About 18 months ago a group of people came together with a big hairy audacious goal of helping people far from God but close to us in Berkeley County find freedom in Christ.

What we said from the beginning is that this is not a church for us and this is not a church for casual followers of Christ.

We are here to BE the church.

On every step of the journey since then you have stepped up to the challenges presented to us as a church and have run after that goal with full force.

In fact, I think it could be rightly stated of Freedom Church that we do anything short of sin to reach people far from God.

Thank you.

On February 3, 2013 at both of our services I will be introducing a new intiative,LOVOLUTION, that will be the next major step in continuing towards that original goal.

I want to ask that everyone who calls Freedom Church home be there at a service that weekend.  No excuses.

We will be announcing the most important thing we have done as a church to date and the big faith it is going to take to get there.

As I prayed over this intiative this morning I felt a sudden urge to say to God, “this is impossible God – this cannot happen” and I felt like he spoke to my spirit and said, “I know”.

“What is impossible with man is possible with God.” Luke 18:27

You don’t want to miss this.

Do you ever just grow weary of something?  Just throw your hands up and say, “I’m tired of it”.

I know I do.  Sometimes I am justified.  Sometimes I am selfish.  Sometimes I am just, well tired.

Well, I am tired of the lack of civility, honor and lingual responsibility shown by our Christian subculture of  bloggers, tweeters and facebookers.

I am tired of reading another blogger attacking someone because they don’t agree with them.
I am tired of reading another tweet about how awful “the church” is from people who should be its biggest fans.
I am tired of seeing names thrown around by people who say they love Jesus about other people who say they love Jesus.
I am tired of seeing friends of mine called “Celebrity Pastors” by people who don’t know them, have never talked with them and simply don’t like the fact that they are funny and draw a crowd and said something stupid in a 30 second clip on youtube.
I am tired of there being such group think in our circles that if someone has an opinion and it does not match your opinion you get to roast them online personally and question their sanity, their love for God and their worth as a human.

One day, and I hope it will be soon, we will wake up and realize that the words we use are important, they are said about people who have spouses, children and church members who love them and google them often.  Shame on us as a community that we fight in the public square like a hoard of middle school girls fighting over a one direction backstage pass.  It’s embarrassing.

I say stupid things from the stage sometimes.  I tweet stupid things sometimes.  Praise God I am not “celebrity” enough in the eyes of the Christian Cannibal Culture to get a weekly review of those things in print.

When will it stop?  When will the sides of the Christian subculture stop dueling like the gangs in the movie The Outsiders and just do what God has called you to do?  I hope soon for the sake of the world.

There should be room to have intellectual discussions, disagree on orthodoxy or philosophy without attacking a person.  Without throwing around strong words with weak forethought of their consequences.

You and I probably have some different beliefs.  If we were the same there would not be a need for both of us.  How about this, I won’t call you names and you don’t call me names and maybe just maybe they will know we are His disciples by our love for one another.

Deal?

I tweeted yesterday that we were using vimeo along with The City to do our leadership training and had a few people ask, “how?”.  So I thought I would give a 250 word answer here.

Trying to get all of our community group leaders together for training was hard.  Real hard. So we decided (thank to a similar idea from @toddmag) to the take the training to them.

So here is what we do.

• I record a video at least once a month with a 12-18 minute training from me on something to do with community groups.
• I make that video password connected because it’s for leaders only on our Freedom Church vimeo page.
• I then post that video along with brief instructions to our Community Group Leaders page on The City.
• I also add other articles, some questions and other videos from other people if pertinent.
• I ask everyone who is a leader to watch, comment (a form of attendance gathering) and dialogue on the city within the month.

This way we are having once a month training, on-going dialogue and questions with a deadline but people can watch on their schedule.

Has worked much better than “Lets meet on Wednesday at 7:00pm at this house”.

Prior to starting Freedom Church in May of 2011 I spent the better part of the previous 10 years as a direct line assisting Pastor to a great Lead Pastor, Greg Surratt.

In that role there were a couple of things that I think I learned, sometimes the hard way, about how to really help your lead Pastor in some of the more practical things of getting things done.

I am now begining the process of training several assisting Pastors myself and so I thought this would be a great way to catelouge in such a way that may benefit others as well.  I like basketball so thus the imagery.

Part One: Never play Forward

One of the best things you can do as an assisting Pastor is be a sounding board and a safe place for quick sometimes raw communication for your senior leader.  One of the mistakes I have seen assisting Pastors and assistants make is to forward on an email from the senior leader in the flow of the delegation process.  Never forward emails from your senior leader raw.  It’s not that he says anything inappropriate or unethical but just as we know all leaders go unshaven and wear their comfy clothes on their day off that does not mean we take a picture and use that as the website photo.

When you are sent an email from your leader with instructions to take care of something he is not suggesting that you simply forward that email onto someone else.  He could have done that.  But instead spend five minutes and…

• think of a subject line that will get attention
• re-write the instruction from you so that you will be the person who will be followed up with
• give clear deadlines and a professional explanation that represents your leader well
• offer for a clarity phone call if needed

It’s a small thing, but knowing that he can write to you in the raw and that you will clean it up a little will help you leader confidently give you tasks that you can do for him that will enhance the overall health of the organization.

I am a productivity junky.

I love  my asana, GTD, lists, tasks and the satisfaction of checking a lot of stuff off in a day.

In my role at Seacoast this is what filled my day.  Tasks.

I still think that tasks and productivity should be a part of everyone’s life and simply put at some point we need to get stuff done, but in my role as a lead Pastor I don’t have as many tasks.  Basically my role at Freedom Church is to:

1.  Study scripture.
2.  Prepare and preach scripture.
3.  Allow scripture to set the mission.
4.  Hear from God to follow the vision to get be a part of that mission.
5.  Disciple elders.

On a task list these don’t really work out so well:

• Check #1 off and it re-appears the next day,
• #2 keeps happening every single Sunday.
• #3 is done. (see Luke 4)
• #4 is messy and never really done.

If you have been following the political debates at all you are aware that quite the squirmish broke out about bayonets in this past debate.  Truth is, we have many more bayonets now in the military (in fact the most we have ever had).

I don’t hold the fact that President Obama did not know that we still used bayonets against him because truthfully I did not know this and I actually said, “ouch” when President Obama delivered the line. I doubt Governor Romney knew either or he would have quickly jumped on that zinger.  Obviously the writer on the President’s team who wrote that line in advance of the debate also did not know.

This post is not political and I ask that it stay that way even in the comments because I think there is something deeper here that we can learn about our human nature.
Human nature just assumes that “old ways” are wrong ways.

As I look at how churches grow in healthy ways I think there are “bayonets” in our arsenal that we can easily assume are ineffective and the fact is that they are still very effective weapons of warfare.

1.  Prayer.  There is still absolutely no replacement for prayer, conversation with God. We can try as we might to grow churches on our own but the church belongs to God.  We need to pray more now than ever.

2. Love.  Jesus told us that the world around us would know that we were his disciples because of our love for one another.  We can be hip, cool, drink blue moon and wear cool shirts but if we do not love people we are toast.  Love is old school but it is the only way to grow healthy churches.

3. Belonging.  I like belonging somewhere.  I like being a part of my Seacoast and ARC crew.  I like being a part of my family.  I like being known by my friends.  Everyone wants to belong. We can start to think a show or even a great experience with God through worship can take that place.  It cannot.  I want to belong in my church.  We just can’t take community for granted we have to actuvely build environments where community can happen.

I wonder if in a weak moment I might would say we have less need for these weapons.  I wonder if I ever assume all the other things can take the place of belonging, loving and praying.  I probably do.  I hope I learn from bayonets.

I define brand, especially when it comes to the church’s brand, as “the emotional after-taste left by an experience”. So how do you make your experience something that people far from God will CRAVE?

Community.  I know it may sometimes seem an over-used term, but community really is the largest contributor to a crave-able moment.  As I encourage the people of Freedom Church I remind them that we all want to be known.  C.S. Lewis said it great when describing the moment when two people really enter into community as the moment when they can utter the phrase, “you too?”.  Here are a couple of things that we do to help people feel “known” at Freedom Church:

• A large a spacious loby area.
• Greeting team at doors and in the lobby.
• An extended greeting time (5 minutes) during the service.

Raving Fans. When you have people at your church who love the vision of your church and want to tell everyone about them they are fans and fans tell others about the team.  I think that the thing that can take a fan from just a fan to a raving fan is principally life change.  At Freedom Church we have 59 people who have been baptized in the last 14 months of our churches existence.  That means 59 people who have had major life change.  Those 59 people, their families and their friends are raving fans. We are addicted to life change.  Another thing we have learned about raving fans is that they want “gear”.  So we have t-shirts, invite cards, baseball caps and even a children’s ministry mascot to give our fans a vehicle for raving!

Authenticity. People crave a place where not only are they known but they “know” the real people.  As a Lead Pastor I have to be Authentic in a way that is obvious that will also allow the people who follow me to have permission to be authentic.  I got an unsolicited text from someone this week who said, “Hey Pastor, just wanted to thank you for being so transparent”.  People crave authenticity.  Make sure if you are a church leader that you are the same person on stage as off stage.

Volatility.  How willing are you to lose everything in order to reach people far from God with Freedom through Christ?  Are you willing to leave the 99 in order to find the 1?  As I write in 14 months time we have grown to be a church of nearly 400 people and already I can feel a tension and a pressure to protect the 99 or at least a significant portion of them while searching for the 1.  I think the amount we are willing to risk is connected to the amount we will grow.  If we decide to protect at all costs being a church of 400 we will get exactly what we protect…no growth, but we will be steady.  So change we must.  I think people crave a church who shows through it’s willingness to risk everything how important those who are not there yet are.  It’s the best symbol of our love for people we can show.

Emotion. When people feel something there is a connection that we then crave again.  I know that emotion has become a dirty word in some circles of the church, however as I consider it I see that God made emotion in the same way he did intellect.  When people feel the power and the presence of God it will dig deep into an emotional part of their soul that for some does not get dug into often.  One of the roles of the church is to create environments that allow people to tap into this powerful place that God has created.

Let’s work together to  help create churches that people crave!

I have been asked to be a part of a blog tour of sorts for my friends over at MinistryMatters.

They are doing a series of posts that have been honoring those in Ministry that have had a huge impact on other pastors and ministry leaders.

Choosing a pastor or other church leader  that has made a positive impact on my faith and life is actually pretty easy?  That would be my Pastor, Greg Surratt of Seacoast Church.

Though I have now left the Seacoast staff to plant a church, Seacoast is certainly still my “house” and Greg Surratt is still my Pastor, mentor and friend.

When thinking about the question, “What did you learn about ministry from that person?” I could actually write a whole blog series, and maybe I should, but the one that stands out to me is his authenticity.

Greg is the same person on stage, backstage and off the stage.  He is the same guy in the line at Starbucks as he is in the greeting line after church.  As I watched for over a decade how he lived this authentic life I decided that I would also be characterized by this same virtue in my ministry because there was something sweet about knowing you get what you see.

I am thankful to Greg for this lesson and also thankful to him as my Pastor for being real.  I can’t help but think that God has blessed Greg and the Seacoast team far more than they could ever ask or imagine partly because of this trait.  It is one we should all shoot for.

Join the MinistryMatters.com ”Why Ministers Matter” blog tour to read as today’s leading pastors and authors share their stories of ministers who made a difference in their lives. Visit MinistryMatters.com/blogtour for a complete list of virtual tour stops and to link up your own post about a minister who mattered to you!

Dear Friends,

This morning at about 6:45 am I learned that the Freedom Church trailer (along with the contents of $30,000 in audio, visual and lighting equipment) was stolen.

At first glance we may see this as a problem, but as I have been listening to God for the last few hours inbetween praying, talking with the Sheriff and planning how to “do” church this weekend I have seen that this is actually another opportunity to BE the church.

1. We can BE the church in our response.

If we were just “doing” church then our stuff would be very important.  The truth is of all of the calls I could get as a Pastor early in the morning – stolen stuff is a good one.  No one was hurt, no one has died and no one can steal our vision to BE the church in Berkeley County.

This just confirms the need for more life-giving churches in our community.  It’s also just stuff.  The only thing that seperates us from replacing it is money and God owns all of that (and it’s in our wallets) so I am pretty sure we are good.

So as far as Freedom Church is concerned we plan on BEing the church in our response.  We also plan on doing church this weekend like normal.  Our friends in local churches are already offering to help proving that the church in the Low Country is amazing.

We are not angry, upset, stressed or worried.  God has our back.

In fact if you happen to have stolen our trailer, just let us know and bring it back and not only will we not press charges we would love to help you through whatever caused you to steal.

2. We can BE the church in our generosity.

This was not expected and not planned by anyone.  When unexpected things happen to a family it takes sacrifice by the family as well as friends of the family to make things right.

If you are a  friend on facebook or twitter with me then you are a part of Freedom or a friend of Freedom.  I want to give you a chance to help us during this unexpected time.  Will you consider giving a financial gift above and beyond your normal tithes and offerings at your home church?

You can do that at https://freedomchurch.onthecity.org/give

Including the trailer it will take at least 35k to replace everything, but together this is something we can do!

Under the “Select a Fund” drop down choose “Replace our Stuff”

Freedom Church will not be hindered or detered from our vision of helping people far from God find freedom in Christ – we can’t wait to see you Sunday as we celebrate our 1 year anniversary!

It’s been a bad week for our relationship.

It started with what was a pretty expected comment from a CEO of a organization that I don’t think surprised either of us.  If we talked in person I bet we would both agree that he has the right to say what he said and everyone has the right to eat or not eat at his restaurant.

But then political people on both sides decided to drag us into their fight.  First some on the left decided this was a great opportunity to stir some attention for the LGBT community.  Then some on the right decided this was a great opportunity to throw red meat to their crowd.  I think we both bit at first and got in the fray with the politicians. You know what they say, “never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig kind of likes it”.  We need to remember that politicians really like to wrestele in the mud.  Maybe we should just let them next time.

So, I wanted to let you know a couple of things about how I really feel about you.

1.  You are more important to me than a political issue.  We love you as someone who God created and loves as his child.  I am sorry that many on both sides of this argument treat you like a pawn in their game of political chess.  I hope that we can help bridge that gap.

2.  I think that if you and I sat down for coffee we could actually find a very good solution to this whole topic.  I think that you would respect my opinion that the church should not have to change our standards of what “Marriage” is and I know that I would never want to see your lifestyle be illegal, see you killed or jailed, lose your job, not get to spend the last days with someone you love or be unable to make legal descsions together.

I have a feeling that there is more politics involved in this argument than common sense and people in both of our circles get pulled into that really quickly.  Why don’t we make a pact to help people not bite on that?

I know we disagree on a lot, mainly that sex is to be only enjoyed inside a marriage relationship between a man and women, but my hope is that one day we will agree on one important thing.  Jesus saves sinners.  Sinners like me.   Sinners like you.  Sinners like the un-married hetrosexual couple having sex that ate chicken together and live together. Sinners like people who waited in line longer this week to prove they support “marriage” than they have spent on dates with theor spouse in the last year.

I am sorry that I and others who agree with me on this issue usually act like your sin is worse than ours.  We probably wont agree on the whole “sin” issue anytime soon but I hope that wont allow me to treat you less than human or you me.