Staff Retreat

I’ve just returned from a three-day staff retreat at Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center near Lynchburg and this is what I’m feeling most:

Gratitude.

The members and friends of Richmond’s First Baptist Church know what an outstanding staff we have, and I do, too, but spending three days with these people, watching them not only work together but also play together, took my appreciation to a whole new level. I won’t go into detail, but Beth Davis’ presentation of our new communication strategy was impressive, Phil Mitchell’s carefully crafted worship experience was powerful, Amanda Lott’s mastery of the “Fishbowl” game was mind-blowing, Donna Earley’s rendition of “Muskrat Love” was sensational, and Steve Blanchard’s willingness to drive the bus home even with a splitting headache was typically selfless.

When I started the closing session on Wednesday morning I said, “Let’s pause for a moment of gratitude. When you think of our church, what are you grateful for?” The staff spent the next five minutes sharing their list and then I shared my own. I said, “I’m grateful that our mission is clear, our finances are strong, our attendance is up, our building is beautiful, our location is perfect, and our staff is world class.” And then I elaborated on that last one.

I said, “When I look around this room I don’t see one person who is a problem, not one person who needs to be replaced.” In his book Good to Great leadership guru Jim Collins says that one of the most important things in any organization is having “the right people on the bus.” Once they’re on the bus, he says, you can figure out where they need to sit, but the important thing is getting them on there in the first place. I told the staff that I think we have the right people on the bus, and not only that, I think they’re in the right seats.

After we got home (on the bus) I put on a suit to attend the inauguration of Jacqueline Lapsley, the new President of Union Presbyterian Seminary. While waiting to process with the rest of the trustees Jim Wagner, a former president of Emory University in Atlanta, asked me what I’d been up to and I told him I was just getting home from a three-day staff retreat. “How was that?” he asked, like someone who knew how badly these things can go. And I was able to tell him, honestly, “I feel like I have the staff I’ve been working toward my whole life” And if you can say that after a staff retreat, you know it was a good one.

Here’s hoping we’ve all come back to First Baptist rested, refreshed, and ready to re-engage our mission. During that session on Wednesday I articulated it for the staff like this: “By the grace of God, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we labor alongside the Lord Jesus in the joyful work of bringing Heaven to Earth.” And when you have a great staff,

It’s joyful work indeed.

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From left to right above: Ruth Szucs, Jim Somerville, Allison Collier, Michael Lacy, Lynn Turner, Amanda Lott, Donna Earley, Chris Wondree, Matthew Hensley, Phil Mitchell, Beth Davis, Steve Blanchard, and Allen Cumbia. Not pictured: Robert Thompson and Emma Tilley.

The Kingdom Just Keeps Coming!

Recently I challenged the staff of Richmond’s First Baptist Church to help me take our mission to the next level.  For a year the whole church was working to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia (KOH2RVA).  By the end of the year it was obvious that the job was too big for any one church to do alone, so we began a year of mission called KOHx2 (Kingdom of Heaven Times Two), with an emphasis on partnership.  In the same way that Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to do the work of the Kingdom, it made sense to us to work with other individuals, churches, agencies, and organizations to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond and beyond.

I call this new mission “KOHx2: Bringing It Together.”

I challenged the staff to collect pictures and stories that would illustrate this mission, and to share them with me so I could post them on my blog.  A few days ago I got this email from Senior Associate Pastor Lynn Turner:

Jim

I don’t know if you can use this or not in your blog, but felt compelled to write it just as a reflection from my heart this past week.  It has caused me to think about this partnership thing in a totally different light.

Lynn

What Lynn wrote came out of her regular work at church, which reminded me that church work at its best IS the work of the Kingdom, and sometimes church people step up and help out in ways that truly bring heaven to earth.

Take a look at what Lynn wrote:

Reflections on KOHx2: Partnership and Generosity

It began with phone calls this past week of various needs within our church family: One family, out of full time work, medical needs, and needing some help catching up on bills; Another family, having faced extraordinary medical circumstances, still in the hospital, and their heating system out in their home with no funds at this time to get it fixed: Another family moving into an apartment with need of furniture and the basics to get them on their feet; all members of our congregation and all legitimate needs.
And thus the partnership and generosity wheels began turning…

An anonymous gift to help with current bills, a heating company stepping in to donate a used system and time to install, and an envelope of money given to me by a church member this past week with the words, “Sometimes ministers just need some discretionary funds to help folks out, use this as the needs arise.”

I have been overwhelmed this week with the way God has revealed to me that bringing the kingdom comes with partners….all kinds of partners…with a spirit of generosity that just points to Jesus.

KOHx2 has been hard at work this week. Blessings abound!

KOH2RVA: Day 332

Last night was National Night Out but that’s not why I ended up in front of Richmond’s First Baptist Church with a group of 20-30somethings. We had come for the Tuesday night gathering of RVA United—an outreach ministry to and through young adults in the Richmond area. I had been asked to tell them something about KOH2RVA and Lynn Turner had been invited to lead in prayer. Surrounding those “talking times” there had been music—glorious, thunderous, not-for-the-faint-of-heart music—offered up with abandon in praise to God. It was a powerful worship experience. We came out of the sanctuary with our hearts still pounding and found…ice cream.

That’s right: ice cream.

It was being dished out by graduates of the Ralph Starling School of Radical Hospitality. Ralph himself was in the crowd, meeting and greeting those 20-30somethings while his graduates (mostly 60-70somethings) served ice cream sundaes with a smile. The picture above is a little dark, but maybe you can see the RVA United sign on the front porch of the church and just to the left of it people standing in line to get ice cream. The others have come down the steps to eat their sundaes and enjoy each other’s company. They stayed for an hour after the service, until it was so dark nobody could see anything. Even then, some of them didn’t want to go home.

This morning, as I was re-reading parts of the Gospel of Luke, I found that place where Jesus says to his opponents, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (11:20). Jesus had just cast out a demon, and here he seems to be saying that in that act, in that moment, the kingdom of God had come.

That’s how it felt to me last night when I stepped out of that powerful worship service and found some of our members cheerfully dishing out ice cream for young people they had never met before—as though in that act, in that moment, the kingdom of God had come upon us. If I were putting it in the form of a parable I might say, “What is the Kingdom like, and to what shall I compare it?”

It’s like an ice cream sundae offered to a stranger.

KOH2RVA: Day 319

This morning I’m thinking about all the ways our hands can be used to bring heaven to earth.

They can cook a meal for someone who is hungry. They can build a house for someone who is homeless. They can put a bandage on someone who is wounded. They can reach out to embrace someone who is lonely. But they can also do this:

They can be folded in prayer.

One of the people who is good about reminding me of that is our Pastor Emeritus Jim Flamming, pictured at right. When he retired from First Baptist Church Jim planned to spend his time on three things: teaching, writing, and praying. He’s been faithful to that plan. He still teaches preaching at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. He’s written a book called Healing the Heartbreak of Grief. And, at my urging, he’s continued to lead the Catalyst Prayer group at First Baptist on Wednesday nights. Last night that group prayed for Chase Ingram.

Chase is 14 years old. He loves little children and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. He and I have been talking about baptism lately which has given him an opportunity to ask all his questions about religion and the Bible and believe me, that boy’s got a lot of questions!

But there may be a reason for that.

I can’t remember the details but I know that Chase was born with a condition that keeps his bones from growing in the way they should. He’s had 40 surgeries to date. Today he’s having number 41.

And so last night he came to church and met with the Catalyst Prayer group. As Senior Associate Lynn Turner put it, Chase has a “special relationship” with that group. They’ve prayed for him a lot.

They prayed for him again last night and they used their hands to do it. Instead of folding them in prayer they laid their hands on Chase and prayed that he would be brave about his surgery, that the surgeon would do good work, and that the surgery would accomplish all that it was supposed to. As they prayed I’m almost sure Chase could feel the healing, strengthening love of God flowing through those people and into his body.

And sometimes that’s exactly how heaven comes to earth.

Would you pray for Chase today?

KOH2RVA: Day 256

I hope you will take five minutes to turn up the volume on your computer, click on the image above, zoom to full screen, and sit back to watch this remarkable video about a partnership between First Baptist Church, the Children’s Museum of Richmond, and Glen Lea Elementary School.

If this were the only thing we accomplished on our year-long, every-member mission trip, it would be enough.  But this is only one of the things.  There are dozens more, hundreds more, because every member of the church has been looking for a way to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia.

David Powers and his team of volunteers in our communications ministry made it their goal to produce one KOH2RVA video each week.  That’s how they wanted to “bring it.”  David confessed to me recently that their goal was a little too ambitious.  Making a video is a lot of work.  But I hope that as you watch this one you will appreciate all that it took to record it, edit it, and present it in a way that tells the story and also gives you that good, warm feeling inside.

I’ve gotten that feeling each time I’ve watched this video–four times this morning.  Now I’m going to publish this post, make some oatmeal, sit down to breakfast, and probably, just probably,

Watch it one more time.