All in…

If you understand the rules of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, you will understand what I mean when I say that after the first weekend service of the new church I was “All-in.” It wasn’t long before I was an active participant on the drama team and the praise team. Soon I was invited to join the church board and we were hosting a youth group at our home every week.

I had gone for 0-60 in a very short period of time. And all I wanted was more. It was at one of my first church board meetings that Carl George “ruined” my life. Dr. George was the Director of the Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth and was the successor to John Wimber, who along with Dr. Peter Wagner started the institute’s activity in the mid-70s.

Carl George is the proponent of something called the meta-church. He has served as a consultant to mega-churches across the country, assisting them with church growth issues. He was the first person I ever heard say the words, “Church Growth.”

This triggered my exploration of the works of McGavern, Wagner, Wimber and George. I became convinced that this quote from Wagner is true: “Church planting is the single most effective form of evangelism under heaven.”

I was convinced that evangelism was essential. Therefore, church planting was an imperative. I was a sponge and anything I could get my hands on about church growth I soaked up. I listened to hours of audio tapes from Wimber and Wagner. I learned everything I could about small-group based leadership development and church planting.

I attended seminars, conferences and I read articles and books. The internet had not yet been invented and postmodernism had not yet arisen.

Church growth had a cause and effect basis. Do this and this will happen. Do this and this won’t happen. I was convinced that the reason the denomination of my youth was declining was because there was no strategy for church planting. My rational conclusion: New generations need new churches.

Just as pianos and organs and stained glass windows were being swept out of mainline churches, members of my generation were returning to church, just as I had. A megachurch pastor from the Pacific Northwest wrote a book entitled “Baby Boomerang.” I attended one of his seminars. Generational theory was popular. Those of us who grew up in the 60s had experienced the generation gap. We didn’t trust anyone over 30, and protested a war. We questioned our elders and their cultural standards for living. We liked rock music!

It was a conflict about music that inspired me to start my first church planting project. I had become the worship leader for the growing church. As a result of a field trip to the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim I had been introducing more and more of their intimate brand of worship music. This introduction unleashed a 90s version of the “worship wars” in our congregation.

Every week complaints came in about the music. The drums are too loud. The music is too slow. The music is too fast. Eventually the pastor decided that he didn’t like the music and told me so. A few weeks later I resigned my job. I suggested that the church hire a full-time musician to accomplish what the pastor wanted and they did about 9 months later.

Weekly rehearsals for the band were still being held at my house when the new worship pastor rehearsed the band for the first time. Not only had the pastor wanted a change, it was an abrupt change, at least from where I was listening in my upstairs bedroom. I thought, “I won’t be able to go to my own church.” In one evening I had turned into one of the music critics! “Aha, I thought, maybe it is time for me to plant a church!”

If I had known what that thought would cost me, I don’t know if I would have ever taken the next step!