I love reading Top 10 Lists @ the end of the year (best songs, best movies, best athletes, etc.)!
Well, Courageous Church is almost one year old and I wanted to get in on the fun and create a top ten list of my favorite Courageous Church moments in 2009! Over the course of the next week I will be sharing them here on the blog! Here are the first two!
That was an amazing night! Our church was just about three months old and most of us hardly knew each other, but we all came together when the college asked us to host a service that would really connect with students. With a guest appearance by Israel Houghton, spoken word, graffiti artists, breakers, rappers, and a message by yours truly we really reached students and helped build our church into a more cohesive team in the process. More students attended the service we hosted than any service hosted there the entire year!
Because of the success we had there, Morehouse has invited us to the campus to partner with them for MLK Day next month! Details coming soon!
Free breakfast has been a major hit for our church! Every Sunday morning since March we have served a huge free breakfast to everybody and anybody that wants it. From our volunteers, to visitors, to lawyers, to the chronically homeless we have served thousands of hot meals on Sunday mornings.
We pretty much scrapped our marketing budget and decided to use what we would spend on marketing on this meal. It is great for our volunteers because they are there all morning. It is great for families that have such a hard time fixing a healthy breakfast on Sunday. It is great for our community because people sit down and eat with one another. It is great for hungry people that really need the meal.
In so many ways, free breakfast is now a part of our brand and I love it…one of the best decisions we made this year!
#8 Moving our Sunday Service & Breakfast to the Red Cross Shelter for Flood Victims (September 2009)
Thousands of people lost their homes in the Atlanta floods. (I’ll talk more about this in another favorite moment.) When we learned that hundreds of victims were living in a Red Cross shelter, we decided to up and move our Sunday service and breakfast from downtown Atlanta to Marietta. We brought in some special guest singers, set up shop in the parking lot, had Crack Barrel donate a great breakfast, and hosted a Courageous Church service for the victims.
After it was over, we sponsored a great outdoor carnival with snow cones, clowns, inflatables, popcorn, cotton candy, face painting, and more. It was a beautiful sight. For just a few moments, those kids forgot about their troubles and had some real fun. I was so proud of our church because no one thought twice and we made it happen!
Love God! Love People! PROVE IT!
#7 – Tearing Down the Wall! (May 14, 2009)
#6 – Atlanta AIDS Hospice Christmas Party (December, 2009)
For the past 6 months a small team from Courageous Church has been visiting a private AIDS hospice for men in inner city Atlanta. When we started going there, I honestly thought that we were going there to be a big blessing for some men that were really in a tough place. While that is true in part, I am sure that every one of us has been equally blessed by the experience.
Last week we hosted a Christmas Party for the guys there and it was a TOTAL BLAST! We cooked and served a huge dinner, played games, exchanged gifts, and really had some powerful moments. Here’s what I have discovered…the crew that has faithfully served the men @ the AIDS Hospice is faithful to all aspects of our church – attendance, giving, serving, and more.
#5 – MLK Day 2009 @ Turner Field (January, 2009)
A few days after our Grand Opening on January 11th, 2009, we asked our young church to come out and serve food to the homeless for Hosea Feeds the Hungry @ Turner Field. I honestly didn’t know if 10 people would show up. When you first launch a church the first few months are a bit of a confusing blur. People don’t really know each other and you aren’t really sure if folk believe in the church or not.
With just a little notice, over 50 people showed up in the freezing cold to make a real difference. It meant the world to me. Our grand opening was huge, but I still really needed some proof that our church was bigger than Sunday morning. This was it. It gave me the confidence to push through the next few months.
Now – the actual event was terrible (understatement). However, the moment wasn’t. Does that make sense?
It was hard. Doggone hard. Makes me feel like cussing hard, but…thanks to YOU – we raised $22,500 from over 400 people from 30 states and several countries to provide every child in Atlanta elementary school a brand new uniform and toy of their choice this Christmas! Several times during the process I felt like giving up. So many people are strapped financially and raising these funds was so much harder than it was when we did it last year.
I was glad that we made the cover of the AJC, but nothing made me happier than bringing hope to kids & families that really need it.
#3 -Baptisms! (Every Month)
When we launched Courageous Church 11 months ago, one of our primary goals was to reach people who had either never given God or the church a chance or who had tried before and given up. Every month we baptize men and women who fit this bill. You may or may not know that Rai & I spent a year @ Buckhead Church before launching Courageous Church and we really borrowed much of HOW we do baptism from them. Our oldest daughter was baptized there and we just fell in love with the very personal approach to it all.
Because baptism really epitomizes what a victory means for us, we invested in this portable baptismal pool so that we could baptize people right in our Sunday services. I LOVE IT!
My hope is that we baptize hundreds – even thousands of people in 2010 and beyond!
#2 -700+ People Attending Our Grand Opening on 1/11/2009
Now before I pat anybody on the back, I have already confessed to 10 mistakes we made after we launched. We’ve made many more actually. However, launching large @ Center Stage in Atlanta was a blast. We made a big splash in the city and immediately became the largest church launch ever for ARC or the Covenant. Because of this large grand opening, we had a ton of momentum and brand recognition that we really used all year long. Here is a video of the opening song we did – our remix of the Nas track “Hero”!
When the floods hit Atlanta, nobody had any idea that they were as terrible as they turned out to be. Social media started telling the story through TwitPics long before the conventional news media had a clue. We waited about 48 hours to see who would step up so we could ride their coattails, but the response time was slow.
We built hopeATL.com in those 48 hours and were SHOCKED by the response! In the next 30 days we provided over $1,000,000 worth of goods and services to families. Over 1,500 volunteers from all over the country joined us and we really provided HOPE to people that LOST EVERYTHING!
Let me break that down -the entire 2009 budget for Courageous Church didn’t crack $200,000, but we provided over $1,000,000 of direct aid to families through items, construction, demolition, and more!
The lessons I learned during these 30 days of relief have changed my life and will change the way I lead from here on out!
Any donation of any size will continue to allow our church to provide hope to hurting people. We will be sending giving statements for tax purposes out in the days ahead as well and hope to include a donation you make today on that statement!
#6 – Atlanta AIDS Hospice Christmas Party (December, 2009)
For the past 6 months a small team from Courageous Church has been visiting a private AIDS hospice for men in inner city Atlanta. When we started going there, I honestly thought that we were going there to be a big blessing for some men that were really in a tough place. While that is true in part, I am sure that every one of us has been equally blessed by the experience.
Last week we hosted a Christmas Party for the guys there and it was a TOTAL BLAST! We cooked and served a huge dinner, played games, exchanged gifts, and really had some powerful moments. Here’s what I have discovered…the crew that has faithfully served the men @ the AIDS Hospice is faithful to all aspects of our church – attendance, giving, serving, and more.
#5 – MLK Day 2009 @ Turner Field (January, 2009)
A few days after our Grand Opening on January 11th, 2009, we asked our young church to come out and serve food to the homeless for Hosea Feeds the Hungry @ Turner Field. I honestly didn’t know if 10 people would show up. When you first launch a church the first few months are a bit of a confusing blur. People don’t really know each other and you aren’t really sure if folk believe in the church or not.
With just a little notice, over 50 people showed up in the freezing cold to make a real difference. It meant the world to me. Our grand opening was huge, but I still really needed some proof that our church was bigger than Sunday morning. This was it. It gave me the confidence to push through the next few months.
Now – the actual event was terrible (understatement). However, the moment wasn’t. Does that make sense?
We’re on the front page of the AJC today and would love for YOU to check it out! When we do good work in the city we don’t do it to get press coverage, but we thank God for it! More good news needs to be in the news anyway!
(Shout out to Melissa for nominating me as a Holiday Hero! You are the bomb!)
#8 Moving our Sunday Service & Breakfast to the Red Cross Shelter for Flood Victims (September 2009)
Thousands of people lost their homes in the Atlanta floods. (I’ll talk more about this in another favorite moment.) When we learned that hundreds of victims were living in a Red Cross shelter, we decided to up and move our Sunday service and breakfast from downtown Atlanta to Marietta. We brought in some special guest singers, set up shop in the parking lot, had Crack Barrel donate a great breakfast, and hosted a Courageous Church service for the victims.
After it was over, we sponsored a great outdoor carnival with snow cones, clowns, inflatables, popcorn, cotton candy, face painting, and more. It was a beautiful sight. For just a few moments, those kids forgot about their troubles and had some real fun. I was so proud of our church because no one thought twice and we made it happen!
I love reading Top 10 Lists @ the end of the year (best songs, best movies, best athletes, etc.)!
Well, Courageous Church is almost one year old and I wanted to get in on the fun and create a top ten list of my favorite Courageous Church moments in 2009! Over the course of the next week I will be sharing them here on the blog! Here are the first two!
That was an amazing night! Our church was just about three months old and most of us hardly knew each other, but we all came together when the college asked us to host a service that would really connect with students. With a guest appearance by Israel Houghton, spoken word, graffiti artists, breakers, rappers, and a message by yours truly we really reached students and helped build our church into a more cohesive team in the process. More students attended the service we hosted than any service hosted there the entire year!
Because of the success we had there, Morehouse has invited us to the campus to partner with them for MLK Day next month! Details coming soon!
Free breakfast has been a major hit for our church! Every Sunday morning since March we have served a huge free breakfast to everybody and anybody that wants it. From our volunteers, to visitors, to lawyers, to the chronically homeless we have served thousands of hot meals on Sunday mornings.
We pretty much scrapped our marketing budget and decided to use what we would spend on marketing on this meal. It is great for our volunteers because they are there all morning. It is great for families that have such a hard time fixing a healthy breakfast on Sunday. It is great for our community because people sit down and eat with one another. It is great for hungry people that really need the meal.
In so many ways, free breakfast is now a part of our brand and I love it…one of the best decisions we made this year!
We had a blast yesterday @ our BIG GIVE for 500toys.org! Seeing the culmination of so much hard work made it all worth it!See the NBC NEWS video here! I have received dozens and dozens of questions on how we did what we did and wanted to take a few moments out to share some key lessons we learned about social networking & fundraising from our efforts this year.
1. Everything starts with a huge vision that will capture the hearts of people.
This is what we do well. We knew when we launched 500toys.org in 2008 & again in 2009 that we had the vision thing down! We did the same thing with hopeATL.com during the Atlanta floods. My friend Jon nailed the big vision factor with this project. Is your vision big enough, urgent enough, captivating enough to break through the noise and cause someone to say “I think I wanna find a way to make this project a success”?
2. A pre-exisiting social network of real friends, family, supporters, followers, etc. is required.
Creating a social network for the sole purpose of raising funds is not absolutely impossible, but almost. If you launch a website designed to raise funds for a project (even a very compelling one) people will think you are using them for money. People are very skeptical of fraud as it is and the idea of supporting a stranger does not lend itself to ease this skepticism. I generally work very hard to stay highly connected to a very large network of people. When I ask for money or a tweet or a blog post, people feel like a neighbor is asking.
It took everything I had to help us hit our goal @ 500toys.org. Literally – I am still near exhaustion over it. I leveraged every relationship, every email address, every family member, every social network, etc. to make this work. I put in HUNDREDS of real work hours and basically became a virtual beggar for this cause. I actually strained my marriage a bit over the past few weeks in the name of this cause and my wife is a trooper. Are you prepared to work that hard? Are you willing to ask strangers for support in person and online?
4. The market is now a bit saturated.
When we first launched 500toys.org a year ago for Christmas 2008 we were called innovative. We were literally one of the only groups in the country leveraging Facebook & Twitter for a good cause and we ended up on the news all over the world because of it. This holiday season I have tracked dozens and dozens of groups doing the same thing. Furthermore, the big name non profits like Salvation Army, Red Cross, YMCA, etc. are seeing this success and wondering if they can jump in. Celebrities were hardly on Twitter last year and they are now promoting causes as well.
In a saturated market, if you have the three things I listed first, you can still succeed.
5. Push the creative envelope.
We had a skilled professional develop the website for 500toys.org, a professional photographer took the pictures you see on the website, and a professional film producer did the YouTube video you see there. Some of them donated the services, but we knew that we could not use our shoestring budget as an excuse to lack creativity. Many people told us they trusted us more because we built a project that looked like we really cared.
6. Celebrities will probably not help.
Celebrities are very skeptical of commoners like me and you. Most of this is because they don’t know us – not because they don’t care. We asked dozens (maybe hundreds) of celebrities to donate or tweet about our project and only Gary responded (and he responded when someone he knew asked him). Asking celebrities to get involved wasn’t worth our time.
7. Early bird gets the worm.
We worked hard to beat the crowd to the punch this year. Although we only raised a very small portion of our funds in November when we launched this project, we created a good deal of buzz, traffic, chatter, awareness, etc. before any other group. This competitive advantage absolutely made a difference.
8. Personal requests mean way more than big (impersonal) blasts
Over 70% of our funds came from personal (online and in person) requests of people and not generic tweets or facebook updates. Now, don’t get me wrong – the tweets & facebook updates created awareness and are needed – but the majority of our donors responded after they were asked directly if they would consider making a donation. Even if we asked a stranger to give they felt way more compelled to give than when they simply read a mass message.
—– These final two lessons are very Christian. I feel like they were essential to our success and I would advise you give them a try, but they are faith-based.
9. Do what the Bible already asks us to do.
Our goal of helping to bring hope to poor children and families fulfills hundreds and hundreds of verse in the Bible and gave me the confidence to know that God would bless our efforts. In other words, it was important to me that our mission was not a fad, but was rooted in something timeless that tugged at the heart of God.
10. Pray!
I asked for God’s help, wisdom, intervention, provision, and more on a regular basis throughout this project. Our church is not even a year old yet and I knew it would take hundreds of people from all over the world to make this project a success. My prayer was always that God would make the burden that I had for the kids of inner city Atlanta real to others. It worked.
Our friends @ 11Alive News (NBC) came through to film our gift wrapping & BIG GIVE for 500toys.org! Check it out! (My favorite part is the boy @ 1:03 that has a grin from ear to ear and starts flapping his arms like a butterfly :-)
Because of your generosity and hard work, we raised $22,500 online in less than a month and will be able to provide EVERY STUDENT @ Stanton Elementary School in inner city Atlanta a brand new toy and a very high quality school uniform. I am so proud of what we accomplished together.
404 people from over 30 states and several countries made it happen! See the totals here for yourself! We will be taking a ton of pictures and videos to show you every step and hope that you will continue to spread the word and tell the story of what we accomplished together.
Here a few VERY IMPORTANT details about what’s next (for those of you in or near Atlanta):
Monday (today) is our Gift Wrapping Party @ Frank L. Stanton Elementary School. This is a blast and we want it to be very easy for all of the teachers. All people are welcome to attend (including kids of all ages). We will begin @ around 3pm and expect it to last for at least 3 hours. Feel free to bring snacks, drinks, gift wrapping supplies, etc. if you can make it. The address is: 1625 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, SW Atlanta, GA 30314
Tuesday is our BIG GIVE @ Stanton Elementary School. It will begin @ around 10am and last until 12pm. This will be a TON OF FUN! Seeing the faces of the kids alone when they open up the presents is worth the entire experience! Here is the video from last year. Again, all people are welcome. We will need help organizing and facilitating the giveaway and would love for you to be there! The address is: 1625 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, SW Atlanta, GA 30314
Hey Everybody! Today is the last weekday to give @ 500toys.org and we need YOUR help in a major way!
268 people have donated a total $15,446 and we are just about $7,000 away from our goal!
If you can just give $1 or you can give $1,000 -please give and help us reach our goal so that we can be a blessing to kids in inner city Atlanta this Christmas!
Several people have asked me, “What if we don’t raise the money needed to purchase all of the toys & uniforms for the kids…what’s plan B?”
I have no plan B.
I rarely do.
222 awesome people have donated $12,810 so far and we are $9,690 away from our goal.
We (not me, not they, not them, but WE) can do this!
Have you given yet? If not, will you give today @ 500toys.org? We cannot purchase the toys and uniforms without you.
If you have given, we are not asking you to give again, but hope that you will ask 2 or 5 or 10 family members or friends or co-workers or intergalactic space monkeys to give. When all of us multiply who gives it makes a HUGE difference!
Time is running out. Let’s do this! Work hard. Spread the word. Make personal phone calls and face to face requests. Send emails. Tweet it. Facebook it. Blog it.
That’s why I’m writing this blog right now. Less than I want you to know my dreams, I just can’t contain them all. Almost like a nervous tick I have purchased 4-5 books this week that I will only have time to glance at, but I want to see how some other people with similar dreams actually stepped out to make them happen.
As a matter of fact, for a few years of my life I would have probably cussed you out if you told me I was one day going to become Pastor Shaun King. I definitely had other plans for myself that had nothing to do with church. As a matter of fact, my friends and I often made fun of people that wasted a perfectly good Sunday morning playing dress-up @ the local baptist such and such.
At one of my lowest points in life my best friend (and sometimes my only friend) was Rodger.
We met each other at very vulnerable points in life. I was an outcast in my high school (long, but good story…may be a book one day). He was the new guy living with a foster mother. We both had more enemies than friends and it really helped to have somebody that really cared and really had your back. We did some fun stuff together (amusement parks, trips to the mall, talking to the girls at the roller skating rink) and did some crazy stuff together (made drug runs, stayed the night with strangers, dodged literal bullets, carried guns, tried promoting a gangster rapper).
After I spent nearly two years as a hermit recovering from three spinal surgeries and a broken spirit, he moved away somewhere and we lost touch. Several people that knew him told me that he had been shot and killed. After I really found God and my life changed, I tried to confirm for years that he had been killed.
He seemed to be ghost. No death records. No social networking pages. Nothing on the net. I would search at least once a year for the past ten years but was pretty sure he was dead. Yesterday I received this message…from RODGER!
I’ve been looking for you little brother! I hope all is well with you and yours. Please tell your mother that I said hello and God bless. I hope all is well with you as I know that they are. I’m doing wonderfully bro. I’d love to hear from you sometime. Hope the holidays are a blessing for you. Oh, I almost forgot…you were the first true friend I ever had and I have never forgotten that. You were true and loyal and a firm example of the way a friendship should be…loyal and honest. Thank you. BLESS!
Best note I have gotten in years!
Some people from our past we hope will never find us. I’m not saying that reconnecting with Rodger will be easy. We’re in different places in life in different places of the country, but I’m sure gonna give it a try. Most of my best friends from childhood are dead or in jail and it has created a bit of a hole in my past.
Anybody from your past that you would love to reconnect with? Have some people you hope never find you? :-)
500toys.org is so much fun because it takes hundreds of people to come together from all around the world for it succeed! Last year nearly 350 people from 22 states and several countries helped us raise over $20,000 to ensure that every child in an inner city Atlanta elementary school got a toy of their choice and a brand new uniform! See the YouTube video here.
Well – when my friend Stephen Brewster from Integrity Records told me he had a great giveaway for us to help raise support, we jumped on it! For every person that already gave and for every person that gives to 500toys.org from now on, we have a great prize for you!
We have a $10 iTunes card that will let you download a great new Christmas album from Integrity with tracks from Hillsong, Israel Houghton, Darlene Zschech and more! All you have to do is make your donation @ 500toys.org and we will take care of the rest!
Please spread the word and make your donation of any size today!
Many of you may know that I have several health conditions that will eventually require some pretty life altering surgeries. When that happens, I hope you pray for me, my family, the doctors, and Courageous Church like crazy.
Well, today we NEED to pray for Pastor Matt Chandler. One of the best preachers in the world, pastor of a growing/thriving mega-church, a husband, and father to a young family, Matt will be having emergency surgery this Friday to remove a tumor from the frontal lobe of his brain.
Can you imagine those conditions? Well – Matt is facing them with a courageous faith, but we need to PRAY! Pray out loud. Pray right now. Pray later. Start prayer chains. Tell you pastor. Tell your friends. Call grandmama and nem. MAKE A BIG DEAL OUT OF THIS.
Pray for Matt Chandler by name. Pray for his peace of mind. Pray for his total recovery! Pray that he hears the voice of God in a real way in this tough season.
Pray for his wife Lauren by name and pray for their beautiful family. Pray that God holds her up and strengthens her from the inside out as she serves as the rock of their family.
Pray for Dr. David Barnett – the chief surgeon this Friday. Pray for his skilled hands and that God uses him to perform medical miracles. The surgery is THIS FRIDAY AFTERNOON!
Pray for Village Church. Pray that they lean on God like never before. They love their pastor and need him to recover. They have a prayer meeting tonight (Wednesday) @ 7pm.
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!
