History in the Making

Going after big dreams

Richard Branson is extending his Virgin brand to include... Virgin Galactic... their new space-travel service [for a set price of $200,000]. Awesome, awesome website. It's like a movie trailer for a sci-fi epic. Every night, I read a book to Wyatt that ends with the question: "Do you think you'll ever go to the moon?" And every night, he answers enthusiastically, "Yeah!" I don't doubt him...

I love big dreams... that are acted upon! That's why I never wanted to call our church anything with a local name [Reston, Fairfax, etc]. I wanted to leave the door open for God to use us in as big of a way as He desired... History Church Galactic... nice ring.

On the radar...

Actress Anne Heche's mother Nancy ~ who is a believer ~ wrote a book called The Truth Comes Out ~ about dealing with her famous daughter's coming out, along with her own husband's admission of homosexuality.

I had a long conversation with Cambodian Buddhist yesterday, which is growing more and more commonplace here in northern Virginia. I've had the Camel Training Manual on my radar for a while, which is supposedly a superb guide to revealing the truth of Jesus using the Koran.

Innovative Church Conference Video

Missed the Innovative Church Conference? Watch most of it here. Now I'll get to find out what was up with the peanut...

Top 10 Reasons Church Plants Fail

Summarized from an article written by Jim Griffith and Don Nations:

• Lack of a clear definition of "success"
• Prematurely launching public worship
• Mismatch between the planter and the community
• Someone didn't accurately assess the planter
• Lack of ongoing training and coaching
• Putting too much stock in one big event or campaign
• Taking on too much overhead too soon [eg: office space]
• The inability or unwillingness to recruit new people
• Inability to prioritize the right activities and investments
• Unwillingness to change the strategy when it doesn't work

Big and Little Ainsley

I'm excited for Ainsley, whose best friend from childhood is coming up to visit us this weekend starting tonight. Kelly's husband is also named Ben, and they named their little girl... Ainsley. So as not to confuse the two, my wife ~ as petite as she is ~ is affectionately referred to in the Webb family as "Big Ainsley." Kelly also happens to be the daughter of Allen Taylor, minister of education at Johnny Hunt's First Baptist Woodstock, which works out nice for me. =)

I'm not recommending you do this but...

Starbucks' customer service is having a hard time keeping up with their explosive growth. I had a horrible experience in Ashburn two weeks ago, sent a cordial e-mail to the regional rep and got two free gift cards in the mail yesterday. Gotta love their commitment to the customer.

Missiology and emotional roller coasters

If Mark Driscoll can reach Seattle in the way he describes it in this video, there is no place that cannot be reached with a proper missiology. Steve McCoy links to a bunch of Driscoll videos here. Listening to Driscoll puts me through a gauntlet of emotions ~ first, I get upset at him, look for ways to criticize him... then I get sad because I know he's right... and then I get overwhelmed because of where I need to lead-out as a pastor... and then upset again because I can't believe I've missed it all along. I love it.

What I'd love to wear to Catalyst

In the men's vesion, of course. =) [source: av club]

Get your praise on

The antidote to worry and discouragement is praising God! So let me say, I am so blessed to have the wife I do... and two little cowboys to raise. I believe Ainsley was born with the perfect temperment for raising little guys [me included =], and I swear she gets more beautiful by the minute.

I get to work with some of the most amazing people you could ever meet. Had a great prayer time with Matt and Phil this morning ~ two guys with devoted hearts to Christ.

Tomorrow I get to share with a group of Virginia church planters 15 ways to motivate people [not because I'm an expert, believe me. My secret to motivating people is shutting up!] But God keeps opening up doors for me to encourage other planters, which comes so naturally to me.

It's funny that when the enemy wants to discourage planters, he uses other people. They don't say anything hurtful necessarily, but they'll tell you how good you'd look in a custodial uniform. =)

Church Craziness

You know you've got some crazy goodness going on in your church when 300 people will sit in your church foyer to watch the service on small TVs. Crazy goodness.

Reaching people on the other side

On Sunday, I talked about the chasm that separates the Gospel from people far from God ~ the chasm of relativism, apathy, affinity, isolation, culture, religious tradition, atheism, pain, anger, you name it. As a Christ-follower, I view my role as being a bridge-builder and chasm jumper to bring His story to them... so they don't have to come and get it. This is Philippians 2. This is my passion for our church...

ReThink

First rethink... Attempted a website redesign for History in my spare moments over the weekend that would simplify our process for on-line guests... based on Rainer's book Simple Church [still haven't read it]. The idea was to have three menu options, representing our three stages of involvement: Prospects, Participants, Partners. I was going for the rugged, natural look of gorving, jeep, and williamsburg... but chucked it all when I couldn't improve upon our current nav. Too simple can be too boring. =)

Second rethink... Our Partnership classes. We're going to experiment with 4 one-hour classes before our service on Sunday, rather than a rushed three-hour class on a Sunday night. By leading our folks through a step-by-step process, we're hoping it will make them more thoughtful about each of the commitments... give them time to really examine the scriptures. Partnership isn't about "joining History Church" ~ it's about learning how to live as followers of Christ.

Mother of all Playgrounds

We found the mother of all playgrounds for Wyatt... Cabin John Park in Maryland. They've got more jungle gyms than you can shake a stick at and a miniature train they run during the summer months.

Passionate TV viewing

Must-read for church planters

If you're a church planter fighting against incredible odds, this newly released book is a must-read: Miracle in the Andes. It's the story of an Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes mountains and fought to survive the extreme conditions through some unspeakable acts. My heart has never soared with such emotion and boldness from any book I've ever read before. And I read at least a book a week.

I learned about this book at last year's New Churches Conference from Steve Andrews, pastor of Kensington Community Church, a phenomenal church-planting church in Detroit. He talked about the tremendous leadership principles from the book and the application to surviving church planting... he was so right.

The craving for vulnerable leaders

My heart soared when I read that Mark Batterson described National Community Church's rocky start at Granger's Innovative Church Conference in his session this afternoon. Tony Morgan wrote, "[Mark] then shared some of his journey that included a church plant failure and a struggle launching NCC in Washington, D.C." Rarely, do effective leaders talk about their struggles along the way... especially at conferences of this caliber. My respect level just went up for Mark. [pic: Scott Hodge]

To wax philisophical ~ what is it about me... and my generation... that craves to see the vulnerabilities and imperfections of those who lead us? What happened? Where did the disillusionment come in? Not only do I demand this of people I respect, but I've noticed that many people require it of me as History Church's pastor.

Who I'd Like to Meet...

Catalyst last year... our leadership team met Bill Hybels. Shot the breeze. Got on the speed dial of his Blackberry [not really]. This year's ambition: John Stott... who preaches at All Souls.

Young, Restless and Reformed

Christianity Today's cover story features the young pastors & planters of the reformed movement: Piper-sermon-loving... Driscoll-blog-reading... MacArthur-study-Bible-buying... Together-in-the-Gospel-conference-going... John-Wesley-belittling... what's-wrong-with-tats-and-cursing?-asking... pastors. =)

Thoughts on 3 years of church planting

Revolution pastor David Trotter summarizes the past three years of planting a church.

Can Mark Driscoll be any more real?

Here's a link to a pretty transparent post about the state of his church.