I know some good things are happening at Cross Timbers. A good friend described it as revival. Last fall they held a baptism service at all their services and a gajillion people were baptized. Looks like they did another baptism service recently and another gajillion were baptized as well. Yes, there are enough people in DFW to sustain these types of baptisms.

So, it’s good to see God is moving and this is a good thing for the Church. If people can run to the church when in need, who are they going to turn to? If all we have to offer is a message, then are we really representing the life of Christ?

Toby, senior pastor summed this up really well. When asked if they were concerned about people taking advange of this generosity, he replied, “I told my church a couple weeks ago, if I’m not being taken advantage of, I’m not being like Jesus.”

One year ago today was my last day working for Cross Timbers Community Church. You can read about it here. It was an abrupt end as over a dozen people were released due to major financial issues. It was a very difficult day. Actually, I think it was much harder on the Leadership Team there than it was for me. They had to release 15 people in one day and each take significant pay cuts. For me I had been frustrated for several month. Sara and I were trying to see how we could downsize our house and other things. So, although it was unexpected and not something we were seeking, it was actually an answer to prayer (yeah, sometimes God does answer in ways you don’t expect). The hardest part of all of it was saying goodbye to our friends. This goodbye was cut short as we left without notice due to my grandmother passing away.

It’s always interesting to look back and see how things change. Although we’re still trying to get adjusted and make new friends, we’re so happy with how things turned out. We love Austin. We love Gateway. I love what I’m doing (I’ll love it even more when I finally hire these positions I need to fill). I’m just amazed at how God brought us from a place that we thought was pretty good and took us to a place that was even better.

The journey was good, but not necessarily easy. There was some doubt as to what I really wanted to do next. I was out of work for 3 months before I first made my connection with Gateway which was followed by another 3 months of interviews. However, I got a lot of amazing time with my parents and family in Georgia and my mom and dad got to enjoy their new grandson in a way they never expected.

So, God has done an amazing thing. He’s always had a plan for my life. Amazingly, his plan is often bigger than I expected for myself. I truly look forward to what he’s got planned for later. Also, within the journey he packed in all kinds of blessings.

I’m truly thankful. I know that I can trust God. I also know that he’s looking out for my best. Although I experienced everything from frustration, anger, and doubt after being downsized, I’ve been given some amazing perspective. Being let go made me available for something better. Something better for me and my family. Now my perspective is that of thanks and gratitude. It wasn’t fun, but totally worth it now.

Not that I’ve learned my lesson. Things happen that make us mad or frustrated. However, maybe I’ll be a little quicker to put the emotions on pause and see if God is at work. Just my thought for this 5th of November.

I made arrangements to visit a few churches, have lunch with the Children’s Pastors at Cross Timbers and actually visit all the Cross Timbers campuses. We drove into town and had about 90 minutes to kill before our dinner appointment. Since the restaurant was in Southlake, we visited the Keller Campus of Cross Timbers. I expected the building to be locked down for the weekend, but I was surprised to find it open. I took Josh on an extended tour of the building that was once Anchor Church (the church that brought me to Texas) and then merged into Cross Timbers. Sara and I had a many happy memories in that church building. After taking out little tour, we let Titus go and hobble around the lobby (I say hobble only because he walks like a drunk man right now). I turned to Sara and said, “Isn’t it a little surreal to see our little boy walking around in this lobby?” It was while we were at this facility that we were childless for over a year and then went through the journey of two miscarriages. Sara began to tear up. I know this may sound bad, but there are some churches that I’ve worked at that I don’t totally “miss.” I was grateful for the experience and there are people we totally love, but we don’t completely miss the church. We do miss Anchor though, there is certainly still a pain in our hearts over that loss. So much has gotten muddied with mergers, new campus pastors, staff turnover, but many of those who were a part of Anchor are still around (actually, that’s who we were having dinner with a few minutes later).

On Saturday Josh and I took tours of both the Argyle Campus and Denton Campus. It was certainly refreshing to see some huge improvements that had been made over the past 9 months. The preschool hallway no longer looked like a dark and nasty pit. Ha! It looked bright and friendly. Good job Argyle. Afterward we went on up to the Denton campus. I had not seen the final product yet. Cross Timbers had just purchased the facility a few weeks before the layoff (one of the key reasons for the layoffs) and I never got to see what they did with the building. It looked fantastic. Miguel (the CP at Denton) has been doing a fantastic job with his new facilities.

It was fun visiting Cross Timbers this weekend. It was great to reminisce. There were a lot of memories formed there. It was also great to see improvements that had been made. It always feels great to see things done that you had either planned or hoped for. I can’t say it was also a little frustrating to see things that still hadn’t been done. Things that were promised initially, but never followed through. I did get to see a few people I hadn’t seen since November. For some of these people, it was so good to see them. For others I only have one word… awkward. Awkward only because of the nature of my departure. If my leaving had been under other circumstances, coming back for a visit would feel very different. There were a few people I really would have loved to have seen that I didn’t get a chance too. Maybe on my next visit. There were a few people that I didn’t see that I’m kinda glad I didn’t. Still a little awkward and still some things to continue to process in my heart… if you know what I mean.

Closing thoughts: Sara and I both felt it on Saturday. We love Keller and North Fort Worth. We could totally live there again some day.We had so much fun being there, eating at our old joints and hanging out with close friends. However, by the end of the day on Saturday, we were really ready to get home. Ha! That sounds kind of funny. We were anxious to get back to Austin… our home.

Just a few years ago I was the children’s pastor at a large Southern Baptist church in southern Indiana. It was my first full time gig and I was definitely growing. My church didn’t exactly fit the mold ot the traditional Baptist Church, but it was by no means cutting edge (not always a bad thing). While at a conference, I picked up a book called Beyond the Box and it rocked my world. I knew at that moment that I wanted more… I wanted to be a part of an innovative church. I called it a next-level church. What really struck me was the multi-site model for ministry. I loved it and thought it would be so great to work in that kind of environment.

 Well, within a year and opportunity came for me to relocate to a church in Keller, Tx (DFW). It was a smaller church, but definitely on the more innovative side of things. The church was only 1/4 the size of my previous church, but I didn’t care. I felt the freedom to spread my wings and try something new. Long story short, this new church I moved to had suffered a few staffing setbacks and had a momentum problem. A little over a year later, we were really struggling financially. At that very moment our senior pastor met with a good friend to ask for help. After about a week of meetings, this friend (Toby Slough, the Senior Pastor of Cross Timbers) and leadership decided to purchase all the assets (and debt) of this stuggling church and make it the first “off-site” campus of Cross Timbers Community Church. I found out the day before Thanksgiving and our first service as CT was the first Sunday in January. That was 18 months ago and the Keller Campus has trippled, going from one service to four services (two live and two video). For me this was a dream come true, I could really sense that God had ordered my steps.

Within a few months, the leadership approached me about moving out of my role as the children’s pastor at the Keller campus and being the Central Children’s Pastor. Since the main campus was without a CP and there were plans to plant another campus in Denton, it was my job to hire three children’s pastor, one for each campus. While in this process, I became very involved in managing a staff of 5 in Argyle. They had been without a leader for almost a year and things were a mess. So for about 4 months I was the children’s pastor at Keller and then managing the Argyle staff of 5 (yet not attending services there) as well as planning the Summer Outreach and Summer Camp programs… oh, and looking for and interviewing CP candidates. It was a whirlwind experience. By August, I hired two of the three children’s pastors. Both had never been children’s pastors (one never in ministry) and I spent most of my time with my new hires training and mentoring. Technically, I was not their supervisors, they reported to their campus pastors and I was more of a coach. However, I was more involved with these two than they were with their direct reports. We had our share of bumps… which I’ll share in another post, but overall things were pretty good. We were all working together, dividing responsibilities and helping each other out. The student ministry reflected this same model as well.

In December, church leadership decided to make a change. For a variety of reasons, the decision was made to decentralize both children’s and students. The central student pastor and myself each took full responsibility of a campus ministry and were considered team leaders. I would attend management team meetings and represent the children’s ministry, but my relationship to the other CP’s was now on a peer level. This sudden downshift was fairly bumpy and not without some conflict. There were some processes that had been in the works for some time and made things uncomfortable as boundaries got a little blurry. Only about two months later, leadership made another decision to try something really new in our multi-site model… that was to give every campus more autonomy. Almost everything was decentralized… except for finance. At Cross Timbers, this is where we are now. Because the jury is still out on the best way to do multi-site, this is really an experiment. We’re still small enough to try some different things without causing major issues. It’s been hard and frustrating at times, but I’m so thankful to be at a church that desires to be innovative and not afraid to try something new.

I can’t really tell you where Cross Timbers is headed next. The only thing I can confidently say is that I expect things to change… it’s one thing we do well. I’m looking forward to the adventure and I’ll be sure to blog the journey.

(where I’m officing now… the church lobby)

This week was pretty unusual. We had some April storms come through on Tuesday, nothing unusual for North Texas this time of year. At about 1:45 (during staff meeting with my team) the fire alarms started going off, but amazingly the power stayed on (in Argyle the power has been known to go off with a steady drizzle).

Because the weekly preschool was still in session, all the staff went to help them evacuate. The rain was coming down so hard, we had a major leak down our children’s hallway (water was pouring in) so we evacuated our kids from their classrooms to the auditorium. It was a little bit of chaos (something to work on at next year’s training). We got all the kids situated, put on some Looney Toons (my favorite) and made sure everyone was accounted for. Thankfully the day was almost over.

It kept raining and raining and raining. After a few more hours, I just decided to go home. I had to walk about 100 feet to my car and got totally drenched. I went on home, sit down for a bit.

45 minutes passed by and I got a phone call from someone on my staff. She said, “Kenny, you might want to get back up here, we’re flooding!” Already, all the offices and part of the auditorium were waterlogged, rain flowing down the hill couldn’t drain through the ditches fast enough and just surged into our buildings. I grabbed my wet-vac and headed up to the church. The rain had subsided, the standing water drained and we started the work of cleaning up. After about two hours of clean up, we went home. A disaster recovery team was coming in later to finish what we started.

After getting home, it started raining again, even harder. We had tornado watches all around. Long story short, I came in the next day and the flooding had spread. Probably 60% of our building had been under 1/2 of water in some places, more in others. We started the long process of clean-up. Disaster Recovery was in full swing.

We pulled up carpet in our auditorium and our nursery. It’s still up in the air if we’ll tear out the carpet in the offices. Nevertheless, we’ve relocated for the next few weeks. With staff and volunteers, we’ve logged thousands of man hours getting the building clean and sanitary for the weekend. Although we’re missing a lot of carpet, I think it is the cleanest this building has ever looked.

Tobyhas joked all week about what great insurance we have… unfortunately we don’t have a flood waiver. Most people in North Texas who don’t live in a flood plain don’t have flood insurance. Looks like the damage is well over $150,000. We’re urging our people to give above and beyond this week to help cover the expense. It’s going to be interesting to see what God does. And what might you ask is the sermon this week? “When bad things happen to good people,” part of the “God drives me crazy” series. Think God may be teaching us here?

Click here to see some video of the damage.