Contagion

Wow!  That’s all I can say.  I’ve been hearing some crazy stuff today regarding the buzz in our city about TXC.  I honestly can’t believe it.  I do know that we have an extraordinary team that is incredibly talented.  But we aren’t THAT good.  I can think of a few things that are getting people stoked up:

#1 -- It’s a God thing.  This is so clear to me.  I was talking with a  friend of mine today and I mentioned that if he knew who I used to be…he’d laugh.  Heck, the people who knew me way back when laugh.  They know this isn’t in my character.  This is something that God is doing.  He’s changing me along with the rest of the leadership team into the people he wants us to be.

#2 – It’s simple.  We put a lot of work into what we are doing at this moment.  We’ve only met 4 times but we’ve poured ourselves into every second.  Some may say that what we are doing is complicated…that’s fine.  But for us this is simple.  (not easy to pull off but not complicated with tons of different programs to confuse everything.)  Every gathering we have one theme.  I was talking with Dave (our worship guy) about the fact that we are a bit different from what we’ve known traditionally as far as the music is concerned.  Traditionally, the music is the “primer” for the sermon.  We’ve decided that we want to communicate one central truth each time we gather and that everything, music, media, spoken word, silence, etc, will communicate that truth.  When someone leaves, we want them to be able to remember the truth, apply it to their lives and ultimately begin the journey of change.  As well, I think our philosophy is very simple: connect the disconnected to Jesus (mission).  We accomplish this by becoming contagious whole life followers of Jesus (vision).  We accomplish our vision by living out our 5 core values.  Now we don’t have  a patent on this and someone could look at this and see tons of holes….there probably are.  This is just what we feel will ultimately enable us to connect the disconnected to Jesus most effectively.  It’s not rocket science but it seems people are really excited about it.

#3 – We are extremely conscious of guests.  It’s very easy to get ingrown and not really care if a guest comes in, as long as my song gets sung and the sermon is an hour long.  Because we are a plant it’s easy for us (at this point) to focus very clearly on guests (because almost everyone who walks through the door is a guest).  We have had comment after comment regarding how friendly it feels as soon as people walk through the doors.  Honestly this is very cool because in movie theatre there is ample distraction and the fact that we can keep people’s attention is very cool.  We are in the process of making guest bags that will have a $5 gift card to starbucks in them.  Some might say we are bribing them…I’d disagree.  The fact that we got them to come to church is our first win.  Getting them to connect in with the community is another.  If a guest shows up and feels no value whatsoever, why would they come back?  We want their first experience to be an amazing one and for them to see that we will spend a little bit of money to make their experience positive I think will speak volumes.

#4 – What we do, we do well.  I’m extremely proud of our team.  They are absolutely phenomenal and everything that we have been doing so far has been done extremely well.  There is obviously room for improvement but I think given the circumstances, they’ve done a phenomenal job.  I’m not a huge fan of just doing something for the sake of doing it.  If we’re gonna do it, I want to jump in with both feet, fully submerged.

#5 – We’re real.  If you know us, you know that we are just real people.  My closest friends would vouch that I don’t have much of a personality.  If this is gonna work, it definitely won’t be based on who I am.  I really don’t know how to preach with a preacher voice.  I don’t know how to pull off a fake smile.  When I do…you’ll know…it’s gimped.  This was honestly one of my biggest insecurities coming in…that I didn’t know how to be a “big person pastor”.  I don’t have it all together.  But the launch team assured me early on that my biggest strength was my authenticity.  Everyone else is real as well and I think this plays into the friendliness factor.

#6 – The location is incredible.  I love the theatre.  I had one guy call me and tell me that he has a biker buddy that feels like if he was to walk into a church God would strike him dead immediately.  This guy told him that he’d been to the movies before and that it’s was a safe place to come.  He assured him that we are all laid back, dress casually and are just plain real.  He said he’s gonna come check it out.  A school or a hall is great, but the theatre is just so high profile.  Everyone knows where it is and the concept is just foreign to people in this area.

#7 – We focus on Jesus.  Had to save number 7 for Jesus.  Don’t follow me.  I’ll let you down…guaranteed.  Follow Jesus.  I just point people to Jesus.  This whole thing is built on Him.  It’s a cliché but it’s so true in our case that we are nothing without Him.  Without his death and resurrection we don’t have a church.  We don’t have a reason to gather.  We have no hope.  No grace. No forgiveness.  It’s all about Jesus and I will rant about that and point people to Him until the day I die.

If you have anything to add to that list, feel free.

On another note, I talked with the Safeway gas bar regarding our gas giveaway on the 16^th and had a good chuckle.  We brought in $1,100 on Sunday to go towards it so I wanted to know if I could buy $1,000 worth of $10 gas cards.  She was a little shocked.  I then told her that we were giving them away.  She was confused.  I then asked her if we would be allowed to give them away at the gas bar and wash windows and give out hot chocolate and cookies.  She then asked me why the promotion was for and I told her there was none…that it was free.  Her jaw dropped.  She asked me why I don’t just do it for the church people and I proceeded to inform her that the church people had given this money so that we could do this for free.  She was lost.

It’s so funny how being generous just really doesn’t make sense to people.  We live in a world that is so greedy and self centered that when someone comes along trying to bring a little light into the place people just don’t get it.  I LOVE IT!  We are going to confuse the heck out of this city!  This seriously is just the beginning.  I was telling a guy today that I really don’t want to own a building because that’s where our focus will end up.  I would love to bring in thousands of dollars a year that in turn just go out.  I would love to drop $10k on a local coffee shop to help pay for their lease just because I love their coffee and they are independently owned and they add a huge element of community to Mission.  I’d love to help other churches pay off their mortgages.  I’d love to pay for certain peoples’ utility bills for an entire year.  I’d love to give the Union Gospel Mission so much money that what they could do with it would be unimaginable.  It’s just the beginning.

This seriously isn’t about us.  If you think it is, you are going to be seriously disappointed.  Everything we do is to connect the disconnected to Jesus.  I understand people are hurting in our church and they are on a healing process but they are healing so that they can more effectively connect people to Jesus.  We gather so that we can more effectively connect people to Jesus every second that we aren’t gathered together.  This is all about the disconnected.  It’s just the beginning.