless) had mad writing skills but apparently he isn’t alone.
We have the help of the bass player for City of David, Bob, and Sebastian’s brother George pounding on the drums. They practiced for about 3 hrs on these two songs and they sounded great. I can’t wait till next week when they have had a few more hours together. It really is a God thing and I couldn’t be more excited to have all of them on board.There are a few more pieces waiting in the wings so I see it only getting better…
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