6. Want to hang out with me and my buddy Kary Oberbrunner at Catalyst?

Of course I do. Doesn’t everyone?

7. What did the decision-making process look like when you decided to leave Granger Community Church to become a pastor at NewSpring?

It looked sort of like this.

8. Other than NewSpring and Granger, could you name five churches (or pastors, ministries, etc) that are stretching you as a church leader?

These were the first that popped into my mind: North Point/Buckhead (Stanley), LifeChurch.tv (Groeschel), Fellowship (Young), Elevation (Furtick) and Community Christian (Ferguson).

9. How much time per day do you spend blogging, answering blog comments, maintaining your blog, and tweeting? Do you schedule that or is it something you do when you can?

I’d guess 30 to 60 minutes each day on average. Some days it’s heavier. Some days I don’t do anything. And, no, I don’t have a schedule. My blog/tweets are a reflection of my life as it happens. But it’s easier for me to write at night after the kids are in bed…but before Emily gets too tired (if you know what I mean).

• We gave a house to a single mom and her son.
• We gave a wheelchair-accessible van to a single mom. She’s caring for her adult son who has a disability.
• Perry used these stories to present the Gospel and invite people to accept Christ.
• Will created a great video to accompany the song “God of this City” to highlight the missions/ministry vision of NewSpring.
• There were women weeping everywhere.

We’ll try to get you some video highlights in the coming days. I’m so glad I get to serve in a ministry committed to seeing life change through Jesus Christ. Amazing!

• First of all, what’s a “transformational mindset?” Please have patience. I know I’m not the brightest crayon in the box.
• Are you saying we should embrace less-than-excellent Bible teaching? Is it OK for us to just give 75% effort in serving others?
• If the business world has abandoned excellence, why did Starbucks recently close all their stores to train all their baristas to make a better espresso?
• Do you think God wants us to embrace “average” or “mediocre” instead of excellent? If not, help me better understand your position.

Just in case you’re wondering, I do think there are times when holding too tightly to excellence can be a detriment to churches. For example:

• It’s a problem when we pursue excellence at the expense of action. Sometimes we need to be more willing to launch the beta version even though it has flaws.
• It’s a problem if we let our expectations for excellence turn into an expectation for perfection.
• It’s a problem when we let excellence become an excuse for not delegating or empowering others.
• It’s a problem when we let excellence get in the way of doing what God has called us to do.

That said, are you willing to share your thoughts on this topic and hopefully teach me something new in the process?

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate. That’s actually a serious point. If you’re going to do something that’s never been done before—which is basically what innovation is—people are going to misunderstand it just because it’s new.

1. Does this decision compromise the Gospel?
2. Will this negatively impact our vision?
3. Is this something everyone will be genuinely excited about?
4. Is this just a temporary solution?
5. Will this decision add more to our plate?
6. Are we attempting excellence or extravagance?
7. Am I making this decision for the good of the church or just my area?

From those seven questions, you get a real sense of the values Perry holds high for NewSpring. Those questions will look different for your church or organization, but do you know what your questions are? If not, it’s highly likely that the leaders around you either aren’t empowered to make decisions or they don’t know what a wise decision looks like.

There are still a few tweaks to make, but Scott and the Updatable.cc crew helped me move. I’m using WordPress for the first time. I guess it’s a week of major transitions in my e-world.

Welcome to the new digs. Make yourself at home.

• If faith comes from hearing the message, someone needs to step up and preach the message so those outside the faith hear it. (10:14)
• "I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them." I have a responsibility to inspire others to fulfill God’s purpose in their lives. (11:13-14)
• I’m glad God values wisdom and knowledge, but I’ll never know what he knows. (11:33-34)
• Am I a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God? That’s real worship. (12:1)
• God gifts us differently. Which is another way of saying it’s silly for all of us to think we’ll have the same gift. (12:6-8)
• "Honor one another above yourselves." (12:10)
• God establishes leadership authority including the government. And, one specific way that we’re supposed to submit to God’s authority is by paying taxes. (13:1-7)
• "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification." Imagine how the world would view the Church is we embraced that statement. (14:19)
• God wants unity within his Church. (15:5-7)
• Faith produces hope. (15:13)
• I love it that our faith embraces the leadership role of women. (16:1-5)

Today’s a brand new day. Here’s what the current set up looks like:

• We transitioned email to Gmail yesterday.
• After that switch took place, I imported my Outlook contacts into Gmail.
• I imported my Outlook calendar into Google Calendar. The huge advantage with that is that I no longer have to manually sync my Outlook Calendar to a Google Calendar for my wife to have access to my schedule. Love that!
• For task management, I’ve elected to use Remember the Milk. There’s a Firefox plug-in that allows RTM to integrate with Gmail. That makes it easy to convert email messages into new tasks.
• I’ve also started using Jott to add tasks to RTM when I’m on the road. Jott converts voice into text and automatically adds new tasks to my list. Very slick.
• The only missing piece to the puzzle is a solution the IT team (that’s Jared) needs to implement to allow me to access my email and calendar from my phone. That’s coming later this week.

And, yes, if you’re keeping track at home, this entire package can be yours for next to free. That’s one of the nice indirect benefits of moving in this direction. That means more dollars for front line ministries in the long run.

Here are some of the other immediate benefits I’ve noticed:

• Web Outlook has always been a stinky solution in my mind for when I’m away from the office network. Now everything is easily accessible when I’m away from the office through Google’s web-based solutions.
• Gmail rocks. I love the way it groups messages by conversations. I also like being able to tag conversations by projects.
• Google Chat is built right in which will be important as my team goes multi-site.
• We’re going to be able to take advantage of Google Sites to be our internal portal for sharing and exchanging documents and communications across multiple campuses.
• Google search is far superior to anything Microsoft has ever developed for it’s software solutions. The days of hunting for messages in my "deleted" and "sent" folders is behind me. Yippee!

No transition like this is without pain. I’m sure I’m going to experience something that’s going to be somewhat of a setback. But, honestly, so far the transition has been very positive. I’m loving the new set up.

Now, the only question in my mind is whether or not I should test-drive Google Docs and ditch Microsoft Office. It may be time…

• "When the Gospel takes root in someone’s life, everything changes."
• "A 95% commitment to Christ is 5% too short."
• "God doesn’t want anything from you. He wants everything."
• "If God loved us based on our performance, everyone in this room would be totally screwed."
• "God will forgive us for our past sins, but he will always deal with our current sins."
• "We will never understand what he expects until we discover who he is."
• "Until we understand what he expects, we’ll never give him our very best."
• Referring to Malachi 1:10: "This is where the fertilizer hits the fan…if you know what I mean."
• "If your offering means nothing to you, why do we expect it would mean anything to God."