Tonight my wife and I swung by Starbucks after eating dinner. She had to get her Friday night fix (ok…I’m exaggerating a bit)!

The one thing you have to admit is Starbucks does one thing and one thing well….they serve up a mean cup of Java. It’s actually the Starbuck’s experience! They have excelled by having laser focus….doing coffee and doing well!

The church of Jesus Christ could learn from the laser focus of Starbucks. Instead of serving up a buffet of ministry specials what if we had a couple ministry specials, and do them well.

For more great reading on this topic read Simple Church and Church Unique.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

A few months ago the leadership at Crosslink went through a visionary process to find our uniqueness as a church. In that process we discovered or uncovered our values.

G – Generous Living
R – Reproducing Leaders
A – Authentic Relationships
C – Community Transformation
E – Everyone Cares

We want this to be part of our culture at Crosslink! We’ve been talking about the Great Commission Resurgence focus of the Southern Baptist Convention. This week’s component to address is making our values transparent. This GCR Task Force spent an entire year working on this. Here are the values they have uncovered:
Christ-Likeness
Truth
Unity
Relationships
Trust
Future
Local Church
Kingdom

Now more than ever as a convention we must define who we are and where we are heading. I believe the GCR Task Force has clearly articulated a set of values that we should all be able to agree upon. Looking at these reminds me of our own core values [see above], and how there is great alignment. It is our job to come together as the body of Christ, and make disciples of Jesus Christ.

To take a deeper look at the GCR Core Values go to www.PRAY4GCR.com.

There comes a point in time where every organization must evaluate it’s mission. In the realm of Kingdom work it’s even more important that our mission is aligning others to fulfill His mission for us. The first component of the Great Commission Resurgence is “Getting The Mission Right.”

“As a convention of churches, our missional vision is to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all nations.”

You may think that’s a rather daunting mission. However, can we even think of settling for anything less than a God sized vision? It is the belief of the convention, and your pastor, that this mission must drive everything we do as Southern Baptists. It should reset every priority of the local church and the denomination.

Our mission at Crosslink is “We link people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” It is our desire to see people’s lives changed by the life changing message of Jesus Christ. We want to see disciples made here in North Carolina, and around the world.

It is our prayer that God would use Crosslink to help carry out the mission of presenting the Gospel to every person in the world and to make disciples of all nations. The next post will look at Component Two: Making our Values Transparent.

It’s hard to imagine that there are almost 7 billion human inhabitants on the face of planet earth. Generous estimates are around 1 billion of those people are believing Christians. That means there are over 6 billion people who are lost without Jesus. Of these 6 billion people, over 3.5 billion have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ! You heard me say this past weekend that there are over 6,000 people groups without a Christian witness [actually 6426 to be exact].

There is no way that we can make a real impact toward reaching these unreached people groups unless we experience a genuine Great Commission Resurgence. We must see a tidal wave of evangelistic and missionary passion, or the numbers of unreached people groups will only continue to expand, and the lostness will grow. We must penetrate the lostness.

We must acknowledge the centrality of the gospel message to everything we do and everything we are. This is the heart beat of the passing of the Great Commission Resurgence last week on the convention floor. In the next post I will begin to unpack the seven components of the Great Commission Resurgence.

It is my prayer that these components will stir our heart strings to reach our “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.”

Well tomorrow is officially Father’s Day. I will have to admit I really love Father’s Day. Our girls love Father’s Day too! There’s nothing quite like receiving hand made cards and the “spa treatment” from them. I am such a blessed man to have three wonderful girls who I am so very proud of. I feel that everyday is a Father’s Day! So I send out this post to wish all of our fathers a very happy Father’s Day. May God give you a wonderful day as you worship with your family on this special day!

Have you ever thought about the “Red-letters” in the Gospels? They are important aren’t they? They mean something don’t they? Why? Because Jesus the Son of God spoke those words! So I want us to glean from what Jesus said about being a disciple. Let me review….

When we last met I drew a “stick man” [not a very good one] and we used the different body parts to help us think about “what a disciple looks like.” We talked about Measures or Missional Life Marks being the “bulls-eye of where we are all aiming!” We want a target a goal, and this helps us to answer “When are we successful?”

It’s very important to know that this side of the frame [Marks or Measures] is very different than the strategy side. The strategy tells us How we are accomplishing the vision. The measures are a set of attributes in an individual’s life that define or reflect the accomplishment of the church’s mission.

If you remember reading in Church Unique about Joe Grow [the fictitious character] the Map or strategy tells “Joe Grow where to go.”  The Marks or Measures tell us “what Joe is becoming.” The goal is a disciple of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus spoke everyone listened. So for all of our leaders here is your homework assignment between now and Tuesday morning…..I want you to scan the red-letters of Jesus in the Gospels. I want you to look for attributes that Jesus used to describe what a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ looked like. Why is this important? Because God’s Word doesn’t change. If He described it in that first century it still applies today. Feel free to post your comments or bring them with you to Tuesday’s leadership meeting.

I was reflecting back over our marriage retreat weekend and thought I would share some thoughts.  I think there were three things that jumped out to me:

1)  We need to celebrate the differences – While modern culture constantly wants to point to the sameness of the sexes, God encourages us to celebrate the differences.  He has uniquely created all of us.  I believe we acknowledged the differences and celebrated them this weekend.

2)  There is always room for improvement - I don’t care who you are or how long you’ve been married there’s room for improvement.  We had couples there who had been married 8 months to 45 years!   It seemed that every couple talked about the need to work on their marriage and make it better.  It was clear no one thought they had arrived!

3)  When Christ is the Centerpiece of the Marriage all things are possible – When we are woven together by His Word and His Spirit all the demons of hell can’t tear it apart.  So we have to walk in His Spirit together!  This must be a daily occurence in our lives.  When it is a daily occurence we can overcome any storm in our lives.

Thanks for a great weekend!  May God bless each and every one of you!

Pastor Ken

When we met a few weeks back for our “Vision Retreat” we got a lot accomplished.  I
recently spoke to Will Mancini and he was super pleased with our progress!

We wrapped up the retreat with a little exercise to help us think about our
Measures. It was really designed to get us thinking about “When are we successful?”.
If you remember we used a stickman to get us thinking.  I want to revisit this area
with a different exercise.

Our Mission is “to link people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” So
here is my question.  How do we know when we are successful?  More specifically
“what are the characteristics of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”.

Take time to really pray and think through these measures of a personal
relationship.  I want you to answer this question…”What are the six most important
characteristics of your walk with Jesus Christ?”

Please post your list below.  I look forward hearing back from you.

As a leadership team I want you to imagine that you are sitting at McDonalds, Bojangles or Biscuitville when someone walks up and starts talking to you.  Casual conversation turns the corner, and to your surprise they ask you about your church.  They want to know what Crosslink Community Church is really all about.  What would you say?  So you freeze for a moment, and then you breathe a sigh of relief because you remember the Vision Frame.  You begin to talk about the Vision Frame, and you break out a napkin and draw it.  So I’m giving you a napkin at this point.  I want you to do your best to “fill in the blanks.”  Let me give you a reminder…. the outline:

Mission? [this answers "WHAT we are doing?"]:

Motives or Values? [this answers "WHY we are doing it?"]:

Map or Strategy?  [this answers "HOW we are doing it?"]:

Measures?  [this answers "WHEN are we successful?"]:

STOP!!! Before you jump into this I want to give you some grace!  I know the two toughest to remember at this point would be the MOTIVES and MEASURES.  [Not to mention these need tweaking a bit].  So I want you to focus ONLY on the MISSION and the MAP!  Could you articulate to this gentleman in the restaurant what the MISSION and the MAP of Crosslink is?  For fun can you draw the MAP?  I’m looking forward to your post!

[adapted from Church Unique, Vision Deck]

Now that we have completed our Vision Framework it’s time to start dreaming a bit. I want us to predict news headlines based on what you dream God will do through Crosslink. What will be the most newsworthy happening? How will our church be different? How will God use our church to transform our community?

Make sure you use our Vision Frame (mission, motives or values, map or strategy and mission measure) to guide your thinking.

Take a few minutes and brainstorm a list of news headlines you will read one year from now. Then brainstorm a list of news headlines you will read three years from now.

[adapted from Church Unique, Vision Deck]

Once you have your “dream lists” post it at kentilley.org.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry