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242 Community - A NewThing Church!

I'm off to visit 242 Community this weekend. I'm pretty excited to see what is going on with Dave and his team. They launched as a NewThing church outside of Detroit last February and have got off to an amazing start: they already have more than 500 people attending and are planning to go multi-site!! They are definitely a reproducing church. And all this in less than 10 months. God is good!

I'll be speaking at their Leadership Community tonight and then at both services tomorrow morning. I'm also taking Josh (12) and Amy (15) along with me for the adventure. I love that they are going with me! I'll give a report on the church when I get back...I'm sure it will be amazing!

Where Should the NewThing Network Go Next?

In the last three years the NewThing Network has planted four churches and we have a fifth team preparing to plant in Boston and are now adding affliate sites. Our vision for 100 reproducing church by 2010 in the United States is still solidly in our sites. But over the last 18 months we have been wrestling with the question of an international presences and where should we take NewThing next? We have had a number of opportunities to take NewThing outside the boundaries of the United States and plant churches in other countries. When World Relief came to us and wanted us to partner in Mozambique to plant churches and do leadership development I wasn't sure that was to be our first step internationally...but then I wasn't sure that it was not the next step. My bias - "Jesus already gave us the great commission so go until you get a no". But I just felt no confirmation at all and still said "not yet". Other opportunities came and I just kept thinking that in the words of Peter Drucker, "decisions aren't so much made as they become apparent" - well it hasn't.

I've come to the conclusion that over the next 12 months that we need our lead team to take some trips to some key destinations and them come back with a report. There are a handful of places that I could see us taking our church planting efforts next: Mexico, Domican Republic, Philippines, Rwanda, England or France. In all of these places we have significant relationships upon which we could build a church planting movement. If you were to put your resources into a foreign country with the dream of starting a church planting movement...which country would you pick and why?

Selling Love Pills?

BoingBoing - The Directory of Wonderful Things had an interesting blog about how we fall in love. Check this out - Psychiatrists from Pavia University (wherever that is?) have found a correlation between early romantic love and a biochemical known as nerve growth factor (NGF). Apparently, levels of NGF in the bloodstream were significantly higher in subjects who were in the early stages of romance than individuals not in a relationship. Interestingly, "subjects in love who—after 12–24 months—maintained the same relationship but were no longer in the same mental state to which they had referred during the initial evaluation" did not have elevated NGF levels.

Which brings me to my next great multi-level marketing business idea - selling NGF! Anyone want to be a distributor?

Living In The Tension of Reproducing & Consistent Quality

I have been thinking more and more about the Multi-Site Tug of War. I have been talking about it to all our staff and I plan on continuing the conversation tomorrow during some of our meetings. Well, here is the next insight: When we are living with a healthy tension between reproducing and consistent quality we are experiencing creativity...when we are either too focused on reproducing or too obsessed with quliaty, creativity ceases. As I started talking to people about this I saw some eyes really light up like, "yeah, that's it...when we are still creating new things, we are living with a good balance of reproduction and excellence".

One of the people who seemed to really resonate with this was Bill Carroll, our Music Guru! Here are some of Bills words on the topic:

"Something really hit me in our in our discussion about excellence versus reproducibility. Maybe it is more of a confirmation. I think you are right on with your thought sequence about the middle ground being "creativity". I think we were really in that healthy middle ground a few years ago when we were at 3 sites. For me personally, that is when I was spending 6-8 hours a week researching and developing the experiential worship stuff. I really feel like I was at my peak. We just need to figure out what it will take at the point we are at now. I think the fact that we are just having this conversation means we are on our way! Thanks, Bill."

I think this is one of the most imporant conversations at Community Christian Church right now. I also think it is one of the most important conversations for the whole multi-site movement. We can not have be satisfied with just quality AND we can not simply reproduce sites and churches that do not have an impact.

The Tug-of-War In A Multi-Site Church

Having led a multi-site church for the last 8 years there are some unique tensions to this type of church. I call it the Multi-Site Church Tug Of War. The tension is a pull between reproducing and consistent quality.

Many churches will never feel the tug of war between reproducing and consistent quality because they are only trying to achieve one or the other and not both. But for a reproducing church (a far better term to describe what we are doing at CCC) it is not an option to chose either/or; we have made the intentional choice to go with Jim Collins "genius of the and" and do both - reproduce new locations and new churches and do them with a high level of consistent quality.

When we got to about five locations I started to really see it and feel this tug of war. (Our fifth site in Shorewood, IL currently doing great - we are about 18 months into it and it is averaging 450-480 with over 70% of our people in small groups). However, as we continued to reproduce it seemed that our consistent quality began to waiver. What waivered was not quality, but consistent quality. Our celebration services still have a very high level of quality...a value that we have always held. But it seemed that we were not being as consistent at meeting that level of quality week after week in all of our CCC locations.

It would be easy to say, "well, what do you expect, Dave...four years ago you had two locations and you hadn't planted a church and now you guys have seven and soon to be eight locations (Pilsen-Chicago launches in February) with four church plants... of course with that kind of reproduction your consistent quality is going to suffer". Ugh! I can't buy it. How does Starbucks do it? How does McDonalds do it? I mean they reproduce over and over and over again...and they do it with a consistent quality. I have more to say about this...and I will come back to it. Any thoughts?

"Never Before Tried": Cutting Down Your Own Christmas Tree

I think I might make this a regular feature in my blog to periodically report on things "never before tried". Maybe I'll call it NBT. This is not stuff that no one has ever before tried, these will just be things that I have never before tried. Got it?

So, my first "never before tried" report is cutting down your own Christmas tree. For the first 10 years or so of our family we only had a fake Christmas tree. I have to say that even though it was fake it looked pretty good! Then we took the big step and drove over to Home Depot to buy a real Christmas tree. We did that for the last few years. But this past weekend we did something we have never before tried - cutting down our own Christmas tree. We went to Camelot Christmas Trees in Dekalb, Illinois - basically a farm that for one month of the year turns into a place to cut down Christmas trees. I really liked it. Sue liked it. The kids liked it - mostly! But it was fun! Not fun like a trip to Laguna Beach, but fun! As I type this blog, the tree is decorated, lit and a looking right at me. I love Christmas!

There is something about dying...

Yesterday, I spent part of the afternoon with a friend of mine who has a terminal illness. He thought last Friday was going to be his last. Over the last couple years we have found a rhythm in our relationship where we get together about every couple months just to talk. And every time I get together with him, I come away inspired. There is something about dying...

...that makes me want to make every minute count.
Much of our conversation evolved around how to spend his time. Every minute mattered and needed to be leveraged for the greatest possible potential.

...that makes me grateful for Sue, Amy, Josh and Caleb.
Guess how my friend is going to spend his Thanksgiving? Of course, with the one's that he loves. When you begin to make every minute count, you spend it with the people that count. In his case it was people that were close to him and people who are far from God.

...that reminds me of what is really important - "helping people find thier way back to God".
One of the e-mails he sent to me last week was in response to me asking him to write something about "helping people find thier way back to God" that I may get published. Here is part of what he said, "I don't know how much time I will have on this earth, ... I would love to help in anyway to help people find there way back to God. I feel this is the area I can help the most, the awakening of my soul has been so great and you opened my eyes to the power of the Holy Spirit. Your friend..."

...that reminds me God is more interested in our significance than he is our comfort.

During most of our conversation he had a "pain stick" in his mouth - it is something the doctors prescribed that releases medication to alleviate some of his pain. We talked about the pain and why God hadn't healed him. That is a tough question and an even tougher conversation. But he firmly believes that he his closer to God now than he has ever been before. He also feels that he is being used by God more than ever before to reach out to his family and people at work. And because of that he says he is truly grateful for his illness. It is clear that his life now has greater significance and is making a bigger difference than at any ever before! We ended our conversation with a new understanding that God is more interested in our significance than our comfort.

There is something about dying that makes you alive!