God KNOWS Best
I taught a couple of weeks ago on the subject that at times I doubt God. I got to be honest, about a month ago I was doubting God on some things. Not only was I doubting God, I was doubting my ability to hear from God. God has given our church a vision to reach North Georgia with the message of Jesus Christ. As we thought about the best way to reach our region, it became clear that multi-site was the best and most effective option. The towns we are feel called to reach aren’t hotbeds for church planting so the ability to launch multiple campuses makes the most sense.
The first place we feel we can most effectively reach is Jasper, Ga. We have a ton of people coming from this city and the buzz in the town about us coming is off the hook! We were ready to go. We have the people, we have the money, and we THOUGHT we had a building. That got shot down by the county and I got to admit, I started doubting whether I heard God right or not.
I have spent the last month praying through all this and God revealed something very powerful to me personally. God was NOT telling us NO. He was saying WAIT. That is hard for me. I don’t like to wait, but over the last month God has shown me that He knows best. I probably should have already known that.
God is allowing us to strengthen the foundation of Revolution and play catch up on some things that will allow us to be more effective when the time comes (hopefully this fall).
- We are FINALLY getting some much needed systems in place. I thought we were doing this towards the end of 2007, but I was wrong. If we would have launched in Jasper on Easter, it would have not been good due to our lack of systems.
- We have restructured our staff. We put an org chart together last year that didn’t reflect our DNA and values. I worried about people’s feelings, more than putting together an effective org chart. We are putting an org chart for our staff together now that will allow us grow to around 2500 people without having to tweak it.
- We are changing things in our worship area (no, Tim isn’t going anywhere). The ability to reproduce musicians is huge for multi-site. We don’t pay musicians (at this time), so going out and hiring some doesn’t appeal to us. So we are making some hires, creating more team in our worship area, and recruiting musicians to be part of our vision.
- We are making reproducibility a value. If we can’t reproduce it at every campus, we aren’t doing it at one.
- We are getting training. I have talked to several guys doing multi-site and I feel very comfortable with it. However, we have done a bad job getting our guys around those who are doing it. In April we are taking our Lead Team Staff to the Multi-site Exposed Conference in Washington. This will double as our Lead Team Staff retreat for 2008 and we will spend a couple extra day there doing some serious planning for the rest of the year.
- We are developing leaders. Multi-site is all about developing leaders. We have some great people stepping up and taking ownership over some key areas!
- We are learning our equipment. Sounds simple, but we have BMW equipment that we drive like a pinto. We have brought in consultants to train us in sound (I know you can tell the difference the last few weeks), we are bringing in a consultant to help equip us with the cameras and video equipment we were given, and we are bringing in people to help us learn our lighting stuff. We are also learning the church management system we have had for over a year.
These things might seem small to you, but they are huge to us. God is using Revolution Church in CRAZY ways, but I truly believe He wants to do more through us and we had to make some system changes for that happen.
I don’t always like when God says wait, but He DOES know best and for that I am thankful.