The Top 10 Moments of 2009 (ALL TEN MOMENTS)

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!

#10: Power of One @ Morehouse College! (March 30, 2009)
(Click above for the original recap!)

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!

#9 Launching FREE Breakfast (March 8, 2009)
(Click above for our Free Breakfast website)

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?

#4 -500 toys & 500 uniforms (Christmas of 2009 – see our website for this initiative here!)

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”!

Hero (Courageous Church) from Courageous Church on Vimeo.

#1 – Launching hopeATL.com (September, 2009)

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!