COTH (Church of the Highlands) Staff Meeting this morning...

Here are some notes from todays staff meeting @ Church of the Highlands.

Chris Hodges is the Lead Pastor @ Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama. Here's some of what he had to say to his staff today.

"Success is measured by how many people are fulfilling the Great Comission (i.e. serving in the Church and the community)."

"It's not just about salvation."

We're not selling fire insurance, we're building the kingom! (that was my thought)

Team Building is the key...

"Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen."

5 Great team building tenants:
Have integrity in modeling the way
Communicate the vision clearly and consistently
Allow them to challenge the process
Let Leaders Lead (the vision is non-negotiable, the way we get there is always negotiable)
Create an atmosphere of encouragement

How we make teams happen:

1. Know and appreciate strengths and weaknesses
2. Openly engage in constructive, ideological conflict (OUCH!)
3. Set goals together
4. Commit to group decisions
5. Over communicate what happens in meetings with others

My quest for DESPERATION!!!

I wanted to upload a video blog, but I'm on the Church of the Highlands wifi and they've blocked Youtube, so I'll give you a brief recap of my quest for Desperation over the last 2 days.

Well, I'm finally here in Birmingham Alabama. I flew out of Burbank airport (supposedly the airport of the stars) yesterday morning @ 9:15am (didn't see any stars!) I arrived in Dallas Fort Worth at 2:00pm (their time) for a 3 hour layover. Had a great lunch @ Dickey's BBQ and then found out that my flight had been delayed from 5:20pm to 6:30pm... oh wait, make that 7:30... no, make that 8:30pm... no actually try 6:30... AM... this morning!!!

ARRRGGG!!!

Well, not wanting to spend the night in the airport, I proceeded to get on a standby list for another flight that left @ 9:30pm. The only problem was that I was #23 on the list...! I heard another young lady state that she was just going to fly to Atlanta and drive to Birmingham. What a great idea I thought, considering that I was going to try and hit up North Point this weekend anyway.

Well, that's exactly what I did and I finally made it to my good friend Mark Peacock's house at 4:00am this morning (Central time). We had a brief hour long conversation and then hit the hay. We needed to at least get a little sleep because we had to be here @ COTH (Church of the Highlands) by 10:00am for staff meeting. Not too big of a sacrifice considering that I get to hang out here in their brand new state of the art facility. I also got to meet the wonderful staff @ COTH along with some of the Desperation Staff.

Desperation starts tomorrow and I'm pretty excited. Check back soon for more details on my "Quest for Desperation".