The Story of a Great Idea the Failed

Got a few minutes?

You're going to want to read this and follow all the posts!

...trust me.

Every would-be pastor that I know is filled with a dream.  The dreams may appear different but their roots are basically the same.  They're rooted in our vision of God and ideas of self.  Each one of us in our best moments think we really could be like MLK, Ghandi, Jonathon Edwards, John Wesley, and anyone else we admire for changing the world.  We may be humble enough to admit being like Christ is out of our reach but hey, if Peter could do it why can't we?  We believe that God can work miracles and has called us to change the world.

And so we often strive to "do our part" to change the world and inspire others to do the same.  We admire (dare I say, idolize?) other leaders who in this current world seem to make a difference.  Shaun King is such a man to whom was worthy of admiration.  I could tell you about him, his accolades and humanitarian awards, but I prefer you follow this link and read about him yourself.

This man had a vision for a church.  Here is Shaun presenting it:

But this church wasn't creating the vision he had hoped for.  So he came up with an idea.

Brilliant in a out-of-the-box kinda way.  People were attending Courageous Church not to be discipled but to be entertained.  It was the cool church on the block with the young up-in-coming pastor who was serious about really making a difference.  People were drawn to it as attenders and spectators... but not with the interest of actually helping or growing.  So Shaun thought what many of us pastors do, "why not get rid of the show" and focus more on discipleship.  Don't allow the congregation an excuse to be spectators, force them to be a community.

So he cancelled the weekly services and exchanged it for home group communities and a once a month worship gathering.  When he was presenting this idea to the church, everyone was all smiles and thumbs up.  When it came time to execute it Courageous Church lost 85% of their attenders.  Of the people who continued to attend the monthly worship service, most were simply attending other churches on the "off" weeks.

Given the choice to either go back to the way things were or quit, he quit.

...I thank God that I am not stepping down in shame or scandal, but it is clear that God is calling Rai and I to take our family in a direction that is just significantly different than what most in the church are asking for.  Over the past 6 months I have taken Courageous Church down a difficult, counter-cultural road in an earnest attempt at building true disciples.  It’s been rough.  All but a few families are now yearning to go back to a traditional Sunday focused system and I am sure that I am not the person to lead you there.
I know this will cause many mixed emotions, but just know that I am making this decision out of a sincere desire to never lead you in a direction that I don’t actually believe in myself.

As a pastor he is constantly wearing a filter, so his letter of resignation is pretty PC.  His wife on the other hand...

Shaun had a very distinct vision for the church God wanted him to plant.  It would be a church that did more than provide weekly lip service to people who already knew God and were content with just that- they knew Him.  They’d heard about Him all their lives.  Couldn’t say they’d ever done anything bold in His service, and couldn’t say their lives resembled anything Christ-like (unless Christ to you is the blond haired, blue-eyed picture of meek Jesus holding a lamb…because Christianity is about being nice, right?).  Shaun thought that if people witnessed courageous leadership, and listened to edgy, courageous teaching, they’d be inspired to get out and be the hands and feet of Christ themselves and provide life changing power and solutions to a dieing and hurting world….Um, FAIL!

Instead, you know what we quickly became?  We became the COOL church.  We were the hip city church that was predominately African-American, but with some sprinklings of white folks, and even 1 Asian.  Our pastor was ethnically ambiguous, so that provided a little mystery.  We often rapped during worship, and our leaders wore jeans and collared shirts with the funky crosses on them.  We even had a dj who scratched tracks instead of a band.  We were so damn cool! We had former drug dealers attending our church, and rappers who still talked about getting high showing up every Sunday morning because they liked Shaun’s preaching.  Does it get any cooler? ... 

And then at some point we looked up and realized, hey, you know, we haven’t done any outreach in a long time.  People are here.  They come and listen every Sunday, but we haven’t done anything outside of these walls in a while.  So then we started an initiative called Choose Your Own Adventure.  We dedicated several services filled with funny skits and quirky videos getting people to sign up for an outreach program of their choice.  And yes, people signed up, but a couple of months into it the outreach consisted of little more than offering water to folks who didn’t want it and wrapping peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and passing them out to homeless people who could do better than that by themselves...Fail! ...

The ATL floods came and Shaun and Jinean and Jason mobilized a huge effort to get people to the church to volunteer.  They collected donations, helped clean out houses, provide meals, etc, etc.  They created schedules, and work teams.  We were on the news for it.  Shaun used his handy flip camera to film a video about it.  We really made a difference.  But you want to know the hard truth about that?  Most of the volunteers were random, unsaved people who didn’t even go to our church.  For the most part, Courageous Church folk were nowhere to be found...

Then came the Haiti earthquake.  A Home in Haiti was created.  We collected tents.  We raised and sent money to Haiti.  Actually, WE meant Shaun, Jinean, Jason Woody, and 2 or 3 other consistent volunteers.  By this time church attendance was at an all time high. We were packing it out.  But volunteers for A Home in Haiti could be counted on one hand....

So 2 years into it, after 300+ sermons, who knows how many songs, people coming, people going, stressful lead team meetings, raising money from outside sources because the people who attended the church didn’t actually give enough to support the church, Shaun got frustrated, a few leaders got tired and left, and Jinean got sick of being the only “crazy” person in the room and started serving God on her own in Mexico...

Am I frustrated?  CLEARLY!  Am I overstating the irrelevance of the Sunday morning song and dance?  Probably.  Did people come to Christ and renew their relationship with God because of what Courageous Church did for so long on Sunday mornings?  Absolutely!  But, then what?  Glad we baptized you, glad we helped you believe in church again and feel all warm and fuzzy about your creator, but I’m sorry we failed to actually make the vast majority of you into disciples.


We’re leaving because we will not go back to the stress and relative lack of actual disciple making of the every Sunday model.  Sunday morning has its place.  I too missed the gatherings, but I will never again participate in a model that replaces the real work of Christ with the mundanity of 2 songs and a feel good sermon.

And on the tails of that, Pastor Shaun sums up his thoughts in this post, with these three "hard learned lessons".

1. Start a thing as close to the way you dream it being down the road as you can.
2. People L.O.V.E to hear about radical change.  They just don’t love making it...."Change sounds pretty but actually looks ugly"
3. Few disciples of Jesus Christ actually exist in the world.

 

You'll have to read his full post to get the gist.

part 2 tomorrow