*Disclaimer! This definitely falls under the category of church planting. If you read my blog for pithy comments, insightful devotions, or my family’s journey – well, this may bore you completely. You’ve been warned.

The Call

Church planting is hard. I read a post from a fellow church planter recently who said church planting was easy – pastoring was hard. I understand the sentiment, but the issue is that the two are inseparable.

Unlike the difference between the wedding and the marriage, church planting has no definitive end in sight. I’m not sure when you are done “planting”.

The Challenge

The primary reason for this is that the most common challenge church planters face is the need for additional leaders. In the majority of cases, every leader involved in a new work is responsible for 3 or 4 areas – and none of them may be their area of gifting! There always seems to be more work to be done than there are people to do it.

Many church planters (myself included at times) often cry out, ‘if I only had more leaders, I could _________!’

Wake Up Call

The truth is, you probably couldn’t _________. That’s because leaders aren’t born. They’re grown!

I was reminded today that Jesus had a peculiar way of doing ministry and equipping leaders. There’s an old saying: God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called. Repeatedly in Scripture we see examples of God taking the most unlikely candidates and using them for His glory and purpose.

True Discipleship

I sat in a meeting this morning where I heard David Putman from PlantingTheGospel.com share this: ‘When Jesus sees the least, the lost, and the lonely, he sees people beaming with potential.’

In other words, rather than focusing on your situation and the lack of resources, why not take the approach of Jesus and focus on the people God has placed in your care and the potential that lies within?

Discipleship isn’t about taking a full grown plant from one garden and transplanting it to yours. It’s more about taking a freshly planted seed, planted in new & fertile soil, and making sure it grows into the healthy plant it should be.

Healthy things grow.

As leaders, we don’t have to manufacture something that doesn’t exist. We don’t have that power. We are only to harness the God-given power already at work within the disciple and steer that in the direction God intends for it to go.

It’s slower than your plug and play leadership team idea.

It’s messier than the neatness of titles and job descriptions.

It hurts more because you fail more and learn as you go.

It’s harder to help people move from where they are to where God wants them to be.

But that’s the job.

That’s discipleship.

And it’s our sole mission.

*Question: I have not arrived in this area and am still learning this principle. How about you? What has your experience been with developing leaders from within?

It’s official! Revolution Church is moving to Camelot Cinemas on September 25, 2011!

This is our 4th move in 2 years! I remember Rick Warren writing about the number of times Saddleback moved in their first 10 years and saying something like ‘The joke was, if you could find us, you could come!’

We don’t want to be confusing, but we do want to be clear: the Church is the people of God meeting for the purpose of God to worship the person of God. It’s not a building.

This is a great move for Revolution! It gives us the space to grow and top notch facilities to do it in. I am more excited about this location than any other venue we have utilized for Revolution!

Here are the details:

Revolution Church (at Camelot Cinemas)
48 East Antrim Drive – Greenville, SC
Service time: 10:30 am
Full adult and children’s worship

We would love to have you join us for a service where our guests are made to feel like family and the atmosphere is casual and engaging. Please visit the website for more details: www.revolutiononline.cc

Filed under: Church Plant, Church Stuff, Revolution Church ]]> http://chrislewisblog.com/2011/08/29/revolution-church-is-moving-woohoo/feed/ 0 Chris Camelotfront http://chrislewisblog.com/2011/08/11/nothing-risked-nothing-gained/ http://chrislewisblog.com/2011/08/11/nothing-risked-nothing-gained/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:09:23 +0000 Chris Lewis http://chrislewisblog.com/?p=1350 ]]>

I read a quote today from Seth Godin that powerfully struck me: ‘If failure is not an option, then neither is success‘.

While it’s true that some people have a more risk averse nature than others, in the spiritual realm, the removal of failure requires the removal of faith.

If I know all the answers, I have dotted every I, crossed every T, eliminated any possibility of the unknown, mastered laying the bat on every curve ball…then why do I need God?

After two years of church planting, my tolerance for the unknown has deepened remarkably. I have grown uncannily comfortable with the ‘what if?’

The Bible tells us without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). Why then do we spend so much time trying to address every variable and possible outcome, once we know God has called us to take a step of faith?

What has God called you to do that fear of failure is stopping you from pursuing? Could it be that you are really trying to ‘solve’ God out of the equation?

First, let me offer a word of explanation. I blog when I have things interesting and (hopefully) uplifting to write about. Lately, I have not felt the urge or ability to report what is going on in my spirit. Church planting is hard! It is without a doubt the most difficult thing I have ever attempted. It’s even harder than having a strong marriage. I covet your prayers and support as my family and I eagerly and joyfully embrace the path God has us on.

I do have something interesting to report…and also something that should keep me blogging a lot more regularly. I committed myself to something the other day in an effort to engage a particular family and get them plugged in at Revolution. I have agreed to compete in a sprint triathlon in August of this year! In case you missed that last part…yes. I am suspending the baseline response I give to everyone that, should they see me running, please stop because that means someone is undoubtedly chasing me with malevolent intentions.

If you see me over the next 7 months, I will no doubt be whipping this almost 37 year old body into the shape required to attempt this challenging feat! So, with that said, I will regularly be updating the blog with my status and thoughts on what will be the most difficult endurance exercise I have ever attempted.

Through this process, I will also be sharing some things that are going on at Revolution as well as insights gleaned from this physical challenge. Thanks for reading and for your patience during this new phase of my family’s life!

This has been one of the best summers I have ever had! There are a couple of things that were unique about it:

First, I was a “stay at home Dad” this summer!  Our oldest daughter is old enough to watch her younger siblings for short time spans, but young enough that the daily responsibility of caring for them is unfair to her and steals her youth. So, we decided that I would become “Daddy Mama“!  I am planning on saying a lot more about that in a subsequent post…probably forever risking my masculinity…but pretty dang funny nonetheless! Stay tuned for that!

Second, this will be a season of life I will remember forever.  This will be eternally etched in my memory and the pages of eternity as the launch of Revolution Church!  I have known for several years what my ultimate purpose and calling from the Lord was.  I have prayed, hoped, planned, fretted, celebrated, and anticipated this day for a LONG time!!!  Now that it is finally here, I am blessed to walk in the plan God has purposed for me.  I hope over the next several months to share some of the pieces of that journey…and who knows…it may serve as an encouragement to some of you to take whatever step in obedience to Jesus you need to take.

My family and I have entered the most difficult phase of our schedule in our nearly 14 years together.  I love this blog as an outlet to share my thoughts and encourage others.  For this season though, I must intentionally keep my wife, my children, Revolution Church, and my job in their proper alignment. This means I will most likely continue on a reduced blogging schedule as long as I am bi-vocational.

When I do post something…it means I definitely have something to say.

Thanks for reading!

Just thought I would give a quick update on some dates for the timeline for Revolution Church:

• July 12 – Preview Service @ 6:30 at the Greenville Hilton on Haywood Rd.
• August 2 – Preview Service (location TBA)
• August 23 – Preview Service (location TBA)
• September 13 – Weekly services projected to begin

Join the attendee list on our Facebook event or send someone an e-vite. See you Sunday night!

It is going to be pretty amazing and I hope you can come!  I have been pretty overwhelmed at the number of people who are using their gifts and want to serve at this event.  There’s a pretty good chance our volunteers could outnumber our attendees!

The space at The Hilton is awesome.  I just have a strong sense that something unbelievable is going to take place.

If you find the time over the next 10 days, would you pray for our core team and the final preparations leading up to Sunday June 7th?  Would you pray specifically for an anointing over the message God has given me?  I appreciate it very much.

See you in 10 days.

Invite everyone you can!  I am going to cast the vision God has laid on my heart for where Revolution Church is going.  It should be awesome!

We have some special things in store too that you won’t want to miss.

Visit www.revolutiononline.cc to learn more and send an e-vite to your friends.

I hope you can make plans to be a part of this!

I am so excited today to share with you the realization of a dream Tabitha and I have been planning for close to 4 years since God placed this calling on our lives!  I am happy to inform you that we are planting a new church in our hometown of Greenville, SC.

We have begun meeting with our core team on Saturday evenings.  Revolution Church should begin hosting preview services sometime in the next several weeks!

In the meantime, you can visit Revolution’s website at www.revolutiononline.cc.

I will post periodic updates to the blog, but the website will be the best place to get the latest updates and most current information on Revolution Church.

Thanks for the prayers and if you don’t mind – kick it up a notch!

Change rarely comes without some measure of heartache, mainly because we are all creatures of habit and grow attached and cling to the familiar.  Change is often complex and very difficult (I did a series on “Change” last year).

With that in mind, I need to inform you that I have resigned from my role as Executive & Worship Pastor at Washington Avenue Church.  My prayer is that Washington Avenue Church would continue pursuing the plan God has purposed and designed them to be.  We leave behind many wonderful friends and some of the best ministry experiences of my life.

I would like to thank the people of Washington Avenue and specifically Chuck Bridges for the time we shared together.  Though we will be laboring in different works, we share a common goal.  That goal is that Heaven would be more crowded because of our faithfulness.  I encourage you to pray for WAC and its leadership.  Great things are ahead!

I would also like to share what’s going on with us right now and how you can pray for us.  Tabitha and I are in the middle of an intense season of prayer and refining the next steps God has for us.  As most of you know, we have accepted a call to plant a new church and went on a scouting trip to Boston, MA last October.  Upon our return, God confirmed that Boston was not our destination.

We do have a very clear sense of what God intends our specific next steps to be and are seeking confirmation of this.  Over the next several weeks, I will be posting more updates about what is coming up in our exciting journey.  Thank you so much for your prayers and I can’t wait to share these exciting things with you!

I had the opportunity to sit down with Sean Sears, a local pastor who planted about three years ago.  Grace Church is one of the churches we visited on Sunday.  This was a spur of the moment meeting, but it was awesome and, I believe, God ordained.  We spent the afternoon together talking about the spiritual climate and need all around the area.  We then drove to an area of 4 towns with a large population and absolutely NO presence of churches presenting the gospel!

He shared some great insights and I left there convinced that this was the connection I traveled to Boston to make.  I look forward to seeing that relationship grow.

I want to recap several highlights and things we learned this week:

• Planting in Boston is an overwhelming challenge!
• It must be a calling…it cannot be a passion only!
• Boston is the most unlikely city in America you will encounter another believer!
• Many of the towns around Boston were chartered before the Declaration of Independence!
• There have been a lot of gifted individuals and organizations that have failed in their attempt to plant churches in Boston.
• God has given me an enormous vision for what can be accomplished in and around Boston.
• I believe this is the beginning of a church planting wave in New England.

God corrected – or at least made adjustments to my vision this week…I don’t believe God wants us to plant a church in Boston…I believe He wants us to plant 1000 churches in Boston!  Too bold?  Crazy?  You’re probably right!  And there is no way we can do it alone.  It will take amazing men like Sean Sears and Hank Wilson.  It will take the seasoned influence of men like Al Ridley.  More than any of that…it will take the unrelenting power of the Holy Spirit!

I will share in a later post how I think God might move to accomplish this.  Thanks for praying while we were gone!

The team spent yesterday afternoon and evening getting familiar with the city.  We rode the mass transit system (called the “T”) everywhere we went.  

We visited different areas of the city, toured Fenway Park, went down to Boston Commons, and made a pit stop by Cheers “Where everybody know your name”.  We ate at an authentic Boston seafood restaurant on Nantusket Beach and had some clam chowder.

We are going to look at a few more areas for potential locations and will be returning home tonight.  We will be traveling quite late, so please remember us in your prayers!

Al Ridley, a veteran church planter, and me

Saturday was another great day!  Al Ridley is the Director of Missions with the Greater Boston Baptist Association and a veteran church planter.  Al drove out to the house the team is staying at and spent a few hours with us Saturday morning.  

During the afternoon, our team went in two different directions and visited potential communities and location for the church plant.  We were very pleased with one and I hope I can give more information on that soon.

We learned a lot about the few churches that are in the area.  Here are some things we learned, along with some highlights of the day:

• There are about 95 English speaking churches spread over 6 million people
• It is estimated that only about .5% of those are Christ followers
• Church planting in Boston is a hard thing with many casualties
• Major groups like Willow Creek and Louis Giglio’s Passion have attempted to plant here and failed
• In New England, relationship trumps everything! (wait…that’s true everywhere!)
• Plymouth Rock is A LOT smaller than I expected!!!
• You can see that picture and others on the Flickr slideshow.
• We are definitely from the south!
• Favorite quote from the weekend: “Hey man, the people on the streets around here are like deer back home, jumping out in front of your car” – Chuck Morris
• We ate at a restaurant called 99 that was pretty good! Still have not had authentic New England Clam Chowder.
• I think we are going to try to get the chowder and maybe take in some history of the city after worship at two different churches Sunday morning.

If you have trouble with the link to Flickr for some reason, here is the full address where you can see some pictures from the weekend:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrislewisblog/show/

Thanks as always for the prayers!!

Hank Wilson and Chris Lewis @ Reunion Church

I just scarfed down a couple of pieces of pizza as the team got settled in our house.  Even though today was primarily a travel day, the meeting this afternoon was awesome!  I hope the rest of the trip is as productive and fun.

This afternoon our team sat down with Hank Wilson and some of his team at Reunion Christian Church. They are doing a great work and God has really blessed the mission He called them to.  They planted a little over 3 years ago. They are really reaching the unique demographic in the downtown Boston area.  Pray for Hank and his team!

We had a relatively easy travel schedule considering our first flight was delayed over an hour.  We made our connecting flight in Cincinnati and arrived in Boston about 1:00.  After getting the rental cars it was off to meet with Reunion and we finished up about 6:30.  They were very generous with their time and shared a lot of great information about the city.

We are having a few internet issues so I’m not posting a video today.  Hopefully that will be handled tomorrow!  Thanks for praying…

• Clarity on location
• Relationships with other Christ followers
• Insight from some other church plants
• Gain a clearer understanding of God’s timing in this

I am probably going to do some video updates to the blog to capture more of the excitement of the environment.  Thanks for praying!

God confirmed over 3 1/2 years ago that we were going to plant a church (or churches) in a major unchurched city.  We did not know when or where, but we began making preparations at that time to be in a position to “GO” when God said it was time.

We sold our home in Easley and reduced our financial commitments as I left my professional career and devoted myself to full time ministry.  I had spent about 10 years in telecommunications and had a business partnership that was dissolved in April of 2006.  We moved into an apartment in October 2006 and our genuine attitude toward planting the church was “God we are willing to go wherever you send us – but there is NO WAY we are ready!!!”

Early 2007, God led us to Washington Avenue Church.  We made this our church home as we continued to proclaim the gospel and minister through Damascus Road Ministries.  In October 2007, I joined the full time staff at Washington Avenue, where I have served as the Executive & Worship Pastor.

One of my earliest conversations with Chuck Bridges (Senior Pastor at WAC) was about the vision God had given us to plant a culturally relevant church in a heavily unchurched major US city.  That was one of the primary factors that led us to WAC – the Kingdom minded vision of the pastor and the people.  Tabitha and I knew that this was a place that would support us and get behind the vision God had given us…without being territorial or competitive!

This past Sunday, we shared with our church family that God had given us some clarity on this calling to plant a church.  We believe we are being called to Boston, MA to plant a church that will reach people with the life changing message of hope found only in Jesus Christ!

While we do not know the precise timing or the exact launch date yet, we are diligently seeking to identify, assemble, and equip the rest of the TEAM that God is calling to join us in this effort!  Some will partner with us by praying with frequency and fervency.  Some may participate by providing financial support, while others will actually be a part of the team that relocates and invests their lives in the people of Boston.

It could take a year or longer to see everything come together and I will continue to serve on staff at WAC as long as I am able to fill my role and remain a benefit in the ministry of the church.  There will come a point in time (approximately 90 days prior to relocation to the mission field) where the demands of the church plant and the new calling hinder my availability at WAC making it impossible to serve in my current capacity as Worship & Executive Pastor.  Until that time, I intend to faithfully serve God and the people of Washington Avenue Church.

It is with the strongest sense of urgency I ask you to pray for God to clarify some of these details…as well as confirmation for some who are praying about being a part of this plant!

Here are some specific ways you can support us and keep up with all that is going on:

• PRAY
• Follow me on Facebook or join our Facebook Group
• Follow us on Twitter
• Scouting trip to Boston on November 7-10
• Support the plant financially
• Plan or participate in a mission trip to Boston once the church is launched

I will periodically update about the status of the plant here on the blog, but will utilize the Facebook Group as much as possible to keep everyone informed.  Thank you for your prayers in this mission!  My family and I are so excited about this next step of faith in the journey God has called us to!!!