The first 360Church Ustream webcast 4 March 2010
Tonight we premiere our 360Church ustream broadcasts, featuring a talk given at one of our weekly meetings. If all our tech works properly, you can view the webcast live right here!
Streaming .TV shows by Ustream
Or, if it doesn’t work so well, you should be able to find it here
The Sixth Dysfunction of a Team
Good teams are where you find them. And these days they are everywhere—at least in name. I’ve witnessed many churches transition to “team-based” ministry simply by applying the word as a suffix to their existing groups (e.g., “The Ushers” become “The Ushering Team”). In the long-term this move usually accomplishes only one thing: convincing everyone that the whole “team” thing has no merit—which it doesn’t when handled that way. This trend is indicative of just how easy it is to get a really important idea really wrong. In his classic book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni outlines the primary ways in which good intentions turn into bad teams. The five include: 1. absence of trust 2. …
ContinueThe AARP Generation Plants Churches
Recently I wrote an article on the potential of church planters who are over 50 years of age. My friend Curt Harlow calls this phenomenon the “Lipitor revivial.” The piece just went online with Enrichment Journal as “The AARP Generation Plants Churches.”
Renewal in the AG Video
George P. Wood shot a brief of video of me discussing renewal in the Assemblies of God while we were standing in the Houston airport. It’s not long, but it’s how I feel. You can find it at YouTube or right here:
Multi-Conversation
In the Summer 2009 issue of Neue Cynthia Ware, Shaun King and I discuss the impact on ministry of multiple cultures, sites, and generations.
Tom Bandy's Book Review of Reverse Mentoring
Tom Bandy recently posted a very nice review of my Reverse Mentoring book on the Leadership Network blog: Leadership development has evolved from training, to coaching, and most recently to mentoring. There is a growing interest in how to impart wisdom to the inexperienced, so that great organizations can survive through a succession of great leaders. As you know, I like to read books in unusual and provocative pairings. This time I read Reverse Mentoring by Earl Creps (Jossey-Bass, 2008) alongside A Companion to the Study of Augustine by Roy W. Battenhouse (Oxford, 1955), during my summertime reflection of how the “City of God” might overlap with the City of New Orleans. Reverse Mentoring…
ContinueDoes Twitter Exist?
Recently I came across a disturbing article presenting evidence that some social networking activities, specifically Twitter, have much less of a following among the young than I was assuming. I find this disturbing because I would really prefer that all of my assumptions be proven correct. When I asked Glen Davis (Chi Alpha, Stanford University) about this article he responded this with these words: “I was just at a conference where representatives from LinkedIn and Twitter both spoke. The LinkedIn guy was asked about his demographics and he said, ‘The readership of the Wall Street Journal.’ And then the twitter guy said, ‘Our users are a lot older than people think.’ Glen concludes: “I don’t know a single student who twitters.” Now that’s…
Continue10 Reasons Why Southwest Is the Best Airline Ever
1. The Wardrobe: Flight attendants wearing shorts in March tells me everything is going to be allllllriiiiiight. 2. The Humor: When the pilot over the PA refers to the female flight attendant performing the seatbelt ritual as “my ex-wife or my girlfriend…you decide,” I know I’m flying with a crew that appreciates irony…the signature trait of an airline that gets it. The more mundane the announcement, the funnier they become. 3. The Honesty: When the crew announces that Southwest no longer accepts cash for drink and food purchases on board, they make no pretense of apologizing for this fact, or for the too-high prices of those items. Everyone knows that airline apologies are our culture’s new benchmark for insincerity. They…
ContinueLearning Communication from Children
Lots of strange things happen on the road. During the Summer, for example, we met a former Air Force sergeant who actually worked at Area 51, the desert location where secret military things happen according to the government, and salvaged alien spacecraft are hidden according to UFO researchers. Perhaps the most unusual and most helpful experience during that season was presenting our vision for a university church in Berkeley to a group of elementary age students involved in the Sunday morning childrens ministry at Elevation Church in Layton, Utah. Jan and I shared with them for about 10 minutes before speaking to the adult service. Before going to the childrens area, we cooked up a plan for our presentation. We would…
ContinueHow The Irish Saved My Civilization
In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill describes the role of the island’s monks in preserving both the scriptures and the written classics of western civilization from the aftermath of the Roman Empire’s collapse. When the opportunity became available, these monks would re-introduce learning and literacy into a continent ravaged by invading tribes, disease, and despotism. Without these largely unknown scribes, no one knows what would have happened to the West after Rome succumbed. Our trip to Ireland may not save a continent, but it has certainly proven life-giving for both Janet and me. For one thing, we have learned some new (to us) vocabulary. Our friend Anne Monaghan, a counselor with an Irish AoG church, used the phrase “secular…
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Earl Creps—a popular speaker and leader—is director of the Doctor of Ministry program and associate professor at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (AGTS) in Springfield, Missouri. He has been a pastor, ministries consultant, and university professor. Along the way, Creps earned a Ph.D. in communication at Northwestern University and a doctor of ministry degree in leadership at AGTS.
What is Earl doing? View or subscribe to Earl Creps' Google calendar. Or learn how to contact him directly.
