There are times when I really try to take in all that is happening in front of my eyes, and it can get a bit hard to catch my breath. It seems that weekly I hear another story at The Gathering of a changed life, a healed body, another conversation that brought the hope of Jesus to someone who was hurting.  It can feel a bit like lassoing a tornado, and I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be when we really start experiencing the prayer that Jesus prayed when He was teaching His disciples how to pray.  A little back story may help here before we get to the point.

Basically the twelve men who had given everything up to make sure that they could be with Jesus anywhere at anytime had finally broken down and admitted that they really had no clue how to pray.  Jesus, of course, wasn’t surprised by this at all, and so He taught them a great model of how to pray. It was such an epic prayer that it has been recited more than any other prayer in the history of praying, and no doubt you’ve recited it in a group or alone more than once.  It’s The Lord’s Prayer, and you know something’s important when every letter in the title is capitalized, even the word “the.”

Of course, with repetition often comes a lack of recognition, and my guess is that we’ve missed a fairly important phrase right there in the middle of the prayer.  Matthew 6:10 says that Jesus – right after telling God how holy He is and right before mentioning anything about physical needs – simply prayed “your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Think about that for just a minute.  He didn’t pray about how great heaven was (and it is awesome, no doubt) or about how he hoped we could just all hang on and survive “down here” until we can finally get “up there.”  He said, basically, “Help here mirror what’s happening there.”  Jesus taught a bunch of non-prayers to pray for the stuff of heaven to invade the stuff of earth, and that – when you really stop to think about the implications -is enough o leave all of us breathless.

What is heaven like?  Revelation 21:4 mentions a few things that won’t be there that we seem to have an abundance of down here: tears, death, mourning, crying pain.  It is so easy to just accept the fact that we have to deal with all that stuff because we’re not in heaven yet, but what do we do with the famous “every word is capitalized” prayer that Jesus prayed?  How do we mirror heaven in the middle of all the stuff that won’t be there?  Maybe a key is found just one verse in front of the one we just read.  Look at what Revelation 21:3 says:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

What makes heaven so much different than earth?  24/7, uninterrupted communion with God!  “He will be with them” and “he will dwell with them” are amazing promises of how His presence changes everything!  Look, all of us have been sick at times, and even when the medicine didn’t help us feel better, we knew that if we could just get to mom, she could make it better.  She didn’t necessarily do anything, but her presence brought a calm and a peace to the situation.  Multiply that effect by about a bazillion and you’ve got an idea of what heaven will be like with the King of kings and the Lord of lords.  We will be with Him in all His glory, in fact so much glory that lights will not be needed (Revelation 22:5)!

So how do we get the stuff of heaven down here?  We allow Jesus to take over more and more in our lives (John 3:30).  We invite His presence into every situation that we face.  We make it our aim to be near God, and in turn we find ourselves bringing Him near men who are far from Him because they want to know the peace in their trials that you and I have come to know in ours.

Our prayer at The Gathering is simply this: God, in every way let the unfiltered presence of Jesus in heaven be seen in my life today here on earth.  Our mission sums all that up: to be near God and near man and to make disciplers of everyone we can.  We are never more like Jesus – who is called “God with us” – than when we are bringing the presence of heaven into the situations on earth.  Carry that with you today, and when you bow your head to honor the National Day of Prayer, remember to ask God to bring heaven to earth through you.  You’ll be amazed at the way things around you will start to change!

I heard about a roller coaster that opened this spring in the UK (that’s the country, not the NCAA Champs) called “The Swarm.”  Boasting of speeds up to 62 mph, it is designed to take up to 28 screaming riders – with hands and legs dangling – on a “flight through apocalyptic devastation on Europe’s tallest winged roller coaster.”  Throw in the 127-foot inverted drop and near-misses with walls and stuff and you’ve got the makings of a pretty good thrill ride.

Only one problem.  2 weeks before it was set to open, crash dummies came back with limbs missing.  Ooops.

2 lessons can be learned from this that apply to The Gathering (or your church plant):

One: no matter how excited you might be about the great things you’re doing, a little patience can go a long way.  Look, nobody likes to wait when it feels like you’re on the verge of something great, and none of us would be on the church planting ride if we didn’t sense that there was something great in store for our churches.  But the worst thing we can do is move so quickly that we harm the body.  None of us want the people who have jumped on this ride with us to come back without crucial parts of who they are because we were impatient and wanted what we want NOW.  Back off, pray, and let time work for you, not against you.

Two: planning is a must.  Inherent in planning are to things that we don’t get a thrill from: time and testing.  We’ve already talked about the time, but let’s brush against it one more time with an eye to the Boston Marathon that just took place this past Monday.  Having run 2 of those beasts (marathons, not the one in Boston – yet) I can tell you with absolute certainty that you cannot wake up on a Friday morning and decide to go run 26.2 miles the next day without having spent the necessary time working through a training plan.  Most of them last 18-20 weeks.  You can see how time and planning go hand in hand.  The church you’re planting is worth the time it takes.

But what about testing?  What if the engineers had decided to just “give it a go” and opened the ride without sending out anybody (dummy or real) on a test run?  A lot of blood, a lot of legal headaches, a lot of pain.  In short, one big mess.  So work your plan, and then test the work to make sure it’s the best ride it can be.  The people that get on board will be glad you did, and you’ll find that they enjoy the ride a lot more, too.  In fact, they’ll probably bring friends back to ride with them.

What does it all mean for us at The Gathering?  It means that there is a timing in this whole process that is 100% perfectly in line with God’s.  It means that no matter how full our space gets, the last thing we should do is rush to find a solution without patience and planning.  And best of all, it means that when we’ve done just that, the end result will be a ride worth taking again, and again, and again.

I LOVE MY CHURCH!!!

That may be the longest title for a post on my blog ever, and it probably needs a bit of explaining.  Every week on Tuesday (plus or minus a day most weeks) I write a little blog post called “From Me to The G” and it’s basically my thoughts about the weekend worship experience that we just had at the church we’re planting in Albemarle, North Carolina, called The Gathering.  If you get bored with this post, feel free to check out the church site to get a feel for what we’re all about.

Anyway, the point of the title is that I ran a little experiment over the week-end here that made me a bit of a blogging rock star for a couple of days and it reminded me of how important it is that we never over-promise and under-deliver as a church.  On Friday, as I was scrolling through my wall on Facebook, I noticed a couple of my friends liked a link entitled “Look what this girl is wearing at the beach in front of thousands of people” that was accompanied with a picture of – you guessed it – a girl on the beach in a bikini.  “Busted!” was the first thing that went through my mind (since I knew my friends had followed a link just to see more), and then I thought that a quick Google search might reveal the truth behind this obvious scam.

I clicked the first result and found a page saying it probably wasn’t a harmful scam or virus, but that it wasn’t wise to click the link on Facebook.  The author made a comment about how his blog had blown up lately with people searching for answers about the lady on the beach, and suddenly I had an idea.

I would write a blog post basically saying nothing and title it “Look what this girl is wearing at the beach in front of thousands of people” and see what my blog stats would do.  I posted it halfway through Friday and ended that day with 584 visitors (up from the 200/day I typically see).

Saturday was 1,250, Sunday was 1,143, Monday was 555 and today is trending back down to the 350 range.

The point?  It’s not that hard to draw a crowd, but you better have something to give them or they won’t stay around.

What does this mean for The Gathering and any other church plant (or existing churches for that matter)?  It means we need to have more invested in this thing than just great marketing and events to get people in the doors.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that (thanks, Seinfeld!), but growth is better if it’s more than just a high water mark on a couple of Sundays in the calendar year.

Like “We Want Justin Shirtless Tour” on Twitter, the goal is for our attendance to trend upwards over time, not bounce up and down like a bobber in the water as fish nibble and leave.

At The Gathering, I’m thrilled to say that while we aren’t ashamed to count the numbers, we’re more than just about the numbers.  We are committed to being good stewards of the people those number s represent.