Staff Value #2

Healthy cultures attract and keep healthy people. – Andy Stanley
The number one force that shapes your culture is your values. – Craig Groeschel

With the words of Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel in mind, I will foster a healthy staff culture at theMOVEMENT by prioritizing four Staff Values:

  1. Connect to Christ – Your Intimacy with Christ > Your Ministry to Others
  2. Check Your Character – Condition of Your Heart > Work of Your Hands
  3. Cheat the Church – Respect from Your Family > Love from the Church
  4. Cut the Crap – Your Results > Your Excuses

Why “Check Your Character?”

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” - Matthew 15:18-20

How “Check Your Character?”

We will continually check our character by protecting ourselves against the following four “enemies of the heart”:

  1. Guilt characterized by the feeling, “I owe you.”
    • Overcome by developing the habit of CONFESSION.
  2. Anger characterized by the feeling, “You owe me.”
    • Overcome by developing the habit of FORGIVENESS.
  3. Greed characterized by the feeling, “I owe me.”
    • Overcome by developing the habit of GENEROSITY.
  4. Jealousy characterized by the feeling, “God owes me.”
    • Overcome by developing the habit of CELEBRATION.

Recommended Reading: Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley

Question to Consider: Which enemy of the heart do you need to guard yourself against?

Spring2013Grades

How ironic.

I received my lowest grade in the class in which I have the highest aptitude!

How ridiculous of me to assume that the quality of my speeches would trump the absence of my papers. Lesson learned.

Looking forward to next semester!

Staff Value #1

Healthy cultures attract and keep healthy people. – Andy Stanley
The number one force that shapes your culture is your values. – Craig Groeschel

With the words of Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel in mind, I will foster a healthy staff culture at theMOVEMENT by prioritizing four Staff Values:

  1. Connect to Christ – Your Intimacy with Christ > Your Ministry to Others
  2. Check Your Character – Condition of Your Heart > Work of Your Hands
  3. Cheat the Church – Respect from Your Family > Love from the Church
  4. Cut the Crap – Your Results > Your Excuses

Why “Connect to Christ?”

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

How “Connect to Christ?”

We will stay connected to Christ by living lifestyles of consistent:

  1. Repentance – Where we experience the grace of Christ.
  2. Worship – Where we exalt the name of Christ.
  3. Study – Where we explore the words of Christ.
  4. Prayer -  Where we engage with the person of Christ.

Recommended Reading: The Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson

Question to Consider: How is your connection to Christ?

Only Christ
6 weeks

In six weeks, theMOVEMENT will be holding its’ first of three preview services in the Jack London Square District of Oakland, California! As the Lead Pastor of this brand-new church, I have mixed emotions about this very momentous and important day, but I’m hoping this blog can be a place where, as the weeks go by, I can process many of these emotions.

I’m most nervous about:

  • Will we have a suitable meeting space?
  • Will there be at least 200 people who show up?
  • Will the message I preach be both clear and compelling?
  • Will our church be well received by the people who do come?

I’m most excited about:

  • Meeting the guests who actually come as a result of our mailer!
  • Seeing people commit their lives to Jesus on that day!
  • Watching our Staff and Volunteers work together as a team!
  • Worshiping together as a church!

I’m interested to know, if you were a Lead Pastor of a brand-new church and your first service was in six weeks, what would you be most nervous and excited about? Please share your comments here!

themeaningofmarriage

I’m currently doing premarital counseling with a couple I have the privilege of marrying at the end of June. We are reading through The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment by Tim Keller, and it is so good! So much so, that, in the coming weeks, I want be sure to list the quotes from each chapter that are most meaningful to me.

Chapter One: The Secret of Marriage

  • If God had the gospel of Jesus’s salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only “works” to the degree that approximates the pattern of God’s self-giving love in Christ.
  • Do for your spouse what God did for you in Jesus, and the rest will follow.
  • This is the secret— that the gospel of Jesus and marriage explain one another. That when God invented marriage, he already had the saving work of Jesus in mind.
  • Through marriage, “the mystery of the gospel is unveiled.” Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel’s remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up.
  • Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.
  • Through the gospel, we get both the power and the pattern for the journey of marriage.