Taking a Risk & Telling YOU My Dream

Six years ago today on Black Friday my whole life changed.

Real life is crazier than fiction and the painful miracle that I experienced is so crazy that if I made it up it would sound ridiculous!  Coming that close to death has caused me to not take a single day of life for granted and even though it hurt like hell and took me forever to recover, I wouldn’t trade the pain because I am who I am today (in part) because of it.

Every since that day I have tried hard to go after the dreams and visions that God has placed in my heart.  Planting and leading Courageous Church is one of those dreams.

You have dreams too. We all do.  Most of us though, including me, chicken out and never pursue them.  Some of our excuses are legit.  Most of them aren’t.  We settle for less than our potential and are left to wonder what coulda/woulda/shoulda been.

Let me tell you one way that I combat that.  After really wrestling with a dream or vision, running it by people that I love and trust, praying about it, discerning if it matches up with the Heart of God, and even testing the waters a little bit…

I GO PUBLIC WITH IT.  This doesn’t mean I won’t still back out, but going public with your dream is a GAME CHANGER.  It demystifies the dream.  It causes it to go from a private secret to a public possibility.  When you go public with your dream, potential keepers or carriers of that dream begin to appear and sometimes make it their dream too.

Well…today…6 years after getting over 400 stitches on my face and getting my bottom lip and left eyelid sewed back on, I want to announce to you a dream that I have had for nearly ten years.  It is going to happen.  I feel it my bones.  Here goes:

• I want to start an elite, award-winning, private Christian, college prep high school in inner city Atlanta for the kids of inner city Atlanta.  Nothing like it exists in our city and it will take many miracles for this dream to come to pass.
• My three role model schools for this dream are Cristo Rey in Chicago and The SEED School in Washington DC and Drew Charter School in Atlanta. I have studied these schools from top to bottom for over five years and know that a hybrid version of these would succeed in Atlanta.
• Each one of the above schools has ONE key feature that I absolutely love!  Cristo Rey’s work option, SEED’s boarding dynamic, and Drew’s partnership with the YMCA hook me.  Click on the links above to understand more.
• This school would be closely related to Courageous Church, but distinctly different from a management and financial perspective.  For instance, I am imagining that Courageous Church would use the school auditorium for Sunday services.
• I want to form a foundation in the next few months with a Board of Directors that will begin a feasibility program.
• I want to begin searching for the first Academic Principal and the first Director of Operations and want them to come from the very best prep schools in the country.  I do not plan on running the school in any way.  God has been clear with me on this :-)
• I have already found three potential locations for the school.  One would be an amazing turnkey solution and the other two are vacant lots that would require that the school be built from the ground up.  Each location has great benefits.
• It would take between $30-$50 million to fund this project.
• I believe in miracles and I believe in hard work.  When these two things come together AMAZING things happen!
• I have received several clear signs that this dream is a GOD THING.  One sign is all I need :-)

I have a lot more I could say, but I am putting my business out there because I believe it will serve as a CATALYST for this dream.  Do you have any thoughts or impressions?  Is God speaking to you about this dream? I would love to see your comments and thoughts!  Comment here or email me directly @ shaunking@courageous.tv