It started at 6:00am EST in Atlanta and ended at 7:00pm EST Panajachel, Guatemala and in between was one great big adventure!

The girls were so ridiculously cute with their backpacks and blankets going through security in ATL. For them it was all new, so even the long lines and walking through security with no shoes on became fun! Thankfully, neither of them had to be patted down by TSA...that might have set things off in the wrong direction. You should have seen the girls faces as the plane took off! It was worth a million dollars! I love how excited they get over simple things. Thankfully all of our luggage arrived with us, and we were off through customs without hiccup. The Radford's met us at the airport and down the road we went. Stopping along the way at McDonald's (the service is WAY better in Guatemala), and later to cover the luggage with a tarp (it was tied down to the roof). Along the way we ran into some flash flooding...some of the streets looked like small rivers, and let's just say some people are going to have a hard time starting their cars in the morning. The girls made a game of counting stray dogs along the road. I made a game of counting guys urinating on the side of the road. We stopped to grab a Coke and saw some cute rabbits in cages, only to discover they weren't pets, but were on the menu at the local restaurant. As we got into the mountains we started literally driving through the clouds...visibility was down to 20-40 feet! My buddy Lee (missionary here in Guatemala) said it was the worst he had ever seen it! Sadly we even saw a fatal accident along the way. Then as we came down the mountain into Panajachel the girls saw their first waterfall and then their first volcano. All said, it was one great big adventure getting here...can't wait to see what the week holds!

As internet access allows, I'll do my best to keep you updated this week about what's going on with our family mission trip to Guatemala!

KEYWORDS: guatemala, family, mission, trip, lee, radford, eagle's nest, travel, mcdonalds, tsa
CATEGORIES: Family • Missions •
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 28 11
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Starting right isn’t everything. But the way you start dramatically influences the trajectory of the rest of your life. This is also true in ministry. That’s why Craig Jutila and Joe McGinnis have teamed up to do a new project together. Craig and Joe are two Children’s and Family Ministry veterans, who between the two of them have over 40 years of ministry experience. Craig served as the Children’s Pastor at Saddleback Community Church located in Southern California and now runs an organization called Empowering Kids http://www.whowillyouempower.com/ Joe currently serves as the Children’s Pastor at Northview Church located just outside of Indianapolis http://www.northviewchurch.us/ and is the author of “The Family Roadmap – A Step by Step Guide for planning the Purpose and Direction of your Family” http://store.whowillyouempower.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=PT106 I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Joe and talk about the new project.

Paul:

Tell us a little about the new project:

Joe:

“Year Won - How to win your first year of ministry,” and “Year Too - Making your second year really good too” (working title) are designed to be a leadership resource to start people out right in ministry, particularly Children’s and Family Ministry. They are workbooks that are full of great coaching and content that you can go through on your own, at your own pace. Or better yet, you can take your whole team through it together! The great thing is that there are team building and development activities as well access to all kinds of built in on-line support and teaching videos. It’s all the coaching you’d ever want your first couple years of ministry.

Paul:

Where did this idea come from? 

Joe:

Craig and I were sitting around Starbucks one day talking about lessons learned in ministry and all of the stuff we know now (most of which was learned the hard way), that we wish we knew then. And we came up with this ginormous list! We started breaking it down and it fell nicely into 12 main categories. Stuff like Team Building, Starting off Right, How to keep going when ministry gets tough, Creativity, Navigating Church Politics, Formulating a Purpose, Vision and Direction, What do you do when you’re not administrative and you’ve got all of these kids, volunteers, budgets, parents, curriculum, and environments you’ve got to lead, and so on. And, well that ended up becoming the framework for the project.

Paul:

So walk me through one of those categories and how you guys are going to tackle it.

Joe:

Each topic will be broken down into “8 Actions.” Let me go ahead and walk you through the Team Building section. 

Team Building:

Action #1 Choose your Team – How to choose the right team

Action #2 Develop your Team – How to develop, train, and coach

Action #3 Serve your Team – Servant Leadership

Action #4 Lead your Team – Management vs Leadership

Action #5 Engage your Team – Navigating relational tensions on a team

Action #6 Free your Team – Allowing your team to influence and own the vision

Action #7 Balance your Team – Transitioning team members in and out

Action #8 Show your Team – Modeling leadership, priorities, and attitudes

Each of these will be full of ideas and activities that you can actually do with your teams.

Paul:

So when can people expect to get their hands on this resource?

Joe:

It is scheduled to release in the Fall of 2011 and will be available through Empowering Kids.

KEYWORDS: Joe McGinnis, Craig Jutila, saddleback, northview, church, empowering, kids, team, building, children, famliy, ministry
CATEGORIES: Leadership • Family • Resources • Staffing •
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 23 11
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Alright, so here's the rest of the list I started the other day. Here's to hoping some of this stuff causes as much internal discomfort and wrestling for you as it did for me.

#5 Seek to fulfill your calling not your potential

Your calling describes what you should do. Your potential describes what you could do. People always ask you to fulfill your potential, God on the other hand always asks you to fulfill your calling. Forget about wrestling with if it is good, if it’s important, could you do it, or would it expand the Kingdom. Rather wrestle with if your name is on it.

#6 Knowledge, self-discipline, and sacrifice do not equal godliness

It just means you're smart and you know how to say no. The problem is there are a lot of smart people out there who have been saying no to God for a long time. Not too smart huh?

#7 If my definition of spiritual maturity is out of reach for the regular guy, then it’s not in line with Jesus

Jesus came to lower the bar, the Pharisees were constantly trying to raise the bar. For ages it’s been average, regular, uneducated, even illiterate guys following Jesus (imagine not being able to do a daily quiet time and still be godly!). After all, the simplest definition of a follower is, well, they follow.

#8 When I use the Bible as a mirror I will become more like Jesus, when I use the Bible as binoculars I become a Pharisee

It’s funny how we become so blind to our blind spots. Guess that’s why they call them blind spots. Check out 1 Kings 3 and you’ll see this guy does a bunch of bad things, one right after another. He was an idiot! And God ends up giving him everything he asked for and more. Solomon had all kinds of blinds spots. Maybe we'd do better looking at ourselves instead of others.

 Question:

So which one of these statements creates the most discomfort for you? Leave a comment below.

KEYWORDS: spiritual, maturity, growth, larry osbourne, disciple, making, discipleship, spirituality for the rest of us,
CATEGORIES: Leadership • Pastoring •
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 18 11
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