“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” - The Words of Jesus in Matthew 10:16
In honor of Halloween (not really) I just finished speaking at a great church conference this morning about KNOWING WHO & WHAT THE WOLVES ARE. It is an essential principle of leadership and I want to quickly share it with you.
Far too often, whether they want to admit it even consciously know it, churches think of other churches as being the wolves of the world. This is INSANE! They compete with other churches. They battle with other churches. They play catch-up with other churches. But churches are not the wolves!
Online pornography is a wolf.
Drug addiction and alcoholism are wolves.
Divorce is a wolf.
Sexual abuse is a wolf.
Materialism is a wolf.
Stress is a wolf.
Depression is a wolf.
When churches make wolves out of the wrong things (like other churches), we fail to create the right shrewd strategies that Jesus expects from us when he instructed us to be as shrewd as a snake in Matthew 10:16.
What are the wolves tearing apart the lives of the people you want to reach? Answering this question will help guide you as you create the next sermon series or small group.
FREE BONUS THOUGHT: Your spouse is not a wolf. Acting like it will ruin your marriage.
A few months ago I asked you your thoughts on a weed-smoking volunteer @ Courageous Church. Many of you declared firmly that he could not and should not serve in the church until he stopped smoking and others of you basically wanted to fire up with him :-)
Since that post, I have encountered issue after issue like this and came to this conclusion: Our church is full of sinners. I’m not even talking 50/50 either. The more I get to know the people I serve the more I realize that they are struggling with sexual issues, drug and alcohol issues, honesty, integrity, and everything in between.
If I had to find a sinless person to serve @ Courageous Church I would be in a world of trouble. Who would sing? Who would usher? Who would cook and serve breakfast? Who would tear down and clean up homes with hopeATL? I wouldn’t be able to preach on Sunday. I wouldn’t be able to lead our team on Monday. I wouldn’t be able to serve as pastor of Courageous Church if I had to be sinless.
So, here are the million dollar questions…
Can sinners serve in church? As leaders? As greeters?
Should pastors and leaders serve as sin police…searching for sins and secrets in the congregation?
Should people with public sins be able to serve or just with private sins?
I want to take a quick moment out to thank each and every one of you that has served with hopeATL since the floods hit Atlanta a month ago. We have helped bring real hope to hundreds of families because of your generosity and hard work. I am so amazingly proud of you and proud of what we accomplished together!
Now that our work with demolition and cleanup has ended, we have opted to leave the rebuilding efforts to the pros. Here are 3 things that we want you to know:
1. If you or your team still wants to serve, please contact Must Ministries. This great organization has over 40 years of experience and is prepared to help flood victims with rebuilding efforts. See the website here and contact:
Jenaila Hawkins @ jhawkins@mustministries.org
Donna Holmes @ dholmes@mustministries.org
Their phone contact is 770-790-38732. In the next few weeks we will be introducing some awesome new ways you can provide hope to hurting people throughout Atlanta. Trust me – our city is full of people – particularly children – that need us to step up! Stay tuned!
3. In just a few days we will be relaunching hopeATL.com to provide flood victims and volunteers the resources they need as well introducing new ways you can bring hope throughout the city.
I love leading Courageous Church! 9+ months into this adventure and I am still excited, passionate, still optimistic, and still courageous! However, I feel like I have done some of my fellow church planters a bit of a disservice by telling you about all of the success and all of the accolades without really giving you a glimpse into how hard this is. I haven’t told you about much pain. I haven’t told you about much drama. I haven’t told you about a crisis or two that we have dealt with. I have pretty much just told you about the BLING, but I need to tell you some more truth so that you know what to expect! So many pastors and leaders tell me regularly that they want to launch large and do things like Courageous Church and that’s cool, but I want to keep it real with you for a few minutes, OK?
Did you read about the 10 Mistakes I’ve Made? I’ve made about 20 30 40 50 more. I want you to know that I have made a ton of mistakes so you don’t feel like an idiot when you make so many too. Church planting is like parenting…you can read every book out, but some lessons you have to learn on your own.
We have had to fire some people. We had to let other people go because of budget cuts. We will likely do both again. This part of leading is harder than I ever expected.
Our weekly offering is about 80% less than I projected before we launched the church. Yeah – I said EIGHT ZERO. 80. We hardly raise enough money to pay our basic bills and this is very stressful. Church planters that are a few steps ahead of me say this is normal. However, it still sucks.
Our attendance plummeted 85% in the weeks after our grand opening and hit a low of just about 50 people. Yes. For real. See what that does to your ego. Since then we have steadily grown nearly every week to about 200 people in Sunday attendance and we have between 350-400 people that attend fairly regularly.
I work very long hours. I am regularly up at the crack of dawn every day of the week and burn the midnight oil. I am nowhere near burnout and God has really graced me with the energy to do this, but it’s hard.
Broken people love me and love our church. I love them. Tom Q. Perfect has never attended our church. Our church is full of skeptics, gay guys, addicts, adulterers, liars, hot heads, homeless people, and shopaholics. I prayed that this would be the case and this was one of the prayers that God decided to answer right away :-)
My family still needs me. My kids still get sick. Dishes still need done. Wifey still needs me to be present. As a matter of fact, since launching the church, my family demands have increased (my baby daughter is crying now after waking up from a nap while my sick wife takes one of our sick daughters to the doctor).
I have a few more that I don’t have nerve enough to tell you, but I think you get the picture. Would I choose a different profession if I had the choice? No stinking way. I just want you to know that this requires you to be called, have thick skin, and some people to hold you up along the way!
On this past Sunday in both of our morning services we took dozens of Juicy/Funny/Serious/Deep questions that you submitted online here and tackled them head on. So many people asked us to do it again that we are going to doing one more time this Sunday. We already have a ton of questions we couldn’t get to, but want to make room for something YOU wanna ask too! Give it your best shot!
(Every week I serve as a Chaplain at a homeless center in Atlanta as a part of my graduate education. I wrote this for our discussion group and wanted to share it with you. Names have been changed.)
Just a few weeks ago I was mid way through a Thursday morning of serving as one of the intake coordinators at the Homeless Outreach and Advocacy Center in downtown Atlanta when I met young woman that really surprised me. I have met a few dozen men and women since starting there a few months ago. I’ve viewed their records, shook their hands, asked personal questions, provided assistance, and generally feel very compassionate for each and every person that walks through the doors…understanding that by the time they see me, life has already beaten them up pretty badly.
However, until I met Jasmine, nobody honestly surprised me. Drug addicts, felons caught up in the system, chronically homeless, mentally ill, countless interactions with service providers listed on the computer screen, teeth missing, hands weathered, bad odor, clothes tattered – nearly every person I met made sense to me on some level. No, I’m not saying they deserved homelessness, but after meeting them and getting to know them, it just made sense. Not Jasmine.
She looked like a pretty, fashionable, sophisticated young Spelman College or Georgia State student that would attend the church I pastor. When I saw her sitting in the lobby from the window near the computer, it did not register with me that she was homeless. I quickly judged her to be a volunteer or a friend of someone else in need. I randomly pulled the file of one of her friends that she was with, and, like most other guests, her friend made sense. She needed a MARTA card to a mental hospital, had more checks on her intake form than I had ever seen, and seemed to be familiar with how to survive while homeless.
I saw Jasmine next. She was new to the system. She basically had no checks on her intake form and just wanted a clothing voucher that her friend had told her about. Looking at her profile online, I could see that she had only been in the system for a few days after registering to stay at Gateway. After looking at her closely and talking to her face to face, it actually crossed my mind that she was pretending to be homeless for a school project or something because it just didn’t add up, but she wasn’t playing games – she was homeless.
After moving to Atlanta from Alabama with a female friend just a few weeks ago to live with her father, she said that he made several sexual advances to her friend (that she at first refused to believe) until he eventually offered both of them money to appear in a porn video together. She and her friend both left with nowhere to go. Her friend found a way back to Alabama, but Jasmine decided to try to make a way in Atlanta somehow. It wasn’t working.
She confessed that she had been wearing the same clothes for three days, that she had already lost most of what she owned, and that she had never been this low before in her life. She showed me a student ID from last year where she was an undergrad student somewhere in Alabama. I got her some reading glasses, typed up a clothing voucher, spoke with her about attending Georgia State and contacted the Admissions Office for her, shook her hand and watched her leave. I told my wife and a friend about her and just how surprised I was to see her there.
Let me not front like I am an unbiased reporter. I am uber excited that my alma mater, Dear Old Morehouse, has enacted a new dress code that bans brothers from wearing everything from grillz to high heels. Already gangstas and gay dudes are calling it discrimination, but I call it a private college…for men.
Here’s the policy and it applies pretty much everywhere except inside of a dorm room:
1. Caps, do-rags or hoods in classrooms, the cafeteria, or other indoor venues. This policy item does not apply to headgear considered as a part of religious or cultural dress.
2. Sun glasses or “shades” are not to be worn in class or at formal programs, unless medical documentation is provided to support use.
3. Decorative orthodontic appliances (e.g. “grillz”), be they permanent or removable, shall not be worn on the campus or at College-sponsored events.
4. Jeans at major programs such as, Opening Convocation, Commencement, Founder’s Day or other programs dictating professional, business casual attire, semi-formal or formal attire.
5. Clothing with derogatory, offensive and/or lewd messages either in words or pictures.
6. Tops, bottoms and feet coverings should be worn at all times.
7. Sagging – the wearing of one’s pants or shorts low enough to reveal undergarments or secondary layers of clothing.
8. Pajamas, shall not be worn while in public or in common areas of the College.
9. Wearing clothing associated with women’s garb (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at College-sponsored events.
10. Additional dress regulations may be imposed upon students participating in certain extracurricular activities that are sponsored or organized by the College (e.g. athletic teams, the band, Glee Club, etc).
11. The College reserves the right to modify this policy as deemed appropriate.
I applaud Dr. Franklin, the President of Morehouse, for taking this stand, but find it a bit sad that it’s needed.
So – here are my questions for YOU…
-Will the policy last?
-Will students that like to walk around in pajamas with do-rags and high heels leave the college or just get in line?
-What are your raw thoughts about the whole thing?
(Even if you are out of state, submit your questions and hear the answers on the podcast this Monday)
On this Sunday I can promise you that we will be talking about what YOU are interested in because I am going to be taking YOUR questions! I have heard for years that people feel like pastors never speak on tough issues or never fully address the concerns people have…well – this is your chance.
I will give my best shot @ answering your deepest, funniest, craziest, most serious questions about anything related to God, the Bible, Christianity, the Church, or anything in between. Submit your question by clicking the link below (your name is optional) and I will attempt to answer as many of these as possible in both services on Sunday. Trust me…it’s going to be fun :-) Ready? Set. Go!
The State of Georgia has asked that all flood affected families be done with cleanup by this Saturday. Don’t get me started on how insensitive this is. Really – I might start cussing.
It’s going to be tough, but I know that with YOUR help we can get it done! Over 1,000 of YOU from around Atlanta and all around the country have already volunteered with HopeATL to provide real hope to hurting families, but we need ONE MORE BIG PUSH!
We are making a HUGE PUSH to have THOUSANDS of people serve this Saturday from 9am until we pass out so that we can finish helping families gut, clean, sanitize, and prepare their homes to be rebuilt.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a brand new day and hurting people need your help! We missed a day of work today because of the heavy rains and need YOU and everyone you know to help people get their lives back on track!
Red Cross is no longer serving meals in the neighborhoods we’re serving. The last shelter for flood victims in the entire city closes on Wednesday. The city and state government has asked that all demolition and clean up activities END before October 18th. This means we just have just 11 days left to clean HUNDREDS of homes so that we can move to PHASE 2 of HopeATL – helping families rebuild their homes.
As you saw on the video @ HopeATL.com, we often have to tear homes down completely to the studs, but the government wants us to get all of that done in 11 days so we can all begin the rebuilding process together.
Here is our schedule every day through this Saturday!
We will be setting up check-in tents every from tomorrow (Tuesday) through this Saturday, October the 10th on the front lawn of Ewing Road Baptist Church (4699 Ewing Rd Austell, GA 30106) @ 10:00am. This will be our central information hub. Even if you are an old pro, please come here and check in before getting to work. It will take our efficiency to another level, OK? Mr. Chance Craven (a fellow volunteer) is our On-Site Director and can be reached @ 904.735.0376 if you have any questions.
If you happen to have any tools (hammers, crowbars, saws…anything…load them up and bring them with you.) If you don’t have any tools, just plan on working twice as hard to make up for it :-)
Although it may be warm, we need you to wear a long sleeve shirt and long pants with shoes you don’t mind ruining. We have a variety of work that is needed that can cater to any challenges or limitations you may have. It would also be wise for you to bring your own lunch, snacks, and some water, OK?
We need more volunteers! Tell everyone you know about hopeATL & encourage them to make a difference!
Our team will be calling you if they haven’t already and will answer your questions. Email me directly by replying to this message or call 404.503.8392 if you have any questions and I will point you in the right direction. Please don’t talk yourself out of serving. People need you.
Also – if you have not yet made a donation, please consider doing so soon @ hopeATL.com – 100% of your donation goes directly to help flood victims get back on their feet. Thanks again!
Just days before the Atlanta Flood I made a very tough decision to pull the plug on something in Courageous Church that I started and loved called Choose Your Own Adventure. On many levels it was working to impact and change our city, but the timing seemed off. It was doing OK, but wasn’t thriving. I had ideas on how God could breathe new life into it and prayed.
I felt like God told me to pull the plug and restart the initiative in January. I was disappointed, but decided I would rather do what God says to do than anything else.
Just a few days after making this tough decision, our city experienced a once in every 500 year flood. Because I freed up myself and other leaders just a few days earlier by pulling the plug on the program, we were able to respond to an urgent crisis by launching HopeATL!
When you do what God says to do, new doors will open to serve Him!
So much stuff had to happen to make this possible (much of which we were sworn to secrecy for), but on this Sunday morning from 9am-1pm, October 4thCourageous Church is moving its entire Sunday operation to Ground Zero and we want YOU to join us!
We are going to be hosting a HUGE, GIGANTIC, ENORMOUS outdoor event for Atlanta’s flood victims @ what is currently the largest shelter in the city – The Cobb Civic Center (548 South Marietta Parkway – Marietta, GA 30060)! Hundreds of families are living there now and they need us to bring the love and the HOPE of our God to them!
HUGE Free Breakfast @ 9am! (During breakfast we will be meeting with families to assess how we can best help them on SUNDAY after the event.)
HOPE Service @ 10am – Some great special guests that we are about to announce, this service will be designed to bring hope to the flood victims and encouragement to the volunteers of hopeATL
HUGE CARNIVAL for Kids/Families immediately after the service with Inflatable bouncers, face painting, free carnival goodies & games, bubbles, giveaways, and so much more!
So…here’s the thing – it took a ton of open doors for us to be allowed to host this service here and we want flood victims all around Atlanta to know about it. We need the following things to happen for this service to be a success:
Sound System – ALREADY DONATED
Several large inflatable bouncers – do you know who can make this happen for FREE?
Face painters
Caricature Artists
Ice cream
Pony Rides?
Cotton Candy or Popcorn
A TON OF PUBLICITY! – Every station, every outlet
Volunteers to meet with families to help assess needs
Sorry I haven’t been able to write any creative blog posts recently…right now my life is a creative blog post :-) Above is the video we filmed this week on one of our work sites for hopeATL and below is an email blast I just sent out to our volunteers. I hope you will join us!
—-
Hello!
First, let me thank you again for making the decision to bring HOPE to thousands of hurting people here in Atlanta. Having spent the past week in the hardest hit areas of our city, I want to convey to you that people are still very much in desperate need of your love, support, and hard work. In the city of Austell alone, over 50% of the people are now homeless. How staggering is that?
If we come together in big numbers, the next few days could really help to begin healing broken communities. Let me give you a few facts and encourage you to push through and come on out! We’re working hard to be more organized and efficient than ever, but cannot do it without you…and your crew!
We will be setting up check-in tents on Friday & Saturday on the front lawn of Ewing Road Baptist Church (4699 Ewing Rd Austell, GA 30106) @ 9:30am. This will be our central information hub. Even if you are an old pro, please come here and check in before getting to work. It will take our efficiency to another level, OK?
If you happen to have any tools (hammers, crowbars, saws…anything…load them up and bring them with you.) If you don’t have any tools, just plan on working twice as hard to make up for it :-)
Although it may be warm, we need you to wear a long sleeve shirt and long pants with shoes you don’t mind ruining. We have a variety of work that is needed that can cater to any challenges or limitations you may have. It would also be wise for you to bring your own lunch, snacks, and some water, OK?
We need more volunteers! Tell everyone you know about hopeATL & encourage them to make a difference!
Our team will be calling you if they haven’t already and will answer your questions. Email me directly by replying to this message or call 404.503.8392 if you have any questions and I will point you in the right direction. Please don’t talk yourself out of serving. People need you.
Also – if you have not yet made a donation, please consider doing so soon @ hopeATL.com – 100% of your donation goes directly to help flood victims get back on their feet. Thanks again!
Hello! I'm Shaun King - a 30 year old husband, father, pastor, and grad student (in that order) in downtown Atlanta.
I am the Lead Pastor of The Courageous Church- a brand new, diverse, exciting church in the heart of downtown Atlanta! Before I put on my SuperSuit and go live out my call in the city, I fix my five kids a bowl of cereal, change diapers, pack lunches, and give my wife a kiss.
This blog is all about the tight rope that I walk between Courage & Corn Pops!
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
A few months ago
I love leading 
Let me not front like I am an unbiased reporter. I am uber excited that my alma mater, 
