I hereby declare that May 17th is now Church Planter Appreciation Day.

Why today? The end of spring is a time when many church planters feel tired. How do I know this? Because I’m tired and many of my friends who are church planters are also tired. This portrait of the tired-looking apostle Paul may very well be depicting a time in the late spring. :)

Church planting is really fun and really hard. Do you know a church planter? Today is Church Planter Appreciation Day, a great day to give your favorite church planter a hug and some encouragement.

Go do it.

And mark this special day on your calendar for years to come. I’ll remind you next year. This is going to catch on.

I just finished preaching Garden City DNA, a six week series on the DNA of Garden City Church.

This Sunday we launch a new series on the gospel’s relationship to religion, power, rest, and words. To kick off the series I’m having John Bryson , my friend and one of my favorite leaders, preach on the difference between gospel and religion. Join us this Sunday at 4pm at Garden City as we spread the gospel in Silicon Valley. Below is a picture of John Bryson and his family.

OUR STORY

Last year I moved to Silicon Valley with a vision to start a new church that would make disciples to impact our city for Jesus. The day I moved I had just 3 people committed to the church and just 3,000 dollars in the church bank account. By God’s grace Garden City Church has grown and thrived. We launched on September 18th, 2011 and are now a church of about 150 adults and 40 kids. People are meeting Jesus, great community is forming, great ministry is happening, and we’re having a lot of fun.

OUR NEED

A few weeks ago I was informed that we need to find a new location for our Sunday meetings. So, I formed a Search Team–a 5-person team that is helping Garden City find a new home. In the last 2 weeks the Search Team and I have scouted 33 potential new locations for our church. The triangle above represents where we have concentrated our search. From the Garden City symbol you see that we are currently located within the center of this triangle. We love our current location, midtown San Jose, because we are centrally located in a heavily populated and heavily unchurched area.

We are now expanding our search outside of this triangle, scouting more locations and praying for Jesus to lead us to a strategic new home where our church can make a great impact.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

I am writing this post so that even more people can help us in our search. I want you to help. There are 2 ways you can help Garden City find a new home.

1. Pray for our church. Pray that God provides us with a great new home by September 1st (our deadline).

2. Help us search for a new home. The more eyes involved in a search the better. Make use of connections you have and see if you can scout out a potential new home for our church. We simply need a space to meet on Sundays, we’re just renting for about 2 hours on a Sunday. Currently we meet at 4pm, and we are open to continuing to meet in the afternoon or moving to a morning service. We are a new church plant, so we are not sitting on piles of cash and we need a good financial deal. We are looking at churches, schools, community centers, etc.. We really want to be in a location that’s desperate for a gospel witness.

If you have some good ideas, leads, or connections, email admin[at]gardencitysanjose.com

Thank you for helping.

We’re so excited to see how Jesus is going to lead us and provide for us. Church planting in Silicon Valley is so exciting.

Charles Spurgeon once said:

Be diligent in action. Put all your irons into the fire. Use every faculty for Jesus. Be wide-awake to watch opportunities, and quick to seize upon them.

I largely agree with Spurgeon. I have more irons in the fire than I’ve ever had before–church planting, leading, multiple writing projects, and speaking (and all I do as a husband, dad, and friend). This has been the busiest, most taxing, most demanding, most productive, and most rewarding year of my life so far. I like having a lot of irons in the fire.

Yet there’s also a cost to having a lot of irons in the fire. Count that cost. Be sure you know what you’re taking on–what both the benefit and the cost will be to throwing another iron in the fire.

There are two types of people reading this post:

1) The under-ironed person, the person who is failing to be fruitful with their life–burying their talents instead of investing them.

2) The over-ironed person who has too many irons in the fire and is not adequately focused on playing to his gifts and strengths in order to make the most significant and strategic impact for the kingdom.

Which are you?

Make a move. Either put some more irons in the fire or pull a few irons out and re-focus.

I don’t know that we ever get the balance quite right. I find I’m always adding and subtracting irons, trying to hit that sweet spot. These days I’m doing more adding than subtracting.

This Neighborhood Group is led by Garden City deacons Matt and Faith Lyon. Matt and Faith give so much of their time to disciple and care for people. Presently we have 8 Neighborhood Groups meeting throughout Silicon Valley and plan to launch a new group next month. Each Neighborhood Group trains a new leader and “sends” members to start a new group within a year. A year from now we hope to have 18 Neighborhood Groups impacting Silicon Valley for Jesus.

Everyone has to live for something and if that something isn’t the one true God, it will be a false God–an idol.

An idol is anything more important to you than God. Therefore, you can turn even very good things into idols. You can turn a good thing like family, success, acceptance, money, your plans, etc. into a god thing–into something you worship and place at the center of your life.

This is what sin is. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything (even a good thing) more than God.

Do you know the idols you’re prone to worship? At our church we talk about 4 root idols that we tend to attach our lives to.

CONTROL. You know you have a control idol if your greatest nightmare is uncertainty.

APPROVAL. You know you have an approval idol if your greatest nightmare is rejection.

COMFORT. You know you have a comfort idol if your greatest nightmare is stress/demands.

POWER. You know you have a power idol if your greatest nightmare is humiliation.

Here’s what you need to know about your idol: That idol that you love, it doesn’t love you back. False gods don’t love you. Idols don’t keep their promises. Anything you worship and build your life on other than God will suck the life out of you and destroy you.

A relationship with Jesus starts when you identify and turn from your idols. Notice what Jesus was always doing with people during his ministry–he was constantly identifying and challenging people’s idols, calling them to turn from their false objects of worship in order to follow and worship him.

I’m convinced that the reason there is so much shallow Christianity in our culture is because many people never displace the idolatry in their lives with Jesus, but instead simply bring in Jesus as an “add on” to their life, keeping their idolatry firmly in the center.

Americans think freedom is found in casting off all restraint and being masters of our own lives. What we are blind to is the reality that everybody has a master. We all worship something and whatever we worship is our master. Idols make bad masters. They enslave. Until you identify the idols in your life you will feel enslaved, tired, and unhappy and you won’t know why. You will feel this way until you discover the only master who can set  you free: Jesus. Jesus is the one master who will love you even when you fail him. Your idols don’t do that. Jesus is the one master who loved you when you were at your worst and who reigns over your life with perfect wisdom, power, and goodness. He’s the one master you can trust. Only he can give you freedom.

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols” 1 John 5:21

_____________

See also:

Love People, Not Their Idols

Start a Revolt at the Idol Factory

Idolatry is Like a Pacifier

The best short treatment (10-20 pages) on idolatry is chapter 12 of Darrin Patrick’s book, Church Planter.

But if faith teaches us anything, it should be that our nostalgia is for an ideal we can only find after accepting, and passing through, the brokenness of a fallen world. Any other approach, in art or in life, is a form of denial.

See the earlier post/video of Garden City baptisms which are done in a hot tub on a trailer parked in the street.

Dear churches of America,

Let’s make disciples instead of pleasing consumers.

That is all.

Sincerely,

Justin

It’s always Easter at Garden City Church.

I spoke this truth several times during Sunday’s sermon on Easter/the Vision of our church.

Easter celebrates the reality that Jesus is risen and reigning. Jesus is always risen and reigning, so we can always celebrate the reality of Easter.

May all of our churches daily operate within the atmosphere of Easter. Jesus is alive and anything can happen. Easter is true. The tomb is empty. The resurrected Jesus reigns over the universe, over our cities, and over our churches. I want my church, and your church, to smell like Easter all year long.

We sing about amazing grace. But before grace is amazing, it’s devastating.

Grace, the message and work of Jesus, devastates our pride.

Grace devastates all our attempts to earn favor with God and others. Grace is a wrecking ball to the foundation of self-effort that we’ve built our lives upon.

Grace destroys you—the old you. For there to be new life, there must be a death. Grace brings that death in order to bring that life.

Devastating Grace, how frightening the sound. Once we experience that, we’re ready to really sing.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now, I see.

Date Your Wife releases in June. Order Date Your Wife on Amazon and you’ll get the book right around June 30th. Order Date Your Wife directly from Crossway and you should get the book a week or so earlier. Or, be at Garden City Church on Father’s Day (June 17th) when we launch a sermon series around the ideas of the book and will have Date Your Wife available for sale.

I love the endorsements that have been written for Date Your Wife. Here they are:

Leaders, you need feedback. But most of us don’t have it. Why? Because feedback is scary.

Let me tell you the story on where this post is coming from.

Last year I moved to Silicon Valley to start Garden City Church. This was the scariest move of faith I’ve ever made. With just 3 people committed to my dream, just 3,000 dollars in the church bank account, and a heart full of big vision, I moved my wife and 3 young sons to start this new adventure. Plenty of people told me I was crazy.

Garden City Church is now 6 months old. These past 6 months have been the most exciting, difficult, rewarding, busy, and thrilling 6 months of my life. I’ve poured my heart and soul into this church. I’ve given it everything I’ve got. We’re off to a great start as a church and we are already far beyond my hopes and expectations of where we would be 1/2 a year into our life as a church.

But, as in any church or organization, things aren’t perfect. There are changes that need to be made, branches that need to be pruned, sins that need to be confessed, data that needs to be processed, and courses that need to be corrected. And, as the lead guy, I’m the one most responsible for looking at reality, calling a spade a spade, and leading change and forward movement.

About 2 months ago I started realizing how I didn’t want to hear too much feedback (criticism) about the church because of how close my heart is intertwined with this church, with this dream that God birthed in me. I started talking to God about this and asking him to help me. This was happening at the same time that I was taking a closer look at the DNA and culture of our church and noticing some changes that needed to be made (nothing major here, but still important). I told God that I didn’t want to be an insecure leader who ignores truth and that I wanted to set a stronger culture in our church, especially among the leadership, where loving feedback is easily given and easily received. Though 6 months earlier I’d already put in place a provisional elder board and a solid deacon board who I repeatedly invite to be iron in my life–to love me, critique me, and hold me accountable, I felt that something more was needed.

So, I did something that was scary for me to do. This last Sunday I held a “holy discontent” meeting at my house with all the leaders in our church. I sent an email to all the leaders 7 days before the meeting and laid out the situation: that I was full of deep contentment in God and so happy over the life of our church, but that I was also full of holy discontent over some status quo realities in our church and that I’m the one ultimately responsible. I told my team that I didn’t ever want myself to get in the way of what God is doing in our church, that I don’t want any of our egos screwing things up, and to prepare for a meeting at my house where we would air all of our “holy discontentment” and then spend some extended time in prayer.

Doing this ignited some great (and hard) emails and conversations throughout the week. Then, on Sunday night, we had the meeting. And it was awesome! All the leaders expressed their feedback in a manner that was both humble and loving, and in a way that didn’t compromise the truth or mince words. It was the best, most important, and most powerful meeting we’ve had as leaders. What stood at the center of our meeting was the gospel of Jesus Christ and the vision we have for this church. With Jesus at the center, egos are left to the side and deep unity and love can be experienced among leadership teams and in a church.

Leaders (church planters especially), feedback is tough because our hearts are so raw. You are so deeply invested in loving and leading people and your people likely do not understand how much pressure you’re under, the stress and pain that happens behind the scenes, the sleepless nights, the dissonance between the vision God has given you and the reality in your own life and the church, and how much your heart beats for the things of God and the well being of your church. But this cannot be an excuse for avoiding feedback.

As early as possible in your organization you need to establish a culture of feedback. The longer you wait, the harder it will get. This will look different in different organizations. You need to figure out and initiate the culture of feedback that is most effective and God glorifying for your context.

The worst person to be leading an organization is a person who is insecure. Yes, we’re all insecure to differing degrees, but there’s a type of leader who is deeply insecure and avoids all feedback in order to not be hurt, threatened, our found out. That is sin. That is pride. And that is incredibly dangerous for the leader and for the people being led. Insecure pastors are a dime a dozen and the only thing that can change this is team leadership/feedback and the deep feedback of the gospel.

The healthiest leadership is team leadership. And if you believe, as I do, that a team needs a lead guy to lead the team, you must put a strong team around you. The stronger you are as a leader, the stronger the team you need around you. I’m strong and stubborn, so I’m thankful to have a bunch of strong people surrounding me, loving me, and challenging me. (Note: Leader, it sounds like a paradox, but you must also follow Spurgeon’s counsel: “A minister ought to have one blind eye and one deaf ear.” You must ignore certain feedback that is harmful, not helpful. Turn a deaf ear to it.)

But more than anything a leader needs the deep feedback of the gospel. The good news of the gospel is the one thing that can liberate a leader from the fear of feedback. Leader, you will never receive a greater criticism than Jesus gave you on the cross (you were such a mess that the Son of God had to die for you). And you will never receive a greater compliment (you were so loved and treasured that the Son of God laid down his life for you–for you!). The gospel liberates. The gospel turns insecure leaders into secure leaders. The gospel creates leadership and church cultures where feedback is sought, not fought, because everybody is pursuing the same thing: a community that’s centered on Jesus and led by Jesus.

Leaders, get your heart back to the gospel. Jesus must be the most exciting thing in your life. When Jesus is most exciting to you, when your living from the feedback you’ve already received from Jesus, you’ll be free to really lead and not merely manage an ego.

Leader, is God crushing you right now? Welcome it. He may well be killing the idols and insecurity in your life in order to really set you free as a leader. God crushed me before I moved to plant this church (long story). Looking back, I’m so glad he did. It was my gospel re-awakening. Had he not done that, the way I’m leading this church plant would look really different, would be more about me than Jesus, and would be a lot less fun.

Jesus + Healthy Feedback = Healthy Leadership