Some Heros

Last week I was in Florida at Exponential. It was great to hang out with so many incredible men and women who have answered Gods call to start new God honoring fellowships. However the highlight of my week was hanging out with some guys who are my heros. It was cool to have brief conversations with Allen Hirsch, Mark Batterson, Sally Morganthaler and Vince Antonucci all of whom have had a good bit of influence on how I think about and engage in ministry. I even got invited to a private Q&A with Andy Stanley (although I still have no idea why, I was probably the only guy in the room who had a congregation of less than 500 people and certainly the only one with a congregation of less than 50. I'll chock it up to clerical error). However I can't say that these guys are my heros. The hero's I'm talking about I got to spend significantly more time with. ie

Linus Morris who's ministerial longevity, wisdom and graciousness are inspiring (I hope someday I can have made an impact for the Kingdom anywhere half as large as he has and be as humble and approachable). 

David Limeiro who is crazy obsessed (in a good way) with church planting, his encouragement of, and words of wisdom to, me are some of the most valuable I receive because He knows me and the road I walk well.

Eric and Shanon Barnes who just quit a great job at a good church to go and plant even though they don't know where/when/with whom they're going to plant or how they're going to fund it (now I'm trying to remember why I'm so crazy about them. lol)

And my newest hero Tim Reardon. I attended a pre-conference intensive on the incarnational church and I realized (no disrespect intended) I learned more and was more inspired about living an incarnational life just hanging out with Tim than from the intensive I paid for. 

After lunch with a couple other pastors on Thursday Tim said he wished he could hang out with all of us more because there was so much he could learn from us. I think we have as much or more to learn from Tim.

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Banners & Gratitude

We're coming to the end of our year of free banners from Group Imaging. I can't thank them enough for their investment in our church and church planting in general (we would never have been able to afford a wrap for the events truck much less all the other banners they printed for us). We just ordered banners for each of our Children's Ministry Classrooms and have a few more to turn in. If you have a need for a banner, vehicle wrap or trade show stuff give them a call.

One Prayer

I stopped blogging. I'm starting again. Nuff said.

I got an email from LifeChurch.tv the church we attended in Tulsa before we moved out here. They are partnering and inviting other churches to join in a series they're doing in June entitled One Prayer. I love the concept. We'll preach one sermon live and bring in some other incredible speakers from other churches via video. We'll all be preaching on the question, If you could pray one prayer for the church at large what would it be.
It's a tough question. So many things spring to mind. So I've begun the process of building my list so I can cut it down to one.

What would your prayer be?

the missing aspect

"It's a nice community, real warm and friendly to each other - something I am missing since I am not religious at all. In fact I left church when I was 18, first thing I did when I was coming of age. But I must admit that when I am around people that are religious I sometimes realize that my life is missing one aspect. Religious people in a community are embedded and protected, and when things go wrong, they have the support of their community."
This is from a blog I ran across recently, the author was describing their experience at a Bar Mitzvah. I love reading blogs about peoples experiences with faith, religion and the church, it always challenges me.
I'm reminded about how important belonging is in the Body of Christ. I hope Kaleo is attractive to an "unreligious" world because of the warmth and authenticity of our community.

Ten Grand For Good

This week were rolling out our prelaunch media campaign with a twist. Instead of sending out post cards and advertising in the local paper, we decide to do something completely different.
We're going to give away our entire prelaunch advertising budget to encourage people to look beyond themselves and see how they can make a difference in the lives of those around them.
Our hope is that this campaign will give us a platform to talk about God's love for mankind, that it will cement in our DNA an outward focus and that people who may never have been interested in "a cool new church" will take notice because when we say God loves you we put our money where our mouth is. I'll share more about how we're getting word out about this campaign later, but for now check out our website tengrandforgood.org

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preview post-post

Our preview was far more than I hoped it would be. Blessed is the best way to describe how I feel. I kept having the wonderful feeling of just being along for the ride, it was as though someone else was planting the church and I was plugging in to help wherever I could, this is exactly what I've prayed for from the beginning, that this would be Christ's church plant and I would be His servant doing His bidding. There is no greater feeling than submitting to God's plan for your life and allowing Him to lead and direct you. It gives me more motivation to share the good news because I'm experiencing just how good it is. As for the details–we had five families there that had no prior association with Kaleo. That is exciting! Several of them expressed their desire to be part of our launch and one of them asked why we couldn't just launch now! Including our volunteers and well wishers from our partner churches there were 68 of us total. I'm so grateful for all the people God has brought in as co-laborers this couldn't have happened without them. I'm also grateful for what has to be the worlds best church planting venue hands down.(check back for pics soon) Here's my cumulative thought from our almost three year journey in church planting so far.
Ask God to do through you something so incredible only he can get the glory, listen for His call, accept His invitation, recognize and confess your own agenda to Him, take a leap of faith, strive to do everything big and small as an act of worship to Him, remember His power works best in your weakness, keep trusting in His strength and goodness and enjoy the greatest adventure you'll ever have. You won't regret it.

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Preview Preview

We set everything up this evening at the facility for our preview service tommorrow, and the worship team practiced. God blessed us with an amazing bucnch of volunteers, some of whom I hadn't met until tonight. It was a great night for counting blessings and letting God be God. I have to admit I'm a bit of a control freak (although I retain the right to deny it to my wife). I would have loved to have made sure everything was just so in childrens ministry, on the sound board in hospitality etc. but there was no way I could be everywhere. In fact because of some misunderstandings about how the facility was being used tonight, what I had planned ahead of time was flipped upside down forcing us to use volunteers differently than we had planned and forcing me to let go even more. But our launch team did incredible and the people they recruited were amazing and the people who just showed up were amazing. So we're basically ready to roll for tommorrow. I can't wait to see what God has planned. It is an immense privilage to be a called to church planting-to get a front row seat to what God does to reach those who don't yet know Him. Another huge blessing is that Jeff and Courtney some of our great friends from b'ville are here. Not only have they been a great help, it's just nice to enjoy this with old friends. New friends are great, but there's something special about the comfort of being with people who you've experienced the extremes of life with, great joys and pains create compounds that don't break down easily. Thanks God for letting me be a part of all this.

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Go Sunday 1

One of the things we're going to be doing as a church is taking one Sunday out of the month and going out in to the community with random acts of kindness and radical acts of service. There are many reason we are doing this. I'm going to take the next few blogs to talk about what has lead us to this decision.

Reason 1) Many Christians have almost no depth of contact with non-christians. Serving brings us back into contact with those outside of our faith.
Reason 2) Servants focus on others. That's what a servant does, their place is to look to the needs of those they serve. So for a Christ follower serving redirects our focus to what God is focused on-those sheep who are not yet in the fold.

Probably the first thing that God used to lead me into a new understanding of serving others was the book The Church of Irresistable Influence by Robert Lewis. I first read this book about several years ago while I was on staff at a church in Oklahoma. Lewis' premise in the book is that the church has become an island with its own customs and traditions that those outside don't understand. These differences become a barrier to people understanding the good news of God's love. So serving the community becomes a "bridge" that covers the distance to a world from which we have become isolated. The book changed the way I viewed the church. It helped me recognize both the churches lack of contact with those far from God, and our lack of focus on those far from God.

The AFA vs. Mrs Fields revisited

I recently received the following response to my blog on the AFA and the Mrs Fields company.

There isn't bullying going on, Mrs. Fields expressed their opinion by saying no to the simple words Christmas, we're just expressing our opinion. They don't want to offend A hand full of athiests? But are willing to offend God and those who believe. Yep, I am a bit offended, and Christmas isn't for Athiests, this was our holiday, and nobody forced them into joining, now they have pushed their way in, and are changing the rules. You put Christians and pansies in the same boat and you are wrong.

As the comment was anonymous I can't respond to just that person which would be my preference so I'll throw it up here and maybe generate some more discussion.

First I regret using the the word bullying as it appears the word has distracted this reader from the questions that followed. However I don't feel the word is entirely inappropriate. The AFA has asked thousands of people to stop buying this companies products unless they put the word Christmas on their packing and in their promotions. They didn't just ask them to express their disappointment in a letter, they ask them to put fiscal pressure on the company to do something. That's more than expressing an opinion.
Webster's Defines Bullying as forcing one's way aggressively or by intimidation.
I consider several thousand letters threating to ban your product aggressive.
This week the AFA sent me a letter telling how the pressure has paid off and that the Mrs Fields company has added Christmas items to their website.

But I come back to the questions I posed in the original post. How does this campaign draw people (the real people who work at Mrs. Fields) closer to God? Does it show them His love? If the word Christmas appears on a package will someone see it and decide to give their lives to follow Christ?

My hope is simply that we will live following Christ's example. Remember how He treated the woman divorced several times over and living in adultery, the prostitute and the thieving tax collector. It was to these people that He brought grace, love and understanding. Now remember who he reserved His greatest anger and harshest words for. It was for those who knew and feared God but didn't live according to His spirit.

I have four children and it sometimes scares me what they see, hear and are exposed to by our rapidly changing culture. It's uncomfortable living in a post-christian nation. However, if I let my fear drive my actions I will lash out at a culture I can't control. But if I let the Spirit drive me, I see people God loves and Christ Died to redeem–instead of seeing their actions, attitudes or behaviors I see people separated from our loving God and facing an eternity without Him.

So again I ask, how does this campaign and others like it draw people into a redemptive relationship with Christ?

If you find this all a bit challenging to your standard way of thinking (as I did when God first started reshaping my thinking on this), I encourage you to read this series of articles by Denis Haack.

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Prep Gathering

We met with our launch team in the facility this Sunday. After a great time of worship and communion together we walked through all the areas the facility we will be using, trying to see it with the eyes of a visitor. We literally started at the entrance to the parking lot and walked through what we wanted people experience their first time with us. It was a great time and there were lots of great ideas and observations. I'm excited to see what God has in store for us next.

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More Party Pics

I've posted more photos from the party at kaleo.cc. Thanks to Kevin Morrison for the camera work.

really big fingerprints–really big trees

Eric and I went up to the Sequoia National Forest North East of Bakersfield today to hang out, get away from the busyness and enjoy God. My hope was to take lots of pictures, however the "fresh" batteries I put in the camera this morning were actually dead. Not that it mattered, we had a great day anyway. God provided a mostly foggy, drizzley fairly cold day, with times of the brightest blue skies you can imagine shining through breaks in the clouds. The colors were amazing the rain makes the Sequoias an impressive burnt orange and the greens of the pines, the yellows of the aspens, and the yellows, ornages and reds of the maples looked amazingly vivid in front of them. At over 7000 feet you don't so much look up at a cloudy sky as you walk through it–so when the cloud your in rolls into the valley below you, perfectly clear skies appear until the next cloud pushes over the peak above you and envelopes you as it rolls through. I know pictures wouldn't do it justice, and I'm sure my words won't either. I wish you all could have been there. The sequoias themselves are so impressive. I'm posting a pic of our last trip up there with my folks. You can't really get an idea of how large they are until you're there but I think this shot begins to capture it. I love the surprises God throws into His creation that make you gasp.
I don't have words to express my gratefulness to God for the beauty He has provided.



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God's Timeline

I was challenged by a friend last week as I was lamenting how far I felt we were behind schedule, to make the best plan you can and then hold it very loosely. (thanks Ben) As often as I've said that in the last two years to other people about our situation you'd think I would own it by now. But no, I was getting too caught up in the plan, calendar and budget to hear God. And so it is with a much lighter heart that I've made some changes. Next weeks preview gathering is going to be a prep gathering. (Read more about it at kaleo.cc) Although it seems to be a slow down in our plans I think it will be great. It just feels right. After letting it go I realized that part of the reason for holding on to it was my own pride. After all if I said we were going to have a preview on the 21st I'd better deliver right. But of course that leaves God out of the picture and me with way too much weight on my shoulders. It's probably true that if your feeling stressed out your not letting God be God. After all didn't Jesus tell us that His burden was easy and His load light and since He also told us that this world would hold troble for us I've gotta assume that He intends to carry the weight. Well I'm looking forward to a much lighter week ahead, in fact Eric and I are going to take Tuesday and head into the mountains for a day of Picture taking, goofing around and enjoying God. I'll post photos later this week.

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Killer Party

The party went terrific. Inspite of several missed opportunities in our communicating it to the public we still had probably 250 or more people. I'm not sure we could have handled too many more.
I am grateful to God for covering my misteps, and to all of the volunteers from CCV, Life Journey and Northeast Christian, and especially our launch team, Mike and Sheri Williams and the pastors and wives of our partner churches You guys rock! We've had a few people ask us why three local churches would help us plant in their own backyards. I just have to say it's a Kingdom thing. Here are a few pics I'll post more soon. Thanks to everyone who prayed and Courtney for the post event call.

Kevin and Jill Our Childrens Min. leaders.

Eric in Kaleo's required preaching attire. : )

A crowd in the gym for a game.

The truck and bounce house.


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The House

The bounce house got here today. Eric and I couldn't wait 'till the party tomorrow. We had to put it up the moment it arrived, you know to "test it" before the party. Anyway we let the neighbor kids play on it for a little while before loading it into the ice cream truck. We can't wait to see it in use at the Family Night Out tomorrow.
Speaking of the party here's the flyer we sent out.


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Kaleo.cc

Kaleo.cc goes live, temporarily anyway. I put up the temporary home for Kaleo on the web. As of tomorrow we will have printed materials out with the kaleo.cc web address so it seems pretty important to have something up. For some reason the website is one of the last things I've been able work on. I think part of that is because I think many people choose wether or not to visit a church based on it's website—partially because as a designer freedom to do almost anything can be suffocating (odd but true) —and because when it comes to big ticket items for Kaleo I've been very hesitant to spend money. If the decision can be put off in hopes of finding a better value, or a less expensive solution, I'll probably put it off. I hope this is because I want to be a good steward and not because I lack the faith that God will continue to meet our financial needs. Anyway until I hand it off to a professional this is what we have. www.kaleo.cc

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Mrs. Fields bans Christmas from their products

Today I got an email from the American Family Association (AFA) stating their offense at the fact that the Mrs Field's company was not offering any products with the word Christmas on them and asking me to write the company expressing my own offense and threating to boycott their products.
I just gotta ask, Really?
Does the AFA really think I'm going to be offended by the fact that a corporation does not celebrate the birth of Jesus. More importantly do they think encouraging thousands of Christ follwers to send threating (or just mean spirited) letters to the company will help people discover, recognize, love and submit to Christ as their savior?
What is the Goal of this campaign? If thousands of "christians" write letters, and the Company is bullied into putting the word Christmas back on its packaging will God be glorified? How will these letters be received by the real humans at Mrs Field's who read them. Will it draw them to our incredibly loving God or will it move them away? Will it help them understand who He is?
So here's my proposal. Lets write the employees Mrs Field's and tell them they make great cookies and that as Followers of Christ we are sorry if they receive offensive letters from those claiming to be God's representatives. Let's tell them that God loves them and that He longs to have a relationship with them. Tell them that we are not offended by their actions but that we recognize their good intentions. And that we hope, if they don't already, that those who read our letter would come to a point where they personally celebrate Jesus birth because they recognize it as a gift from God.

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From 12 to 8 in 24

Within a 24 hour period this week we had two couples who were on our launch team call to tell us they wouldn't be able to help anymore. One because they're moving to Minnesota (Do they even have summer in that state?) and the other for health reasons. I think I know how Gideon felt. Right now I'm thinking really God 12 is too many, your sure about that, You do remember we're having a block party/fun fair in two weeks, right? Oh, and a preview service on the 21st you remember that too right. While my my heart knows God's got it covered my brain is scrambling with the math. At this point the Lord should be "Adding to our numbers daily", after all we want to be a "New Testament" church right. ;-)

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I'm Back

Since it's been so long since my last Blog I'll start with an overview of what's coming up for us.

· Informational Meeting Oct 7th-We'll be inviting people we've met that have expressed interest in Kaleo to find out more about us.
· Family Date Night Oct 13th-Our first big promotional event. We will be co-sponsoring this block party/kids carnival w/ American Kids Sports Center (thanks Mike and Sheri). There will be inflatables, booths, food, as well as gymnastic activities provided by AKSC.
· Preview Service Oct 21st-How will our gatherings feel? How long will it take to setup and tear-down everything? How many chairs will fit in the gym? Our first service will help us answer these questions. This one will not be publicly advertised, it's just for friends and family, a sort of dress rehersal.
· 2nd Serving Sunday Oct 28th-We will be partnering with Life Journey Church and helping them celebrate their fourth anniversary by serving those outside the church. We're hunting for a name for these monthly service Sunday's, I'd love to hear your ideas. Right now I think I like "Inside/Out".

Thanks to Courtney, Becky and Marci for nagging me to start blogging again. What is it with women and pushing men to talk, no guy has ever told me I don't talk or write often enough.

A Starr shines in Bakersfield

We knew from day one that if we we're going to plant a church we we're going to do it in community. From the beginning we were thinking and praying about who God might call to be a part of this adventure. Eric Starr has been a friend of ours since he was in a highschool small group we led in Bartlesville. As God started guiding us and planting the seeds of this adventure in our hearts, He was working in Eric's heart as well. After many late night conversations about the Kingdom and the church, over summer and holiday breaks in the years since Eric left High School, we invited him to be a part of what God was calling us to. The truth is when I invited him I didn't know where we were going or wether or not there would be any money to pay him. How's that for a job offer a few months before graduating with your masters fom Duke University. "Come with us to plant a church, we don't know where we're going and we have no money to offer you, but we'd sure love to have you". But Eric took a leap of faith said yes, and now he's here. I'm stoked to start moving forward in this Kingdom adventure with a partner in crime.