Our BIG Announcement!

This is long and violates all blogging rules.  Read it anyway!

Tonight some of you witnessed two great football teams play one the best Super Bowls in recent history.  While it took a team to make that happen – it took great coaches to get them there.  Every winning team has a GREAT coach.

Sunday at Crosspoint I shared a story that only God could orchestrate that relates to our future and our desire to make North Alabama the hardest place in the country to go to hell from!  To do what God is calling us to do, we need a great leadership team and a great volunteer team.  We think we have the right people on board – but honestly we dont know how to take the team we have and turn them into a well oiled gospel machine and continue to move the ball down the field. So we need a coach.

A wise man once said – “What got you here wont get you there” – I guess it was a man.  It’s wise.  What we did to grow to 100 would have never gotten us to 300.  What we did to get to 300 – will never get us to 500.  So we have to rethink a LOT of things.  We have NEVER been this way before.  So we need someone who has to show us the way.

Late last year I heard about this crazy conference called “The Sticks” It was about doing ministry in a small town.  The Pastor of New Hope Community Church was leading the conference and there was something about him that resonated with me.  Maybe it was the bald head.  It wasn’t his taste in football teams.  When I took my team to The Sticks, what God birthed in my heart was unfathomable.  I had known for years that being in Decatur could literally be the key to reaching the smaller towns around us by planting churches.   For several months before The Sticks I began to pray about Multi-Site as the way to do that.  Then we went to Loudonville and saw what was possible in a small town.  I was UNDONE!

I have been inspired at a LOT of conferences.  If we had not found the GREAT team at Granger Community Church our church would NOT be like it is today.  Churchplanters.com was amazing.  It ruined me.  Unleash is like going to the holy land.  But something happened in The Sticks that I cannot describe.  When I came home  I realized  that what God had been was birthing in my heart was something I was incapable of doing!

I have no knowlege, no skill, and no real understanding of how a church should operate beyond where we are.  Honestly our church doesnt even make sense.  To my knowlege, there are not many churches with 300 attendance that have a Pastor who is full time bi-vocational outside the church.  How we got here is a miracle.  Going to the next level will be another God story.

Shortly after The Sticks, I found out that Charles Hill, New Hope’s Pastor had resigned and was going to plant a new church.  Thinking about what he had done in Ohio I half jokingly (but deep down inside very much in desperation as a cry out to God) put a “Tweet” out on twitter that said something like “Hey God, Im Glad Charles is going to Plant a New Church but I wish he’d come to Alabama and Teach us what he knows”  (of course it fit in 140 characters).  Honestly I thought that would sneak under the radar, and I even felt a little dumb.  I had debated sending the tweet for hours.  I almost deleted it after I sent it.

Then God rocked my world.  Charles contacted me and said something to the effect of “I might be able to help if its worth it to you.“  Over the course of the next couple of months we began a dialog that started out like “I might be able to come down there for a week or so and meet with your team” but ended up as “I have a few months on my hands”  I was giddy about the early discussions.  But deep down I knew that what we really needed is someone who has been where we are headed to light the path.  We didn’t just need a “how to” person – but a “Pastor” who could “Pastor” us and help us organize our systems, staff, and volunteers and tell us where we are screwing up and how to fix it.  We needed a truth teller.  And in our situation we need more than a couple weeks of truth telling.

“Is this worth it to us?”  The overwhelming answer is “ABSOLUTELY!”  But could we afford it?  Abosolutely NOT!  We need $ for advertising, technology upgrades, staff increases, future campuses.  How in the world could we do this?  But how could we afford not to?  So we went way out on a limb and made an offer to Charles to move his family to Decatur to be our consultant/pastor-coach for three months starting at the end of march.

I think the doubting Thomas in me thought he’s probably going to say no.  The day he was going to call me, his twitter feed made me sure he was going to say no.  When  called, I swallowed hard Charlespreparing myself for the bad news.  He prayed with me before he told me and thats usally a nice way of making someone feel good right before you close the door.  Then Charles told me his family had prayed.  They took a family vote and voted 5-0 that YES, They wanted to go to Alabama! One of his children was so excited about it because they could play Sweet Home Alabama on Guitar Hero IN Alabama.  Jesus has a great way of confirming things in the hearts of people.

Our church is jacked out of their minds about this incredible opportunity.  To have a leader of this caliber, humility, and Spirit sensitivity, with experiene growing a church to 1000 using multi-site come along side us and walk with us and pour into us is beyond our wildest dream.  We are so honored and humbled that God would allow us to invite Charles to be part of our team and mentor us for the future.  We are excited that his wife, Tiffany, and their children, Christian, Grace and Joi will be joining the Crosspoint family for a few months.  And we are THRILLED that we get to be part of their church planting journey!

Join me in welcoming the Hill Family to Crosspoint and God’s Country.  You can read about the Hill’s journey on Charles’ blog and follow Charles on Twitter.  More importanly follow Tiffany there too.  Pray for them if you will because they have NO IDEA what they are in for!