Although all the sessions have been great, I thought that this session was far and away the best one so far. Craig Groeschel, the Senior Pastor of Life Church (which has more locations than I can keep up with) spokeHere is what he shared with us:

• Becoming obsessed with what people think about you is the quickest way to forget what God thinks about you.
• People pleasers take most criticism personally
• People pleasers feel an extraordinary fear of rejection
• People pleasers find it hard to express their true feelings
• People pleasers have a hard time saying, “no”
• People pleasing is a form of idolatry
• The fear of God is best antidote for the fear of people.

There was so much more to this teaching than I could write down and communicate, but it was awesome!

Jentzen Franklin is the Senior Pastor at Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia. He led the fourth session and gave us some great takeaways. He talked about being addicted to ministry, and here are a few of the thoughts he shared:

• We need some people addicted to the ministry
• I was raised “Penta-hostile”…we didn’t believe in anything
• God is looking for people who will go to unusual measures and means to communicate the Gospel
• Are we addicted to what Jesus died for?
• Jesus said what, when, and who, but he never said how because it’s up to us to braille our culture
• Ministry is a four letter word…WORK!
• God blesses where His reputation is safe. Live right.
• I am afraid of preachers who don’t pray.

Bill Cornelius is the senior pastor of Bay Area Fellowship in Corpus Christi, Texas. He took us to the Book of Haggai and talked about the lack of prayer in the lives of pastors and churches. Here are a couple of takeaways from his teaching:

• It is ridiculous how much we do for God without God’s help.
• You can build an amazing ministry and never really know God.
• To hear from God, you have to get alone with Him.
• Man-made systems begin to eat away at the men who made them.
• Someone has been dealt a worse hand than you in life and they are winning with it.
• Your prayers should lead your feet to match your mouth.
• Our job is to make our town the hardest place to get to hell from.

I’ve never heard Bill speak before, but he was authentic and outstanding!

I am at the C3 Conference with some of our staff today and we just finished the first session.Ed Young, the Senior Pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, opened up the C3 Conference with a teaching about crazy people. Here are some of the random thoughts Ed shared with us today.

• There is a good crazy and a crazy crazy.
• Crazy people are on the ride of pride.
• The devil throws crazy people around you and me.
• You can’t change crazy crazy people.
• Crazy people love to play the “God” card, name drop, and one up everyone around them.
• Crazy people will constantly call you, ignore your advice, and love to talk about themselves.
• Crazy people don’t have a filter.
• Got an issue, grab a tissue!
• Crazy people enjoy their dysfunction.
• All of us have “crazar” (radar that detects crazy people) and when the crazar goes off, we better not ignore it.
• Ministry is breautiful. There is a brutal side to it and a beautiful side to it.
• Don’t get lazy about crazy. Confront it and deal with it. Speak the truth and shame the devil.
• There’s crazy people all throughout the Bible.

Of course, if you’ve ever heard Ed speak, then you know that he had way too many sound bytes for me to capture, but I thought I would at least share these with you.

I love the study the Bible! Seriously, I do! I’m currently taking a break from my preparation for Wednesday night, but I can’t think of anything to write about because I’m so obsessed with the passage I’m studying.

So, instead of sharing some insight or principle, I thought I’d just share a picture of my study buddies.

Below, you’ll find the three basic tools I use to help me study. They are my computer (yes, it’s a Mac!), a legal pad, and a mechanical pencil. (Some of you are wandering where my Bible is, and I am happy to tell you that it is on my computer!)

I have other tools that I use from time to time, but without these three specific ones, I wouldn’t know what to do during my study time.

And with that said, I really need to get back to studying!

This past Wednesday, I talked about the importance of unity in a church.  

Every church has its struggles with maintaining a spirit of unity because every church is filled with imperfect, sinful people.

However, Paul calls us to passionately guard and protect the unity of the church (Ephesians 4:1-3).  This is Jesus’ prayer for the church as well (John 17:20-22).  

So, how do we do it?

We must have an others first mentality.  For unity to happen, we have to humbly put others ahead of ourselves. This is a non-negotiable.  We can’t make church all about us.   And of course, this also means…

We must waive our own personal rights.  If unity is going to take place in our church and others, then the people who make up the church have to set aside their own personal wants, needs, and desires, for the sake of the greater good, namely, the Gospel.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be guilty of getting in the way of what God wants to do by demanding that the church does what I want it to do.  Finally…

We must make allowances for other’s shortcomings.  There all kinds of people in our churches, and we have to not only tolerate them, but we have to accept them, shortcomings and all. Unless that happens, unity won’t either.  

Unity is so crucial to a church’s health and to allow or contribute to disunity in your church is to be at odds with what God is trying to do in your community.