One of My Biggest Mistakes as a Church Planter

Well, before I start, the only people that may relate to me on this post could be church planters. Not sure if your experience is like mine, but if it is, then you feel like you are always failing.

This is such a hard job and I now see why that when I started many people said if you can do anything else in your life but plant a church, then do it! You have to be called to this stuff. This is tuff.

Well, the bottom line is that I messed up the vision. Yeah, the vision. Yeah, the number one thing that everyone in the church planting world tells you to keep at the front of all things and do not let go of. Some even saying, "Be mean about the vision". Well, let me tell you how I messed up and maybe it will give you a wake up call, or maybe not. Maybe you will fail too and it will take you failing for God to bring you where He wants to bring you.

I had the vision. I spoke the vision. Over and over again. My people knew it. Great!, Right? No.... People started to get tired of the vision and some even left. Disheartening, but God is in control when we are weak and even foolish. So, what was my problem? For the last serveral years, with my core group and even after we launched the church, I was preaching the vision and kept pointing our people toward the vision. It looked like this: our people ----> VISION. Right? That is what I learned. But the problem was that I was pointing people to a mirage that did not exist. I was pointing people to great words of unfulfillment. Tragedy. God has taught me that the vision is not: our people ---> VISION, but OUR PEOPLE <----- vision. The vision of Jesus Christ was to come and save a depraved, broken, helpless world. To give us hope and life. Paul says in Ephesians that we are to equip the Saints for good works, not point the saints to a non reality.

You see, I was saying "Hey guys, lets do this and this". "Hey guys, what if God did that?" But none of this and that ever happened. The saints were not equipped.

Now, once the Saints are equipped, then you can point them to what God has called your church to do. Also, make sure the visionary has people around him to help organize and layout the vision in a calendar where you can see the vision in ink and what it looks like detailed out through a year. That has been another problem in our church. I preached the vision, but people did not see it played out. The vision was words, no one experienced it in reality. Now we are heading into a season where we have the vision, the Saints are equipped and they can see the vision. God is in the organization and clarity.

For some reason, although I have failed badly, God has kept people in our faith family and they have come around me to support me. I have a renewed passion. Now the goal is preaching the vision to our people and having them catch it and role with it this time around. This is tuff, but worth it. This is still my calling and I pray that God would use my weakness to make His name great. The challenges of church planting! Wow, what a ride of faith and failure.

My 11 Goals of 2011

The differenece from a vision and a new years resolution is that a vision is a life long goal that can be broken down each year to fulfill the overall vision. A new years resolution is mostly intended to try something different or try to change something. Some of my goals relate to the vision that God has called me to and some are goals that I have. Most people make goals and keep them for about 5 days. I hope to keep many of these goals at least past January, ha. So here they are:

1. Keep house clean
2. Buy a home
3. Give my life to the gospel
4. Get a blue belt in Gracie Jujitsu
5. Develop closer relationships with my family and friends
6. Read more books
7. Watch less TV
8. Eat healthier
9. Learn to live on less
10. Work hard at work
11. Date my wife more

What are your goals this year?

Relationships Matter

I just spend an hour and a half deleting over 1200 Facebook friends. This probably doesn't sound like the perfect sentence to start off a blog titled "Relationships Matter". The point is, is that I have a lot of relationships, but I do not have a lot of meaningful relationships.

The last few months have been good with my wife. I have been spending meaningful time that with her that counts.

At church, I have realized that we have a lot of stuff to do and not enough people to do it. And all pastors said... "Amen".

I am thinking and praying through my life and focusing my time on relationships that I can build into. Anyone that knows me knows that I love people, but may also know that it is hard for me to go deep. I can go into deep conversations, but that is different than going into deep life together. I now have 301 friends. Maybe some more of those need to be deleted. My goal is to try invest well into people God has close to my life. I am not hating those I deleted, just trying to focus on people that are currently in my life to some degree.

God tells us to love Him and to love others well. I have been so spread thin, that neither have been done well. Hopefully through obedience and faith that will continue to change.

The Old School and New School Gospel.

I spoke at Student Venture, Chattanooga last night. I always enjoy being with that group of believers. The staff walk by faith and challenge the kids to share their faith and disciple them.

I compared our cultural gospels (which is really no gospel at all) to the true gospel of Christ. We talked about the Old School Gospel and the New School Gospel. Here is how I broke them down:

The Old School Gospel says" What You Do" gets you to heaven. Read your bible, pray, don't cuss, quit dipping, pull up your pants and go to church. This is a more legalistic or Pharisaical type "gospel". How good can you look and be, determines if you can go to heaven, and then they add Jesus. This is not the gospel, but a man made attempt to get to heaven and add Jesus name to it.

The New School Gospel says "How You Feel" gets you to heaven. You see this in our culture and many churches when you hear an alter call and someone says to you, "You don't really want hell do you?" Then the person says, "No, of course not" Then the preacher or whoever is getting ready to lead them into a man centered "gospel prayer" says ok repeat after me and then proceeds to lead the person in a felt need prayer that has a lot to do with the persons emotions and little to do with the King Jesus. They just Him on.

The Biblical gospel says that salvation has nothing to do with you. The Bible speaks that we are dead in our sins (Romans 3:21-23), but God has given a gift of life. He actually became our sin. It has nothing to do about what we do or how we feel, but who He is.

If you have lived or are living in the Old School or New School Gospel, I pray that you would leave it and turn to the true gospel. If you are a pastor, church planter or a spiritual leader, lets keep the gospel about Jesus and not what we can do.

Can You Play Poker at Church?

Top 10 list on why we can play poke at church:

10. To engage our community.
9. Wings!
8. Men need a time for healthy community.
7. Prizes are involved.
6. Change peoples mind's about church and God.
5. Wings!
4. Men have a competitive nature. Why not fulfill it with the gospel in mind.
3. I will beat down CaseyB in this tournament.
2. Church is not about preaching at people, but being real with them.
1. Men can finally tell their wives that they are going to church.

You are invited tonight to Awaken Community Church to play Texas Hold'em. No sign ups, just show up around 6:00pm. Those who place in the top 3 will win prizes. We have the cards, chips, prizes, drinks and food; you just show up.

Located at 8609 Walnut rd Hixson, TN 37343. email justin@awakencc.org for ?'s.

Community Now: "Show Some Love Week"

If you think about the American life and the American dream, they both have an "I" right in the middle of them. Your American dream is about you, your car, your house, your family, your money, your stuff. Most of us live life for us. It is just natural; I live for me. But what if a culture changed? What if a whole culture changed the way that they lived for something bigger than themselves? It is hard to imagine, because again, "I" would not be in the middle.

The gospel of Christ calls us to give up our lives because He gave up His life for us. As obedient believers in Christ we should Enjoy what God has done for us; given us grace, but we should also be extending His glory to the nations like He commanded. (Matthew 28:18-20)

Awaken Community Church is getting ready for a blitz in our community. We want to open our doors and also be out in the community to get to know people. November 14th -22nd we will have a week long community focus. The goal is to target people that may be sketchy about church and therefore they do not go. Here is the lineup:

Sunday the 14th - Community Wide Coupon class
Monday the 15th - Community Texas Hold 'em - There will be wings there!
Tuesday the 16th - Community Raking Leaves. We will rake your leaves. Just ask!
Wednesday the 17th - Craft Night.
Thursday the 18th - Community Open Mic Night - Show off your talent: song, poem, comedy..
Friday the 19th - Family Movie Night. Bring the kids to this one!! Big screen and food!
Saturday the 20th - Hungry? - Thanksgiving dinner for anyone in the community.
Sunday the 21st - Community Town Hall meeting. What do you want to see happen in the community?

Church address is 8609 Middle Valley rd. I hope to see you there one night. Its about getting the focus off of us and reaching out to others.

reFocus: God and Your Job

For some reason it seems odd to hear a sermon about God and your job, but the reality is, is that your job consists, for most people 1/3 of your life. If you are an entrepreneurial or a stay at home mom, then even more time. There are many observations that you can have concerning God and your job, but we focused on three. They are:

1. Your job is not about your job, but God's glory. We exists to enjoy Gods grace and to extend His glory. This includes work. Work is not about the check, the promotion or any kind of status, but about the glory of God.
2. Your job is not about your job, but responsibility. Even before sin entered the world, we were required to be responsible with work (Genesis 1). Then we sinned (Genesis 3) Now work will be tough, but the responsibility is the same.
3. Your job is not about your job, but relationships. Consider the people you work with. Your buddy, the guy that gets on your nerves and the girl that joins you in conversation as you both make fun of the guy that gets on your nerves. All of these people matter to God and should matter to us, even if they are just our "co-workers".

God ultimately challenges us to carry our cross's for His glory even in work (and school). I hope this encourages you to reFocus your job.