Yesterday was an exciting day in our country. As the solar eclipse made it's way across North America, it unified our polarized nation, even just for an hour and a half. 

As I reflect on the people who gathered together from sea to sea yesterday to catch a glimpse of the sun's corona, I am thinking these thoughts about connecting guests at our churches:

After listening to this Breakout Session sponsored by Church Community Builders, discuss with your team...

• What is working right now when it comes to connecting guests at our church?
• What creates potential disconnection between our church and guests?
• What are possible initiatives that would bridge those disconnects?
• Pick one to implement and evaluate over the next 3 months.

The Gold Rush had begun.

That's how I felt while on a getaway with my wife Michelle up in the California mountains for our anniversary. We decided on Sunday morning to watch the live stream of our church's worship service and took communion together. When the live stream was over, I had my Jim Marshall moment: my fingers grazed the mousepad on my laptop after I paused the video.

That's when it happened.

I've never heard of a downhill climb. Yet many times when spiritual leaders don't see the results they are praying for, the disappointment colors everything: their time with God, their home life, their joy. So I am going to take some time to encourage you right now with the example of some extraordinary men:

When you are not seeing the results that you want to see, that is your cue to return to the leadership style of a Sherpa. 

One interesting way to mark the journey of a relationship might be the important questions asked that brought the relationship to new levels. 

I believe the questions we ask guests at our church also have the power to take the relationship we are building between them and our church, and between them and God, to a deeper level.

Here is a list of 8 questions to ask your guests, and great places to ask them: 

I had an incredible April and May investing in Church staff where I did Base Camps at One Love in Hawaii and at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona CA. Sherpa-type leaders are so easy to bond with and learn from. I feel like we all come up a level or two just through the time spent together. The Base Camp at Crossroads had Sherpas on staff from churches in Virginia, Oklahoma, Washington DC and Southern CA. What a fun group.

Despite being a record holder for dominating the basket, Koby is far and away the least valuable scoring champion according to win shares. His high scores simply did not produce the winning games and winning seasons that he and the Lakers would have thought.

This gives me pause as an Assimilation Director. Is it possible for our assimilation environment (our "one program") to be stuffed with people, lots of energy, and stellar evaluations and still not connect people to in a big way to small groups and ministry teams?

If the definition of insanity is to do the same things over and over again but expect different results, then it follows that sanity would be to start doing more of the things that give us the results we want. 

That's what we started doing in 2016 in our assimilation ministry at Eastside. It was a bold move.

It's been said that your church's ministry is perfectly designed to produce the results that you now see. The pivotal question is, would you like to see different results?

Would you like to see different results this Spring and exponential results by Fall? You totally can. It will require these three things:

Your Yelp app is pointing to a new reality in how guests at your church make decisions about where they are willing to spend their time and why. So here's what I'm learning about promoting our assimilation environments…

I have learned something about entertaining in my home: people don't always sit where you want them to. But when I dragged 2 $17 chairs to the edge of the lawn, my guests started to bee-line for the best view in the house—the one they would consistently forfeit before.

That’s when I learned that the key to changing behavior is actually changing your environment—and I see 2 principles we need to keep in mind when it comes to the guests of our church.

Really?! Wine tasting?

Yep. My wife and I love to go wine tasting, especially up the Central Coast of California not far from where we live. The best part? You don't have to buy a single bottle. This is how a lot of people select and enjoy wine today. It's also how many people select and enjoy churches.

Now that we have transitioned from a quarterly 7-week "First Step Experience" to an ongoing revolving 4-week experience called "Next Steps", I have wanted to see a greater number of guests coming into that connection environment than ever before. This has been a greater challenge than I anticipated. 

Last weekend there was a breakthrough: we did 3 things different that resulted in exponential attendance at our other 2 campuses and a 40% increase in our attendance at our broadcast campus in Anaheim

My 30th wedding anniversary was last year. I know I don't look old enough to have done anything for 30 years (just roll with it), but this milestone snuck up on me.

Our dinner out to celebrate taught me something that blew my mind, something that our teams should try to give guests whenever possible.

We do. 

This isn't a "Neener, Neener", but I do have to say I think it is super cool to have a person like Julie Liem in this role in my church. I absolutely love working with her, and not just because we grew up in the youth group at Eastside together. At our church, the Director of Volunteers two vital things.

There is an episode of "Friends" where Monica and Phoebe are desperately trying to recreate Phoebe's grandmother's cookie recipe. It is beyond words. 

This scene from America's favorite friends shows us that sometimes the most elegant and powerful realities boil down to a simple recipe.

You may have been wondering where I've been the last few months....

• The beach?
• A Witness Protection Program?
• Unemployed?

Actually, none of these. Where I have been is on an interesting journey that has revolved around these two activities:

A process is a set of interrelated activities that interact to achieve a result.

In this post I want to reveal a volunteer placement process from the pages of the New Testament and to share the 2 factors exposed there that must be present if a process is going to be healthy.

Incredible people, great discussions, productive strategizing, specific prayers, and delicious food. Great investment of all our time together. We had leaders from Oregon, Nevada, and California present. Can't wait to stay in touch with these fellow Sherpas in the season ahead.

Processes in ministry—not something we naturally enjoy thinking about. We would rather take them for granted, but that's exactly what a good process does. A good process becomes something you can take for granted. Processes are essential to the health of any church and they are the spine of any assimilation ministry.