*this material is adapted from a leadership talk by Jeff Henderson, Pastor of Gwinnett Church and the Athens Church LDP book*

There’s no “I” in team, but there’s two in vision because vision was never meant to be the sole responsibility of one leader… it takes a team.

Vision-Casters are Vision-Carriers. They carry and cast vision to others, those people become Vision-Carriers and in turn become Vision-Casters.

The four words that limit the vision of any organization: “It’s not my job.”

A great question to ask yourself everyday: “What did I do TODAY to cast vision for our organization or church?”
You can’t get from A-Z over night, so…

• Start where you are.
• Use what you have.
• Do what you can.

Vision-Casters and Vision-Carriers are great Story-Tellers.
Think of yourself as a movie producer or director, always on the lookout for a great story to tell.
Re-live past stories and tell them in every environment.

We’re doing a series called “4 things: Simple Ways to Partner with Your Church.” This past Sunday, we talked about Community Groups. Here’s the video we showed.

Want to get into a Community Group? Come to GroupLink.

This is my favorite place in the world.

In fact, I’ve blogged about it several times.

But Andy VomSteeg posted this video yesterday on Facebook and I thought it was amazing. He includes the question, “Who says there’s no God?”

We’re doing a series called “4 Things: Simple Ways to Partner with Your Church.” Each week we’re taking a look at a different “thing.” Last weekend it was Strategic Service. Do you serve?

Student Impact is our avenue for middle and high school students who want to serve at New Vintage Church. In many ways they are leading the charge on what it looks like to be a great volunteer. They recently filled out a survey about serving and here are some of their answers:

• “I serve to be a part of something bigger than me”
• “I feel like I’m not just another helper, but someone who matters”
• “I serve because helping out prek and seeing the kids learn makes me feel like my life has meaning”
• “I serve to help the church and to grow”
• “I feel like a part of a team because I am interacting with everyone-kids and adults and hopefully making an impact on their lives”
• “Serving has helped me grow closer to God”
• “I feel like a part of a team because I am really needed.”
• “I feel like a big part of my team because each week I think some kids feel better with the same people other than unfamiliar faces.”
• “I feel like a part of a team because everyone works together and it’s a good time”
• “The kids know me.  They look forward to seeing me and I look forward to seeing them”
• “I feel a part of the NVC family and wanted to give back and help out my family.”
• “I feel like a part of the team I serve on because I was an orphan and now I have a family” (this was a 20-something who serves as a small group leader with our middle schoolers)

How are you engaging the next generation?
If you’re an adult at New Vintage… what’s holding you back from being as involved as these students? 

When I was in high school, I remember my Youth Minister (youth pastor) talking about how God calls us to renew our minds, but that we can’t do it without him. I was reminded of this principle when I saw this on Elevation Church‘s new 24/7 streaming broadcast, Elevation Network, the other day. Thought it was awesome and wanted to share it.

Josiah sings the ABC song. He usually starts off really quiet and gets progressively louder as he sings it. By the end, he’s shouting.

Today in our staff meeting we listened to one of Andy Stanley’s leadership podcasts titled Five Inescapable Truths of Culture. He unpacks some great insights into organizational life. This is true for churches, businesses, or any place really. Here they are:

1. The leader is responsible for creating the culture and they do whether they mean to or not.
2. The longer you are anywhere, the less you are aware of where you are. You need to systematize refreshing your perspective.
3. Healthy cultures attract and keep healthy people.
4. The culture of an organization impacts the long-term productivity of an organization.
5. Unhealthy cultures are slow to adapt to change. Inward focused organizations don’t grow.

If you want to unpack this further… I suggest you go listen to the Leadership Podcast (it’s free on iTunes) from Nov, 2011.

Sometimes you just need to laugh.

Flula is a funny internet (youtube) star, hype man, dj and German who lives in SoCal.
He produces hilarious videos on youtube all the time.
From time-to-time we choose a funny video from Flula and show it in our pre-service countdown at church, or in our student ministry environment.
Whenever we do that, we tell him about it via twitter and he gets a big kick out of his videos being “in church.”

Yesterday I checked our student ministry twitter account (@insideoutnvc) and noticed he’d sent us a video.

(Previous post about Fula’s video he made for me, personally.)