We have a new meeting each week and it has become my favorite meeting.

Meetings are valuable for teams.  It is certainly possible to have too many meetings, too long of meetings, and probably the most common error is to have a lack of meetings.

Realizing our growing team needed additional “glue”, in January I initiated an all-team meeting called Momentum.  It’s a Monday morning meeting to start the big MO.  This meeting is for 3 things:  Inspiration, Celebration, and Communication.  It’s very positive and we avoid doing “heavy lifting”.  It may be my favorite meeting because it’s also our shortest meeting.  Great meetings don’t need to be long.  They need to be well planned and effective.

It’s great to start our week with Momentum.

What is your favorite meeting?  What do you think are components of an effective meeting?

What an incredible night. Thanks to everyone who came out and helped make You Shine an amazing experience.

Here is a link to the CCH Facebook page where we have uploaded a few images from that night.

We’re now in the process of post-production. Thank you for praying for us as we work to complete this project, which I believe will have an incredible impact on many many people.
I’ll give updates here on Threads on our progress every couple weeks or so.

- Brandon

This morning during my devotion time (I set aside time each day to devote to hearing God’s voice, praying, reading the Word of God) I was listening to You Are Still Holy by Rita Springer and one of the lines in the song says,

During this song, the Lord was speaking to me from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.” God was reminding me that all that is in my past: my mistakes, my sins, my failures, my disappointments… all of the stuff that I want to leave behind me but always tries to creep back into my life… God wants to take it all.

You are not your own; you were bought at a price. God does not want you and me to carry around stuff that he has paid for.  He wants all of us.  God doesn’t just want the good in you; He doesn’t want just your potential.  He wants all of you including the stuff that you don’t want.  He is speaking to us today about trusting Him with the stuff that weighs you down.

Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7 encourages us that God wants to take all of the stuff from our lives that holds us back from the potential that He has for each of us.

Will you trust Him today? Will you run to Him WITH all of your garbage and let Him take it all?  All that has been in my life up until now… IT ALL BELONGS TO YOU.

Public ministry requires an audience.  What we do in public ministry is for the benefit of others.

First, your audience may be only one.  In fact, that is enough.  God has called us to look for “the one” and share His love and life with them.  Look for an audience today and begin to do ministry.

Secondly, your audience may be a small group or a large group of hundreds or even thousands.  But whether it is one or 10,000, ministry is not ministry if you are just doing something – preaching a message, leading a bible discussion, singing a song, or just talking to the crowd.  Ministry is only ministry when you connect with someone.

I saw someone recently “leading worship”.  Their intentions were right, and I’m sure their motives were pure, but they weren’t effectively doing ministry.  They were playing an instrument and singing a song, but there was no connection with their audience.  Even though worship ministry must be focused on the ONE we worship, if you are leading others to Him, you must first connect with your audience and take them there.  You can’t lead someone anywhere if they are not WITH you.

Think about this: Simply doing something in front an audience is not ministry.  Whether it is many or a few, make a prayerful and intentional effort to connect with them through prayer, verbal communication, eye contact, body language, emotions, and facial expression.  Help them to know and feel you’re in this together.  Ministry is not ministry if you’re just doing something.  Make sure you are connecting with your audience.

How do you get inspired and get really creative? The best way for me to create is to get around other people. I think that everyone has wonderful creative ability and I have a gift to help others tap into that ability. When I am by myself, my ideas tend to dry up, but when I get around other people, a spark happens and I begin to light up with ideas. This is called creative synergy. The first time that I was exposed to this term was through our worship team leader, Brandon Divine. He taught our team that God can work creatively in exponential ways when two or more people are gathered together creating. (Hmmm… makes me think that Jesus was onto something when He was talking about the power of people coming together in Matthew 18:20.) My advice: when you need that BIG IDEA for your next project, try getting some other people in the room and let the ideas fly!

Leave a comment: How do you get inspired and get really creative?

My husband, Jeremiah and I are the directors of our school of ministry called Fulfill the Call.  I wanted one of our first year students to share some of her thoughts on one of the greatest things God has been teaching her and this is what she shared.  Her name is Jenna Peterson and she is incredible person who has a passion for God and holiness.

“The godly are directed by honesty…” -Proverbs 11:5 (NLT)

“LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart.” -Psalm 15:1-2 (NIV)

It is so easy to lie about where you are at and without realizing it, you end up believing that lie. Sometimes in the process you lose who you really are.

I have found myself in a state of complete complacency. I thought I was saved because I went to church every weekend and I was living what I thought to be a “Christian life”, but it was completely based off what I had seen other people do and say and not the presence of the Lord working in me.  I did not have an intimate, consistent relationship with my Creator.

I had to ask the Lord to erase all my ideas of what I thought a relationship with Him was supposed to be like, what my prayers were supposed to sound like, what I thought my worship was supposed to look like.  I had to start back at the beginning, learning to base it on truth.  Having everything that I thought my relationship with the Lord was pulled out from under me has been hard and I am left to realize I’m not where I thought I was. My prayers are different, my worship is different, and my conversations are different.  Truthfully, being honest with the Lord has given me moments of disgust, because of what I would discover.  Everyday I am finding myself more unworthy of His love, yet feeling more loved than ever.  It seems so simple, but once I grasped it, it turned my life around.

I want to challenge you to be honest in your relationship with God, so that you can truly walk with Him.

Just as the sky and sea are blue, The BLUE Experience is an opportunity for you to explore the heights and depths of leadership.  BLUE will challenge you to reach for the potential God has for your life and to dive deep to form your character.  Join us for our very first BLUE Experience on March 7 at 6:00PM.  For more information or to register visit the Welcome Center or visit us online at www.churchatchapelhill.com.

Often people like to disguise gossip as a concern.  Let’s expose this idea because God sees gossip as a very serious offense.  Look at Romans 1:29-30.

²⁹They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents.

God places gossip right there with envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and God-haters.

Yet gossip has many participants.  Why?  Because gossip is simply “casual or unrestrained conversation or reports about other people, typically containing reports that are not confirmed as true.”   Yet even truth (concerns) being reported by the wrong people to the wrong people becomes gossip.

Sharing concerns with people who cannot “fix the problem” becomes an act of gossip.   When you have a concern, find the person who can help you, and can solve the problem.  Don’t let your concerns become gossip.

As a servant leader, remember that problems (concerns) go up, and praise goes down.  Bring your concerns to the person above you.  Take your praise to the people under you.

Be careful!  Sharing your concern to the wrong people may be … gossip in disguise.

Join us on Friday, February 26th at 7:30PM.