Pastor John Atkinson

Marriage Retreat II

The retreat ended with a bang last night as Craig Groeschel brought it big time. I've always been a huge Craig Groeschel fan for many reasons, and last night just added one more.

The whole gist of Craig's talk was two things. For men it was for us to make a covenant with God to never quit pursuing our wives. He talked about how our wives need to know we think their beautiful, valuable, and that we cannot be who God has called us to be without them. I took away that I need to be more intentional about making sure April is way more important than the ministries I oversee, because they won't be there to oversee unless my marriage is solid.

For women Craig challenged them to make sure their husbands know they respect them and believe in them. He talked about how some men begin to fail because the most important person in their lives has lost respect for them. Last night was the bomb, and I finally got a chance to meet Craig. When I told him who I was, he recognized me from my blog because I blogged about his book Going All The Way. As a faithful viewer of his blog I got a early copy of his book to read and blog about. I keep copies in my office for dating couples and premarital counseling. He also remembered that I had sent him a copy of my book. I was blown away that he knew who I was. I really admire this guy for his leadership and willingness to help other churches and leaders.

We're headed back to Amarillo to pick of the little dude so we can head back to CC tomorrow. I'll be back in the office rested and ready to go for Monday. Thanks for hanging in there on this vacation journey.

John

Marriage Retreat

We arrived yesterday at the Gaylord Texas in Grapevine yesterday for the Pastors and Wives marriage retreat. April and I have really been looking forward to this because we don't have any family in Corpus Christi that can take Caleb for long weekends so it's been a long time since we've really had a few days to ourselves. We wanted to go so bad that we actually drove Caleb to Amarillo to leave him with April's parents. That's a 12 hours drive, then a 5 hour drive to Dallas, and then, we get to do it all over again in reverse. I told you we really wanted to go.

Last night we had a great dinner and heard from Ed and Lisa Young of Fellowship Church. The talked very candidly about their 25 marriage, both the good and the bad. The high of the night was when they began to talk about intimacy and instead of trying to explain it, they played the funniest video I have ever seen. The entire place was in tears. Take a minute or two and listen to these two guys play a song they call Business Time. I promise you'll laugh your brains out.

Today we head to breakfast at 8:00 and then we'll hear from Craig and Amy Groeschel, as well as some very well known counselors who have a lot of experience helping pastors keep their families healthy in the midst of the complete mayhem that is ministry. We're really looking forward to the day. For four hours this evening we have date time. As amazing as the Gaylord Texan is, and it's seriously bad to the bone, we'll probably head out and check out the town.

Gotta run

John

A Blogging Milestone

For some of my blogging friends this isn't a milestone, but for me it is. I officially hit the 25,000 hits mark on this blog. Finding an audience in church world when you're not a senior pastor is tough. There are so many amazing lead guys who blog, and almost everyone I know is going to their blogs. I completely understand, because I do too.

So over the last year and a half I've been pecking away at the computer keys and I've watched this blog go from a few hits a week for the first six months, to three or four hundred a week. Like I said, compared to many of my blogging friends thats not that much, but I'm honored to know anyone would want to listen to my rantings in the first place, much less come back enough times to reach 25,000 hits.

Thanks so much to all of you who faithfully make it by, and also for all of you who took time to leave a comment. I've been told if I want to build a huge audience, something I've never had a desire to focus on, I need to get a little more radical when speaking on issues. Frankly, I don't want an audience bad enough to spend day after day just trying to make people mad. First off it's just not me, and second I don't think it honors God. I believe if I become a jerk in an attempt to grow and audience, then I lose my voice for God, something I will never do.

What I do try to do is speak with confidence on leadership issues that are important to me. I try very hard to stay humble, because I'm well aware that I don't have all the answers, and never will. What I do love to do is share my journey in hopes others can benefit from the things I've learned along the way, both through the victories and the failures. In truth, I've learned a heck of a lot more from my failures than my victories.

Thanks for coming along this journey with you and I hope you stick around. I have been blessed far more by this blog than the people reading it. This blog has been a huge blessing because it's given me a venue to share the things God has taught me these last six years on staff at BAF.

May God bless each of you and thanks again from the bottom of my heart!

John

Vacation Adventures II

     Man the weather has been fantastic in Sherman this weekend. It feels like Corpus when the first nice cold front comes through. I’m thinking about stealing this weather and dragging it south to CC. Is it wrong for a pastor to steal someone’s weather?

     It’s about 7:30 and I’m getting ready to head to services at Sherman Bible Church. The church really has a forward thinking aura about it. I’m pretty stoked to see them in action. This afternoon we're heading over to their sister church called Joshua’s Crossing for an evening service. JC is a very different church from Sherman Bible. It is a young very modern church whose vision is to reach the unchurched. They keep telling me how different it is and to be ready, they’ve obviously never been to BAF. I suspect JC is a lot like BAF was in the early years.

     I’m really excited to go to both. I just passionately love the church, and anytime I’m in one that wants to change the world around them, I’m a happy camper. Joshua’s Crossing was in financial trouble and would probably have already closed their doors if it wasn’t for Sherman Bible Church. It’s a kingdom move when a church steps up to help another church that is so differnt from them. The senior pastor at Sherman is 61 years old and has been in ministry his whole adult life, it would have been a heck of a lot easier to just ignore their struggles and focus on building their new church. They didn’t do that, they came in and are trying everything they can to keep the church going. I’m praying they're successful.

     Pastor Dennis has been out of town so I’ve not had an opportunity to meet him yet, but hope I do before I leave. He's obviously a great leader, because he's surrounded himself with great leaders which says a lot about him, and on top of that, the church has doubled in the last two years, not something easy to do.

     Gotta run, Larry’s on his way to pick me up from Starbucks but I’ll keep journaling my journey for you throughout the week.

John

Vacation Adventures

I'm having a great time hanging out in Sherman Texas with my bud Larry Boatright who is the small groups Pastor, among other roles, at Sherman Bible Church. Larry asked me to come down and spend some time with his small group leaders and share some of the things I've learned over the last eight years at BAF.

First thing this morning I sat in on Larry's new leader training class, and then met with the new leaders, and the existing leaders, to share some of the things we've learned at BAF along our journey. Sherman Bible Church has purchased twenty acres and is in the design stages of building a new facility that they'll break ground on in July. I was able to share some of the things from the journey we went on in building of our new facility over the last few years.

The best part of the trip though, is just meeting a bunch of awesome Christians who are excited about looking to the future and dreaming about how Sherman Bible Church can help change Grayson county for Jesus Christ. I really love this kind of thing because I truly love The Church, and I love hanging out with other followers of Jesus Christ who want to see lives changed like I do. I believe the church gives hope to a world that truly needs it. I felt that hope and excitement in the people of SBC.

I'm getting ready to head out with another group of leaders for dinner. We have a full day tomorrow then I'll head to Amarillo to meet up with April and Caleb who are at April's parents house. Next week we'll leave Caleb in Amarillo and head to Big D for a pastors and wives marriage retreat. I'm really looking forward to hanging out for a few days with my best friend and the love of my life. I'll write about the rest of this leg of my journey tomorrow, and all about the retreat next week.

It's good to get away and take some time to rest. Yes, helping another church in some small way is rest for me. Nothing makes me feel more in God's will that sharing what God has taught me with leaders from other churches. Gotta run.

John

As I prepared to talk about how to create and

Posting Finally

I feel bad that I haven't posted in so long, please forgive me, but honestly starting two churches at the same time is pretty overwhelming. I haven't had thirty free minutes to write since early last week. It's crazy for sure, but I love the challenge because plenty of people have told me it couldn't be done, I do understand why they would think that, and there have been moments when I thought they might be right, but God is my equalizer so it will get done, even if it hairlips the Pope. We had a long discussion recently about just exactly what "hairlip the Pope," actually means, and the consensus was that we have no idea, but it sounds forward moving, so I'm using it.

Here's what's up right now.

1) First and foremost, I have the most awesome wife on the planet, I love her with every ounce of my heart, and I couldn't do what I do without her at my side. I also have three amazing boys. Two are 16 year old twins, and when I look at how their living their lives with whats going on around them, I am the proudest Dad on the planet. And the three year old owns all our hearts.

2) We will sign contracts this week on the Padre Island and the 5 Points Churches. The Padre Island church will be in a building that is not yet built, so we spent the morning with Alex Harris's design guy mapping out the inside plan. The Padre Island Church would not be happening if it wasn't for Alex and Polly Harris's sold out hearts for God. These people are the epitome of what a Christian business person should be. We should be really close to taking over the 5 Points church. We'll probably go ahead and start having church as soon as possible, and do the build out work at the same time. It will be awesome to watch the all the folks from the 5 Points area taking ownership of their church by working on it themselves.

3) I'm taking some vacation beginning Friday. I'm going to Sherman Texas this weekend to do some small group consulting at Sherman Bible Church with my bud Larry Boatright who is the small groups pastor there. Larry and I have gotten to be good friends over the last year or so. We started talking via email and got together for a cup of coffee, that lasted five hours, when he was here last summer on vacation. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with him at his church for the weekend. April and Caleb will drop me off then head on up to Amarillo to hang with her parents, then I'll fly up there to meet them Monday morning. The middle of next week we'll leave Caleb with April's parents and head to Dallas for a Pastors and Wives marriage retreat led by Ed and Lisa Young of Fellowship Church, and Craig and Amy Groeschel of Lifechurch.tv. Were really looking forward to this.

4) Then it's back to the grind here and the push to get two facilities ready to do church. This summer is going to be the craziest of my pastoral career. Normally summer is a time when things slow down a bit, but not this year because we want both facilities complete and ready to go for the fall.

5) Looks like Dave (Hometeams Pastor) and I will have some admin help coming soon so we can free ourselves up to get these two churches up and running. I really need Dave on this not spending Mon-Wed consumed with our admin stuff. This is where Dave will shine because he's a serious get-it-done kind of dude. It has been a huge blessing to have him here this last year.

6) We're getting ready to do a big Hometeam Leaders push. A month ago Bil preached on Hometeams from the stage and we had close to 600 people fill out a form to join a Hometeam. It was fantastic and I'm definitely not complaining, but it pretty much overwhelmed our system. We need some folks to step up and lead a group. Great problem to have by the way, and we'll figure it out like we always have.

Gotta run, lot's to do before I leave on Friday. I should be doing some writing while I'm gone because I want to talk about the training I'm doing at Sherman Bible Church, and the Pastors and Wives Marriage Retreat were going to.

John