My Worship Revolution

Today was the shortest day of the assessment, yet oddly enough still one of the most intense.
It started off with worship again.
I actually enjoyed the song selection way more this morning.
During worship there was a moment that I started thinking about all of you out there who have been praying for us this week.  And I was overwhelmed.  Seriously brought me to tears.  I can’t even begin to express how much it means to feel so loved and cared for.

Church Planting Project

That was what most of today was about.
Wow.  The process of coming usp with an extensive church planting plan with 9 other driven opinionated leaders is quite an experience.
Truth be told, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds from that.
We broke up into multiple teams to put stuff together.
One of the fascinating aspects was how easy it was to get bogged down in lots of the details and forget to keep a good view of the big picture.  But at the same time, a lot of those details were needed in order to put together a strong presentation.

Some of the people who stepped up as leaders did great jobs at delegating based on some of the strengths we had discovered in people over the past couple days.
Rachel’s job was to create the outline for the presentation and to work at getting rid of everything that we didn’t need.
Everyone in the group had to be involved in the presentation in some way.  So for the opening, myself and a couple of the other ladies put together a creative reading that people shared room all over the room, interspersed with everyone else.
People in committees seriously planned out specific budgets, figuring out how much staff we would have, percentage of giving based off the average incomes of our area, and calculating rent for meeting space and office space, and evangelism and advertising budgets.
We had four of us present in addition to the opening that involved everyone.  Our lead pastor opened with the vision, another shared the multiplication plan, another shared the financial plan and made the ask, and then I closed, recapping and reminding the donor of what the vision was, and cast vision for why this was a great Kingdom partnership.

Counseling Interview

Midway through the morning we had a meeting with a counselor.
He asked us some questions about our families where we grew up and asked if we had any traumas or concerns that could effect planting.
He also talked with us a little about our relationship and asked how we coped with being polar opposites on the personality scale.
We seemed to get in and out of there fairly quick, and again I was amazed not to get some tougher questions.  Still not sure if that’s good or bad!  Maybe we were in and out cause we’re that healthy!  On second thought…nah, probably not.

Listening Exercise

There was also a sheet for us to fill out which they gave us the night before.
To help round out their view of us as they make decisions, they wanted to know what God had been revealing to us, what we were surprised by, and whether we felt like God was calling us to plant a church and if so, when?

Church Plant Presentations

After a working lunch, we all gathered to present our churches.
Team A went first.
As they started, we quickly realized they were starting word for word with our opening reading.
They had found our reading in the copy machine and straight up stole it!!!
It was actually quite hilarious.
They had a great presentation with videos they had created, great slides, and a pretty killer logo.
I was worried.
Afterward, the assessors asked questions and put some heat on em.

Then we were up.
They could steal the reading, but it was all in the delivery.  The opening rocked.
Overall the presentation went way better than I expected.  Way better than the practice.
Ultimately, they loved our presentation, but decided our plan was too unrealistic and gave more money to ther first group.
Sucks for the community of Elk Grove I guess. 

And with that, we prayed for all the assessors, and we were done.
They, on the other hand, all retreated to spend hours on end talking about us and deciding on outcomes.

I’ve pondered whether or not to plan on sharing my outcome on here any time soon.
If I get ‘recommended,’ of course I wanna put it up.
But if it’s anything less, I may want to grieve and not tell you.
But then if I don’t say anything, you’ll know that I got less than I hoped.
So maybe I should not plan on telling you anything so you don’t guess.

But in the end, if I have a value for transparency and authenticity, I figured it best to just share how it goes.
So the next post you see here should be a quick reflection on the overall process, a sharing of what the exit interview was like, and of course my outcome.
But you need to wait a while since I’ll be driving to Tuscon, so don’t assume anything when it isn’t up by noon!