So this past weekend was excellent. My mother-in-law came to visit. Always a welcome guest! Unfortunately I didn't get to spend a ton of time with her and the fam. Of course, I'm sure she was much happier to see the younger residents of our house anyway.
Small Group Vision Meeting
Saturday, while the kids and wife were having "Nanna-Ma" time (great matriarchal name right?) I was with the Kinetic small group leaders. It was the vision/strategy meeting for the year. Before I get to some content let me get stoked about the location for a second. We met in a board room in the clubhouse at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. That place was ballin!
It was a great environment. The director of Small groups is Daniel Perkins. Great guy! You might know his dad (Dr. Clay Perkins of MACU). He and Dave kinda ran the show but it was really a all-hands-on-deck kinda meeting. We identified 4 "wins" for Kinetic small groups (i.e. how do we know when they're working). We identified a plan for growth and retention of small groups. We also did some planning for training up new leaders. The lesson of the day was pretty clear to me. Vision is a team thing. It takes a visionary to plant a good vision but it takes a team to grow one. I saw that first hand on Saturday.
I'll be leading a small group starting in 2 or 3 weeks.
Sunday: Front line
Kinetic's Welcome ministry is called "Front Line." I'll be working front line for the next several weeks. The current coordinator is Allison Hodges. She's great....spunky, funny, and very honest with people. IT was cool shadowing her and learning her philosophy and thoughts about the importance of Front line.
Frontline arrives at 830 to set up the foyer. Coffee, snacks, breakfast bars, lemonade, and water. A lot of atmosphere stuff. Music. It's all very deliberate. Then, the teams breaks from the technical side of set up to be reminded of their purpose.
They have a phrase at Kinetic. "Vision leaks every two weeks." So, Allison takes is seriously. She has a vision meeting every week before they put on their game faces and welcome people as they come through the doors. This team may be the first faces that someone far from God ever associates with God. Impressions are made in something like the first 7 seconds. Front line does a lot to prime the hearts and minds of people as they get ready for worship.
Allison has a baby due in a few weeks. I will be doing some of her work when that time comes.
Monday:
Monday was a day for setting my eyes back on the path that I'm on. With moving and getting situated it's been hard for me to really focus and remember why exactly I'm here. Monday was a great day to be reminded of that. Dave and I met for a while to talk about some goals and purposes. He's given me a few assignments that I'm really excited about. I'll be working on a few projects and personal growth things that I can see making HUGE impact on who I am and how I think about evangelism and church work. That stuff will come out later as I work through it in the blog. Our goal for this year is to simulate as many of the things that I might experience in the first year or so of church planting so that I can have a little experience under my belt. Other than that, I discovered a really important aspect of the whole residency. I realized that this year is about so much more than ME learning about church planting. It's a chance for my family to get a taste of it too! LIndsey and I talked about this idea a great length over the last few days and it's really revolutionized the way we're both seeing the upcoming year. We see that God is going to allow growth in both of our understandings, attitudes, and philosophies of the church.
Tuesday
One of my first "assignments" was probably the biggest thing I need to work on in my Christian walk...Personal evangelism. The idea of intentionally placing myself in situations or lifestyles that might lead to me meeting and winning someone (that I dont' already know) to Christ. So, I've been tasked with doing that. Meeting people, engaging them in actual relationship and getting involved in discipleship with them. The truth is, this is not a reality show or a "game." It's real life. So, I'm not going to post a lot of detail about people and their business here. I've had many seasons of practicing personal evangelism and the truth is, it becomes easier once you know someone. So, right now I'm trying to meet someone. I'm getting out into the community some. Camping out at starbucks to see who the regulars are. I plan to hit up some music stores (since that's "my peoples") going to parks with the kids to meet families with kids. The reason this is so real is because It'll be vital for me once I'm in the church planting phase. I'll be living in community with tons of people that I don't know and I'll need to be deliberate and strategic about meeting them.
Also, I've got a big project I'm working on. I'll talk about it more once I get it fleshed out some but it maybe the definitive learning experience of this residency.
This post is getting long and I'm trying meet people so....I'm out for now.
Thanks for the prayers! See ya.
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