Five years can pass VERY quickly. (Especially if you are trying to Juggle Leading a start-up church, self-employment, and the most important job of all-being a husband and father). There hasn’t been a lot of time to pause and reflect on everything that has happened. At times I can’t believe it’s been five years (February 10, 2008-February 10, 2013) since our first “official” church service at Fat Daddys nightclub. Other times, I feel like I may have aged 20 years in the last 5. (And I think there are pictures that would be would agree) :-)
To be honest, most of the last five years have been spent either “starting” actionchurch…or trying to keep it “started”. We are so blessed to have been able to Love God, Love People, and Take action during that time in some pretty dramatic ways. But still…much of our budget…our attention…our “power” had to be concentrated on simply keeping the fires lit in the actionchurch engine room during those years. Over the last six months, much of that has changed. As I announced in the “Inside the camp” series, we have officially moved past “starting” the church. We have a great leadership team in place. I’m confident that Bill and Denise, Steve and Tiffany, Rich and Jackie have the leadership skills, character, HEART, and teaching ability needed to lead actionchurch. Josiah has lead the artists of actionchurch into some of the best ORIGINAL design I believe you will find in church-anywhere. We have a talented actionchurch/actionkidz crew that I believe has become simply the BEST in the “business” of making portable church happen each week. They’re fast, hardworking, problem solvers who somehow manage to still have a lot of fun while doing the most difficult jobs. If actionchurch is the first “portable church” you’ve attended, you truly have no idea how blessed we are to have the great crew members we have in EVERY area of our Sunday morning service. We are also blessed with a beautiful venue at Frank Theaters that works well, and will allow us to grow to 400-500 attenders without needing to relocate.
The questions are many: What comes next? What should we attempt…what should we plan…what should we prepare for in the next five years of actionchurch? Should actionchurch change? Has actionchurch changed? Has the world changed in the last five years? What should we do next? I’ve been thinking about all of those questions a LOT over the last six months.
The short answer is that as a church body we MUST continue Loving God, Loving People, and taking action. Just how we DO that is something I look forward to sharing with you all over the upcoming weeks in the month of February. There’s something I’d like you to do in the meantime if you call actionchurch your home on Sunday mornings. Please Pray for our leadership team. I’d love your prayer for Michele, Reagan and Myself. Pray for our crew…and most of all…pray that God will give you wisdom to see just where you fit into the future of actionchurch as we “Power Down”.