– Today was amazing! Definitely one of the highlights in my 9+ years as Pastor of Calvary Fellowship.  – We launched our Miramar campus today with 150+ people!  Thank you Lord!  – I'm blown away by God's goodness. We did personal invites, Facebook ads, and direct mail, that's it!  – Miramar is a community that has needed a church like ours for a long time. People's receptiveness to a new church like ours shows that there's been a huge need.  – Our staff and volunteers were amazing.  They made Everglades High school look like we've been meeting there for a year! … Read More

As a Pastor, the most important thing you do is teach the Word of God to your congregation.  Yet our study time doesn't scream for attention. Everyone else is.  Staff want to meet with us. People in the church want to talk to us. Other organizations want a few minutes of our time.  But Sunday is coming (with amazing regularity). So I encourage you to schedule your study time first and don't break that appointment for anything or anyone.   Emergencies come up, but if it's happening every week it has ceased to be an emergency and now it's routine. … Read More

Someone asked me last week what the biggest challenge has been in launching a new campus.  Before I tell you, here's what I thought it was going to be as we went into this:  1. Raising the money 2. Having enough volunteers 3. Getting buy-in from the congregation Honestly, I found those 3 things easier than I thought. (they weren't a breeze, but they were much easier than I expected). Here was the biggest thing: Making sure we are properly exporting our DNA.  I really want both of our campuses to have the same experience. I want the highest level … Read More

I've noticed something in the church over the years and I want to address it today. There seems to be a bit of a divide between those who think strategically and those who simply 'let the Spirit lead'. In fact, those who claim to allow the Holy Spirit to lead their churches without the need for strategic thinking sometimes call those who lean towards the practical "carnal" and "unspiritual".  Honestly, I've heard this since I entered ministry. The message was, "If you want to be spiritual, don't worry about the details." Here's where that became problematic for me: I have … Read More

– Surprisingly good day today.  – I honestly thought today would be a ghost town and we had a good crowd.  – 1st service was a little light, but the 2nd service was well represented.  – I finished the book of Esther this morning. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching through this book.  – I've taught through 24 books of the Bible since we started Calvary Fellowship. – It's 12 Old Testament and 12 New Testament for those keeping score at home. – One of my life goals is to preach through the entire Bible. – At my current rate, I'll be … Read More

   Join us this Wednesday, February 10th from 1PM-3PM in a brand new tele-seminar called, "The Magnetic Church".  If you want to know how Calvary Fellowship has follow up on over 900 New Believers in the last 2 years and created a culture of evangelism, then this is the place.   Here's what we'll be covering in the tele-seminar: – Instead of seeing new believers fall through the cracks, become a church that sees new believers stick like a magnet! – If there’s one thing churches should excel at, it’s helping new believers go from infancy to maturity in their faith. … Read More

– Great day today!  – I taught Esther 5:9-7:10. Taught on Haman's pride.  – Messages on pride are not the easiest messages to preach. – The band sounded great today. Love the fact the we have so many capable worship leaders at Calvary! – Talked to several people this morning that came from pretty radical backgrounds.  God is still in the life changing business!  – Next week we finish our series in Esther and then we're spending 5 weeks talking about marriage. – Our Magnetic Church tele-seminar is on Wednesday. I can't wait to talk about how to create an … Read More

#5 – ASK, ASK, ASK! If you want to increase the number of volunteers in your church you're going to have to ask people to serve. You need to ask people in different ways because not everyone responds to requests in the same way.  Here's 5 ways to ask:  1. Personal Invitation 2. Pulpit Invitation 3. Peer invitation (person serving inviting their friend to serve) 4. Email blast 5. Special event (Many times people start serving when there's a special event and they see it as a one-time thing. They have a great experience and then continue serving.) For a … Read More

Now I will readily admit that it's not as exciting as the Return of the Jedi, but I  think you'll find this interesting.   Cinnabon's sales had dropped due to decreased foot traffic in malls because of the recession. So what did they do? Direct mail!*  They started doing direct mail and guess what? Sales went up!   This teaches us a couple of things:  #1 – Hard work pays off – I commend Cinnabon for not blaming the government or anyone else. Instead, they got creative, took a risk and their hard work paid off.  #2 – Direct mail … Read More

#4 – Stop Doing 5 things and turn them into Volunteer Positions I challenged our staff a while back with this objective. Find 5 things you're currently doing and turn them into volunteer positions. I was amazed how this created new positions for people to serve.  There were simple things our staff was doing that a volunteer could easily do. We were simply becoming the bottleneck for ministry to take place. There are people who would be willing to serve if it meant going to the store or picking up coffee.  Create new opportunities by allowing volunteers to do things … Read More