I spent the entire day in Springfield, IL yesterday hanging out with fellow Small Groups Pastors from Illinois & Indiana.  One of the things I enjoy the most is being able to sit down with guys & gals who are “in the trenches” of small group ministry just as I am.  We all have different churches and different ministry environments, but the core issues we deal with are often universal.

If I were to boil down a days worth of conversation yesterday, it revolved around the topic of spiritual formation - the process of helping people grow in their walks with God.  As one pastor worded it, “we need to find ways to challenge people to take ownership of spiritual growth.”

As we talked around that topic, a few key thoughts came out…

• We need to utilize some sort of spiritual assessment tool to help people measure their spiritual growth.  The inherent difficulty here is that you can’t measure things such as increases in love, peace, joy…these are all subjective evaluations.  Therefore, whatever assessment a church were to use would need to incorporate both objective (church attendance, hours spent serving, tithing, etc) and subjective (hope, faith, patience, kindness) factors.

• We need mentors.  Men & women need to have older men & older women speaking into their lives.  We need to gain the insights and experiences and wisdom of people who have gone before us.  And older people benefit as well with a renewed sense of purpose and significance.  (We’ll be addressing this topic in an upcoming session of Men’s Fraternity.)

• Taking the need for mentors into consideration…we need to reconsider the benefit of small groups that are multi-generational.  Rather than gathering people together who are all in the same life stage (i.e. young couples), we need to combine together men & women who are at different ages and different levels of spiritual maturity.

There were many more take-aways from our conversations yesterday, but these three thought seemed to dominate our conversation.  I’ll write more later about my personal take-aways as they relate to Great Oaks.

During the month of July, we shut down our K-5 programming here at Great Oaks.  We do this to give our volunteers some much-deserved rest and to encourage families to experience worship services together.

In an effort to make our services more kid-friendly, we are including some Nickelodeon-type elements.  This past Sunday, we had kids volunteer their Dads to come up on stage for a whip-cream pie-eating contest.  I was hosting this portion of the service, and, therefore, responsible for picking out which Dads would get the pleasure of joining us on stage.

During our first service, I noticed two young girls in the back of the auditorium enthusiastically waving their arms in an effort to volunteer their Dad.  I called out to him to join me on stage and then quickly chose two other Dads.  As the first gentleman & his daughters made their way onto the stage, I realized that I didn’t know who he was (1st clue).  No worries…we’re a growing church, and I don’t know everyone.

The Dads were soon wearing garbage bags to protect their clothes and burying their faces in a plate full of whip cream for 30 seconds or so.  After the service, I made it a point to track down the one guy I didn’t know and very quickly thanked him for being a good sport.  He smiled but didn’t say anything (2nd clue).

I found out Monday morning that it was his first time ever attending Great Oaks!  I wonder if he’ll be back this Sunday…

Welcome to Great Oaks where on your first visit we point you out in the service, have you stand on-stage in front of hundreds of people, and participate in potentially gross and embarrassing activities!!!

We are beginning to put together our plans for the Fall Semester of small groups at Great Oaks.  I met with my Small Group Coaches recently to discuss any special foci for the semester as well as potential leaders for new groups.  We have begun making contacts with these individuals asking them to pray about the opportunity to lead a 12-week group.

We have some early commitments, several individuals who have committed to praying & considering the opportunity (we’re following up in 3 weeks), and a few immediate No’s.  Most people are simply caught off-guard that they already need to begin thinking about the Fall semester; it seems like the Summer Semester just started and already plans are underway for the Fall.

Believe it or not, we are only six weeks away from beginning our promotion for the Fall Semester!

This morning has been interesting…

First, I helped load up & deliver presents for 105 kids in our community.  These are children from low-income families who would otherwise struggle to provide their kids with gifts for the holidays.  Our church partnered with the local Head Start program and local school to bless these families.

Our halls were lined with presents waiting to be delivered this morning.  One family even bought bikes for one family!  And this is all just weeks after the church put together 130+ shoebox gifts for Operation Christmas Child.  I am continually amazed at the generosity of the people at Great Oaks.

After delivering the presents, I returned to the church building to discover about 15 State Police cars in our parking lot.  They are using our building for training purposes - riot control, hostage situations, etc.  They did this a few weeks ago, too.  Last time, though, they were practicing hand-to-hand training with various weapons.  You would not believe the amount of testosterone that is hanging around this place when they are here!

Since the morning has been all about being generous with what God has blessed you with, I decided this was a great opportunity to help our State Police train better…

So I volunteered our Children’s Minister as a hostage if they needed him!

This Saturday night, Great Oaks is hosting our quarterly night-out for married & engaged couples called MarriedLife Live.  As anyone who tracks churches around the country could tell you, this concept (and name) is not original to Great Oaks, but it has been extremely beneficial for us.

We have about 140 people coming out for this night of music, laughter, teaching, and, of course, food (dinner is being catered by Basta O’Neill’s in Washington).  I have the privilege of teaching on “Trusting God in our Marriages.”

My basic premise for the message is that God has a plan for our marriages, and we need to trust that plan.  Too often, we try to do things on our own rather than simply trusting God.  I’m working out the last parts of the message this morning and will then tweak it & rehearse it the rest of the week.

I’m looking forward to this event - especially since we are getting a babysitter, and I get a night-out with my bride!