Archive for May, 2009

Wednesday Mindless Dump

Posted in Leadership, Multi-Site with tags , , on May 13, 2009 by johncatkinson

Starting campuses sadly puts my blog on the back burner sometimes, but as much as I love the blog, Multi Site is what keeps me awake at night, not my blog. So thanks for hanging in with me. So whats on my mind right now?

1. Really excited about what’s going in the Multi Site ministry.

2. We’re currently working on our temporary facility to get the Alice Campus ready to start meeting on Sunday’s.

3. We’ve gathered about 70-80 people who are interested in being a part of a BAF Alice Campus.

4. So proud of the Multi Site ministry for how we’ve saved so much money for future campuses! Every campus tithes weekly into our Multi Site account for just that purpose.

5. Padre Island is doing fantastic, and we’ve been able to solve our main problem of ceiling height with dual side screens. So much better now!

6. Pastor Dave Cotham is doing an amazing job out there. The PI campus is so about helping start other campuses. So thankful for all that is happening out there.

7. Never cease to be amazed at the job Pastor Rudy Garcia is doing at our Kingsville Campus. Pastor Rudy is 22 folks! What an amazing young leader!

8. Pastor Jason Curlee is tearing it up at our 5 Points Campus! I am blown away by what him and his team have been able to do with what was an old worn out metal building. They have transformed that place into a beautiful house of God.

9. Worship at the Multi Site Campuses is unfreakingbelievable. Is that actually a word? If not it should be. The quality of worship has exploded under the leadership of our Multi Site Worship Director Joey Davila. No way this happens without Joey joining our team.

10. Somehow we keep this machine rolling, and that’s in large part because of our MS Ministry Assistant Kyrah Hopkins. Not sure how she does it, but somehow she keeps all of us boneheads in order. We couldn’t do this without her!

11. We should have Alice meeting regularly in less than a month which will take us to 5 Campuses total, 4 being Multi Sites. A year ago we had one MS Campus. Wow, I’m leading this and that still blows me away. Amazing what God can do through a bunch of people crazy enough to believe He can do anything!

12. We have never waited until we had all the money we needed in place before starting a new campus. If we would have waited until all the money was place before moving forward on these,  we would be one campus instead of five. Every one of these campuses has been built on the faith that God will provide if we’ll just start moving! That is one of the things about Pastor Bil that I love the most, he lives by faith!

13. Really excited to have Jim Tumberlin with Third Quarter Consulting coming down to hang with us for a few days in June. Jim is one of the smartest Multi Site guys in the country, and he’s coming to hang with us! I am so excited to have him join our Multi Site Staff meeting that week. We are going to learn a ton from him and I can’t wait!

14. Pumped about taking my team to the Innovation Exchange in San Antonio in June. I love hanging with this amazing team, because they are more than my employees, they’re my friends. Were going to have a blast.

15. Very pumped about and upcoming event at BAF. A group is using our church to film the third or fourth version of Thou Shalt Laugh which will be recorded and sold all over the world. We’re just hosting the event so our people get a free night of some amazing comedians. John Tesh will be hosting.

16. Also really stoked about Michael Franzese coming to BAF for a weekend in June. He is a former Captain in a Mafia Crime Family who found Jesus. His story will blow you away. He will be preaching at all the services one weekend. I’ll pick up John Tesh from the airport one week, then the next week I’ll pick up Michael Franzese. Talk about worlds colliding, WOW! lol  Going to be cool meeting them both!

17. Really proud of my twin 17 year old sons. Cory is heading to Austin at the end of the month to compete in State in classical guitar, and he also serves on leadership staff in the Element Student Ministry in their Worship Dept! Cody is an honors student at Carroll High School with a 98 average taking all AP Classes. Most of all I’m proud because they’re both sold out to Jesus! I’m getting chills just writing that!

18. Then theres the my little guy Caleb, I will be 50 in June and he is 4, don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.lol He is a mini tornado blowing his way through our lives at Mach 10. Cant imagine my life without him!

19. How cool is it that my wife is also my best friend! I love April with all my heart and she is truly a blessing to our family.

20. BAF is going live on national television in a few weeks. Very exciting because we’ve been working on this for probably a year. Our first show will air on The Church Channel which for now is only on Direct TV, but we should be following that up a few months later with some spots on Daystar.

21. I’m truly thankful for leaders in my life like Geoff Surratt and Jim Tumberlin. To have leaders who I can talk to who have accomplished what these guys have in Multi Site, is a huge blessing from God! I need all the help I can get! lol

22. I’m so thankful for all the ministry friends I have made through Twitter. There are so many leaders tearing it up for God all over this country I would never have known had it not been for the relationships we’ve built on Twitter. If you’re a pastor, I challenge you to join Twitter! Yes it will take some of that time you don’t think you have, but the relationships you’ll build with other leaders around the country, will be worth that time.

OK enough rambling! This is what is going on in my pea brain today, hope something in it interests you!

John

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Amazing Alice Core Group Meeting

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on May 7, 2009 by johncatkinson

Tuesday night we gathered the Alice Core Group together to share a meal at a local restaurant.  At the three previous gatherings we had 30 or so at the most, but this time we really challenged the group to invite their friends and neighbors. They did just that as 65 people showed up. Man that place was packed to the brim, and it was great. The staff at El Jalisciense was simply amazing. If you’re ever in Alice stop and have a meal there, you won’t regret it!

The energy in the room was off the charts as everyone laughed and fellowshipped over some bad to the bone Mexican Food. Really, is it possible have a bad meeting when Mexican Food is involved! The best part was that the room was full of new faces, and we were still missing some our regulars who couldn’t make it for different reasons.

After dinner I took a moment to speak to the group then asked Pastor Bil to share with them as well. Bil has been out there 3 times and it has made a huge difference because those folks know he truly cares about their church. We also had a chance to introduce Newell Atkinson to everyone. Most of the people already knew him, but what they didn’t know was, he is going to build us a building and lease it to us because there was nothing available in Alice that would work for us.

We will first move into a 1,800 sq ft facility Mr. Atkinson already has and make it work as best as possible until the permanent structure is ready. I was concerned where we were going to put all the kids during that time, so he decided he would have two temporary buildings he owns hauled to the back of the building so can use them for kids until we’re ready to move into our permanent structure. Man has God been moving in Mr Atkinson’s heart. He is in our prayers and we are praying for God to continue blessing this man and his business big time.

So thats where we are on Multi Site #4. Things are moving fast and God has made it beyond clear that He wants a BAF church in Alice, so me and the MS team will just keep pushing forward. Sometime in early June we will have our first official Sunday morning service at BAF Alice. Keep praying for us because this is going to be a big job, and it has been made perfectly clear to me and my team that, in a little Texas lingo, Satan ain’t happy about it.

John

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Celebrating the Wins

Posted in Multi-Site with tags , , , , on May 4, 2009 by johncatkinson

ags-winIf you’re in ministry you know how hard it is to look backwards at anything, because next Sunday is always looming large. I know I’ve experienced that, so we have made a change in the way we do our Monday morning Multi Site Staff meeting. Each week we open with prayer, then we start off by letting each staff member take time to celebrate their wins. This often adds an hour to our meeting, and it’s worth every minute of it.

This morning Jason Curlee who is the Pastor at our 5 Points Campus, shared how he had been praying about the scripture that says, “they added to their numbers daily,” and in the last three weekends, seven people per weekend have entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ at his campus. Some say numbers don’t matter, 21 people at 5 Points would beg to differ, and we celebrated, because each of those 21 numbers represents a person who will spend eternity in Heaven.

Pastor Dave shared how they had six new couples show up this weekend because someone from the Padre Island Campus invited them. Six new couples is a win by itself, but the fact that they were invited by Padre Island campus people, means the church is taking ownership, and anyone in ministry knows that’s a win.

Pastor Bil got caught up in weather in Dallas on Saturday and missed his flight to Corpus which meant we did not have a DVD for the campuses for Sunday. Pastor Rudy from our Kingsville Campus talked about how God moved as he preached live directly from the scriptures he just happened to be studying in the last few days. It ended up being a God moment set apart for one man whose wife had been trying to get him to come to church for a very long time, and this happened to be that weekend he finally showed up. The message that Pastor Rudy admittedly felt unprepared to preach, was for this man who doesn’t like to go to church, but will be back next week because the message touched him so deeply.

Joey Davila, our Director of Multi Site Worship, shared how he was playing at our Padre Island Campus this weekend and everyone was so well prepared that they finished practice with over and hour to spare. He decided to sit down and pray over them and was overwhelmed by the struggles each were going through that he may never have known about had practice not gone so well. Praying over these selfless servants was a major win.

I was able to share the win of how God has stepped up to bless us big time at our newest campus location in Alice. I’ll share more on this later, but God stepped up in a huge way and we celebrated it.

Had we not been willing to add an hour to our staff meeting, these amazing wins would have gone uncelebrated, and maybe we wouldn’t have taken time to acknowledge the enormity of who our God is and what He is doing in this ministry. We laughed our brains out, we praised God like crazy, we celebrated the wins, and we had a blast doing it.

Are you celebrating the wins with your teams? If not you might want to give it a try because it’s awesome!

Pastor John

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