When to Let Someone Go

I'm not a boss of anyone, but Craig Groeschel has a great top ten lessons that he has learned about firing people.  Here are the first 3: 

1. The right person in the wrong spot becomes the wrong person unless I do something about it.
2. If you’re always trying to develop someone’s weakness, you probably have the wrong person.
3. Keeping the wrong person to protect his feelings is unfair to you and to your team member.

Visit his blog for the rest.

Bid on House

We put a bid on a house yesterday and they countered today. So we countered back. Fingers are crossed hoping that we will be able to get it. It's only 12 min away from Westside. It's further away for Cassie, so that stinks.

Read a cool verse on Thurs that's been on my mind lately:

Psalm 125:1

1 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. 

I want my trust to be in God, so nothing that comes my way will take my joy away.

Wrapping up Jonah

We wrapped up Jonah today. We used the lifechurch.tv message series. It will be nice to get a lead teaching pastor in here so we can begin doing original messages.

This series did have several creative pieces (see our brainstorm board below)

1) on Week 1: We did the Veggie Tales song "Jonah Was a Prophet" as a musical number to open up the message.  Julie, the gal who sang it, and the band (who rocked the swing beat) tore it up. Randy Coleman did a great job of interacting with the musical and playing off the humor of it.

2) Week 2: Ashley sung the Newsboys tune, "In the Belly of a Whale."

3) We made our entryways look like seaweed was hanging from it. Below is a picture of us putting it up.

4) With VBS being on before Week 3's message, we had the kids come up and sing some of their VBS songs on stage. The VBS was conveniently called "outrigger island." That worked well with the ocean vibe.

5) After Week 3's message, we had a family movie night and showed the Veggie Tales movie "Jonah." We had at least 200 show up for that. Our children's workers did a great job providing free popcorn and drinks.

6) Today we did an acoustic set and focused on surrender. The message was on forgiveness and Jason Morris (OP Campus Pastor) did a great job of delivering it. Debbie McNeil led the morning set and I led at the Well.

7) Our pre-service music was made up of songs like "under the sea." Pretty fun and light hearted stuff.

Random Acts of Kindness

This Video won the Willow Creek Arts video of the year.

Sell a house, Buy a House

Great news. We've been busting it to get our house in a condition to sell over the last couple of weeks. We put the house on the market about a month ago and we had a contract on it in 5 days. Amazing!

We were blown away and sat in amazement when we found out. Now we have gone through all the inspections and everything is set to close on Jul 28.

It's always good to know that God is keeping his hand on you and adding blessings to you as you walk humbly before him.

Now we are looking for a house and we submitted an offer today.  It will be a long shot, but miracles have happened already and I'm not doubting God on his wisdom. If is to be, he'll arrange it, if not, He definitely knows best.

A Cup of Cold Water

This video is from Schaun Colin our Missions Pastor. He took it on a missions trip to India where we were digging "Wells For Life."

This past weekend we had Dan Deeble of Heartland Community Church teach at Westside as part of a "round robin" series entitled "What if the Church."

He opened the message with a glass of water on the video screen and closed it with this video. To listen to his great message on serving, click here.

Willow Creek's Reveal sets a new Direction

Christianity Today released a story that quoted Bill Hybels saying that they are moving their weekend services to a believer oriented service and will be focusing their efforts on the believer and not as much the seeker.

Kudos to Hybels as he is making a bold decision to re-align his church to the direction that God has given them.  I would say this is "Courageous Leadership" to take a large church as this is that not only has nationwide influence, but a global impact and say that it is making a dramatic shift in its focus.

I have no criticism for Willow Creek only applause for owning up to mistakes and taking the initiative to lead their church to impact a culture and change with the culture.