For the first six months after we launched Courageous Church, I often felt like a car salesman when it came to volunteers.  Regularly I would basically beg people to serve and tell them how much we needed them in the clearest way possible.  In the end, a few great people would sign up, but it would never be as much as we needed.  I’ve changed my tune. Let me tell you why.

Church plants require a ton of volunteers. Without them, you burn people out and the quality of what you are doing really suffers.

So one Sunday a few months ago I was doing my whole sad begging routine and Reggie Joiner, a mentor to me and one of the best leaders in the world, was there to hear it.  Our leadership team met with him later that day and he told me point blank…

Stop telling people how badly you need them to serve and begin telling them how badly they need to serve.  Tell them how serving changes their life.  Tell them how much you grow and change and get connected when you serve and how not serving basically freezes them in time as far as their growth in the church (and in the faith) goes.

It’s 7am on Sunday morning and I am going to be preaching that message twice this morning.  I’ll let you know how it goes on Twitter later.

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!

In large part due to technological advances and the literal tearing down of walls that divide people groups into little segments that basically hate each other, the playing field in any particular area of the world (including church) is more level (or flat) than ever, but most churches have not yet caught on to this.

Hear me – the “old strategies” of leading church may work.

• Some churches still swear that mass mailers are wildly successful. I believe them.
• Some churches still say that 9am-5pm are the best office hours. I believe them.
• Some churches still proclaim that the sermon is the most important thing a church can offer.  I believe them.

The problem isn’t whether I believe them or not, it’s that MILLIONS & MILLIONS of people don’t and while an equal number of people may really love mass mailers, traditional office hours, and have lives that revolve around the sermon, new strategies will reach people that old strategies won’t.  I’m not even saying one strategy is better than the other here, but that new strategies are needed to reach unreached people. Period.

Here a few numbers behind how Courageous Church has used new(er) strategies to reach new people.

• Of the 700 people in attendance @ our church grand opening on January 11th, over 65% of them learned of us online.
• Over 50% of our weekly 1st time visitors learn about our church from Facebook or Twitter.
• About 50% of our financial giving takes place online.
• Our Facebook ads have been shown a total of 26 million times.  Yes. I’m serious and we rounded down :-)
• A very low ball estimate for the cost of a mass mailer to 26 million people would be $400,000.
• Our ads (which are numerous, targeted, current, etc.) cost us $8,000

Is your church having success with old strategies? Tell me what. How?

Are you using new strategies that are working?

Are you doing anything that you thought would work, but hasn’t produced the results you expected?

PS: I will be speaking more about all of these things @ Bug Conference on July 13th and will be blogging and consulting about these topics really soon.

WARNING – IF PG 13 language or scenarios disturb you, here is a link to Nick Jr.  Go there now.

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I have heard and read about a lot of men (and women) in ministry that have made major moral mistakes, but I never knew any of them very well.  I found it much easier to be judgmental and dismissive of their future when they were relative strangers.

So, when I learned on Sunday that my good friend and one of the biggest (and earliest) supporters/cheerleaders of Courageous Church, Gary Lamb, resigned abruptly as Pastor of Revolution Church after confessing to an affair with another woman on the church staff, I was a bit surprised at just how heavy a ton of bricks really feels.  Because Gary is my friend and I love Revolution Church so much, I mainly found myself sad and hurt for him, his family, and the church.  I also wallowed in self-pity for just a few seconds because it has given me great confidence since launching our church to know that I had a pastor-friend right up the road that was pushing the envelope to reach and grow people that had given up on the church or never gave it a chance in the first place.

Two pastors that I admire a great deal have written awesome posts this week to give us all some perspective and insight on moral failure that I suggest we all read:

Perry Noble: Gary and Two Facts about Spiritual Warfare

Geoff Surratt: An Open Letter to Pastors

I only have one thought that I want to add that has been on my heart this morning.

Gary got caught.  You didn’t. Does this dismiss Gary? Of course not.  What it means is that the grace of God has sustained your sorry tail all these years, but this very public embarrassment should be a lesson to all of us that private behaviors and secrets tend to become public fodder eventually.

You might not have had an affair with your assistant, but you’ve looked at pornography and masturbated.  You’ve looked at people other than your spouse and imagined having hot sex with them.  You’ve lied and convinced yourself that it was a necessary lie or didn’t really matter much.  You’ve fueled the flames of rumors about other people by running your mouth way more than is respectable.  You’ve stolen something before and creatively justified it.  You’ve considered evil or even violent schemes.  The primary difference is that everyone doesn’t know your dirty, nasty business.

You, too, are a sinner saved by the grace of God.  Jesus didn’t just die for Gary Lamb.

He died for you.

• It’s hard work, but I have a ton of fun leading Courageous Church
• Yesterday was a really big day for us on a lot of fronts and I feel like we nailed it.
• Our weekly FREE BREAKFAST is a very big hit and we keep running out of food (which is a good problem in my book).
• The food is delicious (and healthy) and we’re really using this time to build relationships & community.
• We relaunched Courageous Kids today and our staffers say it was a huge success.
• Next week we will be moving Courageous Kids into our new office and ministry space on the 5th floor of our building and this should help take the quality up to a whole nutha level :-)
• Our new band (with DJ Dust) was the bomb and added so much flexibility and quality to our Sunday morning sound.  Loved having them there.
• I started laying the foundation for a very tough, challenging message series today that really challenges a prevalent lukewarm sense of complacency in American Christianity.
• Here’s what I’m learning…when I preach tough messages that are intense, but centered in God’s word, people get with it.
• After our service a team of us busted our butts to clean our offices and paint another wall.  About 20 people got done in 3 hours what it would have take 4 of us 8-10 hours to do.
• THANK YOU ALL!
• We’re laying down carpet and doing electrical work today and should be opening up our space on next Sunday.
• We’re going to do a big, fat Grand Opening of our new space in August or September once we really get it up and rolling!
• I was shocked and hurt for so many people immediately after service when I learned that my good friend Gary Lamb was stepping down immediately as Pastor of Revolution Church after a major moral failure.
• They have been so good to Courageous Church and have supported us in so many ways since before we launched.
• I’m going to write my thoughts about this situation very soon.

In a few hours I will begin what I think may be the most important series in the life our young church entitled, “Choose Your Own Adventure.”

A thought that has been really frustrating my mind lately is that I hate I even have to say things like “Adventurous Christianity” or “Courageous Christianity” because these things should be redundant like “Tall Giant” or “Short Little Person” or “Intelligent Genius”.

Gotta run…time to go preach.  I’ll let you know later if I scared the entire church away.  Pray for me!

I am very excited to announce 4 Big, Fun Changes coming to Courageous Church and can’t wait for you to experience them for YOURSELF!

• For the past 4 months, we’ve had a 1 Man Band on Sunday mornings with DJ Dust, but we are about to add 5 more pieces to the mix this Sunday with an amazing band!  DJ Dust will still be spinning on the 1′s & 2′s, but we’re adding a drummer, a special percussionist, a keyboard player, a bassist, and a guitarist and they are the bomb!

• Starting on this Sunday we are relaunching Courageous Kids – our Sunday morning ministry for children from 6 weeks old-5th grade.  Our crew has been working hard for weeks and we can’t wait to begin building Courageous Kids that change our world!  Courageous Kids will meet weekly on Sunday morning during our service from 10:30am-12pm.  All kids are welcome!

• On this Sunday I will begin preaching what I think may be the most important series in the life of our young church entitled “Choose Your Own Adventure” and will be leading us up to an initiative of the same name in which you get to choose a real-life courageous adventure to participate in every week.  Can’t wait to tell you more about this!

• Last, but not least, we are just days away from opening up our brand new office and ministry space and can’t wait for you to see it!  We think we will be close to complete in about a week or so and we’re still working hard to complete it.  We still need financial donations and donations of all types of skills and items and hope you’ll support us today @ http://SupportTheMovement.org

Please pray for us and spread the word about our exciting work here in Atlanta!

Be Courageous!

Quick Recap of NYC Trip

• Thank you for praying and thinking about my trip.
• Preaching @ Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem this past Thursday & Friday was easily one of the top 3 highlights of my 12 years preaching the Gospel.
• To even step feet on the marble stage of Abyssinian was an awestruck moment for me.  Nearly every President of the US has spoken there, most of my preaching heroes of the past 100 years, and so many amazing leaders from around the world.
• Was really honored to meet and spend some time with Rev. Calvin Butts and his great staff.  He was very cool, mellow, and down to earth.  I shared a funny story with him that I may share here later.
• My wife and our 4 month old baby came with me and we actually squeezed in some fun time together on Friday.
• I took a ton of TwitPics walking through Manhattan and you can see them all here.  Click on the photos for a bigger view.
• I made sure to get some Juniors cheesecake, a slice of pizza from Ray’s, and a hot dog from a street vendor so I could make my trip official.  We ate food from the street vendor Halal’s like 3-4 times.  It was good and super affordable.  I have pictures of it all here.
• With all of that said, I am still zonked from traveling to NYC, preaching two nights, coming back @ 5:45am Saturday, ripping and running all day Saturday and having a full, but awesome day yesterday.

Recap of Sunday Morning Service

• I love Courageous Church.
• I told the crowd yesterday that I feel like we are just now really beginning to gel as a real community and it’s really cool to see transformational relationships form right before my eyes.
• I am amazed every week @ how many people still show up from our work on Facebook & Twitter.
• Our breakfast is still the bomb and is more gourmet than ever!
• Yesterday was one of my favorite days musically in one of our Sunday services.  We had a blend of hip hop with our remake of the Nas track “Hero”, Jarrett and the crew sounded awesome singing our remake of Musiq’s track “Teach Me”, and Dorothy really sounded beautiful pouring her heart out to Tomlin’s “God of the City”
• WE WILL HAVE A BRAND NEW SOUND NEXT WEEK AS WE INTRODUCE OUR NEW BAND! I can’t wait!
• I finished preaching a very foundational series on baptism yesterday.
• Our message series tend to be catchy with graphics and cool names and all that jazz, but I stripped this series down to me reading and teaching a ton of scripture about baptism and people loved it.
• God’s word can stand alone and draw people unto Himself.

Recap of Our First Baptisms

• The great folk @ Christian Church Buckhead let us use their sanctuary and baptismal yesterday!  Thank you all so much!
• We kept our service very simple and personal and baptized 9 adults.
• The baptismal pool was a very small pool just designed for one person.  I was all amped and ready to get in the water, but this worked very well.
• After seeing how small it was, I am thinking we can do something like that soon @ our Sunday morning location.  We’d have to put it on wheels, but I am sure we could rig a simple portable pool.
• I’d love to do baptisms in our actual Sunday morning service.
• We already have 9 people signed up for our next round of baptisms!
• Can’t wait!

I love the One Prayer movement.  It really is one of the most unifying initiatives in the church today.  I really was shocked to have several churches request a One Prayer message from us and I wanted to do it, but we just aren’t there yet.

Courageous Church is just a 4 month old baby and we are moving full steam ahead on so many fundamentals that we just didn’t have the time to prepare and film a great message.  I’m learning more and more that saying no to some good stuff is a fundamental skill to have.

Praying for all of you One Prayer pastors and churches out there and hope to join you in 2010!

• I LOVE our church and the awesome community that we are forming here in the heart of Atlanta.
• We are diverse. We are exciting. We work hard.  We’re growing.  We have fun.  We tell the truth. We…
• I asked people to pray a lot leading up to our service today because I was going to be starting a 2 week series on baptism.
• People prayed, but a ton of stuff went wrong…and none of it got in the way of our goals today.

Here’s what went wrong:

• The projector that we use in our conference room was locked away and caused us to lose all of the video/visual stuff that we worked hard on for today.  I did everything that was legal and some stuff that was probably illegal to fix this problem.  Nothing worked.
• Something happened where we had to eliminate one of our song choices at the last minute.
• We ran out of forks, spoons, and cups for breakfast because so many people showed up (this means our breakfast is the bomb).
• After the service was over, 12 people (most were with us for the 1st time) got stuck in an elevator.  We had to call 911 and get the fire department to pry it open.  No one panicked and half of them took twitpics and updated Facebook about it :-)  Made me proud!

Here’s what went right:

• We had record attendance and had to sit out new seats several times.
• Our volunteers were awesome worked really hard today as we keep adding a couple of layers of quality over what we  started out doing when we launched a few months ago.
• A ton of first time visitors showed up out of nowhere.
• The FREE breakfast was DELICIOUS and our new caterer is doing a great job!  I honestly think more people came out this week because of how good her food was last week.
• The music sounded great and our singers are working very hard.
• People received the sermon very well and 12 people crossed the line and decided to be baptized next Sunday! I AM SO STINKING AMPED ABOUT THIS!
• Our Next Steps class about becoming a partner with Courageous Church was well attended and efficient.
• Volunteers with Courageous Kids received their materials as we prepare to get ramped up in 2 weeks.
• A lot of people got to see our awesome office space (we call it our movement command center) and the improvements we’ve made so far during the renovation.

Other Stuff:

• Wifey is gone to go get more supplies for next weeks breakfast
• Looking forward to the NBA game tonight.  Go Lebron!
• Cooking out tomorrow.  Thankful to God for the men and women that have given their lives for this country.
• Gotta run! Family calls!