Ken

It's 8:56 on Monday morning and I've only had two cups of coffee.LifePoint is now two weeks old and moving right along. One of the most exciting parts of starting a new church community is meeting new people. Yesterday we had 50 people attend one of our two gatherings who I did not know three weeks ago. This is in addition to all the people who were there that I did know three weeks ago!We're continually fine-tuning and had our sound down to a more manageable level yesterday. Just like any start-up (church or dot-com), there will be glitches that must be continually worked on. Unfortunately, churches don't have the luxury of beta testers. Even then, I've been around tech companies that released software that they knew was buggy but shipped it any way.One of the great things about LifePoint is that we are not program-driven, meaning that everything must…

A friend sent me a link to an article by David Ruis entitled, "Creativity and the Arts." Ruis emerged as a leading worship voice through the Vineyard churches and has penned some outstanding songs ("Every Move I Make", "You Are Worthy of My Praise", and more).Here's the article reposted on LifePoint's website.

I had a great lunch today with an old friend. He started out in ministry, went into full-time business, and is now considering a return to full-time ministry. We were talking about how ministry has a tendency to either attract lazy people or turn good people into lazy people. At many churches, the pastor supervises himself and can set his own hours. If the pastor is not intentional about working hard, it's very easy to hardly work. If the pastor is not a self-starter, there is no supervisor or boss at hand to "encourage" them to get busy.On the other extreme, is the pastor who becomes a workaholic -- eventually doing damage to his family, himself, and his ministry. These pastors can do unnecessary damage to themselves and others. I certainly am all for giving one's best to God ... but we must be careful not to justify hidden or…

I almost included this in the previous post but it was already getting windy.Back during the pre-launch days of LifePoint, one of the ideas I bounced around in my head was the idea of launching the church in several coffee shop locations simultaneously. Several of the coffee shops have an open mic / concert room that typically seats any where from 50-100 people. They are already staged and have tables and chairs.The idea was to offer the same type of worship style in multiple locations and try to build on the foot traffic of each coffee shop. I believe all of the coffee shops are open early on Sunday mornings and none of them has a group that uses them at that time.The crowd would be smaller by necessity, which could create an awesome opportunity for a real sense of community to develop.Maybe next time ...

Don Bosch, in his blog The Evangelical Ecologist, described LifePoint as "coffee shop Christianity." It's hard for me to be offended since I'm writing this blog from a coffee shop. In fact, I may adopt the phrase myself -- with proper references, of course.An entire marketing/sociological concept has arisen over the past few years known as "third place" thinking. The idea is that after home and work, people need a "third place" to feel connected.Starbucks has sought to master the idea of creating an environment that invites lingering. The most popular independent shops have the same mojo -- people go there as much for the environment and connections as they do the coffee. You begin to see the same faces, you know which chairs will be comfortable, and there's a barista behind the counter who remembers your drink.Robert Putnam wrote an interesting book a few years ago entitled "Bowling Alone."…