Hey!

I hope that you are doing amazingly well!  We wanna knock out 3 birds with this 1 blog post and are excited to see YOU follow up right away!

1. REGISTER NOW FOR OUR VERY FIRST SMALL GROUPS!!!

We are wanting you to sign up now to be a part of one of our very first small groups!!! You DO NOT have to a member of Courageous Church (or even a Christian) and we encourage you to invite as many of your friends and family as you want to join a group.  Anyone can be a part of a group, but you MUST register.

Each group is free and will provide a place for you to build relationships, learn timeless truths to help guide you through life, and ultimately complete a courageous project together!  Can you tell I am excited??? :-)

We are having a special kick-off service this Sunday and some groups will begin meeting as early as Monday.

NEW UPDATE: The teen small group is now meeting @ 1pm instead of 5pm here in the Courageous Church offices.  This way you can come to the 11am service, then go to Financial Peace University @ 1pm, and then have your teens meet with their small group. Encourage your teen to register and encourage their friends to register too. It’s going to be the bomb (is that still cool to say?)!

2. Sign up NOW for Financial Peace University! It will change your life!

NEW UPDATE: FPU begins on Sunday, March 7th and is offered @ 11am & 1pm every Sunday for 13 weeks.

A few VERY IMPORTANT details:

• You do not have to be making money to take FPU -it’s for everybody!
• Although we have invested a good deal of resources to become an official Financial Peace University site, we are offering the class for free.
• Like any university setting, some books and materials are required and cost $93 per family unit.  Order them from a link on the registration form.
• We have a limited # of partial scholarships available from the church to help you if you absolutely cannot make this investment.  You can let us know on the registration form if this is needed.

3. We need more volunteers in the office every day of the week to help with our efforts in Haiti, manage our daily operations, and so much more.  We’re growing and need you to help carry the load, OK? Sign up now! Thanks!

BE COURAGEOUS!

Red tape is old school. It’s 2010 doggone it.

Last Tuesday thousands of Haitian men, women, and particularly children suffered traumatic brain injuries, skull fractures, and every other type of head injury imaginable.

One problem.

After the quake – Port Au Prince had ZERO neurosurgeons. Consequently, Dr. Sanjay Gupta (there as a medical journalist for CNN) ended up performing emergency brain surgery on a 12 year old girl in the medical facilities of the USS Comfort. At least a bit frustrated, he tweeted this…

“attention: no neurosurgeons in haiti that can be found. needed, along with proper instruments. please ensure uss comfort has one as well.”

The world has thousands of neurosurgeons.  I even heard that dozens and dozens had attempted to get to Haiti but were turned down time after time for misc. red tape rationale.

Many of you read his tweet. I saw it. You were shocked. I was shocked.

Except in Twitter world we don’t believe in red tape.  Together (on 1-19-2010 @ 2pm EST) we decided to locate 5 willing, world class neurosurgeons and figure out a way to get them to Haiti right away.  About 5,000 tweets later we found 5 great neurosurgeons ready to drop everything and take the plunge THIS WEEK. Just hours after tweeting about not having neurosurgeons in Haiti, Sanjay tweeted this:

I’d pretty much say we cut through the red tape! Twitter style :-)

Thank everybody that tweeted and everybody that made a financial donation so that we could act quickly and get these doctors on the ground in Port Au Prince, Haiti.

And a big shout out to the neurosurgeons from Portland, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Atlanta now on their way to save lives!

Tomorrow Only! A Snuggie Contest @ Courageous Church!

#1: Yep.  I’m serious.  We have a SPECIAL PRIZE for any person that wears a SNUGGIE to either our 9am or 11am service this Sunday!  It’s cold out and so many of you joked last Sunday that you wish you wore yours so now I’m giving pastoral permission and a prize :-) Think about it, the design is perfect for you to lift your hands and praise the Lord. Reply now if you think you might be bold enough to wear your Snuggie so I have an idea of how many prizes to bring!

For all of you that are not fortunate enough to have a Snuggie, we purchased three additional space heaters this week to make sure we stay toasty.

#2: Tomorrow (Sunday) we will begin our Next Steps class again for 2010.  We have a new conference room available directly across from the auditorium and it will be offered immediately after the 9am service is over. Grab your breakfast and come on to this casual reception to learn what the NEXT STEPS are for you as you commit yourself to God through Courageous Church.  If you are interested in becoming a member of Courageous Church, this reception is required.

#3: Our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY service is being hosted @ Morehouse College on Sunday, January 17th @ 11am!  During this service we will be celebrating what God has done in our first year, looking forward to year two, and helping the college celebrate MLK Day!  I find it to be very powerful that our church was invited by the college to host our service on King Day!

We’ll have several awesome guests and cannot wait to SEE YOU THERE!  More details coming from us soon!

#4: So many of you have asked how you join or become a member of Courageous Church.  Wanting to make sure that we take membership seriously, we have waited until now to introduce Courageous U - an engaging, surprising, interactive 4 step process to becoming a member of our church.  It’s coming this February and will only be offered 3 times a year!  Are you ready?

#5: SMALL GROUPS are coming!!! Starting the last week of February we will be launching our very first small groups for kids, men, women, and married couples! We will also be offering Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University twice every Sunday!  Are you excited??? I am!

We hope you’ll continue doing a great job spreading the word about all that God is doing through our young church!

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 :-)

500toys.org

Last year 100s & 100s of people from 25 states and several countries came together and raised over $20,000 to purchase every single student at an award-winning inner city Atlanta elementary school brand new school uniforms and a new toy of their choosing!  It was amazing!

This year we are doing it again AND we are also going to give hundreds of kids who lost all of their toys in the Atlanta floods a great new toy (or two) too :-)

If 900 people gave $25 a piece we could knock this out!  Or if about 225 people gave $100 we could do it!  Whatever you can give, be it $1 or $1,000 – let’s do this!

See the awesome video from our 2008 BIG GIVE and learn about all of the ways you can help us bring hope to hurting children in our city @ 500toys.org

Spread the word, text it, tweet it, email it, facebook it, fedex it, scream it, tell your boss, write an old fashioned letter with paper and pen…do whatever you can to make this cause huge!

Together…we can really make a difference!

Love y’all!

Judging from the stats, hundreds (maybe thousands) of you visit here regularly, but you don’t subscribe.  Maybe you don’t know how to subscribe to blogs or don’t know how to subscribe to mine.  I read dozens of blogs daily through subscriptions and they keep me sharp and encouraged!  Here are two ways you can subscribe today:

USE A READER. Most if not all blogs use RSS (Real Simple Syndication) “feeds” which can be aggregated and displayed by what’s known as an RSS or Feed Reader. Some examples of free readers are Bloglines, Google Reader, Yahoo, or most of the newer web browsers have readers built in. I personally use Google Reader which helps me sift through the blogs I subscribe to.

You can subscribe via different RSS options HERE.

EMAIL. If you’d rather have the new posts delivered to your inbox as an email, that’s pretty simple too. Click here first, click on “Get Shaun in the City by Email” then type in your address and verification to receive posts via email.

Starting a church is not cheap.

Doing it effectively in a way that reaches large numbers of people is actually quite costly, but I think it’s more than worth the investment of time and money.  However, I have compiled a list of 10 TOTALLY FREE RESOURCES that have made all the difference for me during the first 9 months since we launched Courageous Church!

I’m not going to pretend…I love FREE stuff.  I am a pretty frugal dude and a notorious cheapskate.  I bought my laptop @ Wal-Mart, my shoes @ Costco, and my eyeglasses that you see in the pictures on this blog for $9 @ Zenni Optical (that’s lenses and the frame).  Nothing beats free though :-)  These 10 free resources have been as valuable more valuable for me as a church planter than any MacBook Pro or amp or software that we’ve purchased.

10. Hard Work – Building a launch team, creating momentum, training people, having a Grand Opening, and then actually leading a growing community of faith takes a lot of elbow grease.  If you’re not prepared to work hard – don’t do this.  I work hard.  I work late.  I work early.  Yeah – we spent some money along the way, but the hard work that I put in alongside the long hours of faithful volunteers has been a huge key to our success.

9. Studying & Reading God’s Word – Don’t believe the hype.  People really want to know what the Bible says.  I lead a young, diverse, highly unchurched, skeptical congregation and preach messages week in and week out that are bible heavy.  I study it and read it for myself and then go share this with people on Sunday morning.  It works.  The more I read it and the more I share what it says with people – the more I see lives changed.

8. Reading Blogs from Pastors & Leaders that Have Already Been Where You’re Going – I have a collection of books that have shaped me in a major way, but the blogs I read daily from pastors & leaders keep sharp and encouraged more than anything else out there.  I follow what they say, learn what’s working (and not working for them), discover some best practices, and even hear God confirm some things for me when I see how God is moving in other churches around the world.  Mark Batterson, Eugene Cho, LifeChurch.tv, and Perry Noble are some that I look forward to every day.  I read about 20 blogs regularly and subscribe to them through BlogLines.

7. Twitter – Twitter has been central to the success of Courageous Church and it never cost us one single penny!  Our church uses to Twitter to stay connected to people and keep them informed of all that’s going on and I use Twitter to learn from leaders, stay in the loop, and keep people connected to who I am in some very fresh ways.  I have made close friends on Twitter, communicated with leaders and mentors that I otherwise would not know, we have raised funds and awareness there, and so much more.

6. Email – Our church uses Google Apps to host our email services and I push email hard and heavy.  I send and receive hundreds of emails a day. I try to respond regularly, quickly, and shortly to almost every email I receive.  I also send out informative and inspirational mass messages to our church.  I heard that email was going out of style, but we don’t act like it.

5. Making the Big Ask -My friends giggle at how much I ask people to do and give, but it works.  I regularly challenge people to step up and serve God in our city and they almost always say yes or have a very good reason why they can’t do what I’m asking them to do.  Do I get nervous when I ask people? Sometimes.  But having nobody serving God makes me even more nervous.

4. Be Motivational – I try hard to be an encouraging force for people by speaking words of love, kindness, warmth, and hope.  Even if I have to deliver bad news, I try to shape it in a way that shows the glass as being at least half full.  Politicians, the news media, and doggone near everybody else has the ANGER & DEPRESSION market down just fine.  If you choose to be a motivational voice, you will probably be in league of your own.  To me, a depressed pastor is a living, breathing oxymoron.  God has called us to lift people up with the GOOD NEWS!

3. Facebook – While our church uses paid Facebook ads pretty often, one of the main reasons they work so well for us is that all of the effective free stuff we do on Facebook has already created goodwill and friendships in our city.  I have over 7,000 Facebook friends (on two accounts) that I communicate with regularly.  We joke. We pray.  We debate.  We live life.  I counsel people through real challenges on Facebook.  Our church has nearly 2,000 people that are a part of our Facebook group.  Every single Sunday we have a ton of new visitors that learned about our church on Facebook.  Some saw ads, but just as many say they are friends with me or friends with my friends that told them about the church.

2. Prayer – I still don’t pray as much as I would like to, but I pray today more than I ever have.  I am completely convinced that if I’m not going where God says to go and doing what God says to do that I am wasting my time and yours.  I so badly want to be in tune with the heart of God for the church and not just promote my own goofy ideas that I find myself just asking God for his guidance and strength.  Try it.

1. A Great Family Life – I love my big family.  My wife is my best friend.  My kids are my biggest fans.  Home base is a safe place for me and gives me the confidence to go out into the world and be bold because I know my family will always love me.  I invest my love and energy and time into leading this family the best way I know how.  I made a value decision many years ago that I would be known as a good husband and father and that this reputation would be a major part of my ministry.  I am not the best leadership guru (I’m learning), or the best preacher (I’m growing), or the best dressed dude around (this will never happen), but when it comes to being a husband and father, I’m one proud dude.

Turning 30 is a pretty big deal, right?

Well my wife all but begged me to let her and some others throw me a big party, but building a well for some beautiful people that REALLY need clean water is so much cooler.  I could actually use a few things (like a new pair of shoes), but my “needs” aren’t anything like clean water.

I turned 30 TODAY (9/17) and I want it to COUNT!

Let’s do this…Shaun King style :-)

Conservatives, liberals, moderates, every color, hip hop, country, rock, senior citizen, child, every state, international! I want EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU to come together on my birthday and CHANGE THE WORLD! Please click any of the links above and do your very best!  Would you spread the word too?

Thanks!

Shaun

PS -Let’s not take 90 days - let’s do this before Sunday :-)

About a year ago I expressed my agitation concerning a national church planting conference that I thought had a glaring lack of diversity.  The lineup they had was awesome!  Every speaker was qualified and anybody that went to that conference was sure to learn a ton…from the best, white male church planters in the country.

In retrospect, I wish that I had reached out to the leaders of that conference before writing the blog post above.  I meant what I said, but connecting with them would have been more mature on my end.

A few months after I wrote “White Male Church Planters Conference -Part I”, I rather humorously wrote Part II after learning that my own organizational conference pretty much looked the same.  Again, I made the same mistake and should have reached out to my leaders and expressed my thoughts privately before going public.

It obviously takes me too long to learn lessons, but I finally learned that lesson :-)

So…guess what…I am now speaking at the White Male Church Planters Conference alongside a female pastor and several female leaders, an awesome Asian-American pastor/author/church planter, a Latino leader that I admire, and more.  To say that I’m proud is an understatement.   Here’s the lineup.  It’s one of the best I’ve seen for a church planting conference.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to exaggerate my influence in this, but I am elated that leaders are getting the point that a diverse conference is a better conference.  It will not only reach more people (I will bet you anything that this is the best attended conference they’ve ever had), but it will provide everyone that attends with a richness of perspectives that will enhance the quality of the time.

I can’t wait actually.  Registration is deeply discounted right now and I would love for YOU to join me there.  I am clearing off my schedule to be there from start to finish and would love to help you out in any way I can.

So -plenty of other White Male Church Planters Conferences still exist…but this isn’t one of them! Pretty cool in my book.

Just a few months ago, Courageous Church was a dream in the heart of just a few people.  Now we are serving and impacting hundreds of people throughout Atlanta.  Our hope is that this video captures just a bit of who we are and what we’re all about! You can also check this out in Full HD on Facebook here!

Thanks to our own DJ Dust for filming this!  You’re the bomb man!