Thanks Volunteers!

It’s been a busy week on for both the church and the childcare center fronts. Lots of painting and constructing. Here’s a few photos.

Wow! What a year.

My wife often accuses me this time of the year of getting philosophical and reflective… and maybe I do (after all its the end of the year and I get one year older). As I was looking back on 2008 I was struck by God’s incredible faithfulness and blessings on our life. Some highlights from 08:

• An incredible week of prayer and fasting in January and so many promises both personally and corporately to our church
• 10 days in Ireland in February with my family.
• An awesome trip to Kansas to serve a church there.
• The opportunity to visit many wonderful friends and family in Portland.
• A great staff retreat in June… I work on one incredible team.
• A first ever visit and game in the right field bleachers of Yankee Stadium.
• Doing dinner with Craig Groeschel and Steven Furtick.
• Steak & Rake 08.
• Brett Favre’s retirement and un-retirement
• Shea Stadium and a day in NYC with my son.
• One unbelievable week in Disney winning an evening in the castle. Can’t tell you how much we felt God love and pleasure as a family.
• Riding Big Thunder Mountain with Aidan, Sophie and Madeline (Mads was just crazy funny).
• The opportunity to meet Mark Batterson (his book is part of the reason we ended up here in Albany).
• The opportunity to spend a couple of days with my wife in Montreal to celebrate our 13th anniversary. I can’t tell you how much I couldn’t do life without her.
• Having the opportunity to go to the Catalyst Conference (a dream came true).
• 50 Thanksgiving food boxes to families in our community
• The opportunity to go to Soldier Field and watch the Packers play the Bears in the coldest game ever played there (-12).
• Blogging, facebook and twitter.
• New friendships with this guy and this guy.
• The iPhone 3G.
• An incredible Christmas season… in a little over two weeks across all three campuses we gave over $60,000 to local and global charities. Incredible generosity!

I’m filled with gratitude when I look back at 2008. This year has not been without its disappointments and failures, but I can’t tell you how blessed I feel. God is good all the time. I don’t know what 2009 has in store my I know that I’m going after God with everything I’ve got.

Sunday Reflections

It snowed, but that’s no excuse not to have church. Had an incredible service this morning, music, art, dance, media… I’m so blessed to be around such talented people who wanted to work together to create an experience that would glorify God. Got home, watched a movie and shoveled the driveway twice… 2ft and counting. Off the Chicago for the Packers v Bears Monday Night Football game… -27 degrees should be fun times.

Enjoy the photos.

Customer Service

Recently a good friend of mine sent me email he had received from Bill Marriott (obviously a corporate email, but I really appreciated the attempts to make the experience a personal one… which is a mantra for the Marriott group). Anyhow it was a letter to rewards customers thanking them and sharing a little of what’s ahead for 2009. What caught my attention was check out “my blog.” Bill Marriott has a blog? I’m intrigued.

One of the best stories I’ve ever heard and a letter I read all the time when talking about the kind of culture we’re trying to create at Cornerstone is one a lady wrote to Mr Marriott when she ended up in one of his hotels on business and really needed to get back to home for her sisters funeral. She thanked him for the thoughtfulness, attention to detail and personal care that the Charles and the night staff treated her with. They had treated her as an individual. Anyhow when I saw that Mr Marriott had a blog I had to check it out… he’s a man running a huge corporation, travels to 300 of his hotels every year to give them his version of the white glove test and he writes a blog. Genius! You should check it out. Mr Marriott tells personal stories of why he does things the way he does, and why his hotels have ended up being the kind of hotels they are. He gives people the opportunity to share their stories, ideas and experiences – good, bad or indifferent. He’s having a conversation with his guests. Very smart and totally sincere.

I think the key to great customer service is to listen. The guest may not always say something, but if you listen carefully you’ll hear something, see something, perceive something that will allow you to serve them. Mr Marriott has created a culture on this idea, and created venue or vehicles by which his guests can participate, and they do so. I’ve noticed an increasing number of churches doing online surveys for their guests which is a great step. But if the Church is one of the only organizations on planet earth that exists for the benefit of it’s non members (and of course so that they can experience the kind of change those who have crossed the line of faith are experiencing) then how do we work at creating a culture, venues and vehicles where people are served. In the words of the Marriott organization it’s the “spirit to serve.” Let the conversation begin.

On a personal note, I’m so proud of what God has done amongst us at Cornerstone this fall. We’ve spent the entire fall and now the Christmas season talking about and putting into practice service as a value… and people have jumped in  and been dreaming ways they can serve and make a difference. Whether it’s how we treat people when they come through our doors, deliver a Thanksgiving foodbox, serve at a homeless shelther or partner with an organization that’s already making a difference in our community. It’s that “spirit to serve” that has permeated our culture this fall. Way to go Cornerstone!

It’s pretty, but it stinks.

That would be ice on trees. Lost power at 3am this morning, then woke up to half my oak tree on the ground in my back yard… fortunately missed my fence. Pretty incredible stuff and they’re saying that it might be 2-3 days before we (and 185,000 other people) get power. Thanks to some great friends we have a warm place to stay tonight (and wifi – yeepee)

What a Sunday

Yesterday was an incredible Sunday at Cornerstone. Rob Morris from Love146 brought the heat and reminded us what Christmas and Advent is all about. One incredible talk that required quite a few Kleenex. Cornerstone, you responded and gave an incredible offering to pour into Love146 and make a difference in the lives of kids. Thank you for your generosity.

On a personal note, we ended up at a couple of parties which was a whole lot of fun. We were invited to a party hosted by one of the parents from our scouts group… each year they host a party and ask everyone to bring items to support a local charitable organization. This year it was school supplies and crafts for kids… I love the generosity and thoughtfulness! I capped off the evening with 2.5 hours with a bunch of heading banging heavy metal musicians who hooked up with some classical musicians and put on this incredible light show (At one point I was heard to scream “all I want for Christmas is an LED curtain”). Enjoyed the event, but the squealing guitars did get a little too much after about 90 minutes. Maybe I’m just getting old. Trans Siberian Orchestra for those who are wondering.

Anyway the take away from this weekend and I guess this entire Christmas season, is that as we’ve sought to live it out a little differently and find small, creative but meaningful ways to make a difference it has become a contagious exercise for us personally and for the many people I’ve talked to. To give really is more incredible than receiving.

Is it okay to be proud?

Over the past couple of weeks the Lord has had me reviewing some of the incredible things He’s been doing at Cornerstone… It’s left me awestruck at His greatness and proud of the folks that call Cornerstone home. On a given weekend there are generally between 220-240 adults and around 100 kids of those 220+ adults 149 jumped into small groups this fall (that doesn’t include any of our students in GC and our small groups for 1st-6th graders).

There are over 145 people serving on at least a monthly basis in the church. All kinds of new volunteers dreaming up new ways to serve and make a difference. I’ve also had the opportunity to hear some incredible stories of service to others in our community take place through our small groups, not to mentioned the 50 families in our community served with turkey and all the trimmings to make sure they had a Thanksgiving dinner. And now as we head into Christmas the church is rallying to support Love146, Smile Train, Living Water, Hope of Life and provide socks and shoes for orphans in Mexico.

I have to tell you that it’s so humbling to be a part of such a great group of people stepping up and out to make a different. Cornerstone I’m proud of you!