I just left ChurchPlanters.com and Bil Corneilus KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK. Hands, down it was the best talk I have ever heard at a conference. I am literally ready to charge hell with a water gun. It was amazing. I can’t begin to tell you all that he said, you just have to hear it for yourself.

It spoke to me on so many levels that it is crazy. What he said about executive pastors was worth the ENTIRE conference. I needed to hear that BIG TIME. Simply awesome.

Here is the best part: Since there were so many people who had to leave to catch flights, they are going to podcast it for free tomorrow on churchplanters.com. GO LISTEN TO THIS TALK!

EDIT:  Here is the talk.

Another cool aspect of the conference today was seeing several church planters from Cherokee County. To hear what God is doing in their churches got me pumped up. When we started Revolution there was a fairly large group of guys starting churches and sadly most of them are now gone.

It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day of Revolution that I forget we aren’t doing this thing alone. There are some great churches in Cherokee County and I am glad we get to partner with them to reach this community for Christ.

Today I headed over to the churchplanters.com conference and it was great. I’ve been all three years they have held the conference and this by far seems to be the best. It literally is the best gathering of church planters I have seen. Everyone is here.

Shawn Lovejoy started the day by simply knocking it out of the park. He talked about The Healthy Leader and to say I was convicted would be an understatement. It was great. Every church leader there is should order this CD.

I did my breakout and I assume it went over well. No one walked out so I see that has a good thing.

Steven Furtick closed out the day and all I can say is WOW. Seriously, it was off the hook. Dudes were uneasy!!! He taught on Sun Stand Still and holy smokes, it was good. Furtick is one of the greatest leaders in the church today and today we saw why. He brought IT.

Tomorrow I do my breakout session again and I am looking forward to hearing the great line-up of speakers.

About 3 years ago I met a guy named Matt Evans. He is the pastor of Rock Bridge Church in Dalton AND Calhoun (see multi-site is working everywhere). We could NOT be any different, but we just connect. The dude is sharp!

He was in our early service this morning and had the coolest thing to say about Revolution. You can check it out here. Honestly, he couldn’t have given us a bigger compliment. That is why we do what we do around Revolution.

• Good day today
• The Band has been insane lately!
• I thought the sermon was pretty decent. DeAnna didn’t. She is now sleeping on the couch.
• Anytime you get to preach the gospel is a good day!
• Mark Shelton is knocking it out of the park with what he is doing with the lights. Love that dude.
• Had a blast hanging with Thad this weekend.
• Swift busting out some Kravitz was off the hook!
• Easter Egg Drop sign-ups are going awesome!
• Get Easter Egg Drop invites and give them to everyone you know!
• I think Zaxbys owes me some money. We literally pack that entire place out every Sunday after church.
• Attendance was good today especially considering it was winter break.
• ChurchPlanters.com tomorrow!
• I’m teaching a session on getting rid of excuses for portable churches and I am passionate about that subject so it should be fun.
• Can’t wait to connect with a ton of friends at the conference.
• I hooked up our new washer today with only a little help from Tim. I’m proud of myself.
• LOVED seeing a bunch of new faces at set-up this morning.
• Next we are hitting on subject that I don’t think I have ever talked about at Revolution.
• Our warehouse is FULL of props for our Easter series!!!!!
• No energy drink today before the sermon and I am feeling it right now.
• Movies started EARLY today and I was so proud of our people for getting the theater torn down so quickly.
• Looking forward to heading to Nasville and hanging out with Joe Case and some planters.
• What are we doing about our middle and high school students? You’ll find out very soon……hopefully.
• We have a very cool young man in the church with down syndrome and I love seeing that dude every week! He dresses like he should be playing lead guitar in a rock band and for the longest time he wouldn’t even acknowledge me. Today he made me cookies and I thought that was the COOLEST thing in the world.
• Simple Man just came on my iTunes. I think that is my theme song for my life.
• Steven told me that Denise was just being lazy and skipped church today. Shame, Shame, Shame.
• I’m hungry and there is nothing to eat at the house
• Looking forward to hearing Furtick bring it tomorrow at ChurchPlanters.com
• We have some hurting people right now and I think that sucks. I hate when our people are going through hard times.
• I am loving our ONE series.
• Ashlyn wants to go see then Hannah Montana movie and we are going to take her this week. Yuck.
• Van Halen’s Jump is on iTunes now. Love that song as well.
• I was talking to some men in our church today who asked me how things were going and it was just a great feeling to tell them things are GREAT. Honestly, this is about the best time I can remember in the life of Revolution. I like that.
• BUSY week ahead
• Pray for me tomorrow as I will be teaching to at the conference around 2:00 p.m.
• We need YOUR home for Home Teams. We also need some of you to step up and lead a Home Team. We are going to be talking about this in two weeks and trust me there will be a need.
• Peace. I’m out

Confession:  I normally dread Sundays when we have a break at school because we have a ton of people gone and it is always right in the middle of the series so that drives me nuts.  That isn’t the case this week.  I am PUMPED up about Sunday!!!!  Tomorrow we are telling the GREATEST story ever told.

Last week we talked about the reason we exist as a church is to reach that ONE person who needs to hear about Jesus Christ.  Tomorrow we are talking about the ONE way to heaven.  I told you to get your friends who are far from God to church tomorrow and from what I hear you guys are doing it.  I have run into 4 different people around town this week who told me they have friends coming tomorrow!!  I love that Revolution Church loves to let’s others know what God is doing here!!

I am jacked up about tomorrow and I love getting to share the story of Jesus Christ because it is that story that literally changed my life.  See ya tomorrow!

BTW, you don’t want to be late.  The band is kicking the service off with a bang!

Joe Case is putting together a get together for church planters in Nashville and has invited me to come and hang out and share a little of the Revolution story.  It is on Thursday, February 28th and he is only opening it up to a limited number of guys.  So if you want to come and hang out, contact Joe through his blog.

The roundtable is being hosted by Pete Wilson at his church, Crosspoint Church which I have no idea where that is, but I am sure if you are in Nashville you will know.

• I want to be the most barbaric Christ-follower there is
• I want to be the best husband to DeAnna I can be
• I want to raise my children to know God loves them, I love them, and they can change the world
• I want to pastor one church the rest of my life
• I want to be used to create a revolution of Christ-followers that changes North Georgia
• I want to pour my life into those far from God
• I want to use the position God has given me to influence church planters to do church for the unchurched

I rode around with Thad today just showing him Canton and I was just reminded how much I love Canton. I know that I know that I know God called me to this town and I want to grow old creating a revolution of Christ-followers.

I taught a couple of weeks ago on the subject that at times I doubt God.  I got to be honest, about a month ago I was doubting God on some things.  Not only was I doubting God, I was doubting my ability to hear from God.  God has given our church a vision to reach North Georgia with the message of Jesus Christ.  As we thought about the best way to reach our region, it became clear that multi-site was the best and most effective option.  The towns we are feel called to reach aren’t hotbeds for church planting so the ability to launch multiple campuses makes the most sense.

The first place we feel we can most effectively  reach is Jasper, Ga.  We have a ton of people coming from this city and the buzz in the town about us coming is off the hook!  We were ready to go.  We have the people, we have the money, and we THOUGHT we had a building.  That got shot down by the county and I got to admit, I started doubting whether I heard God right or not.

I have spent the last month praying through all this and God revealed something very powerful to me personally.  God was NOT telling us NO.  He was saying WAIT.  That is hard for me.  I don’t like to wait, but over the last month God has shown me that He knows best.  I probably should have already known that.

God is allowing us to strengthen the foundation of Revolution and play catch up on some things that will allow us to be more effective when the time comes (hopefully this fall).

• We are FINALLY getting some much needed systems in place.  I thought we were doing this towards the end of 2007, but I was wrong.  If we would have launched in Jasper on Easter, it would have not been good due to our lack of systems.
• We have restructured our staff.  We put an org chart together last year that didn’t reflect our DNA and values.  I worried about people’s feelings, more than putting together an effective org chart.  We are putting an org chart for our staff together now that will allow us grow to around 2500 people without having to tweak it.
• We are changing things in our worship area (no, Tim isn’t going anywhere).  The ability to reproduce musicians is huge for multi-site.  We don’t pay musicians (at this time), so going out and hiring some doesn’t appeal to us.  So we are making some hires, creating more team in our worship area, and recruiting musicians to be part of our vision.
• We are  making  reproducibility a value.  If we can’t reproduce it at every campus, we aren’t doing it at one.
• We are getting training.  I have talked to several guys doing multi-site and I feel very comfortable with it.  However, we have done a bad job getting our guys around those who are doing it.  In April we are taking our Lead Team Staff to the Multi-site Exposed Conference in Washington.  This will double as our Lead Team Staff retreat for 2008 and we will spend a couple extra day there doing some serious planning for the rest of the year.
• We are developing leaders.   Multi-site is all about developing leaders. We have some great people stepping up and taking ownership over some key areas!
• We are learning our equipment.  Sounds simple, but we have BMW equipment that we drive like a pinto.  We have brought in consultants to train us in sound (I know you can tell the difference the last few weeks), we are bringing in a consultant to help equip us with the cameras and video equipment we were given, and we are bringing in people to help us learn our lighting stuff.  We are also learning the church management system we have had for over a year.

These things might seem small to you, but they are huge to us.  God is using Revolution Church in CRAZY ways, but I truly believe He wants to do more through us and we had to make some system changes for that happen.

I don’t always like when God says wait, but He DOES know best and for that I am thankful.