I may be in one of the busiest seasons of my life. The summer isn’t supposed to be like this. I’m involved in the following:

I’ve learned a lot about being busy during this process. Turning it off in order to rest is a challenge for my personality. Learning to do it, honors Christ, my family, myself, the Church, and the initiatives I’m involved in. Failing to rest, causes me to be less productive and less on task. It also robs me from my ability to worship with a clean heart.

In times of intensity, what do you do to rest?

You’ve got to check out Commander Lacy Betton’s blog.  He’s on Day 17 of his charity ride on his motorcycle from Key West, FL into the Arctic Circle at Deadhorse, Alaska and back.  This guy is a stud.

He’s doing the ride to raise money for The Armed Forces Relief Trust, Agape Family Ministries, Miami Rescue Mission and the First Choice Women’s Center.

You can find out more about his trip here…like how that over 1,000 miles of the trip is on dirt roads through the Alaskan wilderness.  Awesome!  Check out some of these cool (very cold) pics!

Rafael Ovando and I went to Homestead/Miami Speedway to check out the open track events they have.  For about $350 you can take your own car out.  I would have loved to have taken my Murano with 3 child seats for a few laps.  That would have been a trip.

The funny thing is that there was a Ferrari blowing flames out of its exhaust pipes on the stretch.  At the same time, there was also a Jeep with a Hemi and a 1985-6 Green Ford Mustang GT trying to keep up…eclectic mix.  You can see some of those pics here.

Check out the vid we shot above.  Or, check out the in-car video of one of the Porsches on the Homestead track.

I think my brother knows more useless trivia that anyone I know.  Me?  I just know that Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo.

Thomas Friedman was right.  The world is flat.  Business dynamics are changing. With the advent of the internet and social networking sites, communications are immediate, accessible by everyone, and permanent.  The companies who are responsive and “get it” will establish significant customer loyalty and trust.  The ones that don’t will pay for their lack of responsiveness and customer interaction.

I vented a very slight frustration with the Southwest check-in process.  My moment of frustration turned out to be a big win for Southwest.  I vented on Twitter.  They responded to my comments, which caught me off guard and very pleasantly surprised me.  A Boston Globe reporter caught the interaction and shared the customer service event in an article on Customer Service.

Oh, and if you aren’t following me on Twitter, check me out here.

I go to Tampa once per month for a coaching network.  I used to do a one day turn-around drive.  9+ hours of drive time and a classroom environment was a butt-kicker.

Once gas prices shot up, it really made no sense to drive.  So, I started flying same day out of Ft. Lauderdale.  It was cheaper than driving and easier on my body.  Well, life just got really good and the trip got a heck of a lot cheaper.  I just got $18 roundtrip flights with Spirit Airlines through November…heck of a sweet deal.

Now, I need to talk Bob into making the same flights so we can split a cab ride or hook up with one of the guys from the network.  If so, I’ll pull this trip off for less money than it would cost for a good meal.

I’m blown away by the trust Jesus has toward us.  We receive His grace and are called to in turn extend it to others.  We are the hands and feet of Jesus here on earth.  That’s a big job description.  I love how Steve Stroope and Aubrey Malphurs put it in “Money Matters in the Church.”  They say:

One of the things I want to pass on to Life Pointe Church is a reorientation from consumeristic lives toward a Kingdom-focused, Gospel-obsessed lifestyle.  It is hard work.  It may mean radical lifestyle adjustment.  But, it honors Christ and honors what Christ wants to do in and through us.

What was your first step to placing Christ first in your finances?

What are the biggest barriers you face today in trying to reorient your life from focusing on the temporary in favor of the eternal?

When we relaunched our church in the theater in April of 2006, our total budget for marketing, trailer, sound equipment, lights, signage, and everything was under $20,000. In addition to that, we had financial liabilities not normally associated with a church plant sitting squarely on our backs. That was all we had.

That meant that we didn’t get to have some of the conveniences early on that makes being portable a lot easier…things like rolling cases and containers. The way we packed our trailer was ridiculous. It looked like my closet when I was 13. It made setup and tear down more difficult and more back breaking than it is when you’re rolling with these guys or these guys.

Some of the really awesome guys I talk to that are out there planting right now, expect that its all going to come in a nice neat case, wrapped up and presented. Maybe it will. That’s definitely nice if you’ve got the cash on hand to make it happen. But, those aren’t necessary things to launch a church.

Guys, just make it happen. Stop being so soft. Get a Gospel passion, love your town, raise as much money as you can, grab the bull by the horns, and expect that Jesus will build His Church. At some point, the “think big and launch big” mindset has to intersect with grit, determination, and Holy Spirit-empowered Gospel obsession.

Jesse just posted some pictures from the video shoot for “Got Funk in Conflict?” After a really lame video that bombed last week, he’s redeemed himself.  Good stuff.  Check out the rest of the pics over on the Santoyo page.  We’ll see you on Sunday at 9 or 10:30.

“How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life” by Michael LeBoeuf was a great business read with a lot of application for a church with a passion to create environments where people who are curious about Jesus will explore and want to return

My Top 10 Takeaways:

Some of our volunteers found out my middle name. I have been dubbed, “Christian” around the office. That’s me…Travis Christian Johnson.

In that whole initial conversation, I found out that Jesse has no middle name. His proper name is Jesus “no middle name” Santoyo. In fact, when I’m typing in MS Word about Jesus Christ, it always wants to auto-complete to Jesus Santoyo. That has gone to Jesse’s head.

Anyway, why don’t you come clean? What’s your middle name?

I’m in my second year of coaching with Nelson Searcy. So, I’m a bit biased towards his work. But, I guarantee I wouldn’t have gone back for year two if it hadn’t been extremely beneficial to the Mission of Jesus in South Florida.

Ultimately, I don’t know of any two ministry books (Activate or Fusion) that are more straight-forward when it comes to the practical application of ministry practice. Nor do I know of two ministry concepts that have more deeply impacted my ministry than either the small group or assimilation systems that Nelson teaches.

Top 10 Takeaways from “Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church:”

There is a lot of “how-to” in this book that I didn’t get into.  I’d highly recommend it for every pastor, staff person, or ministry volunteer that wants to see the Kingdom of God increase as a result of what God is doing through you.

Kelly and I had been married for less than a year. We had just moved to Chicago to start a church. I stopped by a public housing project to visit a guy I had met shortly after moving to Chicago. After walking into this guy’s apartment with my wife, I looked at Kelly and said, “Don’t tell your mom I brought you here.”

We both just had a good laugh about that tonight after watching “Gangland” on the History Channel. The show was partly about that housing project, Cabrini Green. Ah, yes…memories.

The lesson learned? If you’re a church planter, your wife has to be crazy enough to follow you anywhere…and you have to be smart enough not to do anything too terribly stupid.

We had a little shindig at my house yesterday for dogs and eats. Reina hooked me up with some seriously good home made salsa. We played Apples to Apples. I found out that James likes to win and he’s fairly expressive. Fun.

Then, we got out the Wii and boxed, played Tennis, and bowled. My shoulder still hurts from tennis. My brother’s back still hurts from a backhand that got a little out of control…sorry Phil. Glad to say my 4 year old knocked her 33 year old uncle.

Then, we headed over to the Homestead Sports Complex. Bill Finch and his life group came pulling up in what appeared to be a Redneck’s Paradise on Wheels (lawn chairs in the back of a pick-up truck, pizzas, cokes). We all found each other by looking for the flags that rock the outside of our theater…definitely came in handy. The fireworks were great. The crew from Life Pointe Church? Trouble as always…couldn’t have it any other way.

This year in the stadium, there was no band/no concert. The Saturn Project should have rocked it. Maybe next year.

Kelly does a great job keeping a journal of our lives.  Kourtney and McKenna already enjoy looking back to see what they used to look like and to see things they’ve done.  Blake?  He mostly drools on the keyboard.

Her blog is a treasure.  I love this video she put together that tracked her day.  Really amazing stuff for a guy like me to have a family like this.

We refuse to connect a phone line to our TiVo. We refuse to have a home phone.  So far, the TiVo police haven’t arrested us. Thanks, babe for the proof that we are living on the edge.

Getting ready for our Fall Semester of Groups, I read through Nelson Searcy’s book, Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. It’s a great read…one of the best practical ministry books I’ve read.

We’ve been working Nelson’s system for small groups at Life Pointe for one year now. We started last fall. The highest we’ve gotten our small group registrations to is 92% of our Sunday attendance. The best we had done prior to his small group system was just under 60%. Nelson has the mind and possibly, the heart of an engineer which makes him a great, direct talking coach to a lot of pastors.

Here are my Top 10 takeaways from his book:

1. Think larger, not smaller. Larger groups minimize the weirdo factor, mean less work for the facilitator, and anticipates that not everyone who signs up will show up.

2. The Four Spaces of Spiritual Growth are: a) public space, b) social space, c) personal space, and d) intimate space. Small Groups are not geared to creating intimate space but, rather social space.

3. Be simple in your approach to groups and ministry. If you give people too many options, their involvement will be so spread out that you won’t have their full participation or momentum in any one area.

4. Entry into a group must be utterly simple and fool proof. A one-step sign-up process, which removes barriers will greatly increase the number of people who decide to join a group.

5. Your small groups must function as a SYSTEM. Systems save you time, stress, energy, and money.

6. Every person on the church staff should have a hand in the development of small groups. Think full staff participation, not staff specialist.

7. Think decentralization, not control. As long as you have complete control over your small group system, you will only be able to go to a certain level before you plateau. Groups will multiply faster and be healthier when you trust God with your volunteer leaders and your volunteer leaders with your people.

8. The implementation of your small groups should go through four processes: a) focus, b) form, c) fill, and d) facilitate. Good ideas are common- what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about.

9. When planning for each semster, you need to have a goal of how many people will be attending Sunday mornings weekly during that semester. Then, you should have a goal to have 100% or more of that Sunday number in a group. Divide that number by 20 and that’s how many groups you should have giving you a basis for how many leaders, co-leaders, coaches, and managers you need to have in place.

10. When filling your group, you need to be strategic using multiple avenues for recruitment, tactics for getting the message out, and be singular in your message during that month of recruitment. Never underestimate the power of someone telling the story of their changed life through their group.

Ed Stetzer is one of my favorite speakers/writers on the Church in America.  He and Troy Gramling have a great podcast here on the challenge of the Church to remain faithful to the Gospel while remaining flexible in our presentation of the Gospel.  Great stuff.

I’m listening to “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang on a way cool tool called Tiny Song.  Listen to just about any song, build a playlist, etc…  I already love Pandora, the Music Genome Project.  This will compliment that site nicely.

Tomorrow, I’m teaching on humility.  Ben Franklin said that humility was the one virtue he was never able to attain.  It’s a message I’ll be listening to more than I’m teaching.

That’s one of the challenging jobs of being a pastor.  You’re called to share enourmous truths from a holy God.  Leadership requires you to take people from where they are to where they should be.  A leader cannot take someone to a place they have never been.

On days like tomorrow, I’ll be challenged to admit my shortcomings and tell everyone that we’re taking a walk together to a place that we’ve not likely visited very much.

“MAN RULES” is a 3 week series we’re working on for the fall. We’ll be dealing with topics of Biblical Masculinity. This image is a rough idea to be used for a mailer, slides, etc… Do you have any thoughts on the images or creative ideas for the series?

If you click on any of the pictures, you’ll go to our Flickr account and see some of the comments already there.

Check out this Miami Herald article about Melvin McCormick, one of our city councilmen. Then, check your heart and see if you want to be a part of something significant in our city.  If you do, you’ll find me there.

According to C.S. Lewis, there are two kinds of people in the world:

In the battle of the wills, you can beat God…if you will.

We love pipe and drape.  You can use pipe and drape to hide stuff, to create walls, and to right size an auditorium.  One of the worst uses for it is to limit faith.

After getting a handle on our auditorium size, we somehow had gotten hung up on making sure our pipe and drape was in exactly the appropriate place so that the auditorium always felt just right.  At the same time, we were praying for God’s Kingdom to come in Homestead.  We were praying for increase….asking God to send the people yet keeping the pipe and drape perfectly positioned to make sure our auditorium was “right sized.”

For us, taking the curtain down was a step of faith.  It may have also been a signal that we weren’t only praying for increase but that we were expecting it.  Now, I’m looking for where else we have positioned other types of pipe and drape in our church.

BAPTISM SLIDESHOW

Sunday was a defining day in the life of our church. A lot can be said. I’ll sum it up in five statements:

I’m very familiar and appreciative of the stories behind a few of the people being baptized.

Richie Nieves just didn’t go to church at all for decades. He’s one cool guy whose wife has loved Jesus for a long time. He made a decision to follow Jesus a few months ago and hasn’t looked back. Richie is my friend. He loves to serve. He’s totally sold out to a revolutionary Jesus. It was a privilege to baptize him…glad to call him my friend.

Cyndi Mazorous is in my life group. From the first day she walked into Life Pointe, it felt like she has always belonged. She didn’t get baptized with everyone on the beach because she said she “didn’t feel worthy to be baptized”…most powerful, deeply accurate statement of the day. She wasn’t worthy…none of us were/are.

When she got baptized, the beach had been closed because of lightning. So, we stepped into the muck, rocks, and mangroves by our picnic area. I sunk a good one foot into the gunk. People cheered for her. She went public with her faith in Jesus. Bar none, it may have been one of the most significant moments of my ministry.

I’d love to tell the stories of each person going public with their faith in Jesus. Those stories need to be heard. So, go tell them. That’s your first job as a follower of Jesus. Go and tell. It’s too bad that some people never get that part of following Christ.

SUNDAY WRAP-UP