My wife and I had some really good and necessary conversations about our future this past weekend.  Before such conversations have been somewhat heated but this weekend we were able to be honest and blunt and I think we both feel like we are working together towards the same things in relation to family, living, and work.

I found out last week that a friend of mine from High School has redeveloped his passion for music.  This excites me because I consider the guy to be one of the best musicians I have ever heard play live and was sad when for years he neglected his talent.

I have been invited back to do another interview on the Shirley Thomas internet radio show on Wednesday, August 25^th at 10pm.  You can listen to the show anytime online though.

Also this week I met and got to spend some time with Justin Deweese, lead pastor at Awaken Church in Hixson, Tennessee.  Justin is a church planter and is an awesome guy.  I’m excited because I feel like he and I could become good friends and be a support to each other as we both do ministry in the Chattanooga area.

I have been reading in Ecclesiastes and it is causing me to have a “what’s the point?” kind of outlook on things.  I think this is good (for a time) because it helps you rid yourself of all the flaky stuff that gets in our lives.

What’s going on with you?

Last month though Katy and I attended a church planting conference in Cartersville.  Michael Lukaszewski (believe it or not – pronounces the way it looks) is the pastor of Oak Leaf Church in Cartersville and in session one of the church’s ‘Nuts and Bolts’ conference, he really challenged me.  He stepped before a group of hundreds of church planters seeking wisdom about church systems and strategies and addressed the deeper issue: spirituality.  Michael went through the story of Nehemiah, a book I had already been studying for leadership principles (posts coming soon) and mentioned how though Nehemiah had a passion and a vision, he was still patient and faithful in an extended time of waiting.  That time of waiting ultimately caused Nehemiah to be more prepared when his chance to carry out his God-given vision arose.

I’ve never been one to adapt a habit or system just to copy someone else, but after a very honest (and even heated) conversation with my wife on the way home, I determined that I needed to set aside forty days.  For the past month (and several more days) I have determined not to take any more steps toward church planting.  Rather than raising funds, making plans, and meeting with people, I have prayed.  Each morning during this time I have began the day by asking God what my prayer focus should be for the day, and then I have journaled what God has taught me throughout the days.

I have been lead to pray for things like purity, God’s favor, our marriage, and the less fortunate.  Most successful church plant stories include unexplained acts of God that will not come to a person or group that is pursuing their agenda and plan rather than God Himself.

So if any of you have wondered why you have not received any church planting updates from me lately, it’s because there simply is nothing to update you on.  My focus right now is not progress; it’s not movement.  My focus is God.  If I don’t make sure I have that right at this point, it will become more and more difficult to realign myself once things are in motion.  I’m taking the time now to make sure I don’t see the end as being another church in Chattanooga, but rather being in a place where I hear from God and am able to be used by Him.

Though we are still early in the game, we are being aggressive in pursuing any opportunities that could get us into Chattanooga or having us better prepared once we get there.  I have looked into a few job options up in C-town.  We are attending a one day conference for church planters later this month.  And I’m counting on my book selling half a million copies so I can quit work.

Ok, so maybe the last one is not very likely.  But we will be doing fundraising soon so we can minister full time and get plugged in to the city of Chattanooga.  So if you know of anyone with a generous heart, the resources to give, and a love for the people and souls in Chattanooga, please shoot me an email!  I plan on being intentional about building relationships with those who could partner with us in this way.

I also hope in the next year to put myself under the mentoring of some guys who have been successful church planters.  One of those is Michael Lukaszewski. Michael planted Oak Leaf church in Cartersville and is a great leader.  For real, you need to follow his blog and his twitter account as I think he always has solid and interesting things to say.  Michael and his staff are leading a one day conference for church planters and their teams.  By being just one day, June 26^th, and costing just $10, the Oak Leaf team is going out of their way to make this a user friendly resource for church planters in Georgia.

The conference is called nuts and bolts and if you would like information or to go with Katy and I, just click on the link or email me.

I’m looking forward to the conference Michael!

During the first song I began to sense an atmosphere of real worship.  I looked around to see many who through their posture or facial expressions seemed to be showing earnestness and abandonment.  I had to quit singing as I choked up and my throat became sore at the thought of the individual lives that God had touched and the people our church had impacted which was now resulting in many gathering to worship.

At the second song for some reason my mind strayed and I found myself reflecting on funny moments and good memories in my relationship with Katy that will in a few days result in our marriage.  I smiled and chuckled out loud as these thoughts screened through my mind.  I almost caught myself, wanting to think it was inappropriate for me to be thinking about her in a service about God but felt a peace as I realized I was worshiping.  My thoughts were causing me to experience joy and gratitude over a blessing God has provided me and I bowed to thank Him.

Finally I raised my head again to sing and found myself in the middle of a crowd that was predominantly my peers – people in their twenties.  I thought about how growing up in church and at Bible college I was prepared with the “facts” that after high school the majority of young people will leave church.  Yet I looked around and got goose bumps as I saw hundreds of young people, some with tattoos, long hair, and all with non-traditional church clothes, worshiping God.  Some were clapping, some were raising their hands, but most were engaged in what was going on.  My eyes gazed across a young man I know does not like the music or style of our church but returns because he has said we are the only place that has reached out to him and made it easy for him to connect.

I was unable to sing for most of the service, but I felt like I worshipped in a way I have not done in a long time.  I left the service with more appreciation for my blessings on earth and more in awe of what God is doing in those around me.  Being lost in worship I found myself secure in who God is and thankful for how He’s working in others, rather than jealous.

I had not “prepared my heart” for worship that morning, but apparently I came in a position that allowed me to hear from God.  May we continually live in a place where we can hear from God, because you never know when He may choose to take a routine moment and turn it into a time of true worship.

Having studies out and hearing your comments on issues like guilt, repentance, and forgiveness has given me a better understanding on these issues.  Though I desire to be a person who shows grace and forgiveness to others, my experiences cause me to wonder how well the American church as a whole is at exercising these Christ-like traits.

For some reason, churches and their members seem to have an unbiblical, hypocritically high standard for their congregation.  I fear some of our congregations see their mission as being moral police who have a political agenda of outlawing anything they consider sin and monitoring bad behavior without giving any concern to the heart of the people they are trying to convict.

Though preaching such a message in most US churches would get me labeled a heretic, I do hope to encourage most church members to quit relying on their church for their individual spiritual growth.  It took a moral failure and loosing my ministry position to drive me to a place of seeking intimacy and restoration with God on my own.  I believe most spiritual steps will be taken by a believer on their own with the church hopefully serving as a source of encouragement and empowerment.  Though the church does a great job of telling us not to sin, they do a horrible job of caring for and advising those who have fallen.

How have your experiences with the local church affected your attitude toward those who have failed and are in need of restoration?

Do you view the church as a hospital for the sinners, a place of acceptance and evangelism, or a cozy place of worship for Christians?

The service was unique to baptisms I grew up observing because, first of all, it was a baptism service.  It wasn’t five minutes at the beginning of the service when people are still finding their seats that a couple people were dunked and everyone clapped as a trained response.  There was an entire service taking place just for the focus and purpose of baptizing new Christians.  Our church does not have your traditional baptistery, so this type of service for us usually occurs in the creek at an area farm.  Due to weather this particular night, a pool was set up in the auditorium and the service was held at the church.  Over 500 people showed up for a service that involved no music, no preaching, and no offering!  We set a precedence that this is important to us and as a church we will celebrate when people get saved.

Secondly, the baptisms were different.  The most obvious thing was that there were more people to be baptized than I had ever seen in a service before.  I grew up in churches that found one or two people every month so we could have a baptism.  Rock Bridge Church though is an environment where people are being saved and lives are being changed in masses.  That’s a God thing!  Also, there was real life change going on.  It wasn’t 3 teenagers who grew up in Christian homes and have finally been talked into “taking the first step”.  There was story after story read of people who God had saved out of the trenches of life and who had come to our church to find acceptance and community.  Having their stories read as they were being baptized was also powerful, as compared to the preacher making the confession and the person being baptized nodding as was custom in my background.

I remember sitting in a Sunday night service a few years ago watching someone being baptized and thinking this should be more powerful.  This person’s life has been changed!  We should have some loud music or something!  I’m so thankful to be a part of a church that does celebrate life change.  A church where lives are being changed.  A church that gets more excited about baptism than a business meeting.  I hope more churches will shift their emphasis to the things that matter….like people.

The game itself was exciting.  There was a lot of action.  The pace of hockey games is really fast with a lot of quick substitutions.  The crowd was really into the game.  And of course, there were several fights.  As a matter of fact though, I was surprised at just how into the game the entire crowd seemed to be.  In my mind, hockey is not a major American sport, but an impressive amount of people were in the arena, all glued to the ice, cheering and reacting to almost every move.  I did get into the game and even jumped to my feet when the home team scored, but at times I still felt lost.  A lot of whistles were blown for rules I did not understand.  Players were penalized for slashing and dashing and flashing and all kinds of things I didn’t know about.

We tried to pick up on the rules from the discussion of some grade school kids behind us but I still could not help but feel like an outsider who had energetically intruded into the hockey nerd’s bubble.

Because I think about church all the time, I could not help but draw the comparison.  I have to wonder how many people every week have feelings about church like I did at the hockey game.  How many ‘outsiders’ give church another (or a first) try and end up feeling like they don’t get it or confused because they don’t understand or know the rules.  I grew up in church but was still exposed to how a non-church person may view our services every time I brought a visitor.  When we have a new person we care about accompany us to work, school or church for the first time, we over-analyze everything, trying to view it in their eyes.  I did this, and it was not until I did that I realized how so many of the things that occur in most church services only appeal to or can be understood by “church people.”

When reading the Bible, I cannot help but see that the church is designed to reach people with the gospel message.  Therefore, everything that we do should be to appeal to them.  If church is boring, out of touch, or fake, those who visit will immediately be turned off and non-receptive when the message of Christ is presented.

All I know is going to that hockey game was fun.  I enjoyed it.  There was a lot of cheering and yelling and I was impressed with the player’s skills, but I still could not play the game by the rules, much less explain it to anyone else.  Could the same be said about our churches?

Could somebody go to this page, scroll down to the “Group Illusion,” and please explain it to me?!?  I have wasted so much time at work the past few days staring at my screen, trying to figure out where the person disappears to.

Our church has begun a Thursday night service to serve as a third service because of overflowing crowds on Sundays.  I got to stand around before the service last night and talk with some of the volunteers.  It was really good to hear both old and young men showing excitement about this new, unique service our church is doing to reach our community.  I heard several stories by these guys where they talked about being convicted about not being involved enough or sacrificing enough within the church.  It was exciting for me to see some guys from different generations working together and showing pride in getting to be a part of what their church is doing.

I have to confess that I have fallen to this temptation as well.  I would show sympathy when hearing about another ministry’s misfortune while deep inside always feeling better about myself.  It was as though if I could show they were not all others thought they were, I was somehow better.  Or if I did not like a certain pastor or church, for whatever reason, I wanted to hear bad things about them to repeat.  I now find this very funny because in college I created the ministry motives test which basically says, if someone else accomplished what you wanted to do for God, how would you feel? Is my ultimate motive to see others come to Christ, or to be the one who gets them there?

It’s silly if you think about it; to get upset because someone hundreds of miles away is doing well at something you want to do where you are.  Or that someone in the church down the street is reaching people you have never even reached out to.  Yet, I have been there.

One of the fastest growing churches in America is Elevation Church.  I found out about them at the Unleash Conference in 2008 when I saw this kid.  I then found out the kid was a pastor.  I then found out this kid was the pastor of the largest group at the conference.  I rushed home to look up info on him, as though I was going to find something no one else knew.  Come to find out the kid was Steven Furtick, pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and I had no problem with him other than he was young.  His church has grown to about 5,000 in three years and he started the church when he was twenty-six.

I was jealous.  That’s all there is to it.  I thought he was too young, even though he was doing at his age what I wished I could be doing at the time.  I thought his church was growing too fast, which I doubt he really had much control over.  I was upset with him for a lot of things that were not his fault.

So how did I overcome this?  I educated myself.  It’s easy to look down on and accuse when you are ignorant.  So I read his blog (though I refused to “follow” it) and got some of his sermons on Itunes.  I forced myself to admit when he made good points or had great ideas.  It was hard for me, but I don’t want to become some bitter preacher who becomes a critic when people get saved.  I would never want someone to waste time getting upset or jealous of me over something so shallow and pointless.

When we look at other churches, or other businesses, or sometimes even other’s lives, we can immediately get critical in an attempt to look better.  All that does is reveal our own insecurity and repel a lot of people.  That’s not what I want for my life.  Perhaps if we rejoiced with others more, they would feel more supported and not fall into situations that cause us to have to mourn with them.

My reasoning for doing this has been that many of these pastors or churches have had a great impact on me.  I have been molded and challenged by being able to read or listen to many of the resources that come out of some of our countries largest congregations.  Visiting churches such as Willow Creek and North Point have made me better and allowed me to evaluate the way they do things.  I have not been to their churches, but getting to hear both Rob Bell and Joel Osteen in person (on separate occasions) made a great impact on me and God used those events, more than those men, to speak to me.

I also believe that God does not have a system.  I don’t think there is just one way to teach, preach, or do church that is His requirement.  So from what I know of most of the churches that make the 7,000+ attendees group, they are effectively reaching people as a result of God blessing that churches ministry.

All that being said, this post is actually about some of the things I have seen in many mega-churches that actually bother me, quite a bit.

I acknowledge that the following are generalizations and in no way do I believe what I am about to say applies to every large church (or does not apply to every small church).  The first thing that kind of irks me the wrong way when studying some of these ministries is that it appears to be all about image.  I love touring church building and hearing stories from church staff, but when that is the foot you lead with and you talk like there is never anything wrong at your church, that may be a problem.  So many larger churches have pages dedicated on their website to telling you all about their staff.  One area church’s site actually has a page of multiple posed pictures of the pastor and his wife you can print out to have, but no mention of Jesus.  Another top 10 attendance church in the nation which has a country wide TV ministry had the pastor visiting church member homes at Christmas to sing carols and eat cookies with the families.  Every home he visited was a highly attractive young couple living in at least half a million dollar homes.  It really bothers me that some churches try so hard to give a picture of their church as elite when I’m sure it has been reaching the downtrodden and outcast which has boosted their numbers in the first place.

Also, I find that many large churches seem to reach a point where they feel they must abandon what got them to where they are and begin doing what every other highly successful church is doing.  I see examples of this all over the entertainment industry where bands look like simple everyday guys on their first album cover but after “making it” they all grow their hair out and get tattoos, piercing, or do whatever else the groups they are trying to match are doing.

For church, could it not be that what made you big will keep you big?  I had someone advise me that once I get my ministry going, I need to stay a church planter as long as I can.  “You will eventually settle down into the roll of a pastor” he told me, “but even if your church grows to thousands, try to keep that church planter mindset of reaching everyone”.  Sure, more people and more money allow you and force you to do certain things in church world, but conforming is not one of those things.  It may have been being unique that got you where you are.  Part of why two out of three church plants fail is because they are built on some other church’s vision or philosophy.  So they fail.  Why has this not been learned by large churches that fail to continue growing when they feel that they need to offer certain ministries or start hosting conferences just because the big church across the country does.

Even though I have always been a part of large churches and in most areas feel they are best equipped to meet peoples needs, they, just like everyone else, are not perfect.  My hope is that as God continues to raise great ministries and great church leaders, He will strongly call us to authenticity and humility; two things He always blesses!