I just found out that Paul Rodgers is the lead singer for Queen!

I know most of you probably could care less but I am a Bad Company fan and I can’t handle this.

Tadd stopped by the office today. I didn’t know he was coming so it was cool to see him. It is a weird thing to literally see and talk to someone EVERY day for 18 months then not see them for a while.

We solved all the problems for all the churches around us, talked about what God was doing in both of our churches, laughed, made fun of Preston, and had a good time.

It was cool.

We are a year old. Over 70% of our people were out of church when they started attending The Stone. That is cool.

But along with that comes challenges. We started Home Team sign-ups and to be honest we don’t push them very hard so I though we would be fine with the teams we have (which is EVERY ONE who we would actually allow to lead one). Well let’s just say Home Team fever has caught on. Our smallest Home Team is 16 people and a couple are close to hitting 30.

Looks like we will be kicking our Home Team training into overdrive very quickly.
Not sure I have mentioned this before but I LOVE CHURCH PLANTING!

I love fall. I live at the foothills of the mountains and I love the changing of the leaves, I love the chill in the air, I love the Georgia Bulldogs, I love fall clothing, and tonight DeAnna started some thing else I love about the Fall…The Food.

When it is chilly outside I love the baking of breads, cakes, etc. that she makes. I also love the heavy make you feel warm inside dishes she cooks up. Tonight it started with homemade banana nut bread and made from scratch Chicken Noodle soup.

It is fall and I love it!

I think one of the interesting things about people we are reaching at The Stone is the fact that we have 5 Pastor’s kids in our church. PK’s have it rough growing up. I especially think this was true in the past when people had crazy expectations for the PK’s.

Every one of these PK’s were not attending church when the started here. They all were burned out and had vowed not to attend anymore yet some how they ended up at The Stone. Three of the father’s have called thanking us for getting their child back in church. We didn’t do anything but I am glad they called.

Another cool thing about these 3 guys and 2 women is they all now are serving. They are excited about church and they have seen that church can be exciting.

That is very cool.

I have something that has been bugging me for a few weeks so I wanted to post on it. There is a mindset out there against pastors/planters that are doing more progressive church. They call us Church growth people. They say we are in it for the money. We are in it because it draws a crowd. We are in it because it is easier. Blah, Blah, Blah.You can’t be serious.

Logically that just doesn’t make sense.

I think one of the greatest myths about the type of church we are doing is that it leads to church growth. That simply isn’t true. I know as many small church plants as I do established churches. They say that 2 out of 3 church plants will close by their second year. In our area there are several church plants. A couple are doing well. The majority of them are running very very low numbers. I don’t say that to be mean, I just say it as a fact. A more progressive style of church is not a sure thing when it comes to building a church. The largest churches in our area are county seat churches. So if I wanted to just build a church, I could have taken an established one and tried to build it. So to say we do it for church growth is not a very smart or well thought out comment.

“Yeah but what about the money?” This is the one that makes me laugh the hardest. People actually think we start churches for the money???? HA!!!!! If I was in this for the money, I would have taken an established church. I have several friends who run less then half in attendance then we do, yet they make more then double what I do. When Tadd and I started RSC we were making I think $100 a week from the church. Trust me, we didn’t do it for the money. The average established church in America gets about $21 a person on Sunday mornings. We just hit the $13 a person mark. We are teaching on giving right now but I don’t ever expect our giving to reach more then about $16 a person because if it gets higher that shows me we aren’t reaching unchurched people. If you saw how my wife and I lived last year, you would know we don’t do this for the money.

As far as being easier. Nope. There is nothing easy about a church plant. We set up and tear down every week. Every Saturday we wonder if people are going to show up. We are the pastor, IT guy, graphic designer, etc. Pastoring an established church isn’t easy either but it would be a lot easier sometimes to find a church that didnt have to deal with the stuff we deal with.

The fact is we don’t do church the way we do to be cool. I am sure some do but they don’t last very long. We do it because we think people are dying and going to hell. Because of that conviction, we feel as if we must do WHATEVER it takes to reach these people. I could care less about doing church the way we do it. If there was another way to reach lost people, we would do it. I admit I take it personally when people say these things because I know what fuels me and the church planters I know is very simply that fact that we have a burning desire to reach those people that would never darken the door of an established church. That is it. I don’t care about anything else. We don’t do it for the money, because it easier, because it is the way to build a church, we simply do it because people need to hear the message of Jesus Christ.

Every Monday I am so worn out I can barely get out of bed. Every Monday I tell my wife that I just want to find a small mountain church where all I have to do is preach three times a week and visit the members and get a paycheck. Every Monday I just want to find a place where they don’t want the pastor to be the leader, have a vision or reach lost people. Sounds a lot easier to me. Then DeAnna reminds me that yes I could do that but that I would die a slow death. She is right. She always is.

As long as people are dying and going to hell and the % of people attending church is dropping I am going to keep on doing church in a relevant and creative way whether other people, especially other pastors like. I didn’t start Ridge Stone for them.

I’m glad there are others with the same attitude.

End Rant

Willie. Nuff Said.

We kicked of Cha-Ching with a freaking BANG today. All I can say is our creative people did a GREAT job. The stage was incredible. They outdid themselves and I will try and post pictures soon. They made this two huge coins that were hanging off the stage, they had a 10 ft tall dollar sign in the middle of the stage that was awesome and they made these incredible huge diamonds that were sitting all over the stage.

We brought this couple in and they started the service off with Let’s Get it Started by the Black Eyed Peas. If you listen to any of the hip-hop stations in Atlanta you will know this couple from the McDonald’s commercian’s that play. They were great. I sat there in shock at how awesome they sounded and the bad and our resident DJ we have.

We launched Home Team’s and the sign up was insane!

The commitment to do the 40 days worth of devotions was great.

This week was so much work but so worth it.

Man, I am like a kid on Christmas Eve. I am so stoked about church in the morning that I can’t sleep. We are launching a new series and our first 40 day adventure for the entire church. We have never put so much work into a series from daily devotions to prayer to filming small group video’s to stage props, etc.

We have felt spiritual warfare like never before in the office this week. If something could break or go wrong, it did.

I am more convinced then ever that the devil doesn’t want us free from debt and he has no desire for us to teach this series. We have NEVER battled so much getting ready for a series. The funny thing is because it is finances, I am looking for our attendance to drop during the series but our people to grow.
I can’t wait to see our people’s faces when they see the way we are starting the service. It will be priceless.

All I can say is Let’s Get It Started!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Dawgs pulled out the win today. But we lost our starting QB for next weeks game against the Gators. Not Good.

Hunker Down Dawgs, we need this one before we go kick the crap out of Auburn.