THR3E....

Yesterday Elevation hosted THR3E....it wasn't a conference, it was an event. No frills, no worship, no vendors and booths. It was stripped down raw in your face nuts and blots of our first three years of ministry. There were so many things that happened, let me highlight THR3E:

1. Our volunteers honored the 174 pastors that were there from around the country like I've never seen before. It was an HNL when it comes to honor! I am so proud of our people. Many took a vacation day to serve from 6:00am to 6:00pm.

2. Pastor Steven "shucked the corn". I have seen him preach hundreds of sermons, but I have never seen him more in the zone than yesterday. It was an amazing thing to witness and experience.

3. The Pastors that came from around the country walked away blessed and blown away. It was an incredible thing to see happen. Something shifted yesterday, something that will have a profound ripple effect around the country!!!

Easter Intro Video...

I think we have an amazing staff at Elevation. From top to bottom it's a bunch of gifted people who love God and love people. Our most recent hire is a guy named Adam Hobbs...the guy is annointed with video. He put together this video which we used as the intro for all of our Easter worship experiences. Check it out, I promise it will be one of the greatest things you'll ever see....

Elevation Church Easter Opener from Elevation Church on Vimeo.

Looks can be deceiving....

Sometimes first impressions can be spot on and sometimes they are dead wrong....After watching the video, be honest - how many of you expected that?

Easter 09 Recap...

This past Easter weekend easily became one of my top 5 Elevation moments. It was an incredible display of God's mercy and grace. Here's a recap of the weekend:

Saturday Night: We had a one time Easter only Saturday night worship experience at our Providence campus. Going into the weekend we guessed that we'd see around 400 show up...We did have 400 ish show up, but that was in overflow because the auditorium was filled to capacity. It was a first century church moment with people cramming in to hear the message. All total over 1,400 people came out Saturday night to hear the gospel.

This was Overflow Saturday night!!!

Sunday: We are all about the numbers at Elevation, the number of marriages God can put back together, the number of people who experience salvation and the number of people who experience the mercy and grace of Christ. There were two BIG numbers we were asking God for going into the weekend:

Attendance: We were asking Him to blow out minds and bring 7,000 people to our campuses to hear the gospel and He blew our wildest imaginations....7,8999 showed up.

Salivations: As a staff were were not advertising the number we were praying for, but we were aggressively asking Him for 700 people experience forgiveness of their sins...guess what, He blew that out of the water as well...740 people professed faith in Christ!!

Monday: Absolutely exhausted in the best way possible. The best way to describe it is "a Holy hangover"....

God is Good!!!!!!

Been out for awhile...

OK...I've taken an extremely long break from the blogosphere. For my faithful readers I know it's been a dry spell of inspiration. But there's good news, I'm working back into the flow and will begin posting regularly.

As I ease back into the blog, let me illuminate the absence of entries. The more I learn about myself the more I realize how unbalanced I can be. At Elevation we move at the speed of light. Titles, job descriptions and responsibilities change quickly. I've learned that as I add new things into the mix, things of less priority need to have less time allotted. Over the past few months as new things have been added I've been intentional as to how I allocate time....thus the blog has received less attention.

One of the healthiest disciplines a person can develop is to learn what to say "yes" and "no" to. Protecting priorities through healthy boundaries is a wonderful discipline. How about you? What is getting more attention than warranted? What needs to move up the list? What needs to be done with excellence but is muddling along with mediocrity because of a lack of attention?

New Perspectives with Rest....

Over the past 6 months I made conscious efforts on several fronts of personal growth to develop discipline in certain areas. During Christmas break I realized there's another discipline that I need to engage in, one that I need to practice regularly and that's the discipline of "Rest. Rest is something that I tend to avoid mostly because of my highly addictive personality and "need" to stay busy. But I realized over Christmas break that with focused rest I come back more refreshed. I used to view rest as sitting around doing nothing and eating non-stop.

Over Christmas I did it a little differently. Previous vacations I would work while others were napping or late at night while people were asleep. It was semi-productive, but not restful. This vacation I actually did not work....novel idea I know.

The upsides over the first few days back at work are tremendous. Stepping back I actually see things a little bit differently after disengaging for a few days. If you're like me, you can't turn it off....you don't go home and stop the work because of the time of day. Rest is truly a discipline and was a struggle, but the benefits are incredible. Sounds crazy, but for me rest is hard work!!

Christmas Eve at Belk....

Last Night Elevation Church held Christmas Eve services at Belk Theater in the heart of uptown Charlotte. We filled this beautiful 2,100 seat theater three times and saw the largest attendance in our history as we had 6,006 people worshipping God. As amazing as that was, something more incredible happened. Pastor Steven preached the gospel and 414 people responded and gave their life to Christ!!! Words don't describe what took place last night, but there was a shift that happened...something changed. I've never seen our people leverage their relationships like last night. Mothers did everything they could to get their sons who were far from God there to hear the gospel. Teenagers brought their friends. Daughters brought their dads.....people leveraged their relationships and their loved ones walked away transformed through the power of the gospel. Talk about an amazing Christmas gift!!!

Praise God for last night and hold on Elevation Church because something broke loose....2009 is going to be amazing.....the best is yet to come!!!

Our Faith Defines Our Suffering....

One of my favorite series we've done at Elevation is itunes. During one of the sermons Pastor Steven talked about suffering and I was recently reminded of a powerful statement that still resonates in my spirit is "our faith defines our suffering....suffering does not define our faith." It was an incredible creed of the christian faith. Where's my faith in troubled times? Is God still great in tragedy? Is God still good in the midst of struggle? Is He still loving when your world is falling apart?

Elevation has lost a wonderful part of our family. Danny Kellas, one of our volunteers at Butler and a close personal friend passed away yesterday. I'll share more about Danny later. Below is a photo of my friend when I had the privilege of baptizing him last February....this Friday I'll have the privilege of preaching his memorial service...

Does your faith define your suffering or does your suffering define your faith?

Best kept secret on the internet....

I'm always looking for something cool and free on the Internet. Several months ago a friend turned me on to Pandora. If you're not familiar with this free application, you've been missing out. It's a free music player where you build your own "radio stations". Just type in your favorite song or artist and Pandora will play songs of that same genre. One of may favorite features is the shuffle which is a random play through your selected stations.

Here are my current Pandora radio stations:
-O Holy Night (getting ready for Christmas)

-Brooks and Dunn (for when I'm in the mood for a little country)
-Dave Matthews Band
-Bee Gees (yes, I love 70's music)
-Heart (one of the greatest chick rock and roll bands of all time)
-Chris Tomlin
-Hezekiah Walker (makes me feel like I have rhythm)
-Poison (the ultimate 80's rock band)
-Hillsong United
-The Police
-Hall and Oates

Try it, you'll love it....happy listening!!!

Exceeding Expectations....

I don't care who you are, all of us have expectations. It doesn't matter if you go to the bank, the DMV or give blood at the Red Cross...you have an expectation for the experience you are about to encounter. If you're going to Outback and you order a steak, a nice juicy fillet, you expect a certain caliber of meat. You expect a certain standard of steak commensurate with previous experiences at other Outbacks and the dollar amount you're about to spend. When the steak is finally put in front of you and you take that first bite, all the anticipation and expectation come to the test. If the tantalizing taste experience exceeds your expectations you get that satisfied smile on your face and exclaim "WOW", what a great steak. That's your response because it exceeded your expectations. On the other hand when you take the first bite and it's underwhelming, you're left with a scowl on your face as your taste buds are crying with disappointment and you exclaim "Crap, that's not what I expected."

Everyone walking into church on Sunday morning have expectations. Rightly or wrongly, pure or perverted....they all have expectations. The amazing opportunity that is in front of us is to create WOW moments and exceed people's expectations. When you understand what God has put in front of you, you begin to strategically allocate resources and plan to create a WOW experience.

With the people walking through your doors, have you stopped long enough to try to figure out what they are thinking, are you listening to what they are saying and are you trying to gain an understanding of how they are feeling? When you do those things, you are trying to enter into their world to gain an understanding of their expectations. God has put you in the place of being His hands and feet to a lost and hurting world....do all that you can so they walk away saying WOW because they have experienced the love of Christ through you!!!

Where's your focus....

It seems like there's a new church starting just about every weekend in Charlotte and when you combine that with the existing ones we have well over 1,000 in the area. Whether you're a new church or an existing one, there's a tension that most carry...the weight of "how we will get people to come." The underlying emotion is, how will we get people to know we're here and show up on Sunday morning. At Elevation we've been able to remove a great deal of the tension through having the right focus. Pastor Steven has always had the ability to see things off in the distance. It allowed him to prepare us for things that would happen in the future, so when they happened we felt like we were prepared.

One of those things we were prepared for was dealing with this concept of "how will we get them come." He started with the foundational believe that God gave His promise when He called us to start Elevation. We believed that it was God's vision to reach the city of Charlotte through this church and we can rest in that promise. I think every church starts from that perspective....God's called us.

Here's where Pastor Steven took it one step further, he taught us to let God be God and we'll focus on our part of the promise. In Matthew 16:18 God says"upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." And in John 12:32 "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." God said that "I will build my church and draw all men onto myself. Pastor Steven reminded us that God's job is to bring the people, our job is create an experience they would come back for.

Because of the tension churches carry to try to get people to show up on Sunday they invest significant time and money to try to get them there. One problem though, often they've invested too much on the front end that the back end is ineffective. Because they are working so hard to try to convince people to show up on Sunday that when they finally do the worship experience is mediocre and walk away unaffected.

There's freedom when you realize what's your responsibility and God's promise. Focus most of your energy on "why would they come back" and let God be God. As people come and connect with Christ in your worship experience they will go home and invite their friends and family. Let the lives that God has transformed through your ministry invite others to experience your church.

When you keep the focus on "why would they come back" you're focusing your resources on the right thing....the people that God will bring to you!!! Stand in that promise and let God build his church!!!

Leveraging your Vision.....

A key for any successful church or business is to clearly define "The Win"...it's the goal, the thing you're trying to achieve through all of the effort and labor. At Elevation, "The Win" is clear: "so that people far from God will be filled with life in Christ". The Win at Elevation is life transformation. That's why hundreds of volunteers each week labor to create an experience where the gospel is preached and lives are transformed. We constantly celebrate the win through numbers and stories. Each week we share a few new stories with the staff and volunteers of the church to constantly keep us focused on "The Win. Leveraging the vision means that you celebrate the victories with those who have labored and sacrificed to make them become a reality....the funny thing; the more victories they celebrate, the more labor they will put in and sacrificial they become to see more Wins. If you're looking to motivate your volunteers, let the hear, feel and connect with "The Win".

Here is a story of the vision of Elevation in action...this is "The Win".

Pastor,

I just wanted to let you know the difference you and this church are making in peoples lives. A couple of weeks ago I met my friend, Stacey for breakfast and we talked about many things but one of the things we talked about was Elevation. Stacey started talking about her sister and that she had pretty much given up on church and her life was spinning out of control. She said her sister felt like she was judged and that she didn’t belong when she did try to go to church. We talked about Elevation and what a life changing place this was for people just like her sister. Well, Stacey called me Saturday and said that her sister had tried to end her life on Thursday and was just released from the hospital. Stacey said that she knew that her sister needed to be at Elevation for the Sunday service and that she was trying to talk her sister into coming and then working out all of the details to get her here. Her sister did agree and she came Sunday.
Well, I don’t have to tell you how important the volunteer teams are here but I will brag on them. They could not tell how desperate this girl was by looking at her but they treated her like they treat every person coming to Elevation. They were EXCITED that she was there and kept telling her over and over “we’re glad you are here!”. They directed her to a really great parking place and made her feel welcome, not at all like she didn’t belong. During the service I could tell that she was moved and in the end she raised her hand and she gave her life to Christ. On Monday, Stacey came up to me and could not believe what happened and was thrilled and looked as if she were walking on air. What a great thing to see hurting people find peace through Jesus.
This is the story of just one person but I think this plays out over and over and over again at Elevation…

Leadership Lessons from a Wrestling Legend....

Several months ago Pastor Steven Furtick gave the staff an assignment of seeking out leaders in various lines of work to glean principles that could translate into our ministry. I set my sights on trying to get a phone conference with Iowa’s legendary wrestling coach, Dan Gable. During his 21 years at the helm as coach, the Hawkeyes won an astounding 15 national championships. As an amateur wrestler he compiled a jaw-dropping record of 182-1 through high school and college. There is no other athlete or coach that has done more for the sport of wrestling than Dan Gable.

After a few attempts I was able to reach him on the phone. During the 20 minute phone call, he spoke of leadership principles that would rival any CEO’s best thoughts. Not only was he commanding, but he was as genuine as anyone I’ve ever met. His confident humility was obvious. He knew his accomplishments, yet his talent was only exceeded by his honest humility. Not a self deprecating “I was just lucky I guess”, but “I knew I wanted to be the best and worked as hard as I could to make it happen”.

Over the course of the conversation I was able to download a long list of principles. The one that stands out the most was his response to the question “why did some wrestlers not make it?” He is one of the best evaluators of talent in the world, yet not all of the wrestlers he recruited were able to be successful in the college ranks. His response was profound. “Going to a higher level requires a greater level of commitment at the new level.” As he unpacked the statement, the power behind it became clear. The problem with moving to a new level is in the interpretation of level of commitment it takes to be successful at that new level.

Dan Gable’s interpretation was not just to be good, but to be the absolute best wrestler in the history of the sport. That translated in an insanely driven training regime, an intense focus centered on that goal and a structuring of his entire life around that idea of excellence. The difference for Dan Gable was that “being the best” wasn’t just a talking point, it was a lifestyle. Everything he did centered on being the best and if it did not add to the bottom line it was eliminated. The wrestlers at Iowa who did not make it were not committed to being the best at the collegiate level. What caused them to be successful in high school would not work in college. When faced with the reality of their unwillingness to strive for the new commitment level they fell by the wayside.

Apply that concept to the church for a second. At Iowa it was Dan Gable who set the bar for the commitment level. The best wrestlers that came out of Iowa rose above that level and exceeded the expectation. Who’s setting the bar for commitment in your organization? Is it a nebulous thing that individuals are left to determine on their own? An entity mired in mediocrity is probably diseased with commitment issues. Secondly, every new level of responsibility in the church has to have an increased level of commitment to be the best. Moving from a volunteer to a volunteer leader is a new level of commitment. Going from a volunteer leader to a staff member is another huge jump.

Who is the one sitting down and clearly communicating what it takes to be the best and the level of commitment required? It is a much different conversation than asking someone to help. It’s giving someone an opportunity to be a part of the most amazing thing on earth, the church. As commitment levels are clearly communicated, leaders will rise to the challenge. Look for the people who have an innate drive to be the best, to exceed, to excel. Those are the leaders that are waiting for an opportunity to flourish.

2nd Fastest Growing Church in America....

One of the verses we have prayed consistently since we began Elevation is Ephesians 3:20 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church..." We prayed that God would do such amazing things through Elevation that only He could take the credit, something so incredible there's no way it could have been done by human hands.

As we've prayed, time after time He's demonstrated His favor and Grace on this church. We've seen thousands of lives transformed right in front of us! We've witnessed marriages put back together and people radically changed by the power of the gospel. It's been an amazing 2 1/2 years of ministry.

Recently we were recognized as the second fastest growing church in America by outreach magazine. Click HERE to read the article. We stand in awe of the great God we serve and are overwhelmed with gratitude for what He has done.

Honor from a Father....

I’ve heard a lot of sermons on “The Prodigal Son”. The story of the young man who grew dis-satisfied with his situation so he asked for his father for his portion of the inheritance. It was only after he squandered everything when he realized how good he had it. Most of the sermons I’ve heard are from the vantage point of the son, but I want to look at “The Prodigal Father"….the guy who was waiting and watching for his son to return home.

In the story, the prodigal father was always on the look out for his son, knowing he would return one day. When he saw his son coming at a distance he ran out to meet him, not only did he welcome him with open arms he lavished gifts upon him. Whenever I see a person taking the long walk up our sidewalk on a Sunday morning I think of that story. I get an image of a prodigal returning home.

I’ve started to use this story to illustrate the concept of honor to our guest services teams. Every Sunday morning there are people who arrive late and have the long walk up our sidewalk to the school where we meet. Here’s where the honoring part comes in…it’s when the story moves you to action. When you realize that God has put you in a place to be His arms and feet, to give a hug to the prodigal, now you’re on to something. The heart of God is not just to welcome His prodigals home, His heart is to honor them…to go to extravagant means to demonstrate His love.

The person walking up the step may be far from God filled with guilt and shame over the circumstance of life. This may be the one time the entire year they give church a chance because they’ve worked up enough courage in the midst of despair to get in the car and drive across town. Now they’re walking up the sidewalk and you see them coming at a distance…what to you do? Do you wait for them get to the door and you barely notice them or give them a cursory “welcome”. Or are you so moved in your spirit that you realize that you’re God’s ambassador who has a divine appointment to welcome home the prodigal!!!

Honor starts in your heart…it’s the realization of who God is and what He has called you to do. It’s the extravagant means God wants exhaust to demonstrate His grace. It’s the place where you will connect that person to the very heart of God through how you approach them, through the words your use, through the way you look at their face, through the very words you use and how you use them…..Honor is remembering where you used to be and wanting desperately for God’s grace to shine on this person’s soul!!!

If you are in a role that comes in contact with anyone on a Sunday morning at your church…that’s pretty much anyone in the building, you need to understand that God has ordered your steps and given you a divine appointment to be “The Prodigal Father” as His sons and daughters return home….operate with the sense of calling and honor those He brings to us!!!