I’m sitting here listening to John Denver (don’t ask) and looking over my sermon for Sunday and I am getting excited to see all of you who call Revolution home!  It is always weird to me when I miss a Sunday. I honesty feel like I have missed something awesome and I hate that!

This Sunday I am continuing our Uncomfortable series with one of the most uncomfortable things we as Christ-followers are COMMANDED to do in the bible. It is my passion, but I would be lying if I said it was something that comes natural to me. It is going to be a great Sunday!

Get there early, be loud, and let’s have a freaking blast!

I will try and get some pictures tomorrow but things are moving quickly at our Holly Springs campus! I got to give a special shout out to Peter Vogepohl and Chris Hogg for the time and energy they have put into this project. Also a big shout out to all the volunteers that are making it happen! You guys rock!

We still need more help making this thing happen. If you are interested in volunteering your time let Tim know at tim@therevolution.tv. We really could use a lot of help this Friday evening and Saturday. Contact Tim for the details.

Here are some of the things going on over there:

• HVAC units are going in as we speak! The units that were in there wouldn’t have cooled down my living room, much less a church that is going to be packed out with people.
• Plumbing is almost done and bathroom fixtures are being installed.
• Jerked down the sign out front and threw the Revolution R up on the building! Even though it is only a temporary sign, I love seeing it up there.
• Met with a great interior designer this week who is helping us create the vibe we envision for the building.
• Electricians start next week. We’ve got a great guy in the church making this happen!
• Painting will start VERY soon and we need all hands on deck!

Things haven’t went as quickly as we thought, but that is what happens when you are working around volunteer schedules. We are going to be done in plenty of time to make our September 7th launch date!

Stay tuned this week as I talk to you about being part of the launch team for Revolution Holly Springs!

I am a broken record when it comes to teaching on the importance of married couples taking time away together WITHOUT the kids! Thank God for the awesome gift He gives us in children, but you are doing your children a favor when you leave them for a few days and go off and enjoy your spouse. I think couples should try to go away at least twice a year for a few days. You are teaching your children that your marriage comes ahead of them, you are showing them the love you have for your spouse, and you are teaching them what a healthy marriage looks like.

This weekend I am practicing what I preach. DeAnna and I left this morning for a quick weekend getaway. We are staying a beautiful bed and breakfast in North Carolina and we already can tell the difference these types of trips make on our marriage. We’ve talked, laughed, napped, and just enjoyed each other without the distraction of a 6 year old and a 4 year old.

The funny thing is there probably isn’t a WORSE time for me to be gone. Things are insane at Revolution right now! We are building out our first permanent facility, launching a second campus in 7 weeks, we have a ton of stuff to do, etc. On paper, I need to be home. But, guess what?  All that stuff will be there when I get back. I have the greatest team in the world and they get more done with me gone anyway.

It is never a good time to get away, but you need to make time for it. Trust me, you will think me when you get back.

Another great thing about getting away this weekend is I get the opportunity to preach for my friend, Tadd Grandstaff. For those of you new to Revolution, Tadd was on our team when we first started the church. Revolution wouldn’t be around without him. About a year into starting the church, he felt God calling him so start a church and he moved to Burlington, N.C. to launch Pine Ridge Church.  We have supported them since they started and they are rocking it out! Tadd and Becki just had their first child and I get to speak for him this Sunday. Pray for me on Sunday morning!

Also, plan on being at Revolution this Sunday and supporting what God is doing! Preston is teaching this weekend and as always, he will knock it out of the park! Preston does a great job as our Connection Pastor and does a great job giving me a break a few times a year from teaching. He is continuing our Uncomfortable series by talking about Praying For Your Enemies. TRUST ME, you want to hear what he has to say. Support him, encourage him, amen him, and get rowdy for him!

I will miss all of you Sunday but know I will be praying for the services and all of you! I’ll see you next Sunday!

Trust me, I will be a better husband when I get back, a better parent when I get back, and even a better pastor when I get back because I took time and rested and recharged.

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!

This morning I got to the office early and decided to head over to our Holly Springs Campus and see what the building was looking like. I walked in and was speechless! The entire building is framed and you can see the shape and layout of the new campus.

As I was walking through the building, I was blown away by how awesome God is! If you would have told me 3 years ago that we would be launching a second campus, I would have told you that you were insane. If you have would have told me we were launching a second campus in the same county, I would have had you committed!

It blows my mind to think about the people we are going to reach through this new campus. We have cut the drive from Woodstock, Hickory Flat, Sixes Road, and Holly Springs basically in half. In 8 weeks we will hold our first service at Holly Springs and I can’t wait to see the impact that is going to be made there!

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.

• I got to preach today! Man, I missed teaching in front of our people!
• Very cool day!
• First service is a rock. Attendance never changes no matter what. Second service all went on vacation this week.
• Loved the visual of Aaron getting a tattoo on stage while I was preaching.
• Thanks to the crew at Electric Ink for coming in and doing the tattoo!
• Bayne lead worship for us today and I thought he did a great job. He cut a rug afterward so I didn’t get to tell him I thought he was great, but he was.
• Hopefully, you’ll be seeing him lead a little more at Revolution in the future, especially as we launch multiple campuses.
• Had a great pre-service talk with him about bringing in outside worship guys. Good insights.
• Also impressed that he remembered all the words. That seems to be a new concept to a lot of worship leaders.
• I am so proud of our children’s workers! Our trailer got stolen on Thursday and they made things happen today. They stepped up in a big time way!
• No word on the trailer. I know some other pastors thought my letter to the trailer thieves was not cool, but I stand by it.
• SO glad to have my family home!
• SO glad Tim and Taylor are back at work this week!
• This morning was insane for some reason. I got to stay out of the way a lot more. To many people asking me questions before services was messing me up before teaching.
• We start construction tomorrow on our Holly Springs location! We have a ton of stuff to do there to make the building usable in a way that will enable us to grow.
• Had dinner with a guy in our church who might being lead to plant a church. I dig that! He’s been in full-time ministry the last few years and now is feeling led to possibly plant a church. He’s checking things out at Revolution.
• GOT a ton of stuff to do this week!
• I’m the worst dad in the world. I forgot to feed Ashlyn’s fish while they were gone and he died. I told her he was old but she is UPSET!
• I want another tattoo BAD.
• It is weird to me how people take the entire summer off from church. I’ll see you guys in the fall, I guess.
• Man, we have a ton of decisions to make concerning the building coming up. Glad Tim is dealing with it instead of me.
• Start going back to the gym on Tuesday.
• All-staff meeting on Tuesday as well. Love that time with our staff!
• Chili’s for dinner tonight! My FAVORITE place to eat!
• I sliced my had open yesterday and it hurts.
• Talk to you later!

I got a call this morning from Adam letting me know he was at the movie theater and our black trailer was not there. After calling everyone who could have possibly moved it and calling the city to make sure they didn’t tow it for some weird reason, we realized it has been stolen. Needless to say that wasn’t the phone call I wanted to hear this morning.

That trailer contains most of our children’s stuff that we set up in the hall and most of our sign-in equipment, along with lights and a bunch of other things. The stuff we keep in there is pretty vital to the work we do on Sunday mornings. After the initial shock wore off, I thought about Kinetic Church and how they had a trailer stolen a few months ago and how they responded. You can check that out here. They did a video talking about how they forgave the person, how they loved them, and invited them to church. It was cool and I am glad that is how they handled the situation. We’ve chosen to handle it a little different.

So I’ve been thinking for a few hours how I would respond and I thought I would send my own message to the people who stole our trailer…..Revolution style.

To the people who stole our trailer:

First let me say, God loves you. Second let me say we forgive you. We really don’t want to forgive you, but God says we should so we do. Third of all I want you to know that I think you are scum bags. I think you are lowlife degenerates who need a good butt kicking. Matter of fact I feel so strongly about the fact that you need a good butt kicking that I am volunteering to do it. I hope you believe in God because you should get on your knees and cry out to Him like never before because if we find you, I can promise we will kick the crap out of you. It won’t be pretty, it won’t be over quickly, and it will be very painful. I know that doesn’t sound very nice but I feel pretty strongly that is what you need.

I am curious what kind of lowlife you must be? Trust me, I have been around some pretty low ones before but never one that would be so low as to steal from a church. I understand you probably need some crack or something like that but stealing from a church would scare me. It would scare me more once I realized which church I stole it from. We are probably the only church you have ever heard of that will honestly break your legs once you are found.

Let me say again that we DO forgive you. But there are still consequences for your sin and your consequence will be toting a butt kicking. It is obvious you aren’t very smart so let me give you some advice. Get that trailer out of the county QUICK. As soon as I hit publish on this blog post a church of about 1000 crazy people will know that our black, children’s trailer has been stolen and I can promise they will be on the lookout for it. You would much rather me find you then one of them.

Best Wishes,

Gary Lamb

Lead Pastor, Revolution Church

• I’m pumped about being back teaching this Sunday! I felt like I haven’t taught in a year and I can’t wait to share with you what God has been laying on my heart about the life we are called to live.
• We are 100% going to Holly Springs. We have building permit in hand and we are are starting construction on Monday.  If you signed up to help out, we will be in touch very soon.
• You’ve been asking for it forever and I am excited to say we are now working on our first worship CD. It will be all original worship music and hopefully we will have it ready by the end of the year!
• We’ve hired a new student pastor!  Michael Creighton starts full-time on July 14th! Michael has been at Revolution for around a year while working at Goshen Valley Boys Ranch and has built a couple of different successful student ministries.  We’ve been talking for around a year and the timing was finally right. See, there is a benefit to reading my blog because you get to hear it first.
• The funniest thing to me about Michael is he is the oldest guy on our staff, yet he is doing students!
• TONS of you keep asking whether we are opening the office for fireworks this year like we have done in the past.  In the past you could see the Canton fireworks perfect from the office but this year they have built a 3 story building that blocks that view so we decided there was no point in doing it.

Most of you who attend Revolution know Brad Jr. who plays guitar in our band. He is 17 years old and honestly I put the kid up against any guitar I know.  The kid is great.  He’s been playing with us since he was 15.  He is actually working at Revolution this summer at our worship intern and has been awesome.

What most of you don’t know is Brad is in a band called Emery Drive that is really picking up steam and last night they beat out TONS of bands to get the opportunity to play coming up on the Vans Warped Tour in Atlanta!  What a great honor for these kids who are sold out for Christ!  Let him know how awesome you think it is on Sunday when you see him.

You can also listen to some of their music online right here.