Our Limits Reveal our Greatest Opportunities…

It’s ALL about the Signs

A year or so ago when we were forced to remove our signs from our church building and property (during the week), we began to set more yard signs out in the community.  These can only be put out on the weekend now and the city has made it perfectly clear we cannot make people aware (through signs) about our building that sits on Brookway Dr.

Two weeks ago, all of signs we put out on the weekend were taken by the city of Cornelius.  We were informed we could not put them out at ANY TIME in Cornelius.  We thought the weekend was okay, but they said no yard signs, ever.

The Early Lessons of Adopting “Better Experiments”

“The future of the church is not going to be built on implementing Best Practices, but on our willingness to attempt Better Experiments” – Will Mancini

I love this quote and it has stuck with me for over the past 2 years.  As a matter of fact, I even added “Better Experiments” to a list of CORE VALUES we have in our church organization.  It’s not printed on the wall or stuck on the back of any bulletin – it’s just a core value that guides the WHY WE DO decisions of our organization.  I encourage our staff to step out into new directions and take risks as we move ministry forward.

However, this blog post is about the early lessons of adopting this value as an organization. I’ve spoken many times to our church about the freedom of being able to say “We don’t know” and walking into the unknown future with God leading the way – but it takes a certain mindset to be okay with tripping, falling, or even being launched into something bigger than you could possibly imagine with nothing but faith that God knows what He’s doing. For most folks, the loss of control (good or bad) is the loss of stability in an organization.  If we live by fear and make decisions that limit our risk in life – then we are not really living. 

God Has Something in store for us…

This is a picture of the text I sent out around 2pm on Saturday to my staff & advisory team (auto correct in full effect!).  I also sent a Facebook message to a few folks as well.  I very rarely send this kind of message out – but the weight of my thoughts and emotions were overwhelming, and I knew that I needed folks to intercede in prayer for this past weekend – if we wanted to experience what God had in store for us.

For those that may have missed one of our service this past weekend, I’ll give you the brief recap.  I was speaking on sex & sexuality in our series “Boy Meets Girl”.  I was focused on the Oneness God created through sex in the Garden, the brokenness we experience because of sin and the fall, and the hope that Oneness can be found and redeemed in God’s Love.  I really felt that God had something in store for us, but also felt the weight of spiritual opposition of this kind of message reaching our church.  I called for prayer.  Services went great… until the last one on Sunday morning…