What a Blast!

Our summer praise party was a blast. Pastor Jonathan and Pastor TJ did a great job organizing everything. Every part of the service--from the testimonies to the music--celebrated God's activity in our lives. I want to give a special shout out to Elizabeth Beckett for a great sermon. What a powerful presentation! I think she'll do great at the national Fine Arts Festival in Orlando later this summer.

What a Send Off

I am so thankful to the people of Christian Life Assembly. You guys really stepped up to the plate--giving over $11,000 in cash and gifts to the Barthalow family as we send them off as missionaries to India. All I can say is, "Wow!" What a great church family we have! I'm proud to be your pastor.

Jonathan and Erica leave tomorrow for Memphis then head to Springfield for School of Missions. They will be gone approximately nine weeks before they return to Des Moines. After that, they will live in Norwalk and travel the state raising the remainder of their cash and monthly support budget. The best estimate is that this will take about one year. Then we'll have one last service with them to send them on their way to India.

Gas Saving Tips

Here's a great website that tested all the recommended ways to save money at the pump. If you follow their instructions, they assert that you can save up to 37% on you gas. That's a big difference. Here's the website:

http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/driving/articles/106842/article.html

A Timeline for Leading Dramatic Change

Here's an interesting timeline for creating dramatic change in an organization:

Stage 1 Creating Awareness (4-6 months) Through intensive communication events, leaders take people through dialogue and discussion about the need for transformation.

Stage 2 Creating Understanding (3-5 months) The dialogue and discussion serve to bring thinking and feeling modes of understanding together into a pattern of understanding.

Stage 3 Evaluation (3-5 months) What is currently happening in the organization is evaluated in light of awareness and understanding.

Stage 4 Creating experiments (3-8 months) People begin to identify actions that they believe will transform the organization into a missional organization. People will experiment through action.

Stage 5 Commit (Ongoing) People commit to getting others involved in the process of moving through awareness to understanding, to evaluation, to experimentation, and finally to commitment.

It's an interesting change model from the book The Missional Church.

Here's a basic question for all of us, why don't we like change? I'd be interested to see what you post.

Welcome Home, Joel

It was a great honor to welcome wounded Marine L. Cpl. Joel Klobnak home to Iowa last night at CLA. All three local network news teams were there to cover the story, along with a couple hundred of Joel's friends and family. Joel is home through Memorial Day then will return to Washington, DC to recuperate from the injury that took part of his left leg.

Thank you to everyone who made the event possible.

Church in a Box

I got a great idea while I was in Memphis. It's called Church in a Box. It's not something you order from The Acme Company, either. Here's the idea. I am believing God for a church of 1,000 people in the next five years. We are on the way. Our current average for the last 52 weeks is 431. So, we are almost halfway there.

So, what's the church in a box?

I want to get a box and put the names of 1,000 of your friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers who have not yet crossed the line of faith in Jesus. Then, we're going to pray over that box every day. And, out of that box will come the church we're believing for as people receive hope and life through Christian Life Assembly.

Who can build me a box like that?

Walking in Memphis

I'm in Memphis this morning. I spoke yesterday at Raleigh Assembly of God. What a great service. I heard Pastor Jonathan did a great job back home at Christian Life.

Today, we do a leadership seminar for the Assemblies of God pastors of the Memphis section. I'm going to do the talk about questions leaders ask. Here they are:

1. Where are we? (Location)
2. Where are we going? (Destination)
3. How do we get there? (Navigation)
4. What's new? (Innovation)
5. Who's next? (Identification)
6. What's the atmosphere? (Culture)
7. How's our alignment? (Integration)
8. How am I doing? (Self-Leadership)

These are the eight questions leaders should constantly ask about their organization.

Great Resources for Church...for FREE

LifeChurch.tv of Edmond, Oklahoma, one of the fastest-growing and most technologically innovative churches in America, is making its media-intensive approach available to pastors and churches worldwide at no cost. The church is offering an extensive online library of materials that includes outlines from a wide variety of message series, corresponding promotional design graphics and videos, broadcast-quality opening videos and more. You can get a look at the various resources at: http://www.lifechurch.tv/open.

www.ihatemymarriage.com

New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina, took some criticism on the chin when it launched a series titled "ihatemymarriage.com." But while they were being criticized, marriages were being healed and people were coming to Christ.

Granger Community Church, located near South Bend, Indiana, used billboards promoting the website www.mylamesexlife.com to publicize a series called "Pure Sex." They were criticized by the religious community, but the series attedance almost doubled their average attendance for a series that promoted healthy sexuality, including how to break free from internet porn addiction.

A couple of morals:
1. Creativity stirs criticism.
2. Know who you are trying to reach and go for it.

On the Map!

Growing up in the South, I rarely met a catholic or a Lutheran. I guess this map of religious adherance in America explains why. It's interesting that growing, I assumed that the rest of the nation mirrored the worldview of my section of the country. Iowa looks a lot different than Kentucky when it comes to religious affiliation, doesn't it?