The Day We Baptized Everybody

Picture it: Sunday morning, 9:50 AM.  We’re roughly 45 minutes away from the first of two baptism services of the day.  Two of my First Impressions Team members walk up and say, “Ummm…did you know the portable baptistery is leaking in Suite 111?”

My calm, collected reply: “Yes.  It always leaks a little.  We’ll mop it up later.”

The look on their face said it all: this wasn’t a leak.  It was an overflow.  As in, the water was still running and half of a 2100 square foot, newly remodeled room was under water.

Multiple bad words raced through my head.

…and then it was time to get ‘er done.  Ten volunteers came to the rescue and grabbed every mop, bucket, and broom on campus.  I had to go back into the auditorium to make announcements…one of which was inviting everyone to witness a baptism in a room that may or may not still be flooded.  And then I began the quick walk back down to Suite 111…

…to find a completely dry room.

That’s right.  in under 40 minutes, ten people mopped up and swept out the great flood of our day.  These guys get it.  Whatever it takes to get the job done, they do.  First Impressions team members, small group leaders, Summit staff, and Summit elders…they were all pitching in, pants rolled up, making it happen.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love serving at this place?

 

Watch For It

Every once in a while I have a conversation that fuels me for days.  Last Thursday was one of those.  I met with one of our First Impressions leaders at one of our campuses and he told me his journey that he’s been on over the last few months.  I’m paraphrasing, but this is the essence of what he said…

“I’ve always been passionate about hospitality and customer service issues, but never even considered how those things applied to the church.  I’ve attended the Summit and seen the First Impressions Team in action, but never really thought about the fact that this team is the perfect fit for my passion.  Now that I’m working with this team each week, it’s as if God has taken my skill and passion and is using it for his kingdom, and that’s an amazing thing.”

There were two takeaways from this conversation:

• I continue to be amazed that God raises up the exact right people at the exact right time.  That sort of stuff never stops being cool.
• I’m reminded of my job as a pastor to help people see how they can use their everyday lives – their passions, their careers, their vocations, their hobbies – and turn them into an opportunity for kingdom-style ministry.

Watch for these opportunities in your life, and in the life of those around you.  Who’s in your circle that can use an everyday skill for eternal impact?

 

My First Ever Top Ten List

(at least on this blog)

Top Ten Reasons You Should Join The First Impressions Team

From the home office in Rougemont, NC

10. There’s nothing like the smell of freshly-printed worship guides, and you’ll have stacks of ‘em.

9. Work at the First Time Guest Tent, eat your weight in free peppermints.

8. Get giddy with unlimited power as you tell people where to sit.

7. Mess with new people’s heads by telling them the Summit has moved…they’ve arrived at an Amway convention.

6. Single guy + orange parking vests + carload of single girls = better ratios than you’re used to.

5. Secret access to the highly-guarded espresso machine.

4. Moving the pipe and drape will prep you for the javelin toss in the 2012 Olympics.

3. “Church Barista” looks darn impressive on a resume’.

2. After you say, “GoodMorningWelcomeToTheSummit” a half-jillion times, your face goes numb and the second half-jillion just spills right out.

…and the number one reason to join the First Impressions Team…

1. Three words: our guests matter.

Interested?  Join me for First Impressions Training at Frontline tomorrow morning.  More info here.

 

Count the Cost

A few years back our media team produced a great video called “The Set Up Fairy.”  If I were more technologically adept I’d put it up here so you could see it, but trust me when I say it was chock full of awesomeness, and not just because yours truly made a cameo appearance as a short-tempered Connections Pastor who had the tendency to mutter under his breath and kick Coke machines for sport.

The basic gist of the video was that church doesn’t just happen.  It takes a team of volunteers to set up, tear down, provide childcare, park cars, make coffee, clean sinks, greet first timers, sing in the choir, and run the sound.  But have you ever thought about what would happen if those people simply ceased to exist?

• As complicated as our parking system is now, think about what it would be like if the parking team wasn’t there to help new guests find a church building that looks nothing like a church building…especially when all of the buildings around us are identical.
• The Summit has roughly 10,524 babies under three months of age.  10k babies screaming in a worship service?  It could happen if no one was manning Summit Kids.
• There would be no 150-voice choir to bring the glory of heaven down to our little warehouse…not that it would matter, since the soloists couldn’t belt it out loud enough to compensate for the fact that no one was working the sound system.
• Pipe and drape…you know, that black flowing stuff that makes you feel like you’re worshipping in a haunted house?  Yep, that’s going to be your problem.  Hope you can stand on your tippy-toes to get that junk down.
• Two words: No.  Coffee.

Continue down the list: no one to help new people find out more information, no one to get you connected to a small group, bathrooms that smell like you-know-what, and nobody to refill Pastor J.D. with his mid-sermon fuel of Mountain Dew and Slim Jims.

Everybody notices when something is left undone, but the problem with our great teams is that they always get it done, no matter the trial, sacrifice, or amount of time they’re investing in just making it happen.

But what if they didn’t show up?  Is the cost too much to bear?  Better yet, what if those people hadn’t been there the first Sunday you came to the Summit?  Would you have stuck around?

The cost is steep, and that’s why we need you.  Step up and serve today.

Want to know more?  Check out one of our Frontline events throughout the month of August or sign up for more info on specific ministry teams here.

 

Where Did All The Passion Go?

It happens in marriages.  It happens in jobs.  And it especially happens in churches.  Vision drifts, passion wanes, and people find themselves stuck in a rut with no way out.

The problem is often not the rut.  The problem is that we can’t even see the rut.

If you want to diagnose your rut, answer these questions:

• Have you served in a regular, ongoing capacity in some ministry in the last six months?
• If the answer to the above is “yes,” are you excited about showing up for your ministry?
• Can you state in one sentence why your ministry exists?
• Do you regularly listen to or read about needs in ministries, but shrug them off, saying, “Someone else will take care of it?”
• Have you ever talked about how the church has failed to serve you in some way?
• Has church become more about you than it has about God?  Than it has about others?

The obvious answers you should have given are “yes” for the first three and “no” for the second three.  But if your answers were reversed, you might be in a rut.

Ruts happen.  It’s what we do with our ruts that matter, and it’s knowing we’re in a rut that’s really important.  In the words of that great theologian and revived pop icon G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.

I pray that you’ll discover your rut and rediscover your passion.  Life’s too short to live in the ruts in a church as great as the Summit.  Stand up, be counted, and serve!

Want to know more?  Check out one of our Frontline events throughout the month of August or sign up for more info on specific ministry teams here.

 

One in Four

It’s Volunteer Week both on this blog and the Brier Creek AM Campus blog.  Want to know more?  Come to one of our Frontline events or go here to sign up for a ministry team.

Here are some quick stats to get your Tuesday morning off to a great start (statistically speaking):

1. One in four British children do not play any sort of organized sports.
2. One in four American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given calendar year.
3. One in four orders of super-sized McDonald’s french fries actually have Filet-O-Fish particles in them.
4. One in four people in the U.S. are age 18 or below.
5. One in four Nebraska school children have the middle name “Wayne.”
6. One in four attempts to lick a frozen flagpole will actually cause your tongue to freeze to the pole.
7. One in four households have been a victim of identity theft in the last five years.
8. One in four Indian immigrants who call Canada “home” will send money back to India this year.
9. One in four people who attend the Brier Creek AM Campus are serving on a ministry team.

In case you’re keeping track, #1, 2, 4, 7, and 8 are actually true statistics (I know that because I got them from Google).  #3, 5, 6 are inventions of my own brain, because one in four statistics are made up on the spot.

And sadly, #9 is most definitely true: according to a recent survey of our AM Campus, only one in four attendees serve in ministry either on Sunday morning or at another time during the week.

At first, this statistic is very sobering, because we’re a church where serving is one of our core values.  However, when you consider that one in two AM Campus attendees have been here for one year or less, that stat isn’t quite as overwhelming.  For 50% of our people not to jump right in and serve makes sense when you consider that they’re still getting a feel for what the culture of the Summit Church actually is.

That’s why I’m so excited to highlight the opportunity for people to step up and serve.  Maybe you’ve attended the Summit for just a few months and it looks like everything is a well-oiled machine.  Maybe you’ve been here for years and you’re currently taking a break from service.  Whatever position you find yourself in, hear this plea from your Campus Pastor:

We want you.  We need you.  We want to partner with you!

There are no fewer than 300 opportunities for you to serve…beginning this Sunday.  You can be a part of Summit Kids.  You can join up with the First Impressions Team.  You can sing in the choir or run a camera with the Production Team or do almost anything else your heart desires!

Please consider how you can serve this fall.  Don’t sit on the sidelines any longer.  And if I can persuade you by using peer pressure, remember that all the cool kids at the Summit are serving.

…at least one in four of ‘em, anyway.

 

Volunteer Week Begins!

Starting this morning over at the Brier Creek AM Campus blog, I’m running a series of posts that will (hopefully) cause an army of would-be volunteers to rise up from their fuzzy chairs, storm the hallowed halls of cyberspace, and demand to serve in some capacity this fall at the Summit’s AM Campus.

Over on that blog, I’ll be somewhat more diplomatic, because I should behave myself.  Over here on this blog, however, I realize that many of you are loyal readers, or at least tune in daily with the same morbid interest that you check the obituaries so you can say, “What will the fool say today?”

So tune in over there, and keep checking back here each day for the straight-up inside track on what’s going on with our volunteer teams for the fall.  And if you’re interested in serving, check out one of our Frontline events throughout the month of August or sign up for more info on specific ministry teams here.

 

Coming Soon To A Campus Near You

As you know by now, this fall we’re adding a 12:30 service and a 10:45 overflow service to the Brier Creek AM Campus. With those additions come a huge need to beef up our First Impressions Team. We need peeps to serve on the parking team, the auditorium seaters team, the coffee bar team, and on and on. If you want to serve, we want to help you get plugged in to serve.

On Saturday, August 22, we’ll be hosting the First Impressions Frontline event, designed for both potential, beginner, and seasoned members of the FI Team. It will be held at the Brier Creek Campus, but it is open to Summit folks from all campuses. Watch for sign up info coming soon or talk to your First Impressions Campus Director today!

 

A First Impressions Primer, Part 2

In yesterday’s post we started to answer a question from Doug in Michigan.  Read on for part 2 of that discussion.  Oh, and happy 200th post, Connective Tissue readers.

Our FIT has one driving mission, and that is to create an inviting environment that engages worshippers and builds meaningful relationships.  We do that in three different ways:

1. Removing all distractions: it’s easier for a mom to relax and enjoy the service if she knows her baby is being cared for by a worker who greeted her at the door, listened to the allergy information, and called the child by name…rather than a random guy with an eye patch who mutters about the end times apocalypse and smells like beef and cheese.
2. Defining an experience: we don’t want an experience to simply happen to a guest.  Rather, we want to be the architects of that experience…what will they see?  What will they feel?  What can they use?
3. Bringing them back: Gary McIntosh says in his book at that the average growing church in America will keep only 16% of it’s first time guests, but if they get them back a second time, they’ll retain over 85%.  To use Waltz’s term, we want to create “Wow!” moments that guarantee a second visit.  Second and third and fourth visits are where the gospel begins to get familiar and people have life-changing encounters with Jesus.

Over the years our FIT has morphed and change, and it looks much different now that we’re a multi-site church.  Different campus FITs function different ways, but every team has the same basic sub-teams:

• Parking Team: rockin’ the orange vests and walkies, making sure there’s no fender benders.
• First Time Guests: full focus on the FTGs, helping them get where they need to go, answering questions, making them feel like family.
• Outer Entry Team: works the sidewalks and outside doors, say “Good Morning” approximately 6,254 times a week.
• Lobby Stations: Coffee Bar, Info Table, Resource Table…these folks know their stuff.
• Auditorium Entry Doors: pens, worship guides, and inserts, oh my.
• Auditorium Seaters: making sure every last person has a seat, occasionally catapults people over sixteen heads if necessary.
• Collection Team: IRS wanna be’s.

So that’s it, Doug.  The quick and dirty on how the FIT functions here at the Summit.  If you’re a part of the Summit and would like to get involved with the team, sign up here (Brier Creek AM Campus) or check in with your Campus Pastor.

 

West Club is Going to the Dogs

Last week I heard a story from one of our campuses that just has to be told.  The Summit’s West Club Campus is located in the heart of a historical neighborhood that is populated with urban professionals and urban professional canines.  These are the types of canines that likely have bowls with their names on them, and the vet knows them on a first name basis (because face it, dogs with last names are kind of silly).  In other words: these people take their dogs very seriously.

That’s illustrated by the fact that on any given Sunday morning, you can find roughly 912 people walking their dogs down the sidewalk in front of the campus.  That’s where Bob Bacon comes in.

The Bacon family are long time fixtures at the Summit.  They are the go-to people for just about everything, because they seem to know just about everything.  Bob is the kind of guy that, if you have a need, you can’t tell him about the need, because he’ll walk right out and take care of the need.  If I were to tell him that I needed the pollen from a flower that can only be found on a craggy outcropping at the top of Mount Fuji, he would strap on his hiking boots and brush up on his Japanese, because doggone it he’s gonna get me some Fuji flower pollen.  That’s just the kind of guy he is.

Bob is also one of our parking team guys over at West Club, and a few months ago he came up with a brilliant way to engage the dog walkers in conversation: he keeps a pocket full of dog biscuits for his four-legged friends.  Now, the dogs see Bob way before the owners see Bob, and they drag their owners down the sidewalk to get one of Bob’s treats.  No word whether or not they’re bacon flavored (ba-dum-bum).

This one little act of creative kindness has cemented Bob – and West Club – as a familiar, friendly group of people who care about the neighborhood and the dogs within.  Great job, Mr. Bacon.  Keep passing out Milk Bones for Jesus.