RX 24 - RX24 Kickoff

Transcribed Content

Why are you here at RX? Have you thought about that? Now some of you might be here because your boss told you you're going. I need you to go to the conference. I need you to get all that content. I need you to learn what's coming out. I need to learn what people are doing. Get over there, get that content. Others of you might be here because a group of people in your church were like, hey, come along with us, you need to be here. But you're not really sure why. Others of you maybe had never really thought about it. You come here because you're part of the rock community and that's just what the community does. So you just show up and say, hey, this is encouraged. This is where I should be. This is the area that I serve in and this is the conference for the people who do what I do. So you show up. Or maybe you've thought about it, but you didn't really come down to a really deep meaning. Yeah, again, I just go to the conference, we kind of hang out, I get some content, and I go back. And I really feel like before we get the conference officially started tomorrow morning, that we should take some time and just really define our why. And believe it or not, God has a reason for each one of you to be here tonight and for the next two days. And I feel like we really need to connect with what is God trying to lead each and every one of you? What path does he want you on? And how do we strategically alter for each of you, your pathway through this conference? What sessions you're going to be going to? Who are going to be connecting with? What do you need to learn? And so we want to provide that time tonight. Now I know you all work for churches, and I know you all realize that we're in the middle of a spiritual battle. We all realize that, right? And the Bible says if we could pull back the curtain right in this room, there's a spiritual battle going on in this room. And I guarantee you, there is tonight and for the next two days, because this is an amazing and a powerful group of people who can make a difference in this world. So to think that there's not a battle going on, we'd be fooling ourselves. I think though, if we're being honest, that many of you in the room are like, yeah, there's a spiritual battle, but I'm not on the front lines. I'm not a warrior on the front lines. I'm in logistics and supply chain. I'm helping those who are on the front lines. And I want to tell you that is certainly not true. The devil would like you to believe that. Experiences, your knowledge, and your toolset makes you a very powerful and dangerous warrior in this battle. And what's at stake? We know what's at stake. The whole world is at stake. And we can make a huge difference in this world with our skill sets, experiences and our tool set. There's a widely discussed phrase the last few years, especially in America, and that is make America great again. I'm not sure how we in this room can help with that, but what I do know is everybody in this room can help America be good again. You see, in the eighteen hundreds, a Frenchman came to America for several years and just went all abroad within America trying to figure out the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Two revolutions very different. And he wanted to know why. He wrote a two volume book called Democracy in America. And if I could summarize that two volumes down to two phrases, he said, America is great because America is good. And what did he mean by good? He was talking about our Christian values that formed this country. But he also gave a haunting prediction that if America ever stopped being good, America would stop being great. If we think back through the last twenty, thirty years, isn't that true? When we stopped being good, we stopped being great. And to take America out of this, it's not an American thing. Everywhere in the world where there's greatness, it's because there's goodness. And you take away the goodness, you lose the greatness. So it's really important that we see our role in bringing goodness into the world. And we have that, right? We have the truth. God's given us that truth. And we need to do everything we can to make sure that truth is widely spread. And so you have to see yourself as a warrior, The warrior that God sees you as. The warrior God is calling you to be. Now there's different types of warriors, and I'm kind of wondering tonight, which one might you be? Let's look at some of the warriors that you might be. Perhaps you're the surprised warrior because you're like, woah, I thought I was in logistics and supply chain. I didn't see myself as being on the front line. But you are. I guarantee you are. And so what don't want to tell you is that you might feel like you're not strong enough to be that. You're like, I'm not qualified for that. Well, the good news is God doesn't call strong people. His calling makes us strong. And if you look at all the heroes of the Bible, they are much the same. Look at Jesus' apostles. Yikes. That's what he was dealing with. But his calling made them strong and made them world changers. And it's the same for you. I look at that in my life like what am I doing up here talking about these topics or leading the technology platform that we are. But his calling has made myself and our team strong. So don't forget that. It's not that he's calling strong people, his calling will make you strong. Perhaps you're not surprised, a surprised warrior, but maybe you're an apprentice warrior. You're saying, well yeah, I guess I see myself as a warrior, but I'm new to rock, or I'm new to technology, or I'm new to being on a church staff. Well good news, you are in the right place. For the next two days you're going to be surrounded by content and learning. So lean into that and glean from all that's going on. For you, I would say, let the wise listen and add to their learning. And to the discerning, and let the discerning get guidance. Proverbs one five. Well good news, you're going to be around a lot of wise people in the next two days. Listen to them from their learnings and get discerning and guidance from them. A lot of people have gone down paths that you can learn from. You don't have to be the first one down the path, can learn from others. Well if you're not surprised or an apprenticed, if you're just being honest, sometimes if we reflect deeply on where we are, perhaps maybe you've become the indifferent warrior. You're like, yeah, I'm living my best life. I'll clock in. I'll do my effort that's required of me. But then I'm going to go home and I'm not going to put that extra effort or extra time in. Well, would challenge you with that we should work willingly at whatever we do as though you're working for the Lord rather than for people. Because you are, especially when you work for the church. Everything we do is for the Lord. And it's easy to get caught up, especially over time and lose our way and say, well yeah, that's the pastor's job. I just kind of help the pastor or the pastorial team. But I've kind of lost my way. Now if you've ever worked with me, you know, and the team that works with me the closest knows this and actually kind of laughs a lot at the way I think. I think in pictures and in analogies. And the picture I always think of from my own perspective to kind of encourage myself when I feel indifferent is I think of a house on fire. The bad news is the house is on fire. The good news is God's provided a way out of our house. It's an easy way. All we have to do is follow it. Now if the house is on fire and there's other people in the house, wouldn't you help them out? Of course you would. You wouldn't say, well someone else will help them on the way out. That's the urgency we have to have. And in the spiritual battle, it's much the same thing, it's just a different fire. So work within your positions as if the house is on fire. And we need to get as many people out of this house as possible. I don't know when Jesus comes back, but it feels like someday, any day, and we need to be bringing people out of this fire as fast as humanly possible. Now I know a lot of you in this room, I work with a lot of you in this room, and a lot of you in this room might be a different type of warrior. You might be the weary warrior. You guys work really hard. A lot of things don't go right. If I'm being honest, I think I'm in that weary warrior mode. It's been a hard twenty four years of ministry, and the last thirteen years have been crazy. This whole rock community and all the things that are going on. And I think sometimes it just gets to you. Also, perhaps you're like me, you kind of feel like sometimes you're under the attack from the devil. Certainly in my life that's been the case, I think for definitely the last year. In a thousand small ways, and in a couple of really big ways. I feel like it's even within our team we see a lot of that. The last two weeks leading up to this conference has been one crazy situation after another where you're definitely feeling the spiritual warfare. The last two days, our office in fact lost its air conditioning. That's probably pretty important in Phoenix right now, right? There's only one person I know that likes it that hot. And I know working with a lot of you, you probably feel the same thing. Some words of encouragement perhaps, things that make me feel better, is just know that the devil doesn't attack you because you're weak, he attacks you because you're a threat. So when you're feeling attacked, just know you're over the target. That's a good thing. And if the devil can't take you out, he's just going to wear you out. And knowing that truth is really, really helpful. A quote that really helps me too is this one. I want to be so anchored in Christ that the chaos around me doesn't produce chaos within me. I don't think I'll ever achieve this, but it's really helpful. Some other things I would just put out there that when you're feeling wary, it helps me. First is, he is with us and he is for us. We always hear the quote, Philippians four thirteen, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. That's a really good quote. I love that quote. But it's also good to know that quote, if you add to it, and Jesus is with us wherever we go, and He's for us. He's like rooting, a cheerleader rooting for us right next to us. So He's not distant. I also think, again I play these funny word games in my head. I always think too that I need to reframe my perspective. One way I do that is I think about my grandfather. He was born in the 1920s to a large family just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were farmers. Their farm though wasn't a great farm. Was on a hill. So they had to plant tomatoes and do all this stuff on a hill. They had lots of kids. So the kids ran the farm because his mom left the family. She was tired of having kids. And his dad worked in a coal mine. That was until his dad died in the coal mine. And the kids had to run the farm on their own until they could find the mom and bring them back. He finally was able to leave the farm when he joined World War II. He was part of a bomber crew that did several missions, many missions over Germany. They kept lengthening how many missions you had to do, so it was almost like a perpetual stay in the military. Witnessed most of his friends die by watching their planes go down all around him. He got out of war, but didn't have any money. So he started doing construction. He worked Don D'Aousta. He was in his early eighties. And so I kind of reflect on, like, what would he tell me? And I think he'd say something like this, John, you're working really hard. I'm proud of you. But no one is shooting at you. So just take that wisdom that even though we're weary, we still live in an amazing world. And we have so many riches and things around us that take for granted. So when you feel weary, just know almost anybody in history would trade their places with your worst day. And so sometimes reframing it I think helps that worry and weariness. And what I would want to tell you is you're making a difference, especially you in the rock community. And I would just really emphasize that you just need to fight on. It's okay. You're surrounded by people who will help you. Just fight on. And in my experience, life doesn't get any easier, but you do get stronger. And the things that brought you down yesterday don't impact you as much the next day. There's one warrior you could be, this is an important one. This is the battle ready warrior. I know there's some of you in this room. You have a great responsibility in our community especially. Quote I would tell you is, therefore encourage one another and build each other up. First Thessalonians five eleven. And your job is to inspire the surprised warrior. Show them that they are on the front lines. Inspire them to take up their sword and shield and join the battle. Provide wisdom for the apprentices. Give them knowledge and learning that you have that they need. Challenge the indifferent. We're all going to hit a level of indifference. And we need battle ready warriors who are going to challenge us to step up. And finally, encourage the weary. Now when I say this, if you're battle ready, you start today. Like for the next two days, do these things to the warriors all around you in this room. Inspire them. Help guide them in their journeys. And encourage them. So don't wait to wait until you get home. It starts tomorrow morning. Okay. This is our first interactive experience. What I want you to do, open up your mobile apps and tell us which warrior type you are. Now this is anonymous. So please, just reflect quickly and pick which warrior type you are and we'll put it up here on the screen. Alright, it's working. All right. Those are some great results. Those are the results I probably would have expected. I know many of you are weary. Now look at this and just know that over the next two days, these are the people you're surrounded by. Encourage them. I think this is a really good data point as we reflect and try to be strategic with our time together over the next two days. Now let's talk quickly about the enemy of every warrior. And I really feel like this is a cultural problem with our generation in history. Not our generation in terms of what we typically say generations, but in this moment in history, the biggest enemy that we have is comfort. Unless you're 70 years old, we just found out that you can be comfortable, but the rest of us, we can't be comfortable. In fact, discomfort is a real disease within our modern cultures. In fact, research scientists are telling us that we are so comfortable. The temperature is almost always perfect. Maybe Phoenix isn't. But we have air conditioning. I'm actually freezing in this room. And we go from freezing to warmth in the winter. We very rarely are uncomfortable in our temperature, if we're honest. But it's not just that, there's other creature comforts. Look at the houses we go to. They're palaces by any other time in history. Our beds are amazing. Kings didn't have beds as nice as we do. You can't even get a car without steering wheel being heated now. And if you don't have a heated steering wheel, it's as if your car is not good enough. It's crazy. And experts tell us that makes us mentally weak. In fact, when we lose just an ounce of comfort, a lot of people just lose it. And this comfort is really at war against our warriorness. In fact, we need to become much more disciplined if we're going to fight this battle as warriors. I love this quote too. Everyone must choose one of two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Now it's certainly true if maybe you're going to the gym, you better get disciplined or you're going to have regrets, you're not going to make any difference. But as warriors, we have to look at this too. We have to be disciplined if we're going to fight the fight. Growth and comfort can't coexist. We have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. We know that. But we're fighting against that constantly because we're addicted to comfort. All of us, including myself. As much as I like to think I'm disciplined, I'm really not. I try to be, but I need to keep leveling up each and every time. And I think the quote is also great because it tells us if we don't do this, there will be regrets. Someday we'll reflect back to this moment working in the community and the opportunities that we had that maybe we didn't take. Or we didn't step up as much as we could. And we don't want to live with regret. That's the one thing I don't want to live with. Okay. So let's look at a few things that every warrior needs. The first thing that every warrior needs is a mastery of skills. Would you want to stand next to a warrior who didn't know how to use his weapon and had no idea of tactics or strategy? I wouldn't. In fact, I'd prefer them to stand very far away from me. I'd rather have no warrior next to me than someone who had no skills. And so we need to continually grow our skills. No matter how much you feel like your skills are ready, we need to continually grow those skills. And we can't be in a better place again for the next two days to be surrounded by people who have skills that maybe we need to level up in. Skills that we can learn from over the next two days, sure, but we can take those skills back with us and change the trajectory of our careers and the impact that we have in God's kingdom. So for the next two days, we're in the perfect place for that. I'd like to do our second interactive experience, this will be our last one, and just ask you guys what skills do you feel like you need to level up in, in building out your warrior toolkit. So go ahead and pick one of these skill sets. Alright. That's great. I'm actually a little surprised at how even the bars are. That's really, really great. Now the good news is we have all of this content over the next two days. What I would challenge you to do is to go back to the session list that you've picked over the next two days and ensure that what you're going to matches what you most need. I think sometimes if you're like me, it's easy to go through that list and be like, oh that sounds like a fun one, that sounds like a fun one. I kind of know some stuff about that. But we often sometimes don't pick the ones that are going to stretch us, that are going make us uncomfortable. So consider going back through your session list and picking those that are going to make the most impact. The second thing that every warrior needs, and this is very important, is a battle plan. Now for us, plans could almost be translated into projects. Like we need to pick the right projects to fight in, and we need to know how to work those projects. So a battle plan is very, very important. And it's very strategic. We talk about this a lot, not only at the conference, but on the podcast and every time we talk to the community. We have to be very strategic on the projects we pick. There's a project management axiom that says that when I say yes to one project, I'm actually saying no to every other possible project I could work on. So we have to treat the projects that we say yes to as very strategic decisions. Sometimes we're quick to just jump in and just say yes. But realize when you say yes, you're actually saying an infinite number of no's. We need to make sure we're working on the right ones. We talk a lot about that from the community's perspective in terms of things like, there's two types of projects. There's administrative projects, administrative projects and ministry projects. I keep telling you guys that the administrative projects, I sometimes call them Satan's projects. And it's true because if he stop us, he's just going keep us busy with stuff that doesn't matter. Reports that don't change anybody's life, reports that get us busy, that keep us away from the features would actually change this world. Now there will always be administrative projects. There will be some things we need to do. But I think the draw to them is too great. Why? Because sometimes those projects help us. They make our job a little easier, and so we're quick to say yes to them. Or maybe they're quick to say yes because they make the person who sits in the queue with the office next to us, they make their job a little easier. And so we get a nice attaboy and a pat on the head for doing those projects. But we really need to be aggressive to make sure that we're working to fight the right battles and to do the right projects. Not only is it important for your church, it's important for this community. Because the projects that you pick, they funnel all the way down to us because we are working to support the needs that you want us to work on. And so by selecting just administrative projects, you're actually forcing us to work on those also. Just realize there's always a tension here. And the wheel is always going to pull us to the administrative projects. So to keep even parity, we have to steer the wheel to the other direction. I remember once when I was in college, I went to Northern Arizona University. What people don't realize is a third of Arizona is very high forest. And so it had just snowed and the roads were really icy. And me being from Tucson, not a great snow driver, I was going down this hill and I thought it would be really fun to go kind of fast. And at the end it kind of teed off and I slid the car and hit the curb. Well I was driving like this for at least two days until I could get it to a mechanic. So I had to make it very awkward. That's the same thing we have to do with our project planning. We need to pull to the administrative side. It's only those features that are going to make a difference. And I know there are some people in the room who saying, that's great. I want to work on those projects but I don't have access to that. I don't get to pick my own projects. I have to work on what's given to me. And in love, I'd want to say that's a bit of a cop out. You see, you can have cast vision for these projects, and you can work on the projects you want to. I'll tell you another story. Just mentioned I went to college at NAU. I was there between the years of 1991 to 1995. It was a great year for going to college at NAU. I left as a very experienced and almost perfectly trained mainframe programmer. At a time when mainframe programmers were not needed. Luckily I'd taken some elective classes in client server programming, and I'd also at that time learned about the World Web. It was an exciting time because the World Wide Web, what we mostly call the Internet now, was invented in those four years. And I had taught myself that in the lab. It was kind of a coincidence at the time, I thought, but now I see that God had a plan. Well, flash forward, I graduate, and now I'm getting my first job at Honeywell. And I show up on the first week and I tell my manager, hey, I'm here for client server development, I'm all for that. But I have this skill set where I can do web stuff. Can I work on some projects like that? He said no. And I'm almost assured that he just didn't know what I was talking about. And he just wanted me to quickly exit the office. But I said, wait, one more question. Do you mind if I work on my own time to set up an intranet site for the IT department? And he's like, sure, it's your time. I don't really care what you do. So I begged, borrowed and mainly stole a desktop to operate as that intranet server. It was an IBM PS two and it weighed about 80 pounds and had this huge handle on top. And I had to lift it back to my desk. I installed this web server on it using a floppy disk. And I put up a five page intranet site. Now at that time I worked in a division that made jet aircraft engines. And so the coolest thing about my five page intranet site was this animated GIF of an engine spinning. It was really cool. But that was about the only thing that was cool about it. But it wasn't about six weeks later that someone in the engineering department went to his director and said, hey, someone in IT just woke up and is actually doing Internet things. Like we should get over there and maybe they can help us put all these projects that we want onto the intranet. So they went to my director. My director was like, who did this? Luckily my manager kind of had an idea of what I was doing. And flash forward, six months later, I'm doing nothing but intranet and web based projects. Flash forward two years, I'm actually working at corporate. I'm setting all the e commerce standards. I'm being able to be on calls with the CEO who's gotten the e commerce bug and now wants all these standards created. And I'm leading teams to set those standards and to do all the web hosting for Honeywell. All it takes sometimes is just a little bit of effort and pouring into the vision and the needs of the organization. It's a principle I call leadership gravity. In my experience, a lot of people want to be handed leadership and then they'll show you what they can do. But I don't think the world works that way. So what I found is if you just have a little bit of success, it creates what I call mass. Now we know mass creates gravity. And so a little bit of mass, my little intranet site, that was a little bit of mass done on my own time, But it started to create a little bit of gravity and I had opportunities pulled to me. When you continue to do successful projects, you start to create mass. That mass creates even more gravity. Next thing you know, you have more opportunities that you never thought you'd ever want. All those promotions that I got, I never asked for any of them, they were just given to me. Sometimes in hallway surprises, I'm like, really? This is great. I didn't ask for it. But the more you create mass, the more you create gravity. Once you have enough gravity, you start to have so many opportunities that you are given a team to help achieve those, and you get even more mass and even more gravity. Soon you're like, stop. No more. I just literally can't handle this. But it's creating that success. And sometimes that success requires us to go above and beyond to achieve it. So if you feel like you don't get to pick which projects you want to work on, just start working on something, even if it has to be on your own time. Make sure that it aligns with the vision of your church leaders. And you might say, well I don't have access to them. And I'd say you do. I'd hope most of you have a staff meeting occasionally. And if you don't, you have a Sunday sermon. Find out where to go, where they need to go to, what they want, what their strategies and visions are, and align your experience, knowledge and toolset to support that. And you don't have to do something grandiose, just do something small. Something small creates mass, mass creates gravity, that creates opportunities, and you continue that over time and it quickly will lead you to a point where you can choose the battle plans and have a bigger difference in God's kingdom. Another thing that warriors need is a passion for the mission, and I hope you have that. I hope this conference helps you with that. It's only when we have passion that we can get over our weariness. It's only when we have passion that we can be catalyst that God has in store for us. Now the last thing every warrior needs is an army of allies. No warrior wants to fight the battle alone. Right? You want to be surrounded by an army of people who are like minded. Now you can find no better army of allies than you have in this rock community. It's an amazing thing. We always say Rock is not a product, Rock is a community. And if we had to get rid of one thing, we would get rid of the product. Because we could rebuild that product with the community. But if we just had a product, I don't think we could recreate the community anywhere near as easily. And I think we take for granted how powerful our rock community is, and how much more powerful it could be in the future. In fact, I was thinking about it. There's just under 700 people at RX twenty four. I think that the people in this room, even though they're a small part of our community, our full community can't be here over the next two days, but you are. But this group of just under 700, I think, is the most powerful community and most powerful group in God's kingdom right now. Cause with our experience, and our knowledge and our toolset, we can change the world. We can. Let me prove it to you. Did you know that this weekend, there are 1,200,000 people in attendance at a church running rock? That's a lot. Yeah, you should clap. Now, does everybody go to church every week? No. What's multiplier that we can get to get active attendance? I always hear four. Think I heard someone else say four. I always go with four, but I went with three because we need to be conservative. We don't want to overdo it. That means that 1% of all Americans attended a rock church this weekend. That's pretty incredible. Imagine if we just go above and beyond and we just level up in our experience, our knowledge and our use of this toolset to reach these people and draw them in and give them tools that help them become a better follower of Christ. And it's not just that 1% because more churches are coming. And if we build our community and we help more people get on board, we not only get them, but if we give these tools and we keep working on outreach tools for our people, how many more people will they be able to bring to our churches where they can hear the message and change the world? That's one fact. Another fact is, there's really over 28,000,000 people records inside of rock databases. That's 9% of all Americans are inside of a rock database. Their contact information is inside of a rock database. What if we could reenergize these people and reconnect them to our churches, and again, them the tools to reach the lost? What impact could we have? I love this quote from Margaret Mead. She says, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. If you look in history, that is true. There's not one revolution that started without a small group of committed people. We think that all these revolutions were caused by majorities, and they're not. They're caused by very, very small minorities. We always think that the American Revolution, everybody supported that, they did not. Most people were indifferent. A lot of people were actually supporting the other side, the English. And there was only a very small group of radicals supported the change. And even fewer actually fought. We need to take that to heart. This group, even this group tonight, we can change this world if we want to. If we put ourselves and we commit ourselves and we put extra energy into everything that we do. I think there's some lies that our culture talks about and tells us. One of the lies that goes around right now, especially sometimes in younger generations is never work more than you have to. Jesus said, if you're supposed to go one mile, go two. Now if you're required to work eight hours, I'm not certain he's saying work sixteen. That might be a little aggressive. But if you look at your screen time, all of our phones tell us how many hours a day and a week we spend on our screens. There's a lot of time in there that we can apply to bettering ourselves and going to the next level. And when we do that, we can have a huge impact in this world. And I think if we think through the future, sometimes it's good to think backwards, but sometimes when you think into the future, I think when we reflect back on this time in twenty years, maybe thirty years, we're going to say, you know what? Those were the days. We got to work on amazing technology and amazing projects in an amazing community with an amazing toolset. So right now, that means these are the days. I think to the weary warrior, sometimes it's like, oh man, this is a grind. But don't forget, in the future, you're going say, those were the days. Remember when we used to do those projects? Remember when we made that difference in the world? And so we need to really feel fortunate that we actually have these amazing projects that sometimes can make us very weary.