We had an awesome day today as a team of learners. There are so many opportunities today for church leaders to glean from what others are doing. I have heard it said it is far better when you can learn from other’s mistakes rather than making them all on your own. Today we got to spend some quality time with two of the campus pastors, Nathan Jeter and Brian Howe, of Northway Church. Every church could learn from Northway’s hospitality. They have a way of making people feel valued and important. It was great to hear that they had over 3,000 people show up for 10 different worship experiences at their 3 locations for Easter! Can you imagine?

I get an inside look at Northway because of my relationship with my brother Buddy, so to see how Brian and Nathan have grown and developed in their roles was phenomenal. We also got to take Brian and Nate to one of my favorite restaurants…the cheesecake factory…yea baby!

On the way home it was cool to get a chance to connect and process the things we learned together as a group. I want to give some special props to Kevin Kelly who took time away from work to spend with us…he also let me drive his suburban on the way home! Kevin is an emerging leader at Fellowship with an amazing story. His wife Shari heads up our Life Groups and they have enjoyed unprecedented growth under Shari’s leadership.

I made it all winter with out getting sick but it finally caught up with me yesterday. What I thought was just my annual battle with allergies has grown into a full-fledged cold. I’m busting some night-time cold medicine as I write this so let me just get that out there in case I have any serious typos or grammatical errors.