BLeach

Sand Castles And Hiatus

It's time to re-engage with the blogosphere.  I guess I'm a streaky blogger (which has to be better than being a streaky dresser.)  Or I could blame my little hiatus on August being vacation month.  In any case, it was nice to take a little break.

Meanwhile...

Had a great time at our team's annual play and pray retreat (props to Mark for the name).  We use these 2 days to bid farewell to our summer interns.  We don't do any business.  We just play hard and pray hard.

On Monday we played really hard.  For starters, Phil and Don joined me in a grand vision of building the largest sand castle in the history of Lost Lake.  This is the curse of being a dreamer.  I have a hard time doing things like this average.

The first hour was just spent digging and piling sand.  It was the dirty, pre-launch work.  We almost lost Don.  I had to passionately explain to him twice that piling the sand was like gathering a core group:)  Only a few people can see the finished product.  Everyone else just gives you wierd looks, wondering why your working so hard on something that looks so rough.  But when that church sand castle starts to take shape, weird looks change to inspired looks and the help increases.  Sure enough, Emily and Eddie jumped into help.  And then the people started coming by with their questions. 

How long did it take you to build it?

How did you start?

Can we get our picture with it?

One piece of advice.  If you decide to build the largest sand castle in the history of your particular lake, don't also try to simultaneously build the largest mote in history.  It will destroy your sand castle:) 

Here's the church plant sand castle (after some reconstructive surgery from the mote incident).

After building the sand castle I continued with getting carried away.  I challenged myself to swim across the lake and back (1/2 mile).  Tal kept me company.  Then we played frisbee and volleyball until the sunset.  I can tell I'm almost 28.  This stuff causes more pain than it used to:)

The highlight for me was our prayer times.  We prayed for each other and we prayed over our dream.  I could feel movement in heaven.

Dream Relationships

Yesterday Jeff Leake made the trip from Pittsburgh to Detroit along with Andy (one of his staff members).  We've been brainstorming for a few months about some ideas for connecting young church planters.  God is using Jeff to raise and release young guys who are called to pioneer.  In fact, his story of mothering churches out of his church in Allison Park was one of the primary influencers in how my dream for Church of the King took shape. 

We spent several hours together yesterday and dreamed about winning cities for Jesus by launching networks of church planting movements.  Every now and then you meet someone who has been down the road you're walking.  Jeff is one of those guys for me. 

13 months ago, we started Origin Ministries as the tool for planting our first daughter church.  Since The Oaks launched at Easter God has been shaping a picture in my mind for how Origin will develop in the future into a strategy that will allow us to fill Metro Detroit with new church plants. 

At breakfast I shared the Origin dream with Jeff.  His heart is connected to it.  I'm not sure exactly where our relationship will lead on this.  All I know is that our hearts seem to beat with the same values. 

God-given dreams are interesting things.  They seem to take shape over time, becoming clearer through strategic relationships.  I was in junior high when God first gave me a dream to impact a city.  The details and pictures have come together little by little over the last 14 years, often through people God purposefully brought into my life.  For me, strategic relationships have been the fuel that have caused my church planting dream to progress.

Jeff is one of those guys in my life.  His friendship has already impacted several things I've done. 

I think there's alot more to come.

We'll be launching one of the key components of Origin's development in the fall.  More details to come on that very soon:)

Napkin Dreams

I had lunch today with Abdu Murray.  Abdu is a converted Muslim and one of three founders of Aletheia, a ministry startup designed to share Jesus with Jews, Muslims, cult members and skeptics.  One of the other founders is a converted Jew.  The third is a converted atheist. 

Great conversation.  Mike Kern set the lunch up (that's Mike Kern jr for those of you at COTK).  Abdu is currently a lawyer (which by the way is a great profession for an apologist).  The guy can flat out debate and reason.  Mike is a buisnessman.  We spent alot of time dreaming about creative ways to fund ministry startups. 

Planting The Oaks has been a great thing for our church, but the experience has also caused me to think a little bigger about how we will resource future church plants.  To be a church of 200 and plant a daughter church required us to leverage virtually every ministry that we have.  As a result we're experiencing alot of transition right now.  I dream of the day we will find ourselves planting not only one church, but several at the same time.  To do that we'll need some creative resource strategies.

I actually used a napkin to draw some thoughts out for Mike and Abdu that have been floating around in my head the last few weeks.  Who knows.  Maybe in ten years that napkin will be hanging on the wall in the entrance to a church planting resource center for Metro Detroit!  I only need $200,000.00 to make the napkin work.

It could turn out to be an expensive napkin:)

On a side note, I must be hitting that age where I'm thinking more about health.  I chose the baby carrots with my sandwich over the potato chips. 

The Madras Miracle

Wednesday night David Mohan spoke at our Michigan District Council service.  He pastors New Life Assembly of God in Madras, India that has now grown to 30,000 people.  They are currently building a sanctuary that will seat 55,000.  He began the church with 7 seekers. 

When they started small group ministry they launched 50 small groups.  They now have 4,500 small groups.  A few weeks ago New Life baptised 900 people in water.  About 100 of them were converting from Hinduism. 

They've also mothered about 120 church plants.

I was struck by his simple passion for prayer.  On Friday nights they have between 400 and 1,000 people who gather at the church to pray all night long. 

At one point he began talking about a 100 million dollar Hindu temple that is being constructed close to his church.  He became so irritated while mentioning it in his message that he paused and began leading all of us in prayer that the construction would be halted.   

His most striking comment to me was this.

If I don't pray as a pastor, then I am saying I can build my church without God's help.

David Mohan's story reminded me of something so simple.  Cities aren't changed because of good ideas.  They are changed by God's power.  Prayer connects us to God's power.

Looking back over 4 years of church planting, I can identify definite stretches when I practiced prayer more than others.  That's not good enough.  My goal is to develop consistent dependency on God by saturating every season of my life in prayer.

Prayer can do anything God can do.

Miracle on 12 Mile Rd.

A few weeks ago I posted The Miracle on Main.  In that post I referenced our first building miracle.  Jeff asked me about that story.  So here's an excerpt from Church of the King history 101.

I moved back to Metro Detroit in May, 2001 after finishing my senior year at CBC.  5 of my friends from school joined me in June.  The six of us fanned out across neighborhoods in Southfield five days a week and began building relationships with people.  We started a Thursday night core group meeting.  Meanwhile we hosted 4 different community events to begin assimilating people.  At the end of the summer we had a core group of about 25.   

On September 16 (the Sunday after 9.11) we had our Grand Opening Service in the cafetorium of Thompson Middle School.  After launching we doubled to 50. 

We were spending $3,500.00 a month to rent the school on Sundays.  In October I began looking for a place to start some leadership training.  Meanwhile, God gave me a relationship with the pastor of a church about two miles from our building.  They were not using their building during the week, so he offered for us to use it on Wednesday evenings to train leaders. 

A few months later he called me and asked if I'd stop by his office.  He greeted me with a question.  "If you could have anything for the church right now what would it be?"  I listed off some needs that I thought his church could afford.  He responded by making my jaw drop.  "How about a building?"

My friend's passion was to give his church full time ministry (which they had not been able to afford).  He saw our biggest need as a facility need.  The dream God had given him was to give us their building.  He shared that vision with his church and together they decided to deed almost one million dollars worth of assets over to Church of the King.  It was kingdom-minded and unselfish.  It was a financial breakthrough for us.  It was a staff breakthrough for us.  The money we saved from renting the school put us in position to hire Tal and Gwen Sullivan, a fantastic couple with 3 kids.  They brought much needed balance to our leadership team.  Up until that point there were four of us on staff.  None of us were old enough to drive a church van!

This is our Miracle on 12 Mile Rd.

This Sunday our first daughter church will launch in downtown Royal Oak.  We would not have been able to plant The Oaks so quickly without the building miracle.  Now with our first church plant we've added The Miracle on Main.

We're facing space challenges now, but asking the question "Where to next?" is easy to do when your short 4.5 year history is filled with miracle stamps of God's provision. 

2 facility miracles down.

98 more to go!

The Day of Small Things

This afternoon Pastor David Okai launched Resurrection and Life.  David moved to Metro Detroit on December 4 with $100.00 in his pocket and a dream to start a new church for West African immigrants in our city.  When we linked arms about a month ago he began advertising this grand opening service. 

The same verse came up two times during the Grand Opening.  It was Zechariah 4.10. 

Who despises the day of small things?  Men will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.

Zerubbabel and Zechariah, the Z boyz, were contemporaries of Nehemiah.  Nehemiah led the charge to rebuild the wall in Jerusalem.  Zerubbabel organized the efforts to rebuild the temple.  Zechariah kept them all going with prophetic reminders.  In this reference to Zerubbabel, the rejoicing comes from those who see him with a plumb line in his hand. 

The plumb line is a tool used at the beginning of the construction process.  Anyone can cheer when the builder has the permits in his hand.  It takes a visionary to rejoice over the plumb line. 

I once read that a visionary sees possibilities before they become obvious. 

Every church planter should have Zechariah 4.10 memorized, especially the first part.  It's only 7 words, but those 7 words have the potential to get you out of bed 7 times a week! 

Dream Drive

I spent this morning with Chris, our church planting pastor, scouting possible launch locations for our Royal Oak church plant.  We're now less than 3 months from going public.  I think we're getting the facility options narrowed down. 

For me, driving around to possible locations is an excuse to dream.  Today we had a dream drive.

Here are some of the places we've looked at.

Possibility; Opportunity; Hope

Potential; Risk; Why Not?

Imagine; Promising; Conceivable

Energy; Transformation; Create

Visualize; Fantasize; Super-Size

These are all church planting words; my kind of words.

I have a motto.  Surrender your wildest dreams to the Wildest Dreamer, and let Him make them wilder.

10,001 Days Old

Well, I'm now 49 minutes into day # 10,001 of my life.  Yesterday was a hilarious celebration of day # 10,000.  Thanks to everyone who sent me emails.  And a special thanks to well over 30 people who helped with the video.  It was an all day process.  I haven't captured it to my computer yet, but I would guess that the footage is well over 2 hours.  As a recap, here are a few memories from the day that stand out.

The crazy looks from strangers in Sam's Club who didn't believe it was really my 10,000th day to be alive.

Jonathan Sullivan, the coolest kindergartener on the planet.  When I asked him what he would be doing on his 10,000th day, with big eyes he replied, "I'll probably be dead!"

Meeting one of Carrie Cornelius' co-workers who will have her 10,000th day in 2 weeks.

Marshmallows: Going to 3 different stores to buy 10,000 of them...giving Pastor David Okai his first one ever...feeding everyone in line at Walgreens...having a war in Sheryl Toussaint's basement (I'm still getting them out of my clothes)...going head to head with the indisputed Chubby Bunny champion, Jennifer Anderson...and getting creamed.

I'm looking forward to posting the video.

As for you, the challenge is on.  If you are still younger than 10,000 days, I dare you to dream big!

Snowman Inspiration

My family's quest to build the biggest snowman in two states is coming to a climax.  On Monday I leave for Columbus, Ohio where I'll gather with my extended family for three days.  Last year my Uncle Jim Palmer and his family came to Michigan and we built the largest snowman in Michigan.  This year as we go to Columbus to be with twice as many family members, going for the two state record seemed appropriate. 

Meanwhile, the list of contenders continues to grow.  It is at least a four state competition.  The most recent addition was Mark Batterson who vowed to go bigger than us this year (assuming Washington DC gets snow). 

People at COTK are familiar by now with my vision for huge snowmen.  Today, two friends in our church independently sent me the same link to a 16 foot snowman that Billy Powers and his neighbor made in Anchorage, Alaska.  The picture and article fired me up.  I sent the link to some family members to get them thinking bigger.  Here's Snowzilla.

I think we'll need a bigger ladder next week. 

Bigger and Better

I'm looking out the window of my home office, amazed that it can even look cold!  Is that possible?  Our Michigan weather has turned. 

I'm definitely a warm weather guy, but I also believe there is unique excitement to every season.  The cool temperatures of fall mean the frigid temperatures of winter are right around the corner.  Winter means snow.  And to a dreamer like me, snow means record breaking, gigantic snowmen. 

Last Christmas I teamed up with my sister Betsy, my brother-in-law Rob, my dad, and my three cousins Nathan, Justin and Christian, to build what I believe to have been the biggest snowman in Michigan (click on the picture for a larger view).   

In January I showed the picture to our church as a reminder to think big, and it subsequently travelled all over the state in my dad's sectional council presentation.  As a result, I have received several challenges from snowmen building contenders.  They talk a good game, but I wonder if they have the gloves guts to back it up. 

As for us, the plans are already in the works.  This year our extended family will gather in Columbus, Ohio.  There will be more uncles, more aunts, and more cousins.  In other words, I expect the 2005 Leach/Palmer/Clay snowman to soon be the biggest in two states. 

If you thought Frosty was big last year, you ain't seen nothin' yet!