I just got my DVD’s of the Calvary Chapel Senior Pastor’s Conference (By the way, mad props to the people at The Word for Today for getting them out to me so quickly). I wasn’t able to attend this year, but I’m looking forward to checking them out and hearing for myself all the good stuff that my friends were telling me about.

I’ve heard people say this. I’ve said it. But today I want to ask the question, “Is this true?” Do people really decide whether or not they are going to attend your church within the first 5,7, or 10 minutes? Are we building this theory based on comments that people say like, “I knew from the moment I walked in that this place was home!” Or, “I knew I was never coming back based on the fact that the place looked like a disaster!” I don’t know. I think this theory should be tested by having the worst band in … Read More

As the New York Yankees are learning this season, now that they have some star players out for extended periods of time, that a team is only as strong as their bench. Every team and every church has a few star players, but what about when these people are out? Can the church still thrive without the All-Stars? I’ve been thinking about this since I was out for 2 weekends and then Mark, our Worship Leader has been out for the last 2 weekends. It has made me appreciate that we have some depth. We’ve got gifted teachers who can … Read More

Church went really well today. We are in the second week of a new series called “Crash”. We’re spending some time in the book of Daniel. It has been great so far. Today we looked at Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Chapter 2. I think it went well. The rain in Miami has been out of control. I’m not used to cloudy days. Days in Miami are usually sunny 90% of the time. But this weekend has been miserably wet. It affected our attendance. It also made me think: I have never purchased an umbrella in my life. Weird. I’m looking forward … Read More

If you’re thinking about planting a church, would you consider Miami? Here are the stats: 94% unchurched (I know this means a lot of things to a lot of people, but here it means people with no church background at all). Of that 6% that are churched, it is evenly split, 3% Catholic and 3% Protestant. There are more Santeros in Miami than clergy. (If you don’t know what a Santero is, click here) Most church plants in Miami fail, mostly because all the stuff that’s written in books about how to grow a church don’t work here. Miami is … Read More

We have gone over 2 weeks without voicemail at our offices, until yesterday afternoon. We thought the whole voicemail system was fried, but it turned out to be the power supply. Once the people picked it up and replaced it, we were back in business. This means 2 things… #1 – If you called us over the last 2 weeks and didn’t have an opportunity to leave a message after office hours, we’re very sorry. #2 – Feel free to call us when we’re not hear and our friendly auto-attendant will take you to the voicemail box you need to … Read More

Here’s the video intro that Carey made for our new “crash” series. It’s compressed to 2.8 MB. This way, you won’t have to wait all day to download it. Also, it’s in Quicktime. If you don’t have Quicktime (which means you don’t have a Mac), get right with God and download it here. Enjoy…Download CRASH-web.mov

I had an interesting conversation this week with a Pastor and I was reminded of the importance of how to implement change. I shared some things with him and when I was talking, I was remembering all the dumb mistakes we’ve made over the years in regards to changing things. So before you turn your church upside down because you just got back from the coolest church ever or the best conference in the universe, consider this: #1 – Get your staff on board – I know you’ve heard from God, but your staff needs to hear from you. Give … Read More

We had a great service today. It felt great to be back after being out for 2 Sundays in a row. People seemed excited and into our new series “crash”. We spending some time in the book of Daniel. That dude was awesome. “No, I won’t have your non-kosher food, thank you very much.” I love the integrity of that 17 year old kid! Anyway, a bunch of people were out. Some of our staff was out of town. I encourage our staff to take vacation during the low times in the church calendar. The last day of school was … Read More

Carey and I saw X-Men 3 on Saturday night and it was amazing. I’m blown away by how great each of these movies has been. It seems as though each sequel was better than the next. But as we were walking out, we started talking about how both sides of the mutant world had so much in common except one thing. We talked about the differences between Professor X and Magneto and the types of leaders they were and we came down to one thing that made them so different: Integrity. Like every mutant who had special gifts, so too … Read More