What if your income came from tips like a waiter or waitress does?

Would a cashier at the store act differently if they were paid according to how well they served their customer?

This made me think about serving.  If I am greeting, being an usher, on the hospitality team, on the parking team or guest services, would I get a tip for serving my guest?  Would I exceed their expectations?  Don’t get confused, I am not looking for compensation.  I just wonder if we applied the same “work” principles to serving, would our level of excellence increase?

I think about the waitress I had last week. She made eye contact with my entire family. She spoke to all of us and it didn’t feel forced or fake, she was sincere.
She answered our questions, dealt with my kids not behaving perfectly, took care of me after I was inconvenienced by not having something on the menu.  This was all with a smile on her face. She chose to be happy and serve us like we were the only people in the restaurant.

Wouldn’t you want your church staff and volunteers to serve as if they were getting a tip for their service?

I know we volunteer our time in some of these roles. But, would we get a tip for our service? Or would they go complain about the awful customer service
they received?  They came in to hear God’s word and left thinking “if they hate their position why don’t they leave?” Don’t tell me you haven’t said that before about someone you have experienced
in the business world.

So, my question to you is how are you serving your guests?

What makes you think you can lead over 600 people when Jesus only led 12?  I remember when my pastor Chris Spradlin asked me this question.  We were discussing volunteers on our Welcome Team. This question was a major paradigm shift in my life and my way of thinking.

It was then that I decided the search for my twelve was on. I already had my twelve in mind, but I needed to sell them on the vision of what we were going to do.

I found twelve leaders to pour into and asked them to also find twelve leaders and pour into them.  This concept helped us to make what was a large team, smaller. We were always looking for leaders.  We eventually started looking for our three, these three were people who could replace us. Our job was to develop leaders to lead others, to spend time with them, to get to know them and not just their name, to learn about their family, how long they had been attending, & how long they had been volunteering at the church. We also wanted to know what they were passionate about.  We did spiritual gift tests and personality tests to find what their strengths were.  We learned how to better communicate with them. We did book studies, training sessions, had lunches, just talked, laughed, griped and planned on what WE could do to improve the team.

Our team became small and these twelve were helping to change the team.

It was no longer about one because there is only ONE who can do it all.

So my question is, who are your twelve?

Have you ever had an “AHa Moment?”

I remember it so well, it was like yesterday, but in reality it was a few years ago. We were in a staff meeting and I was talking to my good friend, Gina Mcclain. What she said still haunts me.  She said, “if we moved or left, would our neighbors even notice?” She almost had tears in her eyes when she said this. We were discussing the community around where our church was located. We then changed it to our neighbors where we live. Would they notice or even care if we moved?

This conversation with Gina jacked me up.

Here we were, pastors at one the largest churches in America, discussing if our community where our church was located would notice if we left the community. Even worse, we discussed if our neighbors where we lived would even notice.  The answer for both of us was, I don’t think our neighbors would miss us where we live. The church, ah, they will be okay. They would go somewhere else.

Right then a bell went off in my head and said this has to change. I know it has changed at the church level for a fact. I am on fire for the neighbors of the church. It was like someone poured gasoline on a fire already burning in my heart. My world has changed and how I see it has changed for the better.

So if you moved would anyone notice?

I have been thinking a lot about the community I live in and pastor in.  I have asked myself “What am I doing to help”? Especially the inner city community. The church I work at is in the inner city. Okay, I am not in New York where there are millions and millions of people, but does this matter? How am I engaging and pouring into my community?
 
Here’s some thoughts on what I am thinking about the inner city where I pastor. I would like for you to be thinking about where you are. It could be your neighborhood, where your church is located, where you work.
 
Get out of your comfort zone and get to know your neighbors. Sounds easy, but if it were, there would be more people doing it. I got out and met the local business owners where our church is located, this is my community. By doing this, I found out there is an overseas mission organization across the street from me. Hardly anyone I spoke to knew they were there. I also met a store owner and found out the homeless people shop there and at the local Dollar Store.  I met the owners of a local homelss shelter. They are some of the most wonderful people I have ever met. We are now starting to partner with them on many things. I am going to start teaching a Bible study at their shelter, they come to our church, they attend small groups and they love helping their neighbors.
 
It is important to meet your city leaders and with other organizations. My focused has changed now from the inward location to the outskirts of town.
 
Here’s a question I want to leave you with: If you moved or your church went out of business would people care? Or would they say Oh No, you can’t go.

 Last Friday, has to be one of the most memorable moments of my life.
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> Did I go bungee jumping?  No. Skydiving? No. Attend a March Madness game in person?  No.
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> I had the honor and priviledge of worshipping with 56 homeless people. They are staying 2 blocks from my church at a place called the Resurrection House. We held a special service for them. Our desire is they would start attending on Sundays with the rest of our community.
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> It was a very cool evening & I will never forget it. I loved hearing them repeat versus out of the Bible. They paid attention to every word of the message. At the end of the night, 13 people accepted Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Saviour. My heart melted and my excitement was so overwhelming I could hardly sleep that night. I get excited just thinking about it.

I have had allergies as long as I can remember. To put this nicely, I hate them. I have them year around. I took the allergy test at the Doctors office and I was allergic to everything but a horse and a feather. I knew it was bad when the doctor walked in the room and said. Whoa! I was swollen where they injected me with that junk. I tried to take shots but I couldn’t even get past the lowest dose. I kept swelling up and they would have to give me shots of adrenaline to calm me down. The shots made me sick so I said I’m done with that. I’ll live with it.

I heard a message this weekend called “Sun Stand Still” by Stephen Furtick. It was about praying a Sun Stand Still prayer. Not, just a weak prayer but one only God could get glory when your prayer becomes a reality. So my allergies are my prayer. No more taking medicine that makes me sleepy. No more  taking medicine, so I won’t sneeze or my head won’t explode. No more medicine so people won’t ask me what have you been smoking?

Last week the Supreme Court made a decision that it was legal for the church in Kansas to protest funerals of soldiers. It would violate their freedom of speech if we didn’t allow it.
 
This topic had my brain racing. Freedom of speech my foot. They can protest a funeral but we can’t pray in school. We can’t have 10 commandments in courthouses, no Christmas parties in schools either. Where’s the freedom of speech for this?
 
Then I started thinking what would I do if I was a pastor at one of these funerals? How would I react? My first thought was, I would go down swinging. Maybe even spend a night in jail. Then I came back to reality. After a day of processing this I decided I would go pray with them and for them. It wouldn’t be easy but I would have to travel the path that had been least traveled.
 
What would you do?