Saddleback Day Two

Ok. Day two. I’m learning a ton. Sherwood Carthen brought it on day two. He is chaplain for the Sacramento Kings and leads a church in that area. Powerful stuff. I can’t even describe the passion that flowed from the guy. Here’s some highlights…

1. He started off by making fun of every denomination. How many (fill in your favorite denomination) does it take to change a light bulb? Hilarious.
2. 2 peter 3.9 God is patient…that none should perish. He’s waiting on us to get our act together.
3. He spoke on the proper response for a difference maker from Jude 20-23.
4. Said that 75% of people going to church are declining or are in a critical moment.
5. A difference maker is someone who changes the destination of another.
6. What is your defining moment?
7. We spend a lot of time trying to convince people how good we are when we should spend our time telling people how God rescued us. “If God did it for me, he can do it for you.”
8. Programs without passion and the love of God won’t change anything.
9. We must get to a point where we realize that a soul means something to God.
10. You can think of two or three people right now that you don’t care if they go to heaven or not.
11. Difference makers bank on God’s power.
12. It’s not elbow grease, it’s God’s power.
13. If God is not empowering your ministry your just doing stuff.
14. Acts 1.8 He gives us power to stand on the witness stand and testify not become a lawyer and argue.
15. Everyday is orchestrated by God all we have to do is live.
16. Glean from steve’s (gladen) field but realize that unless God builds the house those that labor, labor in vain.
17. When you get ready to go big you’ve got to go deep.
18. People in this world don’t need perfect people, they need delivered people.
19. Difference makers don’t say “we don’t have time.” Wow. Others have planted. Reap the harvest.
20. Difference makers don’t say “it can’t happen” or “it’s impossible.”

Sat in with Dave whitten to hear about campaign strategy. Evidently, lots of other people wanted to know about campaigns as well. I knew a little about campaigns. Here’s a couple of things that were new.
1. Saddleback asks existing groups to stop meeting during campaigns. I think this is a good strategy but I wonder how they keep up with reforming groups, new groups etc. I would imagine there are a lot of Saddleback groups that exist but are not tethered to the mother ship because they have disbanded, reformed and nobody knows about it. This happens at Highlands a lot. Campaigns generate lots of groups and the growth outstrips our structure every time. I think that is the reason we return to a baseline number of groups. Saddleback is providing more post campaign care. We’ve got to figure that out or we’ll be right back here in the same spot next year.
2. Connections are important but to achieve 110% participation you’ve got to place the burden for inviting new people on the host. This is a great idea. One guy asked “well what happens to people who don’t get invited?” The answer went right back to the old standby…we create a list of groups, put it on the web, etc. Boy, I’ve been down that road. Creating a list of any kind is not the solution (in my opinion). You’ve either got a list of groups which makes attending group awkward and places too much responsibility on the guest, or, you have a list of guest and that places too much burden on the staff. It also creates a list of people who are having a negative experience while they are unconnected. Our solution is to have the connections, explain to hosts that they probably won’t get a full group at the connection and send them out with instructions to fill their group. There is no list, anywhere. If someone wants to get in a group, they come to the connection or are invited by a host. Period. I think this is the best way for us right now. I think with the combination of hosts inviting and connections we can reach 110%.
3. Clear the Calendar. This is a good idea. Every ministry clears their calendar for a campaign. I wish I had known this little piece of info about 3 months ago. We need to plan campaigns earlier out so that we can give ministries leaders margin. At this point, shutting stuff down will cause fires but in the future we can give people more lead time.