WHAT A WEEK!

It's Saturday night and Melinda and I returned from our annual retreat with the leadership team at TRC. We had a spectacular time and here are a few highlights...

• Dr. Habich permitted us to stay at the Habich's amazing house on Lake Chelan...I am serious, this place is the coolest place we have ever had a retreat...I will post some pics later in the week. The amenities included a giant house to sleep 31, huge dock and boat slip, two boats, two jet-skis, a 33 foot jumping tower and all the water toys we could drag people on. THANK YOU DOC!
• I am bruised due to the sudden impact of hitting the water over and over from 33 feet.
• Each morning we had conversation about discipleship. What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? How were we discipled? What defines a Christ follower in terms of being planted at The Rock Church? What are the essentials for discipleship? I was blessed by these conversations to learn about how much discipleship is taking place, but these conversations were dedicated to making discipleship more efficient at our church.
• We landed on four critical areas for discipleship as defined by Christ: Learn, Love, Live, Lead.
• If you continue in my Word you are My disciple, Learn; if you love one another you are My disciple, Love; if you bear fruit that remains you are My disciple, Live; Go and prepare a place for My disciples, Lead. These are the four times Jesus called them, "My disciple."
• We joked, if someone doesn't desire to learn, love, live and lead, the only option for them is the fifth "L"--leave!
• Lots more about the discipleship process coming in my next message series called "I FIT."
• We are going to add 5-10 new leaders to our team in the next 12 months, so we brainstormed a list of 30 names of potential candidates.
• Did I mention the bruises from jumping off the 33 foot tower!
• Big props to Jayden Scheffer, our children's directors oldest son, who jumped from the tower at the age of 9! There is only one younger jumper in the tower's history, he was 7.
• Pastor Rory got a call on Friday that his uncle had passed away from a long battle with cancer. I hate those kinds of calls. Rory is a real family man, so that was a tough afternoon.
• On the last night we snuck up on Pastor Travis, who was sleeping in a SUV outside, and lit a couple hundred firecrackers next to the back bumper. He said he wasn't scared, but it was Friday the 13th, I know he was scared.
• We found this house on the lake where the foundation had cracked and the house was falling into the water...great metaphor for our current LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD message series on doctrinal foundations.
• Oh yeah, I learned to play cribbage for the first time and Rory and I whooped on Pastor George and Roger till after midnight!

I am convinced retreats are the places where we remember the real reasons we launched this vision in the first place. There is power in laughing, loving, living and being together face to face to refill and refresh. We had times of prayer, discussion and most of all a total feeling that we would do it all again if given the chance.

What I mean is, our staff, elder ship and support teams work hard and the majority of them are volunteers with careers of their own. Every time we retreat there is this awesome feeling that the hard work is all worth it!

Want to go on this kind of retreat? To be one step closer, go to the guest services kiosk and find a place to volunteer. Saved? Learn. Love. Live. Lead.