I have had 14 hours sleep since Tuesday. Tim and I have been starting at 4 in the morning and working until about 11 every night getting ready for Christmas Eve. We have literally unloaded a semi-truck full of equipment. Taking a 100 year old church and make it useable has not been easy. We have some creative elements that are going to be great, the music is going to rock, we are having a choir so that should be cool, and I am overall pumped up. We are no where near done but I am so tired that I sent everyone home and we will start back in the morning.

The weird thing is we have done ALL this work and I literally have no idea if anyone is even going to show up. We are doing it in a different location, we have advertised it huge but not as Ridge Stone but as Christmas Eve In Canton held at City Hall. I’m not sure that is good or bad? I think we screwed up by doing 5 & 7 instead of 3 & 5.

I feel the 5 will be standing room only but I have no idea if anyone will show up for the 7.

I sort of feel like I did before our first service.

I’m now going to sleep and if you got a sec, I appreciate the prayers.

One of the guys who attends RSC is an actor. He is a nice guy and is often in L.A. so he isn’t around much. I was seating here watching Law and Order tonight and lo and behold there he is! He was found guilty. Yep…he IS a Ridge Stoner.

I have spent about 30 hours at City Hall the last two days. I haven’t done anything but I have been there. God has given RSC in incredible team and it is so awesome to watch then in action. I cast vision and they do it. They make my job so easy and I get all the credit. It doesn’t seem fair.
Though I don’t do much, I am the type that has to be around everything. I have worked at city hall putting my sermon together the last two days. I just want to be there when we are doing things and make sure I dig what is taking place. Some call that micromanagement. I don’t believe in such a thing. I believe people do and follow what you inspect not what you expect. So I am there…plus I love being around our people.

Christmas Eve is going to be off the hook it it doesn’t kill us. I could see City Hall being a new worship place for us when we outgrow the theatre but I would have to do a lot of praying and a lot of booty kissing to get them to let me meet there. They made it pretty obvious that wasn’t an option.

Our office is in downtown Canton. There is a parking ramp but it is a long way away (okay actually it is across the road) and I don’t like parking in it. So I park in front of our office which has 2 hour parking. I’ve gotten a few tickets for not moving my car. They are $5 a piece and I never have paid them. I kind of forget about them.

I got a letter today saying I owe $135 in parking tickets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get this if I don’t pay them by Friday they will issue a warrant for me!
I will pay them in the morning.
Brawling and getting a warrant in the same week is not a good thing.

I talked today with a guy with a real passion for God. He was a good guy and I enjoyed talking to him. During our talk he turned our conversation to RSC partnering with an event he runs in town. It is a Christian event and they are trying to get other churches to be part of it.

I told him I was for him and was excited God was using him but that we don’t normally partner with other churches in town. I could tell he was a little surprised by my answer but he was cool.

That got me thinking, how many of you guys and your churches partner with other churches for community events?

Let me say that I am not against doing events with other churches but I feel we are a VERY focused church on reaching unchurched people. We have a certain way we do things. Our environment is a certain way. Our music is a certain way. My teaching is a certain way. This is all with a purpose in mind and that is to connect with the people God has called us to reach. I am in no way saying our way is the only way but it IS the way we do church.

Therefore it is hard for me to partner with other churches that do things different then that. We have a level of excellence I want things to be at, I want things done the “RSC” way (whatever that is), and I want to know that if our name is attatched to it that it will be done in a way that lines up with our vision.

I’m a local church guy. I believe the local church is the agency God left to spread the Gospel. I always get confused when churches “partner” with each other which vision is getting pushed and whos church these people are getting ushered into. Therefore we have chosen to do our own thing.

This allows us to stay focused on what we do best: Sunday morning and it allows us to lead the things we do with the vision God has given us.

For this reason we don’t bring in outside speakers. I do have a list of pastors I would bring in and hope to bring in but the time is not yet. I feel no one knows our people better then me and our staff. I am the one who talks with them and understand and has a hand on what they are going through. I have learned that outside preachers can many times destroy in one sermon what you as the pastor have spent a year building.

For this reason we don’t attend youth camps that other people lead unless it is a local church we know and have partnered with. There are some GREAT camps out there but I want us being the ones teaching our kids. Who knows our kids better, our staff or some camp speaker who is teaching his sugar stick? I think we do.

I feel due to the people we reach it is very important that they are discipled and grow in the Lord but I also feel I have a responsibility to make sure they are being taught in a way we find biblical and lines up with our vision.

We have been asked to be part of some GREAT things in our community by other churches but we feel God called us to plant RSC and do all we can to make it impactful in the community. God didn’t call us to partner with other churches in what many times are ineffective events just so I can say we are kingdom minded.

I will pray for these events, I will lend a hand in anyway we can, and I will root for all these events but in the end I am called to RSC.

I think far too many church planters spend their time hanging out with other pastors and partnering with other churches for the sake of the “kingdom,” that they have no time focusing on the church God called them to plant.

I really am open to the fact that I might be wrong in this attitude, so if you have any thoughts, fire away?

I get way to much credit for RSC. God has been good to us and I have a great staff.

When we started RSC we went through staff like water. In our first year we went through 2 children’s pastors, a youth pastor, and God moved Tadd to another church. It was rough and a great learning experience. Now I feel like we have the team God would have us to have and it is awesome to come to the office and hang and work with these people.

We currently have 3 full time staff, one 30 hour staff, one 15 hour staff person, and in January we have two more 20 hour a week people coming in. I love it!

Last week we had our staff Christmas party at the Downtown Kitchen in Canton. The DK is about a year old and is great! The owner and chef attends RSC and is another awesome story. He was totally unchurched when he started attending the Stone and now is one of our biggest fans. I love stories like that.

It was a great time to get away from the office and just hang out.
I think this is an important thing for church staff. If I can’t hang out with the dudes I work with, then I don’t want to work with them.

I think Small Groups (we call them Home Teams) have been one of the hardest things for us to get to fit into the culture of Ridge Stone. We are young (17 months old) and we are still learning in so many areas and Home Teams are the one area that we struggle with. We actually have a decent amount of people in HT’s but getting them to fit who we are is a constant struggle.

I believe in them and I know they are important but I find them hard to get a handle on. HT are the one thing that is seems EVERY church does different.

Some close them
Some are open
Some are year around
Some are done in quarters
Some are done by location
Some are done by age

Every church does them in a different way and I think small groups more then anything else is something you have to keep plugging at until you figure out what fits your style.

Small groups can literally make or break a church. If you get a small group that is strong and going good, it is a good way to take people to the next level and get people locked into the church through strong relationships. If you get one that goes south, chances are you are losing everyone in that small group. We had a small group last year where the leader decided we were not the church for them. That is fine and I realize that not everyone is going to enjoy RSC but what has happened is slowly we have lost everyone in that small group except two families. That is the price you pay and one of the negatives of relationships getting formed.

One of the problems we have is small group leaders. We simply don’t have enough. I have two very sharp families in my Home Team that will both probably take over a small group next year but we are very short handed in that area. Another problem is child care in small groups. Yet another struggle is the schedule of people.

We had a GREAT meeting today discussing what tweaks we need to make and I am excited to try the changes but for some reason it still seems we have the “RSC” stamp on everything we do except small groups.

A couple of questions I am asking in regards to small groups:

1.) What is the point of them in our context?
2.) Is the effort we put into them worth the return?
3.) How often should they meet?
4.) How long should a team stay together?
5.) What should our HT schedule look like?
6.) What is the purpose of OUR HT’s?
7.) Is there a better way?
8.) Should we kill them and start over when we figure it all out or should we keep doing it until we figure it out?

Don’t get me wrong, we have about 50% of our adults in a small group but I can just feel that they aren’t right yet.
Does that make sense?

I couldn’t listen to this when I was a kid because they were of the devil. But for just flat out rock and roll you can’t go wrong with this CD. Many people thought they would never put another album after Bon Scott died but they came back stronger then ever.

After the events of today, this is the unwind of the night.

I’ve been meaning to post this thought for a while.

One of the key things I am teaching our staff right now is something I learned very quickly in planting. Those people who visit your church one time and instantly they have found the perfect church, are ready to sign up to serve everywhere, and are totally into your vision, they won’t be around long.

Most planters are so excited to have someone appear to buy in to their vision that they jump on these type of people. I have learned that these people won’t normally cause you problems but they will very quickly fall off the face of the earth. They are normally needy people who want a lot of attention and are excited at first that you are giving it to them but once you get them settled in and they don’t get all your attention they end up just vanishing.

Be excited when people are excited after a first visit but realize that you need to watch them and move semi-slow with them because they probably won’t be around long.

I have seen it time and time again.

Our door hangers from Christmas Eve arrived. Two weeks late and they look GREAT. The only problem is there is no holes in them!!!!!

Yeah Baby!