Thursday, June 25, 2009

Good week!

This week's been good and stressful...ha! Seriously, we got the quote back from PCI and feel good about their assessment and plan for our location in Palm Bay.

Bay West Church, from the technical side, is really starting shape up. And it's looking GREAT!

Click here for a link to a video from Florida Today on Heritage High School...LOOKS GREAT!


I had a great meeting with some of our Leadership Core on WEdnesday to do some formative things for our campus. We'll be finishing it up next week. The structures we are putting into place are formative to our ministry and our campus, so please pray for us.


Three good conversations as well. I met with two prospective Children's Leaders for a meet and greet and had a phone conversation with a person with some interest in our Worship Leader position. I was pleased with all the conversations...we'll just see what God has upcoming. Look for some large projects for August-September right around the launch...here we go.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

New name is out there!

This morning, we announced that the name recommended by the naming team for our new campus in West Palm Bay is going to be Bay West Church, a campus of First Baptist Church of Melbourne. We hope and pray that God is able to use us to introduce people to a relationship to Jesus as a one of the churches in Palm Bay, Florida.

Stay tuned for more info, as this starts to heat up into our launch on September 13, 2009.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Great God!

You know, today I was reminded of God's supreme planning ability...how he's incredible and all that stuff. It's really amazing how God is putting this whole thing together...for us to join the work He's doing in Palm Bay, Florida as Bay West Church....this new campus of First Baptist Church of Melbourne.

The other day I was praying and was just really impressed with God at all the things He was doing and at the same time, I started to start feeling really inadequate. I started thinking about all the church planters I know that really know what they are doing...are people that I respect tremendously in their walk and was thinking "Why in the world would God be blessing me as the leader of the project so much?" My honest thought was "I just absolutely don't deserve all this, God". It was one of those times that God almost spoke to you...it wasn't audibly, but it was almost like an immediate phrase popped in my head...like an answer to my statement. The reply was "Good...cause I'm not doing this for you, Jim, I'm doing this for Me."

That re-centered me again and also calmed me as well...my inadequacies don't stop the universe or blow God's plan, in fact, I think He prefers using people who don't have it all going on, like me, so He gets more credit...that's certainly more comforting.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Field Trip a SUCCESS!

We had a GREAT trip to Sherwood Elementary to visit New Hope Church. Bruce Cadle, the Lead Pastor, acted as our host for the day and was very gracious, as were all the people at New Hope. They were VERY hospitable to us future attendees of Bay West Church in Palm Bay, or the Bay West Campus of First Baptist Church of Melbourne.

We arrived at 8am and got to help unload the trailers. Everyone was cheerful and upbeat and I was EXTREMELY proud of our group and their willingness to jump in and help.

One takeaway was across the board...PCI is worth the money. New Hope has a pretty involved setup and we were able to setup in a little over an hour. Everyone was impressed with the ease of which the room set up.

Another takeaway was the importance of depth of the setup team. For example, in the Baby-K area, people are asked for a 2 week a month commitment. One week, a person would participate in the area's set up and they are done. Their second week commitment, they would come in and work the morning (after another team had set up that morning), and then they would take the area down afterwards. So actually, one person only misses 1 worship service a month.

A good rule to remember anywhere (especially here) "Many hands make light work." The thing about this proverb is that it's not that EVERYONE shows up at the same time and mass assembles. They had a period at the beginning where they had TOO many people...people in the way, inability to set up in a proper sequence... What they found was that the "light work" was better served in 3 teams of 10, rather than 1 team of 30.

We also found out about layered setup. Some areas don't need as much setup as others, so some areas had later meet times.

Another takeaway was how different each area (especially the children's area) looked before/after. The PCI setup was able to achieve a VERY inviting atmosphere. Bob Osterholm remarked to me how impressed he was, because he was expecting for it to look like you were having "church in a school", but it was not like that at all...the transformation was WONDERFUL.

We also realized that we have several advantages over New Hope.
1) Chair setup. Because they meet in a cafeteria, they have to take down the tables and setup their chairs, then take them down again. In the auditorium that we'll be using, we will have neither.
2) Acoustics. New Hope's music and sound was GREAT, but there are always challenged in a cafeterium...an auditorium is acoustically treated to handle performance styled music, which (regardless of what you like or don't like about the word "performance") is pretty much the style of music that ANY worship service has...regardless of the configuration of instruments, vocalists, etc...bad sound hinders everyone, and the room can really hurt or help you...
3) Stage setup. Because of the small size of the stage in the cafeteria, they had to set up a pretty sizable temporary stage for a pretty complicated setup. Even though PCI's system sets up likety-split, it is a challenge that we won't be locked into taking on.

We heard some great stories of kids and salvations and reaching people in the community and were really encouraged about their enthusiasm for our task of reaching people in Palm Bay. They offered open access to relationships with the setup team leaders there to offer any wisdom to us as we go through the process. It was a great time for everyone.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Field trip is ready

In about 10 minutes, I'll be heading out to FBC Melbourne to meet our team to go to New Hope Church (findhopehere.com). They meet in Sherwood Elementary. We'll be sharing the experience of the setup this morning and seeing how things go there.

Bruce Cadle will be giving us some time for Q&A and I really hope it will be a profitable time. Time to go...see ya.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Rolling, rolling, rolling

FIELD TRIP
Field trip! Field trip! We'll be going on a Field Trip on June 7th to New Hope Church. They've just recently moved into a school and used Portable Church Industries for their church. This is an EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY for our Launch team to see up close a similar setup for church. We will be meeting at FBC at 7:25am...that's AM...on Sunday morning, June 7th and leaving at 7:35am to make it to Sherwood Elementary to observe and watch the setup team at New Hope do their thing. Bruce Cadle, the Lead Pastor, will also be available for us to have some Q&A with him during the morning. They will also be providing us with a continental breakfast.

Email me and let me know if you are coming to see what's up... jim@fbcmel.org

WEB FOCUS GROUPS AND DESIGN
Sandy is getting a focus group together to fill out a questionairre to help us establish a flavor and design for the Satellite Campus THIS WEEK. We have a discovery call with our graphic artist next Tuesday, so be in prayer for those filling out that crazy questionairre...it's nuts, but there is a method behind the madness and we are working with a proven and successful entity in the field of web design in Details Communications. Click on the name and check out the other churches they've done designs for. Nice work (including our current design a few years ago). We'll be incorporating the dual campus element of our church into a prevalent part of the design and updating our design somewhat. We will also be getting some newer functionality that will make it easier for online giving, event registration and member management...it will be GREAT! Pray for this as well.

STAFF SEARCH
Our staff search is still ongoing. I made a contact at the Baptist College of Florida and he will be sending us some traffic from their schools of ministry. If it's on your heart to possible serve as Children's Leader or Worship Leader, it's up to you to follow the procedure and put your name in the hat...if that's what God's telling you to do, it's your responsibility to do it. Just click here for the process (JDs, resume, cover, email to me)... www.fbcmel.org/staffsearch .

FINANCIAL PLAN
Mitch Garner, our Finance Team Leader for FBC Melbourne, and I are getting together to work through the exisitng financial plan for the rest of 2009 and 2010. Pray for wisdom for us and great ideas and that we'll catch as many things as we can.

LAUNCH TEAM MEETING
This meeting went great...we ate a little, fellowshipped a little, gave info and the most important thing...we prayed for the campus and what God will have us do. We will be praying in the Ed building, room 127...

PRAYER
We'll be meeting to pray every Wednesday night in the Education Building in room 127 on the first floor from 6-7pm. Come on by! Also, if you are still considering being a part of the Satellite Campus, this may be a good place for you to be still and let God give you an answer on your direction. Remember that Stan Berry is having prayer/bible study at his house in Palm Bay on Sunday nights as well. You can email Stan at