Today I got the opportunity to meet with a church planter. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. A huge part of our DNA at Revolution is doing what we can to help church planters.  There isn’t a week that goes by where there isn’t a church planter in our office, our services, or talking to someone on our staff by phone.

Today was different.  Today was one of those days where it is awesome to see how God works and from time to time He allows us to see a bigger piece of the puzzle.

Today I had the opportunity to meet with Nate Liston. Nate is planting a church in Ames, Iowa.  About 9 years ago, God called DeAnna and I to start a church in Ames. We had never met someone who had started a church, had never read a book on it, and knew NOTHING about it. We moved there and started a church and God used that church as my seminary.  I learned how NOT to do church in Ames, Iowa.  When I was about to walk away from ministry for good, God sent a dude named Tony Liston to invest in my life. He showed me church could be different, that you could focus on lost people and that it didn’t have to suck. God used Tony to keep me in ministry. I will never forget that.

As awful as our church experience was in Ames, we truly loved the city. It was a college town (home of Iowa State), was a great place to raise kids, was beautiful, and we loved the city. There has been very few days that have went by that I haven’t prayed for Ames. It is a city in need of a great church that is focused on reaching lost people.  Due to it’s location, I believe you can change Iowa from Ames.

Today I get to spend some time with Nate who is planting a church there that will start in January. Nate’s brother is Tony, the guy who invested in my life when I was ready to leave ministry. Because of the investment Tony made in my life almost 7 years ago in Ames, today I got the opportunity to return that invest in his brother who has now been called to Ames. Not sure I did a good job of explaining that, but I find it very cool.

Investments we made there in learning the area and reaching people, I get to share with Nate. He came down today with one of the guys who was in my church in Iowa and was here at Revolution the first 3 years. He’s back in Ames and helping start a church that will reach a city we started reaching years ago.

Today I get to see the reaching of a city come full circle.

Pray for Nate as he launches Freedom Ridge Church to reach a city that I love. You can follow his adventure on his blog here.

I’m not sleeping good lately which means I am laying in bed with tons of thoughts running through my head. I shared some of the thoughts yesterday so we’ll call this MORE THINGS THAT ARE MESSING ME UP: The Multi-site edition.

• What is the bottom line cost we can launch campuses for without compromising our vision, style, and excellence? I honestly am thinking we can do them for around 50 grand if portable and 100 grand if it involves a build-out. You could never create space in one location for that small amount.
• How can non-mega churches launch campuses in an effective manner.
• How quickly can I launch campuses. I think we can launch them from start to launch in 3 months, possibly 2.
• How do we determine where to where to launch next campuses? I’m thinking you go to the edge of your reach at your current campus and launch there. Once you have a campus there, the edge of your reach will stretch out further and you repeat the process. That is why it makes sense for us to go Jasper to Elijay to Blue Ridge in that order.
• How many people do I need in a launch team to launch a campus? I think not many. I think I just need a full team to commit to being there a month and we should have enough new people to take over. That is how we launched Revolution. West Ridge sent people for 4 weeks and week 5 we were on our own. Worked pretty well.
• It appears to me the biggest multiplication issue is worship. Reproducing worship leaders and musicians at the level we expect is not easy.
• How important is the role of campus pastor? I think if the campus is further than about 20 minutes away it is probably very important, but I honestly wonder…..
• How do you duplicate the buzz and energy of our main campus? At most churches there isn’t a lot of amening, clapping, and talking back to the preacher, but at Revolution there is. Does that duplicate in a video campus and if not, how do we make it. Need to talk to Perry and Steven about that one.
• Was talking to someone in the know at two different mega-churches that are doing multi-site. They have spent BIG money and can’t get people to leave the main campus for portable campuses. I don’t know anything, but I think the key is never allow them to get to comfortable at a main campus. For instance our people meet in a movie theater so it isn’t a real deal to move to a warehouse or school.
• How do you manage a budget with multiple campuses? Luckily that is Tim and Carol’s problem
• How much flexibility do you give each campus?
• You don’t need as much space as you think you do. I want as much space as I can get, but I refuse to let lack of space stop us from going to an area. We’ll do tons of services. Good thing “video Gary” doesn’t get tired.

I could go on and on, but those thoughts will keep me up until about 2:30-3:00 tonight. It will probably kill me but I got to admit, I love every minute of it!

Somehow I missed this on Ben’s blog but some dudes are putting on a conference called The Sticks Conference. It’s a conference for churches in small towns with big visions. Anyone who knows me, knows this is a huge passion of mine!

We planted Revolution in Canton, Ga. which is a town of about 20,000 people, we are launching our second campus in Holly Springs which has a population of around 7,000 (yep, you read that right), and we are looking at launching our 3rd, 4th, and 5th campuses all in cities of less than 15,000 people! It might not make sense but I have a huge heart for small towns and I think these are towns where churches can literally transform them with the message of Jesus Christ.

So to hear about a conference focused on that seems pretty cool. I just read the bios of the guys teaching and most of them I have never heard of, but sounds like they are doing awesome things. Not having heard of them is a big plus in my book. The two I have heard of are Mark Batterson and Tim Stevens and I have no idea why they are teaching at a conference focused on reaching small towns but I think they both are awesome and great leaders so I’ll give them a pass.

Anyway, I know I have a lot of guys who read this blog who are all about reaching small towns so I thought I would post about the conference thinking you might to like to check it out. Pretty sure I’ll be there and I might take our whole crew to paint the small town it is being held in red…..revolution red!

Should be a good conference and if it sucks, we’ll host our own next year! Yeah…come on!

I have been trying to ride my bike a lot more over the last few weeks. This morning I hit the road at 6:15 a.m. as soon as the sun was coming up. Riding early is my favorite time because everything is peaceful and the roads where I ride in the country are beautiful.

On the route I ride, there are 2 pretty large hills. It doesn’t matter how well I am riding, when I hit those hills I about die. Today I noticed while I was going up the hills that I look right in front of my tire the entire way up. I literally can only see about 2 feet in front of me. On one hand that is good because I need to know what is directly in front of me, but the bad part of that is I have no idea when the hill is about to end so it seems like forever and I about die.

Today while riding I was hitting the hills and doing the same thing when suddenly I decided to look up. WOW! It totally changed my perspective. For the first time ever I could see the top of the hill and knew how much further I had to go. It gave me extra motivation as I got closer.  I still spent the majority of my time looking directly ahead but every few strides, I would look up at the goal.

I had my best time ever today. My average speed went up almost 2 mphs and I felt great at the end. Simply looking up from time to time at the goal helped me push through.

I was loading up my bike today and thinking about that, God hit me over the head with that thought. I can get so busy looking directly ahead, at what is next, living in the day to day that I don’t seen the goal is in sight many times. Yes, the day to day is life, but I have to start lifting up my head more and looking at the goal where I can realize that I am making it up the hill and that the goal (vision) God has given me is in sight.

Since we are 7 Sundays away from launching our second campus, since I have never been to a conference on going multi-site, and since we are launching a campus 8 miles away and that is supposed to be a no-no, I figure I am an expert on multi-site church.

In all seriousness, we don’t have a clue what we are doing and we are flying by the seats of our pants, but that is how we roll at Revolution! Even though we are so new into this thing, I am already learning HUGE benefits to the multi-site model and I thought I would share some of what I have learned already.

• Video teaching is NOT an issue - I will admit, I have been a little afraid of this but One Prayer proved that video teaching is a non-issue.
• Multi-site multiples your volunteers - New opportunities create new volunteers. We have not even started forming our launch team yet (yes, we launch in 7 Sundays) and we have already had a HUGE amount of new volunteers at BOTH campuses.  People are pumped. No matter how big your church becomes there are only a limited amount of people you need serving and multi-site creates more opportunities.
• It is the most economical way to grow - We are spending about 50 grand on launching our second campus and it is in a permanent facility. I will admit we already have a lot of the sound equipment, the video equipment was given to us, but we have done this thing on a shoe-string budget and it is going to be very nice!
• It is a huge buzz creator - I can’t believe the hype from our people and people in the community. To have a church our size in our community is unheard of. To have one church in two locations is insane! Our critics think it is going to be the death of us and our fans are cheering us on. Either way, they are talking about us and I love that!
• Music is the BIGGEST issue - We operate at a very high level musically at Revolution and we will operate at the same level of excellence at our new campus but it has forced to be very intentional about our musicians and especially lead worshipers.  We have some awesome guys we are developing and will be ready long-term. But in the short term, we are getting very creative.
• Don’t over-complicate it - I am sure it gets more crazy at campus 3 and 4, but we are treating this campus like adding services. We aren’t even using a campus pastor. We will have a member of our Lead Team there every week but we don’t feel the need with it being so close. We’ll see how it works out and we are open to change if it doesn’t work. However we are operating like one church all the way down to staffing and budgeting.
• Our people are the most unselfish people ever! - I was at the campus today and as I looked around it occurred to me that not one of our guys there doing construction is even going to attend that campus.  Can you believe that? They won’t even benefit from the campus, yet they are working around the clock to make it happen. Amazing!

I am as excited about launching our second campus as anything we have ever done at Revolution! It is so weird to know we are doing all this work just like we are launching a church and I won’t even be there for the first service because I’ll be at our Canton campus! God is doing an awesome thing and I can’t believe we get to be part of it!

I got emails all the time from guys who are thinking of planting churches and want to know what advice I can give them as they seek God’s will on whether they are called to plant or not. My advice is immerse yourself in church planting as much as possible. Here are 4 quick ways I would do it:

• Get involved in a church plant. Find a church plant that is growing AND still portable. Get involved volunteering and learning the ins and outs of what it takes to make a successful church plant happen.
• Register for the NEXT Church Launching Conference. There are several of these a year but the next one is here in Georgia. The dates are September 16-17 and I think this conference is going to be off the hook! My understanding is they are holding a track just for senior pastors as well at this one. I have been invited to share the Revolution story so that makes it worth the price right there! BTW, the price is FREE!!!!!!!
• Register for the West Ridge School of Church Planting. This is NOT for just those called to be lead church planters. It is for anyone called or feeling called to be part of planting churches. Don’t judge them by their sucky webpage (I know how planters are), this is the real deal. They have planted some awesome church plants out of this school including Revolution Church, Oak Leaf Church, The Church At The Ridge and many more! Guys come from all over the nation once a month for this thing. It is worth your time!
• Do whatever it takes to attend ChurchPlanters.com conference. I think it is the BEST church plant conference out there, bar none. The friendships and networking that happens here is worth the trip by itself. I have done a breakout the last two years and I have enjoyed it. They might be crazy enough to let me do another one this year, we’ll see.

Ricky Merrefield has been at Revolution almost since we launched the church. I would venture to say in grand total of volunteering hours there is no one who has volunteered more than Ricky. We work his sorry little butt to death, but he never complains so we refuse to let up.

Ricky does a TON of junk around the church that makes Revolution happen. Anyway, he had a great post today on his blog about running pro-presenter (the software we use to put lyrics and message notes on the screen) that I thought others just starting in the process of planting a church might like to read.

Check it out here.

Today has been a good day for reading blogs. Lot’s of good stuff out there and I thought you might want to check them out.

• Ben Arment fired me up with these two posts. I love Ben and I have loved the conversation that has taken off in the comment section. The two posts are here and here.
• Vince Antonucci’s creative arts dude has a GREAT post here on the questions they ask in creative planning. The jpeg with the questions is GREAT! Must read post. You can check it out here.
• This one is just shameless self-promotion but I appreciated Greg’s thoughts on his weekend with us. You can check them out here.

Before starting Revolution Church, I was DESPERATE for anyone who had planted a growing church to learn from. At that time, blogs were not the rage and finding out about churches that were starting churches to reach unchurched people was not that easy.  ANYTIME I would hear anything about a church that was new and doing cool things, I would instantly go to their webpage and devour anything I could trying to learn all I could from their success.

I would bookmark their church webpage in a folder called “Churches To Learn From” which I still have at the top of my internet browser.  It has about 150 churches in it now. One of the first churches I put in there was a church called The Church At The Springs led by Ron Sylvia. At that time, anytime Rick Warren talked about church planting he talked about Ron’s story. I bookmarked his page and they have been a regular church I have watched. When he started putting out CD’s sharing church planting insights, I started ordering them.  At that time, he was one of the few people I had heard about that had planted a church with basically nothing but a vision from God and that connected with me BIG TIME.

Fast Forward: Ron has now started an organization called NEXT that is focused in helping church planters launch churches and deal with the NEXT steps as they seek to impact their communities.  Again, I bookmarked their page a while ago and have followed from a distance.

Over the last month or so, I have become good friends with Hal Mayer who is involved with NEXT and somehow he has tricked Ron into allowing me to share the Revolution story at one of their upcoming Church Launch conferences. I am blown away and excited about the opportunity to share the story of what God is doing at Revolution with a room full of church planters.  I have yet to meet Ron so I don’t take lightly the trust he has put in me by allowing me to be on his stage.  He would probably never admit it but he has to be a little nervous.

I said ALL of that to say this: Their next church planting conference is September 16-17 here in Georgia!!!!  Harvest Church in Warner Robbins is hosting the conference and I am pretty freaking stoked about it.  Harvest is lead by Jim Cowart who was a co-coach in the first coaching network I ever got to be part of.  We still use ideas we learned from him. He was also one of only two churches I have ever visited that meet in a movie theater and we learned a TON from that visit.

If you are a church planter who has just started, a guy who is thinking of starting a church, wants to explore church planting, wants to relaunch your church or just wants to check out what church planting MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR THIS CONFERENCE.

THE BEST PART OF THE CONFERENCE IS IT IS FREE!!!!!!!!!

I’m looking forward to finally meeting Ron, connecting with some church planters, sharing our story, and seeing some guys called to the extreme sport of ministry!

After I meet Ron, I am going to sweet talk him into coming to the real part of Georgia (the north part) and letting Revolution host one of his conferences.

You can register for the conference here.

I have spent A LOT of time listening to preaching over the last month. I love listening to preachers and I think podcasts are the greatest invention ever! As I have been listening to different preachers, I have noticed an interesting thing about great preachers. They ALL have one message.  What I mean is almost every preacher who I have listened to has ONE theme that runs through their preaching no matter what the subject they are teaching on. It is the one thing that over everything else gets their fire going.

For example:

• It doesn’t matter what Ed Young Jr. is teaching, he is going to get it back to creativity
• Perry Noble’s message throughout his messages is Christians need to be  dangerous and not settle for Christianity as it is
• TD Jakes always has a message of encouragement. No matter what he is teaching, the underlying theme is “you can make it.”
• When I listen to Steven Furtick I always hear that God is BIG and wants to do BIG things.
• Mark Driscoll could be preaching on ANYTHING and it goes back to the gospel and the bible

I don’t think this is an intentional thing, I just think it is an outflow of their passion and their message God has put them on the earth to convey.  Listen to your favorite preacher and you will begin to see over and over  that their message, their passion will come out in one form or another. I believe it is born in them from a life experience.

I think for me, my message is GOD HAS A PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE.  It doesn’t matter what I preach about, I am going to get it around to the fact that God has a purpose and plan for your life.  Almost every message I preach I talk about the fact that God can use anybody. I love to talk about the fact that God doesn’t care about your past, He doesn’t care about education, He just cares about you being willing to be used and discover your purpose.

I never thought about the fact that this was my message until everyone started pointing it to me. If you go back and listen to my old messages, I talk about the fact that God can use you non-stop. But if you knew my past, it makes sense. I am a perfect example of God can use anyone.  I have never been the smartest, the most athletic, or best looking (well, maybe that one isn’t true. ).  I was the LAST person you thought would ever be a preacher, a leader, much less a pastor of a great church, but I am proof that God can use anyone. God is in the business of taking that which seems unusable and doing great things through it.

Revolution Church is a church that is full of people who no one will mistake as superstars. Yet, God has used the people of Revolution to do great things.  Why? Because God can use anyone.  I think that is awesome.

I have had critics talk about the fact that I am a broken record in my preaching. It use to bug me, but I just realize that it is my message, it is my passion, and I think I’ll keep the repeat button turned to the “on” position.

Look back over your teaching, what is your message?  We all have one whether we realize it or not.