Money, Money, Money

If you are a church planter out there, you’re gonna love this conversation!  I decided to make a few comments on what I’ve learned about money over the last two years.  First of all, you should know that I firmly believe that money will fall out of trees if you shake them hard enough.  I have no grasp of the sentence, “We don’t have the money to do that.”  I don’t believe it and I intend to prove the world wrong.

We started this church with one $25,000 grant.  That is absolutely nothing.  It’s pretty much chump change in light of the astounding mountains to move in the church planting world.  The only reason we have not folded in failure is the consistent, faithful families that started this church with us (39 awesome people, but half of that number represents children).  We have also had a few larger checks along the way that have made all of the difference.  I’ll write about it later, but we were about one week away from near bankruptcy when New Life in Renton, Washington took an offering that propelled us to the next level.

Along the way, God has consistently provided as long as we kept putting ourselves out there.  When things looked bleak in the bank account, you could hear this sentence often, “Don’t stop spending.  Think smart and spend what you need to stay excellent.”  Don’t get me wrong, we also had to be very resourceful… www.craigslist.com became our best friend.  We liquidated anything we weren’t using to pay the bills.  We are the “greenest” church out there because we are forced to recycle everything.  A piece of plywood used in a stage set will be reused a dozen times for whatever the latest cause!  If an offering envelope falls on the floor, our vultures will swoop down to make sure it is available next week. 

And here we are again at a crossroads of decision making in the financial world.  As Mark and I pray, we feel that North Creek needs a semi-permanent residence.  Being in a school has limitations that hurt.  Advertising, perceptions, damages to our ever-moving technical equipment…it’s a constant juggling act of rental facilities and replacement issues.

As we walk down this path we have discovered that once again we need about $25,000.  Isn’t that ironic?  We are back to where we started two years ago, but with a new drive and a new direction.  And mark my words…just as God has provided before, He will again.  It’s His church and He loves this community far more than we ever will.  Why wouldn’t He find a way to give us $25,000 to change someone’s life?

So church planters out there, hear me loud and clear…shake the tree, money will fall out.  Put yourself out there with a dream, a passion, a purpose.  Walk in unwavering faith and determination.  Love people so deeply and unconditionally that it hurts…the money is not worth the time you are spending thinking about it.  Think about excellence and giving people your best.  Money is just a tool and there’s plenty of it out there.  $25,000 is just chump change to someone!  (Of course, if $25,000 is chump change to you, you can give online at www.coffeechurch.com …and I’d love to meet you!)

I understand the weight that terrible finances can be on leadership…been there, done that, hated it, don’t want to be there again.  But I will tell you that in the midst of crisis, we held firm to what we believe about leadership.  We believed in our team, blessed them to the best of our ability, thought with creativity, and never whined to our people about making a greater sacrifice. 

So, in the spirit of my tree analogy…hang in there!

Outrageous Stages

Here’s some funny memories from Kris that will make you laugh today:

 

North Creek is a church of purpose.  Everything we do is for a particular and well thought out reason.  Even our stage decorations have a purpose.  In fact, the win for the Stage Creativity Ministry is to create an auditorium environment that people will tell others about when they leave.  Have you heard about coffeechurch’s crazy stage decorations yet?  If you live anywhere near Vancouver, Washington you just might!  Until then, here’s a list of some of the odd things we’ve heard said in the midst of North Creek’s preparations for our stage decorations:

 

1.     Joe, could you go rub Kylie’s back, I need to make 43 more cups of mashed potatoes.

2.     Doctor, can you get tetanus from chicken wire.

3.     How much paint do you need to cover six eight foot men?

4.     Where can I get 1,000 pounds of flour?

5.     Do they carry that at Target?

6.     Can you push that while you breastfeed?

7.     Mom, you drivin’ me crazy…you walking me too long!

8.     We’ll only have to have a fridge on the stage for one week.

9.     We’d only have to unplug one cable….

10.   Is somebody writing this down?

11.   I can’t take the baby chicks home, I have cats.

12.   Exactly how many rolls of sod does it take to cover the stage?

13.  If you think Mary will let you have open flame in the lobby, you’re crazy.

 

Long Term Vision

There is a long list of challenges in church planting.  I wouldn’t trade our problems for a traditional church’s problems, but nonetheless, the challenges are sometimes daunting.  I think that the most recent realization is the long term reality of growth.

When you open the doors of your church plant, I think there’s a hope that people will just naturally flood through your doors and the hard work will be over.  After months of planning and advertising and working, you really need to believe that after opening Sunday, you get to rest.  However, Monday morning comes with the harsh reality that you need to do everything all over again for next week…and the next week…and the next week. 

The reality is that the launch of a church is not a sprint, but a marathon.  We are right at 100 services and we have mastered some parts of this church plant thing.  Set up, tear down, budgets, responsibilities, getting people involved in ministry…we have it almost to an art form.

But what I have not mastered is patience.  I want Vancouver to be reached with the love of Jesus and my personal timeline is NOW.  However, in the irony of God, His timeline is much wider than mine.  He is more concerned about the journey…both of the individuals who will come to North Creek and the church itself.  He wants us to be molded and shaped precisely how He wants us, which might take a day or it might take 40 years!

I’m in it for the long haul, but my spirit is anxious.  Anxious to see with my eyes what God has put in my heart so long ago.

Awesome Baptisms

What an amazing day at church today!  We baptized another nine people at Klineline Pond this morning.  Congrats to Tamara, Kevin, Liana, Lori, Wyatt, Kylie, Laura, Lexi, and Heather! 

It was such an awesome statement of what God is doing in the lives of people!  Our God is living and active!  As I videotaped each testimony this morning, I couldn’t help but appreciate the vastness of God.  Each story was completely different and each person’s journey lead them through a multitude of experiences.  And yet God met them just where they were at and will continue to mold and shape each life as He sees fit.

I am humbled at how God has used this church plant to reach people in our community.  It is so amazing to be a part of God’s plan!  I couldn’t help but wonder how God will use each life that came out of the water today.  Even as I spoke with each baptism candidate this morning, I felt as if God was whispering to me that I was in the presence of truly remarkable people.  Both young and old…God will use their lives to change Vancouver…and beyond!

Faith

Last night Mark and I read Hebrews 11, which is the chapter on faith.  My Bible reading plan just happened to coincide with some decisions that we are making that require faith.  Isn’t faith such an interesting concept?  Faith is easy if you are sure of the direction you want to go, but what if you have lots of options and just need to go ahead with one of them?  Then what?

I laugh at the way we often times think God works.  I think we overspiritualize “choice” sometimes.  I spoke with a young woman who was trying to determine whether it was God’s will that she date someone who was in full time ministry or one that was pursuing a business degree.  She was torn about which one God had “called” her to.  As she was lamenting, she began talking about what she wanted in a man, including the exact height requirements that she would settle for.  I told her, “You are willing to tell God that you won’t marry a man under six feet tall, but you aren’t willing to just make a choice about the type of career path you want in a mate?”  Sometimes you just have to make a decision and let God bless you from there.  For example, if you are uncomfortable with the military lifestyle, don’t date someone in the army.  It’s a choice and God gave us a brain to make a choice.

The faith part comes right after the choice.  She won’t marry a man under six feet tall, so she better have faith that God can help her with that…

And I find great comfort in that.  Just make the choice with the best heart and mind that you can muster…and have the faith to believe that God will bless you for giving it your all. 

As church planters, we face such a multitude of decisions in the months and years to come.  Everything we are is temporary and it is our job to find permanence in our community.  That will take sacrifice and leadership skills far beyond what we can imagine, but I trust that as we make the choices necessary, our church will follow with a faith that moves the mountains.

A Word From Kris

 Just to throw in a little variety, here are some thoughts from one of our other pastors, Kris Gray…

 

As part of the teaching team at North Creek Church, I had the privilege of speaking about Dreaming Big last Sunday and I am overwhelmed by the responses of our people!  I have been flooded with calls, emails, and texts of people who went home and made incredible goals for themselves and their family and I am very excited for what these small and big changes might mean for our church, our community, and our world!  

 

 

I used the illustration of the scene in the original Indiana Jones where Indy is faced with fighting a man who seems very proficient in whip wielding and is displaying his incredible skills to Indy, which the audience seems to find very intimidating.  But not Indy.  He just quietly and subtly pulls out his gun and shoots the guy.  It’s an awesome moment in the movie and it’s an incredible analogy of not getting caught up in being superspiritual, but instead taking action on who you want to be and who God says you are.  To me, it’s what’s so great about North Creek Church, changing lives in a practical way.   

 

By the way, if you want to know the odd story behind that scene in Indiana Jones, shoot me an email and I’ll fill you in! (kris@coffeechurch.com)  And if you want to check out the entire sermon, visit www.coffeechurch.com and click on the media library link.   

 

Until then, dream big!  Dream with expectancy!  Believe what God says about you!  I do…

 

 

Quiet the Critics

I was recently reading a great article on hologram churches, such as Northpoint in Georgia.  It’s such a creative way of growing a church without having the stadium feeling!  Check out the article for yourself… (http://www.slate.com/id/2197166)  Basically a hologram church is a video venue service at a different location than the senior pastor is actually preaching at.  It’s a cool and trendy idea of how to use technology to reach people.

After I read the article, I ran across several blogs that were commenting on their opinion of what Andy and many others are now doing.  And I am amazed to say that there were many critics of this style of church.  Here’s my problem.  Andy is reaching over 20,000 people with the love of Christ.  Why do we feel the need to rip him apart for it?  I would give my left arm to be able to reach that many people!   

My mother-in-law was also telling me a while back about a show on TBN that was negatively criticizing young pastors preaching in flip flops for not being reverent enough…Jeff, you are in trouble!  Have they read the New Testament?  Do they understand Jesus?  He threw outward reverance aside in order to reach whomever, however, wherever He could with the love of God. 

How silly will we look standing before God someday to argue our point of whether or not Andy Stanley should have had a hologram church?  Are we serious?  If he is blessed enough and smart enough to figure out how not to stop reaching people, go Andy!    

I want to live in the refreshing reality that the church next door can be extremely successful doing it their way AND we can be extremely successful doing it our way.  There really are enough people in the world that need Jesus for every Christian church out there to do well.

So, grab your coffee and wear your flip flops!  We’re gonna have church!  And if that takes a holographic Pastor Mark and sixteen venues, so be it.

Playing Catcher

Someone recently suggested that I include my own bio on the list of staff that I’ve been compiling for the last couple of weeks.  Where do I start?  

As a kid, I played fastpitch softball.  (Softball is for sissies, but fastpitch is the real thing!)  It was in those seven years that I believe God was preparing me for my role as a pastor’s wife.  Being a catcher is like playing all the positions at the same time, but staying in one place.  You get foul balls, pop flies, you’re a baseman, there are line drives, you make the pitcher better if you make the right calls, you keep the ump happy, and with the right padding, you can get hit pretty hard and still be OK.  A great catcher is very fast and can throw all the way to second base with a surprising speed and accuracy.  If something gets past you, it could very well cost you the game and there’s no one around to rescue you.  Although a catcher is part of the team, they are also very clearly playing their own game just outside the bounds of the field.

And that pretty much sums up my life in ministry.  I love my role, although it includes such a variety of jobs that it can leave me reeling.  I’m definitely on the team, but just slightly outside of the bounds.  I do my best to make the pitcher look good, I can take a hit better than most, and not too many things get by me. 

I try very hard to hide my fierce determination because when it comes out, it tends to scare small children.  I can easily accept someone elses failure, but I can’t tolerate my own.  I need people around me to do what they are great at because that is when I’m most comfortable.  Whiners and those who spend more time complaining than working absolutely drive me nuts. 

I am blessed to have a church that doesn’t make me feel like I have to be something I’m not.  I’m never going to be on the worship team, play the piano, bake cookies for the women’s bazaar, or wear a broach.  Nor am I good at saying all of the right things.  No comments necessary on that one…

The thing that gets me up in the morning is to watch people’s dreams come true.  I want you to be incredible and if I can help, I’ll pretty much bleed to make it happen.  I love people…a lot.  I spend my extra thought time trying to figure out how to get you involved in the bigger picture of doing something great for God.  I ask for updated church directories frequently so that I can go through each name and take inventory of where you are fitting in.  If you’re not, I want to know about it, but don’t tell me unless you want a new ministry.

Most importantly I love God.  I love His Bible.  I love the job that He’s given me.  I’m doing my best to please Him and “catch” as many people as I can for the kingdom of God.

“Someday” is Going to Be Great

Pastor Kris preached at church this morning on dreaming big.  It’ll be online to listen to at www.coffeechurch.com in a couple of days.  Listen to it!  It’s a pretty amazing reminder of confidence in our God.

Kris’ request is for people to get a dream and live it out.  In her sermon she said, “Someday” is going to be great, but we’re not supposed to live for someday.  I think we are all guilty of believing in “someday” much more than we are at believing in today. 

Although I have personal goals, I often find that most of my goals revolve around our church.  My life and ministry are very tightly wound together!  So, I have lots of goals about what North Creek is going to become in the future and it’s easy to settle into the fact that we’ll just grow into it…someday. 

But what if it didn’t have to be that way?  What if we could wake up tomorrow and become a force to be reckoned with?  People clammering to hear about Jesus and get involved in ministry?  What if everyone in Vancouver knew the name of coffeechurch.com and associated it as a church that cares about the community?  What do we have to do to make that happen…now? 

Through a series of events that have occured throughout the last few weeks, I think God is stirring within me to go after my goals with a new vengence…both those ministry goals and my personal list.  I hope that you have goals stirring within you as well.  I’d love for you to comment on what some of your goals are.  There is power in writing them down!  Here’s three of mine:

*Have a church of at least 10,000 people

*Be on Deal or No Deal

*Go to Israel to see where Jesus was!

*Have Andy Stanley comment on my blog

I’ve got lots more, but those seem pretty significant, so I’ll leave it at that for now! Go ahead and leave a comment with a few of your dreams!

Fearless Leader

And behind all of the amazing leaders that I’ve spent the last week telling you about stands an amazing man.  Our lead pastor is a phenomenal man.  I have the privilege of sharing my life with him, so I know him well. 

Mark was a youth pastor for over a dozen years, which took us on an incredibe journey that molded and shaped our lives into who we are now.  For at least ten of those years Mark never dreamed of starting a church.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that would have been the job that he wanted the least…ironically it has become his greatest joy in ministry.

Several years ago, Mark knew his days in youth ministry were coming to a close.  It was bittersweet because we both really loved that era of our lives.  However, when God begins to tug at your heart, you are never quite comfortable.  After much research, prayer, and counsel, his path was obvious.  He would join the ranks of those who have sacrificed and stepped out in faith to start a church from scratch.

Mark is dripping with optimism and faith.  I’m not sure the thought ever crossed his mind that this might not work.  I believe that is because God whispers to a pastor’s heart differently than the rest of us.  The mantle of ministry is a heavy one…one that I would not wish for on anybody.  I think God is gracious to those that have a pastor’s heart.  A common thread for those in ministry is a strong determination mixed with a sensitivity that can easily break a man. 

Mark is a leader that allows other people to be their best.  He is so deeply confident in who God made him that he has no problem letting others be better in the giftings that God has given to them.  He is an enabler in ministry.  He will use people far before they are “perfect” and “ready” because he so deeply believes in the using the gifts God has given us…at the level that they currently are.

He strives for excellence in everything he does and suffers deeply when he lets someone down.  He has an insane attention to detail, which is famous for being labeled as “intense”.  We are blessed to be following a man of integrity.  What you see is what you get.  He has no ability to be guarded or pretentious. 

Mark loves to laugh, which is probably his favorite part of being a dad.  He enjoys the small moments of life.  He lives for your stories of changed lives and bursts with excitement when you grow in your life.  His intentions are pure and his reason for being a leader has nothing to do with titles and egos.  He is called by God to preach the Word and that humbles him daily.  It’s what I admire about him the most.