Month: March 2008

1.  About a dozen of us from Life Pointe Church trekked up from Homestead to the heart of Miami Lakes this morning to Don Shula’s Hotel & Golf Club to attend the regional Fusion Seminar for South Florida.

2.  It’s all about what we can do as church leaders to assist first-time guests in becoming second-time guests, second-time guests in becoming regular attenders, regular attenders in becoming members, and members in becoming leaders. As our guests take their next steps and advance through the various stages there’s some amazing Life transformation that’s occurring.

3.  We are a church family that meets corporately every Sunday morning and expects guests to arrive. It’s our responsibility as family members to ensure that our guests feel comfortable when they arrive, for they will probably decide within the first 5 to 7 minutes of their visit with us whether or not they will visit us again – and again – and again. It’s very easy to get a guest to visit us for the first time, but it’s not so easy to get them to visit for a second time. We have to work to make that happen.

4.  It is important to serve within the church because (most importantly) that is what God created us to do – to serve others. Once a guest takes that next step and serves he / she begins to feel that this is his / her church. It’s not the church that he / she attends, but rather he / she actually owns a piece of the church. We want and need our guests to become regular attenders and members and then ultimately leaders because a church simply can’t grow without this continuous Life cycle. The church is not a structural building with a cross at the top of it. The church is the actual living breathing body of guests, attenders, members, and leaders.

5.  I was a first-time guest of Life Pointe Church on Sunday January 21ST 2007. I knew within that first 5 minutes of walking through the front doors of Flagship Cinemas that this was where I needed to be every Sunday morning. After nearly 40 years on His glorious Earth I had finally found my spiritual family – walking the walk with me. I was a second-time guest on Sunday January 28TH 2007. For the next 10 months I was a regular attender, but I always felt like I was already a member. It finally happened on December 09TH 2007 when I officially became a member of my church (on paper). Of course since then I’ve felt like I was a leader. I’m ready to take that next step and officially become a leader now, and I think that Travis and Paul are ready to make me a leader of the (tentatively-titled) ‘First Response Team’. While Travis, Paul, and I develop and finalize how I will go about doing this I will also come up with a better name for my new leadership title. As the ‘Director’ of the ‘First Response Team’ it sounds like I should have the title ‘Dr.’ in front of my name.