The other night I was talking with a friend about church planting and starting businesses. He’s done the business, I’ve done the church planting and we were comparing them. Both businesses and church plants have a season that is called the danger zone. It is at the beginning and can last for the first 18 – 36 months until the business or church becomes established or self sufficient. Revolution is 20 months old, so we are right in that zone.
He asked if I felt Revolution would make it. To which I replied, “Absolutely.” He then asked when I started feeling this way. Truth? Just a few months ago. The reason? I made a conscious choice to be me.
When we started Revolution, I didn’t have my preaching voice. I tried to be every other preacher that I listened to or watched. I tried to be angry because Mark Driscoll was angry. I preached from a stool because I saw Erwin McManus preach from a stool and thought it looked cool.
Then something happened.
I was convicted one day by the fact that God had given me a gift of teaching, given me the personality He gave me and called me to lead Revolution. He didn’t call those other guys.
I realized that how I preached was going to have to be good enough for Revolution and God. Ironically, that is what God called me to in the first place. I remember Rob Bell asking once, “If you aren’t you, who will be you?” God wanted me to preach and lead Revolution, so if I wasn’t me, who was going to do that?
At that moment, I knew that if I did that, that was all I could do. Ironically, that seems to be enough. God has done wondrous things over the last few months. We have seen more people accept Christ, get baptized, we have seen more people come through the doors of our church in the last 3 months than the previous 17 combined!
So, be you.
