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Sunday Stuff...

- Great Sunday!

- I taught from Proverbs 21 on the subject of "How to be Wise with your Finances"

- I spent about 10 minutes talking about tithing and 45 people decide to take the tithe challenge. 

- I believe over 200 people have taken the tithe challenge this year at Calvary Fellowship! 

- My favorite part is hearing the stories of how God "opens the windows of heaven"

- I have always said that the key to an effective tithe challenge is in the follow up process you have

- If you want to know what our follow up process it, it's here

- Band sounded great today. We are blessed with an amazing bunch of musicians!

- Looking forward to teaching on parenting next week. I will speak as a fellows struggler, not an expert :) 

- People are really excited about the new Miramar Campus! I can't wait!

- We just started our Christmas offering 2 weeks ago and we're 60% of the way to our goal! Calvary is an incredibly generous church.  

- I am blown away by the impact of this Proverbs series. God is growing us in wisdom. 

- Got to meet a bunch of new people. It's great to hear about what God is doing in the lives of new believers. 

- I am so excited about a tele-seminar I'm leading on Dec. 3rd. I'm talking about how to get great results from direct mail. I think it's going to help a lot of churches that want to do a Christmas Eve outreach, a January series push, or a February kick off. You can get the info here. 

- I'm reading a great book right now, which is great because I've a bunch of duds recently.  

- I'm talking about the thing you have to before you do direct mail in the www.church-strategies.com newsletter. Plus, I'm reviewing a great book that I read this week. You can subscribe here for free. 

- Looking forward to spending time with my coaching network on Thursday! Amazing group of guys that are seeing awesome things happen in their churches. I'm blessed to invest in them! 

- Got home from church and spent the afternoon with my wife and kids. I love my life! I'm grateful to the Lord for blessing me as much as He has. I'm humbled by God's grace in my life. 

- Have a great week! 

Building your Volunteers like a Baseball Team (Part 2)

If you're going to help servants grow in their leadership, you need to decide what roles are of higher priority than others. For example, here is how this model plays out with our greeters: 

Single A volunteer - person greeting on Sunday

Double A volunteer - person overseeing that team of greeters that morning

Triple A volunteer - person who oversees the greeter ministry 

Major Leagues - Staff member who oversees our entire hospitality area

The key is to move people as you see the potential in them flourish. I talk about this model in my book Zero to Sixty: 60 principles and practices for leading a growing church. There's nothing worse than a faithful volunteer with huge potential staying at a single A spot. 

(FYI - just don't move them until you've seen a level of faithfulness in them that you feel comfortable moving them to the next level). Because the only thing worse than not promoting a faithful volunteer with the potential to do move is to promote an unfaithful volunteer who has not been faithful with his/her God-given gifts. 

If you want to increase your volunteer base and know how we equip volunteers, check out our resource "Serving Strategies" by clicking here (If you want the MP3 version, it's here)

Building your Volunteers like a Baseball Team

I've been thinking about volunteers a lot lately for a couple of reasons: 

1. It's my topic for my coaching network next month

2. We asked 50 people to commit to serve and make a move to our new Miramar campus and we had over 60 step up in the 1st week! 

3. Churches are volunteer-intensive organizations and the day we stop leading volunteers into greater steps of commitment and growth, we're in trouble (and they get stalled in their spiritual and leadership development)

So here's what I suggest: looking at your church like a baseball team. A baseball team isn't just the 25 guys that make up the Major League team. There's also a farm system that's funneling young players to the big leagues. 

I believe every position in your church needs to have a designation of: 

Single A - entry level position 

Double A - Overseeing a team within a ministry

Triple A - High capacity leader overseeing a ministry

Major Leagues - Staff Member with responsibility for that ministry

Next time I'll talk about how we delineate between a single, double and triple A position and what each position needs. 

To increase your volunteer base and know how we invest in our volunteers, check out our "Serving Strategies" resource by clicking here. (If you want the mp3 download version, it's here)

Q and A: Boards

This question came up recently, and it's one that I get a lot from church planters, so I thought I'd post my answer here: 

"Do you use Roberts' Rules of Order in your board meetings?" 

Great question, and the answer is yes. We use Roberts' rules to run our board meetings. While this may seem corporate or stuffy to some, it's a very effective way to have a meeting and get through agenda items effectively.  

If you're unaware of what Roberts' Rules are, it's saying things like, "All in favor" and making motions and seconding those motions to pass agenda items.  

I've served on ten church boards over the last decade and those that have used Roberts' Rules functioned much better than those which did not.  

For more information on conducting board meeting, selecting board members and bylaws, check out our Laying the Foundation resource by clicking here. 

Q and A: Meetings

I've gotten this question in several different forms, but it's usually something like this: "How can I make my meetings more effective?" 

Most meetings are: 

1. Too long

2. Too dull

3. Too scattered

That being the case, my philosophy for effective meetings is to make meetings: 

1. Shorter (90 minutes at most)

2. More exciting (Make sure the content is relevant to everyone in the meeting)

3. More focused - you don't have to discuss every issue. If a discussion is going to derail the meeting, have a separate meeting to deal with that issue and only have the necessary parties there. 

I talk about meetings in greater detail in the Zero to Sixty Seminar which you can pick up by clicking here. 

Q and A: Commitment

This is a great question I got recently: "Bob, what does commitment mean at Calvary? It seems like my definition and my leaders have two different definitions. How do I change that?" 

Awesome question! I have found that there's only one way to change that mindset - you have to define what commitment means according to the Bible. I've found the best vehicle for that is instituting a membership class. 

When you have a solid membership system, you set the baseline of commitment for the church. If being committed to your church means believers should be attending, serving, giving and growing, then your membership class should outline that.  

If you don't establish a baseline of commitment, everyone will decide what they think commitment means.  Trust me, you don't want to be there :) 

If you want a resource that will help you establish a solid membership system in your church, pick up our resource, "The Complete Membership System" by clicking here.

Q and A: What do you do for New Believers?

Here's a question I got this week: "Hey Bob, I see that you guys reach a lot of unchurches people at Calvary. What do you do for them once they come to Christ?" 

Great question: We have an 8-step process/ system that we work through which takes new believers from the moment they let us know they've made the decision to follow Jesus to full assimilation into the church.  

But that all starts with the individual letting us know the decision they've made.  That's why we let them know if made that decision, to check that off on their connection card and we'll send them a copy of my book Start Here. It's the 4 most important next steps a new believer can make.  

If you want to know our complete 8-step process, check our our new believers follow up system by clicking here. (It includes the Start Here e-book plus every other document we use).  

Sunday Stuff...

- What a great day! 

- You wouldn't have known it was going to be great, because the A/C was out at the school and it was about 8,000 degrees in the auditorium. 

- Outside, it was only slightly cooler. The high today was 89!  We're having a warm Fall :)

- I taught from Proverbs 16 on "How to Know God's Will"

- I know I've said it before, but God is doing an amazing work in the lives of people through this Proverbs series.

- This week we rolled out a big announcement: on February 21st, 2010 we're starting our 2nd location in West Miramar! 

- Miramar is about 15-20 minutes away and has a population of just over 100,000 people.

- There's very little happening evangelistically in west Miramar. There's stuff happening north of Miramar and south of it, but nothing in the city itself.  That's changing in February! 

- We're really excited about this new venture! We have a great team in place to see this vision become reality. 

- God put this in my heart about 4 years ago and I'm thrilled that we've taken so many steps to see this happen.  

- We had a baptism after church. It was great to see people making the decision to obey Jesus and go public with their faith.  

- Got to talk to dozens of new people that I have never met, but Jesus is changing their lives! 

- Had a guy say to me today, "I wish I would have come to this church 30 years ago. I would have done life differently and raised my kids differently." I was really moved by this. I'm amazed at what God is doing here! 

- Sometimes we get so caught up in the overall numbers that we lose sight of the individual stories of life change that are happening all around us.

- It's Carey's birthday on Wednesday, so we're heading out for a few days. I can't wait to reconnect with my family. 

- I've got 5 new books in my Kindle. Looking forward to getting some good reading time.  

- Gotta go pack! 

Thoughts on Evangelism from a Non-Evangelist Part 2

I believe the most important aspect of being a church that reaches a lot of unchurched people is creating a culture of evangelism. The only way I know to create a culture of evangelism is to preach the Gospel every week.  

We give people an opportunity to come to know Jesus in our services every week and not a week goes by when we see people give their lives to Jesus.  

You have to preach on evangelism, but people need to see the Gospel preached and see people respond. 

It builds people's faith when people are turning to Jesus every week they come to church. When they see other coming to Jesus every week in the services, they think, "If I invite my friend, family member, or neighbor, they may come to know Jesus here as well."  

Of course, this can't replace personal evangelism, but it compliments personal evangelism nicely.  

To know how we create an environment to reach lost people through our Sunday services, check out our resource, "How to Make every Sunday like Easter" by clicking here. 

Thoughts on Evangelism from a Non-Evangelist

I am amazed that God has allowed Calvary Fellowship to be much an evangelistic church that reaches primarily unchurched people.  

The reason I'm so amazed is because I'm not an evangelist.  I'm a Bible teacher. That's my sweet spot. Teaching through books of the Bible and feeding God's people.  

While that's my primary gifting, my passion is to see lost people found. Nothing give me greater joy than to see a lost person give their life to Jesus and start growing in their faith.  

This week I'm going to talk about how that happens in our context at Calvary.  I hope this series of posts will be encouraging to you and maybe help you if you're a non-evangelist seeking to reach lost people.  

To know how we create an environment to reach lost people, check out our resource, "How to Make every Sunday like Easter" by clicking here.