Beach Baptism from 10/11

Several times a year we head over to the beach for Beach Baptisms. A couple of Sunday's ago we did this for the last time of the year. It was great. Check out the video. Dustin. FO peeps, you Rock! Let's keep advancing His Kingdom for His glory!

2009 Beach Baptism from Fellowship Orlando on Vimeo.

Riley's Big Adventure:

Ever since Riley was 2 years old he loved race cars and just wanted to be a race car driver. He never got the chance to drive anything beyond a typical go cart, until today. A friend told us how a local race track was having a special day for young kids to test out real "1/4 midget" race cars. This was a dream come true for Riley, he loved it. Enjoy and feel free to laugh out loud, Riley is ok and loving it!

Longer behind the scenes version



Shorter, to the point version.

Riley's Big Adventure from Dustin Aagaard on Vimeo.

Callie Joy's Joy Ride

Callie Joy went right after Riley. Due to her inability to steer the race car correctly they improvised. They pick up the car put it on a 4 wheel dolley and had 3 teenagers push her around the track. Best part is she swears she was driving all by herself. She had no clue about the kids or about the fact that she 4 inches off the ground. Enjoy!

"The people God hates" via CNN.COM

This was on the front page of CNN.COM This is frustrating in so many ways. No wonder many people view God in a bad light. No wonder so many people are spiritually confused. Ugggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Disney Institute: Day 4, Quality Service

Today I spent the first half of the day playing golf for the FCA fundraiser golf tournament. FCA has played a huge role in my life and making me the Christian leader I am today. You can find out more or support them at http://centralfloridafca.org/ I mention this because it meant I missed a good portion of the Disney Institute. But I'll give you what I got and what notes I was able to gather.

Today's topic was on "Quality Service". Quality: high degree of excellence. Service: meeting needs. Disney's definition of Quality Service is to 1) "Exceed our guest expectations". 2) "Pay attention to all the details."

Hollywood Studios: today we spent an hour at Disney's Hollywood Studios to observe the following: safety, courtesy, show, efficiency, process, cast, sets. The amazing part about Disney isn't that are so good but it's that even when you examine them they still are nearly flawless. I was reminded of the HUGE value of simply slowing down and examining your own footsteps to see where you are at and where you are heading so you can determine which way you may need to turn.

Great Quote: "You don't build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them." Walt Disney

Infrastructure: The greatest thing I heard all day was regarding a grid Disney uses to evaluate their current reality and to determine what should happening next. It's difficult to explain the grid but the premise is while thinking of your organization think of these three questions. 1) What in your organization are the non-negotiables. 2) What in your organization are obvious things you should be doing, things your clients expect you to do. 3) Lastly name the things that if you did they would be considered going above and beyond. I spent some time thinking about what these questions would mean within FOkids and I realized they truly are brilliant. They help you focus on the proper things at the proper time.

Disney Institute: Day 3, People Management

Today was another great day!

Create your Culture: "Don't let your culture just exist, craft it by design to what you want." Four components of a successful culture: 1) By design. 2) Well-defined. 3) Clear to all. 4) Goal-oriented. They walked us through the new hire orientation process which sets the tone in creating and crafting the culture they have. During the orientation they creatively and passionately share their heritage, traditions, standards, and values. This seems to be where they fully ingrain the new staff member into the Disney way. They don't rush this process and understand the value of building a strong foundation for each employee. This reminded me of the impact of a great new hire/volunteer process can have. Something I look forward to working on in the future. One other thought was they listed 5-8 things they specifically and physically do to discourage potential employees. They want to make it difficult to go through their application process. They want you to want to be there. They believe if they make the hiring process easy then they are more likely to hire, train, and empower more of the wrong type of employee's. They only want to spend their time, money, and energy on people who have a real future and potential in the organization.

Great Exercise: Split into two groups and were told to, "as a team name as many Disney animated characters as we could in 60 seconds". We all jumped in and had fun with it. The winning team had 43 characters and our team had 35ish. Then they asked the question how many characters would we have come up with if we did the exercise alone. Clearly everyone knew there was no way we'd name nearly as much. The point: TEAM, Together Everyone Achieves More.

Earn Your Ears: After you are hired they "make you earn your ears" which means they take their time in training the employees until they are for sure ready. The trainee wears a special badge that describes they are in training and to please be patient. Thought this same idea would be beneficial in the church culture.

Cool Thought: Disney celebrates lateral moves just as much as they do promotions. Thought this was a huge conviction for most churches and most communities. Do we celebrate when our volunteers or staff go to different departments in the church? What if they went to a different church? If we are Kingdom minded shouldn't we celebrate that as well?

Pride: One of the exercises they led us in was to come up with the top 5 things we are proud of in our own organizations. Whatever those are we must bring those up in the new hire orientation process. This will give them a sense of pride as well to be part of such a team.

No Excuses: We went backstage to the Epcot's Cast Members (their employees) only area. This place was unreal!!! There goal is to remove all excuses for their employees to be "show ready" when they go on their shift. Check out what they have available at each employee center and there are lots of them. They have shoe shinning, a hair stylist, computer lab, place to cash check, mail things, get a notary, Driver License center, break areas, food venues, and you don't have to do your own laundry. You turn your dirty clothes in and get clean ones. They even have a "no excuses vending machine". Put your money in and you can get such items as deodorant, shaving cream, mints, and panty hose. There is NO reason their employees shouldn't be ready for action. It was pretty cool to see.

Walt Quote of the Day: "You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality." Walt Disney. Walt cared for people more than anything because he knew they were the ones who would make his dreams come true.

Diseny Institute: Day 2, Leadership Excellence

Today was another awesome day out at the Disney Institute. One quick note, one member of the class is from Germany and as we were talking he was amazed people can go to church here in the States for FREE! He said in Germany everyone pays taxes for church and the government pays for the churches to run. I was in shock, needless to say I invited my new German friend to our FREE church this weekend. Siegfried, if you are reading this-you are the man! Praying for God's grace and peace to keep you and guide you, blessings!

Stories & Values: Disney will tell you they are in the story making business. Everything they do they are making a story, including every "cast member" (their term for a Disney employee). They phrased it like this, "every leader is telling a story about what he or she values". Meaning don't tell me the mission statement or the business card with your vision on it. I see what you value by your actions. I see what you care about and what drives the organization by what the employees/volunteers do not what they say they do. What is it we say is important by our actions? Another great quote of theirs is, "we judge ourselves by our intentions. Others judge us by our actions." Think of Simba from the Lion King, what does he value in the movie? Whatever your response it was because you watched his story which you determined what you thought he valued. He never came out with a written statement on what he valued, he told you by a story. We are all writing stories.

Funny Trade: Hilarious story was told about Al Michaels being traded to Universal for a original Disney Rabbit. Full story @ http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/10/business/fi-rabbit10

Fun Fact: In the original Disney movie Fantasia, Walt Disney wanted movie theater employees to spray water bottles during certain scenes and incense during other scenes to enhance the story. Talk about ahead of his time. Of course the movie theaters told him, "there is no way".

#1: The CEO of Walt Disney said, "I'd like for the Walt Disney Company to be universally recognized as the most admired company in the world." This statement set the tone for the day and for the leadership at Disney. A reoccurring theme we heard all day was how much they focused on their cast members not their customers. The whole business model is go above and beyond for your teams and your teams will do the same for the customers. Disney employees love working there. As a matter of fact the average tenure in their laundry department (which is the biggest in the world) is 23 years. That my friends is vision. When people don't want to stop doing laundry because they love it that much you have a successful leadership model.

Vision: They talked a lot about vision and the importance of clarifying your vision and communicating it often, passionately, and creativity. A cool story about Walt Disney, when he cast vision for the movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". They said Walt invited 40 employees out to his studio which only had one light bulb (they say to save $) bought everyone dinner and dessert then shared for three and a half hours the story of Snow White. One huge importance to notice was that Walt was willing to sacrifice (1 light bulb) so his employees were taken care of (as they ate a nice meal and dessert).

Make Time: Another theme I heard over the day was that Disney makes sure its employees have time to evaluate, reflect, take risk, do research/surveys, etc. to take their departments to the next level. Most business and ministries complain that there is no time to do all that, we need to tend to the clients/customers. Disney philosophy is you don't have time not to do it. In the church world I often see myself and others take way too much on without proper infrastructure in place to run with it. Thus I find myself with my head down focused on the day to day instead of the future and where we are going and how we are to get there. Make time to evaluate, to plan, to be creative, to celebrate victories, etc.

"The actions of one, multiplied by many, can change a culture."

Character of a leader: Was boiled down to 3 things. 1) Set the example for others to follow. (Christ didn't tell what to do, he gave us an example to follow; my interpretation.) 2) Create relationships for life, (I Thessalonians 1:18). 3) Spark excitement and enthusiasm in others.

Great exercise: Think about your role model, mentor, or someone who has had a positive influence in your life. What did they do to build you up? How did they teach you or care for you? What made them a credible leader? What values did they reflect? How did their influence your progress in life? Whatever your answers are those are same ideas, thoughts, and suggestions we should use to lead and influence those in our ministry/organizations.

If you have any thoughts or questions you'd like me to ask the instructors feel free to let me know and I'll post the answer.

Disney Institute: Day I, Creativity

All this week I have the awesome honor of being able to participate in the Disney Institute for Business Success. Someone provided a scholarship for me to attend this in hopes I'd be able to learn how to use the same principals to further His Kingdom (not Mickey's, God's). So many people have already asked that I share some of the main points or thoughts. So God willing I'll be blogging every night what I learned that day. Today's topic was on "Creativity". Tuesday is "Leadership Excellence". Wednesday is "People Management". Thursday is "Quality Service". Friday is "Brand Loyalty". Hopefully I'll explain my thoughts clearly but if you have questions on anything just let me know. Now there is no way I'd be able to share everything I learn so what I'll do each day is share what I thought was particularly useful.

1. Collaborative Culture: Disney is know for its consistency throughout all aspects of their entertainment. They explained that if they come out with a theme like "Pirates" then every department would come together and learn from one another on how to implement that theme throughout each department. So the "food and beverage" department has freedom and is expected to share thoughts to the "merchandise" department and this happens throughout each department including the "janitorial" department. My first thought was what if each ministry in churches collaborative together to openly support each other. Then I expanded that thought with the Kingdom in mind and thought, "what if churches collaborative together for His glory and didn't worry about their turf/crowds/etc." So the question was how can we help our organizations have a better "collaborative culture". My thought was you have to have at least one department set the trend. One department has to look after and serve another to bring everyone's insecurities down. For example last week Chad Harper our Student Pastor and Jack Thomas are Creative Arts guy both took most of their week and helped me transform one of my environments. It had nothing to do with their "department/ministry" yet they served me with their ideas, hands, and time. Them leading like that totally makes me want do the same back to them or other ministries. Also Disney nominates one person on staff to give a couple hours a week to head up this idea to bring "accountability" to ensure collaborating gets done.

2. Brainstorming Exercise: They did one exercise I thought was great. They had a problem; lets say it's "How can we make people feel welcomed at church". They then took a sheet a paper and posted 9 sticky notes on it. At the top they wrote the problem, "How can we make people feel welcomed at church." The directions were to get in a circle around a table. Pass the paper around and write one way to solve that problem per sticky note. Don't think about the details just dream about potential solutions. Try not to read the others, just post your thought and pass it on. Imagine 10 people in a group with 4 problems being tossed around in a circle. In a matter of minutes we had 50 plus potential solutions and were able to hear from 10 people; very effective.

3. Brainstorming, "Yes if or Yes and": Disney made it clear one of the main ways they come up with their "magic" was by a very strategic way of brainstorming. Some rules to their brainstorming are: 1) Bring diverse people to the table. Bring different departments, ages, etc. 2) When brainstorming do not analyze ideas yet. Accept all ideas at the beginning, analyze later. Disney's rule is "Yes if... or yes and..." Meaning if someone throws out an idea you can not say you like it or don't like it you must say "yes we can do that if..." or "yes we can do that and..." For example lets say to solve our previous welcoming problem example we wanted to hire Miley Cyrus to sing in the lobby every week to welcome people, someone would then say, "yes we can do that if we kidnapped Miley or had a billion dollars to pay her."

Hope this helps and again God willing I'll be sharing some thoughts every evening.

Jeremiah: Simply Obedient

Recently I've been reading and studying the prophet Jeremiah found in the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 13 God is asking Jeremiah to do a series of events that don't make sense. 1) God tells Jeremiah to "Go and buy a linen loincloth and put it on, but do not wash it." Jeremiah's response, "So i bought the loincloth as the Lord directed me, and I put it on." 2) God tells Jeremiah, "Hide the loincloth in the Euphrates River in a hole in the rocks." Jeremiah's response, "So I went to the Euphrates River and hid it as the Lord directed." 3) God tells Jeremiah, "Go back to the Euphrates River and get the loincloth you hid there." Jeremiah's response, "So I went to the Euphrates River and dug up the loincloth."

What I am so impressed with is Jeremiah's obedience. God keeps giving him these crazy instructions and Jeremiah's response each time is, "So I...(obeyed God)." Man what faith and trust as he proves his faith through his obedience. Every time we read scripture the Holy Spirit speaks to us, calling us to do crazy things for His glory. The question for us both is, what's our response. I pray each of us have the same response that Jeremiah had, a simple yet radical faith that is full of obedience no matter what the instructions are.

My wife is Hiliarious!

Over the weekend my brother Derek and his wife Tiffany came to my sons soccer game on his scotter, Frank the Tank. After the game with hundreds of people pulling in and pulling out my wife decides she wants to take Frank for a little spin. She didn't bother to ask my brother one question before zooming off. And becuase of that she made my week and reminded me why I love her so much! Check out my smooth wife, very funny! Once she starts going turn the volume up a bit to get the full effect.

Pretty funny huh? It's ok to laugh no one got hurt, she laughed, and Derek got Frank running again after a while. TJ thank you for a great laugh, you ROCK! Keep em coming. Be sure to leave a comment for TJ, she'd love to hear from you regarding her latest adventure.