complaint free

Wow, I thought I was a very positive person, until I started wearing my "Complaint Free" bracelet. The goal is to go 21 days without being negative. If you are negative through complaining, gossip or otherwise negative words, you have to move the bracelet to the other wrist and start again. It sounds easy, but's it not. I caught myself already saying something negative about the Cincinnati Bengals. I'm excited about doing a message on this for this weekend on being complaint free. For Thanksgiving we always talk being grateful, but we are going to mix it up and make a commitment not to speak any negative words. If we change our words, we can change our world.

Rivalry

Today is the day.....Ohio State vs michigan football game! The biggest rivalry in all of college sports (according to ESPN). It's amazing how I get pumped up for a game I'm not even playing in. It is one of my joys that makes life more fun......as long as the Buckeyes win...ha! I'm holding my breath.
I have personal rivalries with certain runners around Columbus who I know when we are in the same race, that it is going to be a battle. Those kind of rivalries can help take us to another level, the problem comes when we look at other churches or ministers as rivalries rather than as teammates that play different positions on the same team.

Go Bucks! Pound the team from up north.

Celebrate

Today, as a staff we are heading to a coffee shop to hammer out processes and strategy for 4 hours. Sounds like fun huh? Then we will pick up our ladies and head to GameWorks where we will meet our Advisory Board Members and spouses along with our worship leader and youth director. This will be a time to show appreciation for what God has done and for their hard work and investment in C3. There will also be some vision casting about the future of our church. After we have eaten, we will all go play some games together in the giant game room and then grab some coffee together. I think many times as a team we move so fast and fail to take time to celebrate and truly enjoy the journey together.

The state of C3 Church

Coming back from my prayer and planning retreat (thanks Christy for reminding me to blog about it) I felt God confirming the direction I feel in my heart. God has incredibly blessed our church and we have grown fairly rapidly to the place that internally we are usually behind on many things and doing a lot of scrambling. Much of this is because we continue to move forward, which almost always means adding something new. With the newest addition of our (Sun Eve 7pm) 3rd service, we now have bought ourselves time to work on the internal processes and procedures of C3. To make simple steps to move people from Connecting to Growing to Serving. We will take the next year and focus on the internals of C3 to get us running as if we are a much larger church, so we can handle the growth as God continues to give it. Currently, we are an engine that is running and making ground, but losing gas and dripping oil. I feel the vision for "now" is to get us running effective and efficient.

Buckeyes

Here is my take on the 2007 Ohio State Buckeyes:
Tressel does an amazing job every year getting his team ready to play even when it is supposed to be a "reloading" year. The fact is: LOSING TO ILLINOIS WAS THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO US. Here is why:
1. We are not the best team in the nation (this year) and if we get blown out in ANOTHER championship game, next year the BCS voters are not going to want to give us the votes so easily when we are the #1 team in the land.
2. If we did play for the national title this year and get beat by LSU, we will never hear the end of the SEC fans on how the Big Ten is so weak.

This year is no doubt a rebuilding year. At the beginning of the year we were picked to be 3rd in the Big Ten, but Tressel and the crew will have exceeded even our highest expectations of this year if (and when) they beat michigan (Big Ten Champions) and win the Rose Bowl.

That's it...Thanks my conclusion after some good discussion with my good friend Greg Ford.

Go Bucks!

Personal prayer retreat

I'm leaving in a couple of minutes to go to an old farm house out in Marrow County to spend some time with God. While there I will map out some personal vision for this next year as well as the future direction of C3. It's so amazing when you block out time for nothing but to spend time with God.....He has the tendency to show up BIG! I look forward to this time every year. Also, this weekend is our Leadership teams yearly retreat, of which GameWorks, and the OSU vs Team Up North with all be worked in.

PS - The Buckeyes recent loss has been devastating.....but Jesus is still on the throne!

C3 night

We just had our first night service, which is our new 3rd service. It was a totally different feel that we think went over pretty well. There were quite a guests who decided to give us a try and I believe they will be back. We had a total of 50 show up and 37 who did not attend a morning service that day.
I love new things, especially when we are creating something from the ground up. We have a great team that jumps in and fills the holes until we can replace ourselves. With this new service, we now have some room to grow and we can turn our focus on getting all of our processes and procedures where they need to be. I feel like C3 is a engine that is running and moving, but we are leaking fuel and dripping oil. My heart is to see that we are both effective AND efficient. We are up for the challenge!