PART 1 – Well, I Was Heading Around Turn Three When All Of A Sudden It Spun Out Of Control

I think the third year of a church plant is much like the “Seven Year Itch” in a marriage. The newness has worn off, reality has set in and the daily grind of trying to keep pushing forward begins to take hold. The third year for Compass Point was our most difficult so far…but in the end was full of discovery. I have come to realize that God truly speaks during the times in the desert…but you have to reach a point of almost quitting…of hitting rock bottom…of giving up on everything you’ve tried…and become humble enough to really listen for Him.

It is no secret that I almost walked away from pastoring Compass Point back in the summer. I had watched as my friend Gary Lamb hit that point in the spring…but did not take heed of his warning. I kept plugging along preaching 40 sermons in a row….making every meeting…switching direction with every book I read or conference I attended…and tried to be “all things to all people”. It was a harsh dose of reality when I discovered I was not Mark Driscoll or Perry Noble…and Compass Point would never become Fellowship Church or North Point. It was even more difficult to swallow that Compass Point wasn’t what we planted it to be. I wanted to reach hip, cool young artsy single adults that had no church experience. What we ended up mainly reaching was young 20-something and 30-something with children that had little or no church experience. I didn’t want to reach families…I wanted young musicians and artists. Compass Point was suppose to have cool art-based ministries like Imago Dei. We were suppose to have culturally-relevant conversations about the Bible in bars like The Journey. I was suppose to have the post-modern mystique of Rob Bell or the great communication skills of Andy Stanley. What I discovered was that I’m a fat, white, teeth-missing, rock n’ roll redneck that preaches instead of teaches and is about as uncool as a vintage pair of leg warmers. I got depressed…I got down…I wrote my resignation letter. Under my depressed state of leadership the people of Compass Point got depressed…they got down…they left the church. I was in my third year and I had hit a wall.

More coming in Part 2…