My first decade of ministry was to high school students. I imagine that I'll always have a heart to see godly people invest in the lives of the students God has entrusted to us.

One of these leaders is Leo Galarza, he's the director of student ministries for Irvine. Last weekend was their VERY FIRST service for students at the Irvine campus. We’re all in this together, so Kurt Johnston (Student Ministries pastor in Lake Forest) showed up to be a support. I heard rumor of a Matt Hall sighting as well (he’s also on the junior high team in LF).

More than 50 showed up! 6 committed their life to Christ, 7 recommitted their life, and 3 want to be baptized. It’s easy to skip over these numbers, but each person who showed up is someone Jesus died for. Each one was made to Jesus. Each one was made to connect with other believers. Each one has the potential to make an UNBELIEVABLE difference in their world.

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All three campuses also taught Class 101 to the adults, which is also really cool. Class 101 is the place to go in order to learn more about what it means to follow Jesus. We talk about important things like salvation and belonging to a church family.

I was in Corona on Sunday, and it was so great to see how everything is coming together. They’re now past the “honeymoon” stage, and it’s time to roll up the sleeves and do the work of being the church. There are so many great people who are sacrificing their time to see the campus pull off great services. They also could use some more people who want to help, if you know someone in Corona, ask them if God is leading them to serve!

Last week, Pastor Rick invited all three campus pastors to join him at a church planting conference in Orlando, FL. They let me tag along too. Here are a few things that we found challenging and encouraging:

"If God is about community, then maybe we should be about community.  Instead of being church planters, maybe we should be community planters."

The topic of one breakout was about creating multi-ethnic communities.   There is no biblical mandate for planting churches based on the homogenous ethnicity principle – it may grow faster but it is not biblical. A multi-ethnic church isn't something that just happens, you have to be intentional about sending a message that says all are welcome. We tend to say, "You are welcome here as long as you like our style of worship." To develop our ethnic competency, we have to promote a spirit of inclusion and empower leaders of different ethnic groups.

Planting churches and planting campuses are two effective ways for local churches to spread the cause of Christ. It doesn’t need to be a ‘one or another’ mindset but you need to be intentionally to make either a reality.

Those who risk the most, gain the most. It was inspiring to hear of churches that valued ‘planting’ and did that on a time schedule rather than a statistical schedule. Those who wait until they are a certain size often won’t do it at all.

If you have a multi-site model it’s essential to build church-wide momentum as individual campuses are built. Every campus needs to be told about the vision, how they can contribute, and the progress on a regular basis.

Developing a healthy church takes time – anyone can get a crowd but that isn’t a church. A mushroom grows in about 6 days, an oak tree takes 60 years. Would you rather your church be a mushroom or an oak tree?

Had a great week last week.

Things are really coming together for the Corona and Irvine, everyone is falling into a healthy routine for what it takes to pull off the weekend.

I had two great conversations with ministry leaders from Lake Forest. As Saddleback’s ministry expands, we face a single question: what does ministry look like beyond the borders of Lake Forest campus? There are at least two critical tensions, and these four issues frame the answer to our question:

How much of the ministry is CENTRALIZED and how much is DECENTRALIZED?

How much of the ministry is CLONED and how much is CONTEXTUALIZED?

Ron Wilber (pastor of small groups) and I talked about what small group care might look like at a regional campus. Tracking groups in our database, is something that’s CLONED (each regional will do it exactly like Lake Forest) however, the data entry will be DECENTRALIZED. The key for caring for small groups is a RELATIONSHIP infrastructure, and this can’t be CENTRALIZED, but it definitely needs to be tied into and connected to LF in order to share i