Interning at North Point
Some of you have asked, “What exactly are you doing in Atlanta for three months?” The short answer is, “drinking from a firehose.”
I’ll spend the next couple of posts explaining what’s going on here for us. Let me start with the learning component.
1. Experiencing the North Point environments. This runs the gamut…Sunday morning worship services at Alpharetta, Buckhead, and Browns Bridge, as well as each of the nearby partnerships…KidStuf, 7|22, MarriedLife Live, GroupLink, Inside Out, well, you get the idea. And not just here, but visiting the strategic partners whenever they launch a new environment. This weekend several of us will go up to Red Rock in Colorado Springs to encourage them for their first Sunday service.
2. Attend staff meetings. This includes a weekly all-staff meeting, as well as meetings with the Campus Expansion team. It also means sitting in on meetings related to service programming, groups, care, admin, kids & youth ministries, and more. Observing the culture of how events and ministries are engineered, executed, and evaluated.
3. Building relationships with staff. This can’t be overstated. I have a rare window of opportunity that is not to be repeated, where I get to hang out by the water cooler and see up close how the organization is managed. This component has been fascinating and very rewarding. It’s a chance to be “backstage” at North Point—and I’m here to tell you these people are the real deal. Already I’ve been privileged to see the staff here deal with some unusual circumstances, like the resignation of Reggie Joiner, and how they’ve processed and handled that. I’ve been thoroughly impressed.
4. Observe and question the culture. Tonight I attended my first MTR meeting, where they selected individuals from the MTR to be a part of the elder selection team. North Point’s constitution is unusual, and it’s cool to see it in motion as I contemplate writing the consitution for our new church in Jacksonville.
5. Reading. Lots of good stuff has been recommended by the leadership team here—mostly books on leadership and management, but stuff more directly related to church, as well. Right now I’m reading Andy’s new book, “Communicating for a Change,” and a quick read by Patrick Lencioni called, “The 5 Temptations of a CEO.”
6. Evaluating North Point resources. Beginning now to select sermons that we will use in 2007, and determining the sequence.
As you can imagine, 13 weeks starts to look like a very, very short period of time. So much to learn and observe, so many relationships to build. We would love to stay longer, except for one thing…we can’t wait to get to Jacksonville!!
