Pick Up The Pace

It finally happened. I’ve been threatening to do it for quite some time, but yesterday I finally mustered up enough backbone to do it. I started walking several miles each morning.

It was still dark when the alarm went off and the early morning twilight was just beginning to appear when I started my journey. I first went down the street next to my apartment and then up the hill past the clubhouse. I must admit I was getting a little winded, but kept going knowing this was the only way I going to get into shape. Next came the part I most anticipated…the trail next to lake. I was getting pretty tired…my chest hurting…but I was enjoying the view of the sun coming up over the lake. My legs were beginning to cramp…may pace was slowing down considerably…I was hurting and considering quitting…then it happened. A HUGE water moccasin appeared on the ground next to me. As he raised head to striking position and showed me his open mouth…I sensed the immediate danger…heeded the warning…and seriously picked up the pace. When a large poisonous snake appears…fat folks can haul some serious butt!!!

There are times where my walk with Christ feels like that. I’m tired…hurt…exhausted…and feeling like throwing in the towel. When I get to feeling that I way I just take a hard look at the people I come in contact with every day. Some of them are intentional relationships…others are accidental. Yet when I take a closer look I see immediate danger…warning signs…the vision of people destined for Hell because no one has told them about the saving power of Jesus Christ. It is in those moments that I find the burst of energy to carry on…to get going…to move forward…to pick up the pace.

Are you tired…weary…worn out? Look around…who are the warning signs in your life…where do you need to pick up the pace?

This One’s For Tony Morgan

So Tony Morgan has decided to indulge in some kind of Oprah-like experiment where people get psychoanalyzed by the wallpaper on their computer screen. In order to participate, I humbly submit the current screen on my Macbook. Try this one on for size Tony.

The Difference Between Men & Women

I just got through cleaning the bathrooms around the house and discovered the difference between men and women.

In my shower stall

1. One (1) bar of soap
2. One (1) bottle of shampoo
3. One (1) back scrubber

In my wife’s shower stall

1. Thirteen (13) bottles of shampoo
2. Four (4) razors
3. Seven (7) bottles of conditioner
4. Three (3) bars of soap
5. Eleven (11) tubes of body wash
6. Four (4) luffas
7. And one (1) abrasive brush-like contraption that I have no clue what it’s for…but it scares me to death

Monday Morning Ramblings

Kyle is on vacation still…so no meetings today.  I took a rare Monday off to work around the house for Denise…I hate cleaning bathrooms!!!  Anyway…the “honey-do list” is HUGE and I only have a few moments to type…so here goes my abbrviated Monday Morning Rambling:

1. Rough day yesterday at Compass Point.  The new lighting configuration kept blowing the circuits.  Not one problem during four hours of setup and rehearsal…but as soon I got ready to preach…BOOM…we lost two banks of lights and one projector.
2. Lakeland is one backwards town.  We have good attendance during June…but everyone takes vacation in July.  It’s always been that way.
3. Getting pretty psyched up about Fantasy Football this year…still haven’t decided if I’m going to host a league or not.
4. Twitter seems to be back on the fritz.  It’s taking hours for a post to actually show up online.
5. Saw a friend of mine Saturday that gos to the University of Florida…she says the Gator’s football team is looking really primed and ready for the season.  I smell another SEC and National Championship in the air for the Gators!!!
6. Compass Point is one diverse bunch of people.  Found out yesterday that one of our new guys is a pyrotechnics expert for Epcot…handles the “IllumiNations” show.  I feel we are finally getting closer to KISS-like worship services at Compass Point. 
7. Great meeting last week with a guy in church that does AMAZING graphics…expect a rebranding of Compass Point in the Fall.
8. If you thought the creative team commercial in the service yesterday was hilarious (which is was)…wait until you see the one for next week!!!

That’s it for today…now it’s back to my battle of good and evil over the demons of soap scum!!!

To Answer Some Questions - Part 1

Each week I get a bunch of emails from church planters and pastors asking all kinds of things.  I thought I’d address a few of the more common ones on my blog so I don’t have to keep emailing the same responses over and over agan.

What translation of the Bible do you preach from on Sunday? The leadership of Compass Point decided early on that we wanted to use a word-by-word translation instead of a thought-by-thought translation of the Bible.  With that in mind, we mainly use the English Standard Version or New American Standard Version translations to preach from.  For me it’s not “hill to die on”…the Word of God is the Word of God…unless it’s a gender neutral version.  Because of that I will also read verses from the New Living Translation, New International Version or The Message on occasion to simplify and parallel what I just read from the ESV or NASB.

What is the discipleship process at Compass Point? It has changed immensely in the past three months.  This was one of the experiments we went into the summer wanting to conduct…and it is really coming off well.  There is too much for me to address with this post…but will address it in a series of posts next week.

Who are the guys that God uses to speak to you? God uses four guys on a consistent basis to speak into my life: Kyle Bridges (our Executive Pastor), Perry Noble, Gary Lamb and Bobby Triplett.  I talk or meet with these guys on a regular basis…and God always uses them to pound Truth into my hard-headed brain.

How do you get spiritually fed? Good question that I get a lot.  First of all I have a daily quiet time…usually in the morning after I get to the office.  I mainly read from “Morning And Evening” by Spurgeon…then pray from a prayer journal I’m constantly updating.  My wife and I also pray together on the way to work.  I set aside several hours a week for personal Bible study…this is over-and-above the hours I pour into my weekly sermon prep.  Right now I’m studying through Acts because our Journey Groups are going through it.  Each week I also listen to three to five sermons via podcasts.  While I listen to a wide variety of preaching depending on what God is speaking to me about at the time…there are three guys I listen to each week without fail…Pastor Perry Noble, Pastor Steven Furtick and Pastor John Piper.  After all of this I take two separate weekends off…one in the Fall and one in the Spring…to go to a place with no phones, radio, television, newspaper or internet access so I can pray, fast and read God’s Word…no agenda…just let the Holy Spirit take me.

More questions and answers coming tomorrow…

Fleeting - Part 2

I remember when I first got into comedy…it was by sheer “accident”. I had a job as a deejay on a sleepy little AM Christian radio station in Shreveport, Louisiana. Trying to shake things up I started doing these weird characters and different voices…basically trying to add a little joy to people’s lives as they rode around town listening to the radio. One afternoon I get a call to come do my “characters for a group of teens” at a conference…turns out it was several thousand teens and dozens of youth pastors. The rest…as they say…is history.

It was that initial desire to see people laugh…to bring joy…to break down walls with humor so I could share Christ with disconnected people…that got me into the whole stand up comedy thing in the first place. Then all of a sudden I’m on a plane flying around the country…getting picked up by a booking agent…landing a management deal…getting invited to the right kind of gigs…major record label interest…and watching the miles go by out of the window of a tour bus. Somewhere along the way it became more about product sales, how many weekly interviews I was doing, concert attendance numbers, how prestigious were the events I was hosting, in-store appearances, getting on the biggest tours and how many “connected” people I could have lunch with…than the simple joy and ministry of making people laugh. Too many people…with too many agendas…that were not my calling….were whispering in my ear. Because of the noise and confusion…I stopped listening to God..and starting buying into what I was hearing from those around me. I had lost my focus…my reason for doing it…my first love. It all stopped being a ministry to further the Kingdom of God and starting becoming…a competition.

It wasn’t long after that realization that I walked away. I would still occasionally do comedy as a platform team member with a international prison ministry…however the CCM lifestyle was clearly in my rear view mirror. I also made a promise to God that if it ever stopped being about reaching people far from Him with the Good News of Jesus Christ…I would walk away.

Four years into this journey called church planting it’s still about reaching disconnected people for Christ. It’s not about how many people are in the seats on Sunday, how much financial reserve is in the bank, whether I’m being asked to speak at the “right” conferences or whether I get to sit at the “cool kids’ table” in the church planting world. I think those things eventually come…if you keep your eye on the ball. The ball? Reaching people far from God with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their knowledge of God’s Word. If it ever stops being about that…I’ll quit again. I’d rather walk away from something deemed successful in the eyes of man…that disappoint my Father in Heaven again.

Monday Morning Ramblings

1. Yesterday’s service went good…but attendance was low. I go into more detail here, plus provide a PDF sample of our regular worship set list available for download. Also detailed our normal Sunday morning schedule for the summer here.
2. Spent most of the weekend praying for NewSpring…and was totally pumped up to read this and this!!!
3. BIG meeting today about our next steps at Compass Point. We’re about to take a HUGE financial risk…but know that God is leading us that way.
4. I’ve really begun to see the value and need for the accountability and covering that I have from our Elders. Each Sunday they pray over the band, the tech team and me before we go out…it has made a world of difference!!!
5. Still struggling with what it means to make disciples in the 21st Century. Praying through it…studying up on it…talking with other pastors about it…but it is starting to look a little more organic small-group for us. We’ve already begun the experiment…and it seems to be working.
6. In the spirit of one-up-manship…Gary Lamb has been spouting off about how Pastor Furtick sent him a copy of Elevation’s new worship CD “We Are Alive” last week by mail. Mine was flown down to Florida and hand delivered by a member of Elevations’ Senior Management Team almost a month ago.
7. Spent most of last night and this morning praying for some soon-to-be church planters. I am finding that spending time praying for other churches helps me to better love God, His kingdom…and my own flock.
8. Speaking of Elevation’s worship CD…go buy it!!! It will melt your face off…and comes with an official Elrod “Pantyless Praise Guarantee”. Especially check out “All Things New”, “Sun Stand Still”, “There Is A Place” and “We Have Overcome”. You can hear samples and purchase it online here.
9. Getting pretty pumped about heading to Poland in October with the International Mission Board. Details are still being worked out…but it shaping up for an amazing opportunity to see what God is doing overseas.
10. All of Compass Point’s missionaries left this week. Kyle and Lynea are on their way to India for two years…and Kaleb our summer teen missionary has made it to Wales. He’ll head over to Iceland in a few weeks.

Fleeting - Part 1

I guess the #1 question I get from folks is about why I quit being a Christian comedian.  It really has more to do with quality over quantity…a thought process I’d like to think I brought with me to the church planting world.  I think it also has to do with the realization that success by the world’s standard is always fleeting.

I remember sitting in a hotel room in Kansas City, Missouri having just opened for a legendary Christian band.  At one time they had been packing out stadiums…10,000 people a night.  This night they managed to only get about 800 people to come out to the show.  Their bassist told me that this had been a good night on the tour…the actually broke even.  Two years before you couldn’t get to them because of the fans crowding around their dressing rooms…now they were trying to figure out how to mortgage their houses to pay for the tour losses.  The most crazy thing…I had packed out a 1500-seat theater the night before in St. Louis on my own.  Sitting in the stillness of the hotel room I began to reflect on the reality of the profession…the “ministry”…I had chosen.

For three years I had fought, clawed, smoozed and did whatever it took to gain success in the Christian music industry.  Here I was finally opening for top music artists, bringing in hundreds to my own shows, a record deal was in the works and I was constantly on radio or television…yet I wasn’t very happy.  Sitting on the couch in the hotel room that night I realized that I had been chasing the quantity…not the quality.  It wasn’t the attendance numbers at the concerts that meant the most to me…it was the kid at a youth conference that just needed someone to talk.  It wasn’t the amount of product I sold that got me jazzed…it was the burned out youth pastor that just needed a word of encouragement before I went on stage.  It wasn’t the number of radio interviews I did each week that made me feel like I counted in God’s plan…it was playing softball in the Memphis heat with a bunch of other goofy CCM artists so bald-headed kids at St. Jude’s could have a laugh.  It wasn’t the amount of people I came in contact with…it was the ones I actually made an impact in their lives that made me feel like I was where God wanted me to be.

It took a while…and the help of several lawyers…but I finally was able to break away…to move on…before I simply just faded away.  These days I have very little contact with the folks I use to tour with…it’s like another lifetime for me.  I watched some CCM friends never really make it by the world’s definition of success.  Others made it…and learned that Sir Isaac Newton was correct.  Still others moved into other…not so glamorous…areas of ministry.  What I took from those days is that quantity is never a substitute for quality…just because thousands come through the door…doesn’t mean that thousands are being ministered to.  I also came to understand that success…according to any definition…besides that found in God’s Word…is fleeting.  I wanted something more than to sell a compact disc…or make an audience laugh.  I wanted to know that Heaven was a little more crowded because I existed.

Needed One Of These

I’ve been sick the past two days with a stomach virus that is going around Lakeland. Can’t keep food down…been living in the bathroom. I sure could have used one these to make me feel better.

Having Your Cake & Eating It Too

Every now and then I just like to randomly reflect on things that God is showing me or that I’m learning about leading a church. Today’s list is more random and practical…but stuff that is hitting me like a ton of bricks. For the most part..I’m learning that you have to give to get…to let go in order to gain…and that…you can’t have your cake and eat it to. Here’s what I mean…

1. Leadership development doesn’t always mean they’re gonna lead in your church.
2. You can’t please God…and your sheep.
3. You can evangelize…you can disciple…but it’s almost impossible to do both at the same time.
4. If you preach the Word of God without compromise…every Sunday part of your flock is getting jacked up…while another part is getting pissed off.
5. Accessibility is a necessity…and a mirage.