New Passion Church: Foundations

I feel like I am on a one way street and all of the road signs say “No U Turns.” God knows if I had my way, I’d already have turned around and went in another direction.

It was easy being a youth pastor. We could plan an event and if no one signed up, we could easily cancel it, scrap the idea, and move on towards something else. Making a commitment to start a church, well, this is a whole new game. A whole new commitment.

As I get the time I want to layout some of my thoughts & experiences in these posts called “Foundations.” Really, this is what it is. I, along with my family, and team are laying the foundations for this new church known as New Passion Church. So to begin with, here is how this whole thing got started…

In 1993, at the ripe young age of 13 I knew God called me to preach. I was the only teenager that went with a group from our church to share the Gospel with migrant workers in the Vidalia Onion fields of south Georgia on the weekends during the onion seasons. I loved it. I could not speak Spanish, but Jerry, who was a friend of my dad and I, could not speak Spanish either so he and I would talk with those who could speak English. The older I got I quickly found out that it was not cool to be ‘called to preach’ as a teenager. I went to a Christian school that had some rough kids attending. My dad was the pastor and it was already difficult making friends because I was a PK, so I never mentioned the call that God had placed on my life. In fact, I put it so far in the back of my mind and my priorities that I started doubting the call myself.

As an older teenager I made a commitment that I was going to be sold out for Christ and live my life for him. Whether people accepted me or not, I was going to follow him. God started giving me a passion for students and so I set out to follow that passion. I worked with students in various capacities for 14 years, beginning at the age of 14 and ending just a couple of months back. I love students. They are the church of today and unless I knew God was calling me to start this church, I would have spent the rest of my life investing in their lives. I love youth pastors. They are seriously underpaid. Their work is unappreciated. Their influence is greatly needed. Many of them see the big picture, but most of them are defeated by church members, pastors, or parents who are blinded to it. Find a youth pastor, hug them, thank them, and buy them lunch. Seriously!

In 2005 I attended a conference teaching church planters how to launch a new church and existing churches how to relaunch their church. It was there, God started working in my heart to launch a church, but the stubborn person that I am, I stayed in youth ministry for the next 3 years, and told very few people that the Lord may be moving me in this direction. I’ve seen a lot of people make emotional decisions and then back out. God’s leading was not an emotional feeling, it was real. In that 3 year span, I went almost an entire year ignoring what I had previously felt the Lord leading me to do. To this day, I don’t think I was being disobedient, but cautious. After all, our executive pastor, also came back and announced to the church that he was going to launch a church, and there was no way I was going to make the same announcement riding on his coat tail. In these last 3 years, God has taught me so much, and I know that his call was right, but the timing was not. I had an opportunity to start a church about 2 years ago, but the situation, the organization, and the timing was wrong. Out of all God has taught me, he’s taught me the most since that milestone decision in my life.

I was given the opportunity to preach and asked to do so on the topic “The Next Generation Church.” It was in preparing for this one message that God solidified that eventually he would lead me to start a church. Here is what God has tied around my heart. I cannot escape this. This verse screams my generation and I believe Christ is calling me and our team to go after it, to impact it, to influence it…to do something, because something has to be done:

“After Joshua sent the people away, each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them. And the Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the leaders who outlived him-those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the land he had been allocated, at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight…”
Judges 2:6-11

I believe Judges 2 is a vivid picture of my generation and the younger generation among us. I believe there is an older generation that honored God, who placed him first in their lives and they saw God do amazing things in their homes, in their families, and in this country. That generation is pretty much dwindled away and over time, each generation after it has slowly ignored God, slowly refused to acknowledge him or his works, and its led to a group of 30-somethings who around 30% of claim to have an intimate relationship with Christ, its led to a group of 20-somethings whose percentage of having an intimate relationship with Christ is in the low teens, and now a generation of teenagers whose percentage of having an intimate relationship with Christ is less than 5%. Sadly, this is just America. We’ve been called to influence the entire WORLD! The statistics have looked similar to these I just gave in other parts of the world for a long time. I’ve seen generations of “Christians” sit by and watch it all pass them by. Many of which do very little of what Christ has called us to be. There is no way possible that we can be the Christians Christ has told us to be and not do the things he has called us to do.

So here is New Passion’s Beginning. I’ll talk more on its foundation in depth later, but it is rooted in the simple fact that we are a people on mission to deliver the love of Christ to an entire generation.