I’m really excited to announce that starting this coming Wednesday, our Gatherings at George Mason are going to have sign interpreters available to serve members of the deaf community.  We have an amazing team of volunteer interpreters who have come together to offer this service and I am so grateful to them.

Here’s where we need your help – letting members of the deaf community know our Gatherings now have interpreters.  We’re doing some very targeted outreach this week but if you can help us spread the word, that would be great.

One day we hope to offer this at all of our weekly Gatherings.  Not planning to leave this a Mason only thing.  As our volunteer team expands, we’ll look at offering the same service at other locations.

I’ve really enjoyed speaking at our Frontline services these past two weeks.  I know God has been challenging me to take a long, hard look at Samson’s life and learn from his mistakes so I don’t fall into the same traps.  I pray he’s been doing the same for you.  I also know many of you who read this blog aren’t regular Frontline attenders.  So, if you want to spend some time with any of the messages on Samson, just click here.

As I was driving home last night, I realized that one of the biggest changes in me these past two weeks has been the addition of a short, new prayer into my life.  I’ve found myself praying the words of Samson over and over.  You know which ones, right?  ”O Sovereign LORD, remember me. O God, please strengthen me”  (Judges 16:28) That short prayer says so much – God is in charge.  He’s my strength.  I need Him.  I don’t deserve His favor.  But in His grace, He chooses to remember me.  I don’t pray it because I think God has forgotten me.  I know He hasn’t.  I pray it because I need the reminder of how reliant I am on Him for the strength I need to get through the day.

I love that little prayer.  I pray it literally dozens of times a day.  It’ll be a long time, if ever, before I speak anywhere without those words running through my mind and heart.  If they find their way into your mind and heart, I’ll think you’ll be encouraged by the effect they have.

The dashboard of my MacBook has a little electronic Post-It Note that sits right in the center of the display.  On it are a very few words that have served me incredibly well as a leader.  Here’s what it says:

What Do I Do?

1.  Communicate God’s Word

2.  Develop Leaders

3.  Lead and Inspire Through Vision

4.  Pastor Those In My Care

5.  Coach Staff To Achieve Excellent Performance

That little Post It Note is invaluable when it comes to keeping me focused as a leader.  Getting distracted as a leader is incredibly easy – emails, voicemails, meetings, questions, projects and people all compete for our time and attention.  If I’m not careful, I can work like crazy all day long and not do anything on my Post It Note.  Those days are incredibly frustrating!

So, I try to run everything I do through the filter of my Post It Note.  If it doesn’t touch one or more of those categories, I’m out.  It’s not my job which means it is someone else’s which means I need to delegate.  Pretty simple in theory.  Harder in practice.  But totally impossible if you don’t know what should be on your Post It Note.  If you’ve never thought through what you should be doing as a leader, take some time and work on it today.

One piece of advice – keep the list short!  One of my goals over the next two years is to reduce my Post It Note to just three things.

One of the things God has been doing in The Gathering for the past couple of years is developing an incredibly gifted teaching team.  As Allan McCullough and Mike Kelsey have taught these past two weeks, I have been reminded all over again of how much God has blessed us by leading those two guys to pour so much of their lives into the college campuses of DC.  I love watching God grow both of them, I love learning from them and, I have to admit, the fact that we’re all pretty good friends makes the whole deal that much better!

People keep asking how we pull off four services in three nights – especially with Georgetown and Mason occurring at the exact same time.  The answer God has led us to is really simple – it’s going to take a team of people teaching to fulfill the vision He’s given us.  Allan and Mike are living examples that God always supplies what we need to live out the vision He’s called us to.  So, here’s the teaching line up this week:

AU: Allan

Mason:  Allan

Georgetown:  Me (see, I still do something around here!)

UMD: Mike

Can’t wait for this week.  And, I’m not going to lie – I can’t wait for the first week of November when I get to speak at AU, Mason and UMD – I miss you guys and can’t wait to be back!

Final thought:  take some time today and pray for our teaching team.  Pray that God would bless Mike, Allan and me with fresh insight for the week to come and the grace to accurately handle His Word.

See you soon,

John

Hopefully you’ve noticed Daybreak becoming an increasingly important part of where God is leading us in The Gathering.  The intersection between a college ministry and a ministry seeking to transform the lives of some amazing kids is an obvious one.  I know so many Gathering students who have a passion for serving children and Daybreak reaches so many young people in the Lincoln Heights community who need your gifts, your time and your love.

If you’ve never been to Daybreak, I hope you’ll head down there at least once during these last few weeks of the fall semester.  Check our website for the next day your campus is headed to Lincoln Heights.  By the way, all of us are converging on Daybreak for the annual Turkey Outreach on Saturday, November 21st, so you can go ahead and put that on your calendar now.

But at our Gatherings this week, you’re going to have the chance to support Daybreak financially.  It’s a pretty rare thing that we take a special offering like this at The Gathering, so I wanted to start getting us ready for it now.  First of all, you’ve gotta know that everything you give this week goes straight to the kids of Daybreak.  This isn’t a fund The Gathering thing or a write a check to MBC moment.  It’s a chance to be a part of what God is doing in a community desperate for hope.  If you feel God leading you to give, I pray you will be faithful to that.  By the way, don’t feel bad if you don’t have much to give.  Jesus is honored by the desire more than the amount.  One day Jesus observed people bringing their offerings to the temple.  Many wealthy people gave much but there was a poor widow who had little to give but did anyway.  Luke tells us how Jesus felt about that, “He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ’I tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’” – Luke 21: 2-4

I should also say that if you don’t feel the Lord leading you to give, you shouldn’t.  God loves a cheerful giver not someone who does it out of guilt or compulsion.  God has a plan to fund Daybreak.  He’s going to keep building His church.  No guilt trip here.  Just pray about it.

I’m excited to see how God is going to use a group of college students to provide for the needs of some kids desperate for hope.

Remember what a big deal it was when you were losing your baby teeth?  It was pretty cool and pretty scary at the same time.  I remember thinking permanent teeth was the ultimate sign that I was all grown up.  I remember harboring a vague suspicion that the tooth fairy was a joke but I liked the money, so I played along.  I also noticed she had a tendency to forget to come on nights when my parents were particularly tired, but that’s another story.  I still thought the whole thing was cool and I wanted those teeth out!

But I also remember being afraid of actually pulling the teeth.  I think I have a pretty low pain tolerance and that was probably part of it.  I also think I was afraid of parts of my body falling out.  I had never lived life without those teeth and I wasn’t particularly eager for them to go.  Maybe I’m the only one, but I would sometimes leave a tooth in my mouth way longer than it needed to stay.  It would just dangle there by a tiny flap of skin.  It was obviously on it’s way out.  I just needed to find the courage to yank it.

Sin and baby teeth are kind of the same.

I’m guessing there’s some sin in your life that you really want out.  You know life is going to be better without it.  You know it’s the next step in your Christian maturity.  You also know it’s inevitably falling out at some point.  But we can be so afraid to yank the sin out of our life.  Maybe because we’re afraid it’ll hurt too much.  Maybe because we can’t imagine life without it.  But we leave it dangling there by a thread for a really long time, right?

Let me toss some Scripture in the direction of the dangling baby tooth of sin:

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. – Romans 6: 11-12

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. – Romans 13:14

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. – Galatians 5:16

Here’s the point:  yank the tooth!!

I know it’s not always easy and it might even be a little frightening.  But life on the other side is so worth it.

Tonight marks the beginning of a whole new chapter in the story of The Gathering.  We’ve been dreaming, praying and working towards a weekly worship experience at Georgetown University for the past two years.  The road has not always been easy, there have been detours and some days there were roadblocks that seemed insurmountable.  But tonight the dream of a weekly Gathering at Georgetown becomes a reality.  I’m headed to campus in a few short minutes to welcome our newest campus and my alma mater into this Gathering family.  I can’t wait to see what God is going to do in St. William’s Chapel as we meet to worship at 9PM tonight.

There are so many thoughts running through my head right now that I can barely keep them all straight.

Part of me can’t believe I’m not going to be at Mason tonight.  But I’m so excited for the message Allan is going to be sharing on that campus.  I’m humbled by the chance to be at Georgetown.  I love the student leaders that have carried the dream of Georgetown for so long.  I can’t wait to lead tonight with my friend Nick Jones.  I love new beginnings.  God is a God of new beginnings.  I want to carry tonight well.  I love that two Gatherings are happening at the same time.  I want to be at both.  I can’t.  God is.

Time to go…

John

I’ve gone from Twitter hater to Twitter user.  With this post I might be taking one step deeper into the Twitterverse.  I believe I am now a Twitter advocate.  I’m not sure how I feel about those words I just wrote, so I’m going to get to the point.

All of our campuses now have an active Twitter account and you should follow the one for your Gathering.  I promise our campus directors won’t be tweeting about what they ordered for lunch.  But we will be able to keep you updated on worship experience locations, small group news, upcoming events and other really cool stuff.

So, take a minute to follow:

American

Mason

Georgetown

University of Maryland

By the way, Allan McCullough is now an active twitterer.  And you can still follow me on Twitter.

It’s a pretty common thing in Gathering world for members of our team to use my office for meetings when I’m not here.  No problem there – love that they are using the space.  One of the dominant features of my office is a giant white board.  People often use it during there meetings.  Definitely no problem there – I’m virtually incapable of thinking without a whiteboard!

Sometimes I can even figure out how the meeting went based on notes left on the board.  But what I found this morning has definitely left me scratching my head.  No doubt about an upcoming Haiti trip.  I just wonder what “Latrine Planning” is.  Hope Thony knows…

I just finished reading Patrick Lencioni’s new book, “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.”  Turns out I do NOT have a miserable job!  Good news – especially since I started the book convinced I had a great job.  It was nice to have that confirmed.  But now I have a better handle on why I enjoy leading The Gathering so much.

The challenge for me is making sure everyone on our team (staff and volunteer) has a great job.  That’s a little trickier – but one of the most important things I could spend my time working on.  If you’re a leader or a manager, I highly recommend this book.  Very simple principles that are easy to implement.

I’m really excited about this week’s Gatherings. I’ll be posting some more thoughts about why later this afternoon. For now, let me just say this to get us on the right track – tonight’s message is the most important of the semester. Yeah, that’s a big statement. Not minimizing the others. Any time we open God’s Word, we should expect our lives to change. But tonight is huge for us as a ministry.

My point – I would love to pack out the Kay Center so we can all experience tonight together. Easiest last minute outreach? You guessed it…Facebook. We’ve created an event for tonight.

Here’s what I’m asking you to do:

1. Let us know you are coming
2. Send a few friends a personalized invite to the event.

Let’s see how much momentum we can generate in 11 hours.

Here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=169254959342&index=1

Have fun!!

Many thanks to Brett Becker for capturing these images of just some of the people who make Thursday nights amazing at UMD.