• Special opportunity for senior pastors of church plants that are in the pre-launch phase or first year or so of their plant.
• We’re about to celebrate the five-year anniversary of Elevation Church on February 12-13, and we want to honor one church plant team with an all expenses paid road trip to be our guests of honor.
• Senior pastors, send us an email or a video with your story to churchplantingroadtrip@elevationchurch.org. We’ll select one winner and bring him, and four of his team up to celebrate with us.
• Emails and videos must be submitted within the next 48 hours.

It’s Friday and I’m delivering a final thought on something I learned this year at THR3E.  If you keep up, you know that we did the event as a recap of what we learned in our first 3 years of ministry.

And for me, I learned how healthy it is to remember the past faithfulness of God.

Pastor Steven shared the down and dirty ways that we have developed the Elevation brand and culture. He detailed the mistakes we’ve made and defined our best practices.  He intimately shared the cost of doing what we do in the ministry and unloaded wisdom at a rate that couldn’t be re-tweeted.

The content of the day was for a church leader what a Brazilian Steakhouse is to a carnivore. It was a culmination of everything God had done over a short period of time. Not just numbers but even the processes and systems that were born out of frustration and hard work. And everything was a reminder to me of God’s faithfulness.

I’ve been blessed enough to be a part of Elevation since the beginning. I’ve watched Pastor walk with God through the beginnings of Elevation and develop as a leader of our generation. And I can’t hear him preach about what God has done here enough.

Today is the last day to get a cheaper ticket to our Impart event (the second coming of THR3E). You can sign up here. Whether you are there or not, I’ll be on the front row experiencing information overload remembering the faithfulness of God through it all. And I think that is healthy.

Here is your next installment in a week long series on some of the things we learned at our recent Thr3e event. Thr3e was an incredible day as Pastor Steven unloaded so many leadership principles that my hand hurt trying to write everything down.

The one that stands out the most, though, was the closing session when Pastor Steven got pretty vulnerable in a message called The Cost of the Calling. In this message, Pastor talked about the sacrifices he has had to make through each new leadership and ministry transition of the church. Sometimes the cost is emotional, other times it takes a physical toll, but there always is a price to pay as we walk in what God has called us to do. This was real life, honest stuff that you don’t tend to get at a conference, but it was filled with encouragement and hope as I personally was challenged that in order to embrace the calling and gifting God has on my life, I can’t avoid the sacrifice and pain. I must embrace it, because it is through these times that God brings an even greater anointing and effectiveness in the ministry He has for me.

If you are the lead pastor of a church, I would do whatever it takes to get to our Impart event to get the same kind of honesty from Pastor Steven on what it looks like to lead a dynamic move of God. Click here for all the details on Impart, and don’t miss the early bird registration deadline this Friday.

And if you sign up before Friday, you have a chance to win a fully loaded Kindle. Get those details here.

I look forward to seeing you in October at Impart.

The biggest thing I took away from THR3E was the way we took care of everyone who came.  And, when I say, “took care,” I’m saying we did everything we could possibly imagine to make their day with us as smooth and memorable as possible.  Let me list out some of what we did:

• Each church was provided a personal concierge to answer any questions and provide any assistance needed.

• We took it upon ourselves to make reservations at restaurants and hotels for their convenience.

• Our volunteers were never caught without a bottle of water and a pocket of mints.

• When they got to the restaurant where we had made a reservation we had been there before them to leave them a gift.

• We even had customized directions at the end of the day to get them where they needed to go.

So why would we go to these lengths? Because, we just believe that the reason people came to THR3E was to experience Elevation Church unfiltered. We believe in honor and we strive for excellence in everything we do.

This was an amazing event for everyone involved and WE’RE DOING IT AGAIN on October, 27 at an event we’re calling Impart.

Early-bird registration for Impart ends this Friday so if you want to be stuffed with vision and treated like a king for a day click here and register now!

This week we’re sharing some of the things we learned from our Thr3e event earlier this year. Here’s one of the best things I walked away with:

To become all you’re destined for requires sacrifice.

It wasn’t worded exactly like that, but that’s how it came together in my head. If we’re ever going to go where we’ve never been before, it’s going to be hard. Lots of sacrifice along the way. No one gets to go where they’re intended to go without feeling incredibly challenged along the way.

If you did, would it really be that exciting anyway? Probably not. It’s like being handed a gold medal for a race you never ran. You might think that’s great and claim it’s working smarter, not harder. I’d say…lame…and you’re missing the point. I think the process is the point, and what we learn along the way matters. And how we learn it matters.

All that to say, you don’t get to cheat destiny. You don’t get to decide you’re great and then you just are. You become great. You work toward greatness. God wants you to become great. But, you don’t get the badge until you’ve sacrificed along the way.

Don’t miss out on your opportunity to get amped up about what God’s done through this church and how it could help your process at Impart on Oct. 27. And after you register, read this and try to land a new loaded Kindle. Bam.

All right, here’s the deal. We’re getting kinda crazy with a giveaway for the people that are choosing to come spend a day with us in late Oct for our Impart event.  If you haven’t heard about the event, this link will catch you up.

Registration for the event is nearly full and with the early bird pricing ending this Friday, we’re expecting it to fill up fast.

So, now on to the contest…if it seems like I’m delaying, I am, this is not a cheap giveaway. Beginning today and running through this Friday, July 31st, we will be randomly selecting a winner of a brand new Kindle loaded with 10 of Pastor Steven’s favorite books.

“How do I win?” Good question. All you have to do is tag #impart in any of your tweets and we will randomly select 1 winner a day for 5 days (that’s 5 loaded Kindles).  You can only win once and we will select the winner every day at 5pm EST from the qualifying tweets of the day. So if you don’t win today keep trying ’til Friday.

You do have to be a paid registrant to the Impart event to qualify so sign up here today. You also have to have a twitter account, so join the revolution or “twitterverse.” And if you don’t know what twitter is then you probably don’t know what a Kindle is either so no hard feelings.

If you do win, you’ll know who you are. Don’t contact us, we’ll contact you. This contest if officially on starting right now. Tweet away.