We had our grand opening at Ballston today. Here are some of my reflections on the launch.
I couldn't sleep last night--my mind was racing and the butterflies were flying. I was too excited to sleep. I finally dozed off around 2:15 AM. It was one of those nights where you sleep fitfully--sort of like a night when you have an important meeting early in the morning and you're afraid you're alarm won't go off. I woke up at 5:54 AM.
One of the greatest challenges for me was preparing the message for today. Anytime I preach a message that is especially important--commencement or state of the church or Easter--I always feel like I try to say too much! You want to combine the best points from every message you've ever preached. I had about forty pages of notes at the start of the day on Saturday and had to trim those notes to five pages!
On a morning like this morning I always feel like I did in the locker room before a big game. You have a heightened sense of signficance. I was pretty nervous, but I've learned a few things over the years about managing nerves. I always try to pray through until I have a sense of peace. And I try to remind myself of why I'm doing what I'm doing. As I walked from the office to Union Station I tried to take myself out of the equation and just pray that God would be glorified.
I preached the 9:30 service at Union Station and exited through the back hallway. A car was waiting in the loading dock and we took off at 10:18 AM. I think one of the funniest ironies of the day was the fact that my driver told me that he didn't own a car and had only driven three times in the last five years! But he did a great job. Thanks for the ride Jeff! We arrived at Ballston at 10:35 AM.
I'll never forget the feeling of walking in Ballston Common Mall. I really had no idea what to expect when I walked into the theater. I've never been on a blind date, but I'd imagine it's the same kind of feeling (except magnified a few fold). You don't know what your date is going to be like but you know that you're going to have one of two initial reactions--either a letdown or a pleasant surprise. Even though we'd hoped and prayed that we'd reach lots of people the first week, today was definitely a pleasant surprise. 244 people were in attendance @ Ballston. It was a pretty awesome thing to see so many people filling that theater that I'd only seen empty.
I think the thing that gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction is the fact that I don't think we could have worked or prayed harder. I almost feel like the launch has mirrored my workouts recently. Up until a month ago I'd never run more than five miles in my life, but I've been training for a half-marathon. I did a five-mile run three weeks ago. Two weeks ago I ran eight miles. Last week I did a ten-mile run. I kept pushing myself to new levels. That is how I feel about the launch. Just when I thought I couldn't work any harder or handle any more pressure we kept taking it to another level. The bottom line is this: I'm going to sleep great tonight because we gave this everything we've got. We didn't pull any punches or cut any corners.
What an incredible team effort. Pastor Joel and Pastor David have been an incredible tag team. I haven't lost any sleep or wasted any energy worrying about the launch because I have supreme confidence in their leadership. All I had to do was show up! I feel like the reserve running back who watches his team march down the field, get all the way to the two yard-line, and then gets to come in the game and score a touchdown. The entire staff and launch team have done an incredible job marching the ball down the field.
If I had to describe the overarching feeling I had today I'd probably say there was a sense of excitement in the air. It was so exciting to see the launch team so excited. It was contagious! I also felt the excitement during worship. Steph and the entire team did an awesome job creating an atmosphere of spiritual electricity.
Today still seems so surreal. I felt so comfortable when I got up to preach this morning that it didn't seem like our first service. But it also felt like a dream afterwards. I'm not sure that we are equipped to emotionally process a day like today in one day. I guess one way of describing it is to compare it to having a baby. The first time you hold your baby in your arms you can't process all the feelings. You're just "wowed." And you know that your life will never be the same!
What now?
After you pour so much time and energy and tought into something there is a tendency for an emotional and spiritual letdown. But the thing that has always allowed me to weather the ups and downs is the fact that I have a long term perspective. You've got to zoom out because you've been so focused for so long on one Sunday. The launch is about a whole lot more than one Sunday. It's about faithfully serving God week in and week out . I'm excited about this first step in the journey, but I can't wait to see what God does in the years to come. The key to impact is longevity!
Finally, I think we need to celebrate! It took five years, but the dream of becoming one church with multiple locations became a reality today!

I spent the last two days helping to strategically invest tens of thousands of dollars in different ministry endeavors. Through some God-ordained circumstances I have the privilege of serving as one trustee of a trust fund. It always reminds me of some very simple but life-changing truths:
1) I don't own anything. It all belongs to God. I'm just a trustee of everything God has entrusted to me. All of life comes back to the issue of stewardship--doing the best I can with what I have where I am. And doing it to glorify God.
2) Everybody likes making money but the greatest joy is giving it away! I think it was John Wesley who said we should make all we can, save all we can, and give all we can. The key is motivation. If we make it to give it God will bless it.

I've found that there is an incredible link between how we're doing physically and how we're doing spiritually. My physical discipline and spiritual discipline usually mirror one another. If I'm physically disciplined its much easier for me to be spiritually disciplined and vice versa.
I'm not much of a long-distance runner because I've got asthma, but I did a "cemetary run" last night (my house to Arlington Cemetery and back) just to prove to myself that I could do it. I've never run that far in my life (not even close), but I wanted to push myself physically to mirror the way I'm pushing myself spiritually in preparation for our launch on 09.21.03.
I'm so "proud" of the way our staff and launch team is pushing themselves past personal limits. We still need a major convergence to happen before 09.21.03, but I'm so exciting about so many people pushing themselves so hard for the sake of getting our Ballston location off the ground.

I love Arthur McKinsey's description of how he approaches problem-solving. "If you think of a problem as being like a medieval walled city, then a lot of people will attack it head on, like a battering ram. They will storm the gates and try to smash through the defenses with sheer intellectual power and brillance."
Arthur took a different approach. "So I just camp outside the city. I wait. And I think. Until one day--maybe after I've turned to a completely different problem--the drawbridge comes down and the defenders say, 'We surrender.' The answer to the problem comes all at once."
That seemed to be Nehemiah's approach in Nehemiah 2:11. "I set out during the night with a few men. I had not told anyone what my God has put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. By night I went through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate examining the walls."
Sometimes you need to get outside the city walls to solve your problems. Battering rams ususally don't work.

I came across a great life metaphor this week.
John Muir was an explorer extraordinaire. I like the way Eugene Peterson describes Muir, "He tramped up and down through our God-created wonders, from the California Sierras to the Alaskan glaciers, observing, reporting, praising, and experiencing--entering into whatever he found with childlike delight and mature reverence."
In 1874, Muir was staying at a friend's cabin in the Sierra Mountains. A storm set in one December day. It was a fierce storm--trees were bending over backwards. Instead of retreating to the safety and security of the cabin, Muir left the cabin and entered the storm. He found a mountain ridge and climbed to the top of a giant Douglas Fir. He held on for dear life "expereincing the kaleidoscope of color and sound, scent and motion." Muir rode out the storm "relishing weather: taking it all in--its rich sensuality, its primal energy."
Peterson interprets the Muir metaphor this way. "The story of John Muir, storm-whipped at the top of the Douglas Fir in the Yuba River valley" is an "icon of Christian spirituality." "A standing rebuke against becoming a mere spectator to life, preferring creature comfort to Creator confrontation."
Climb the tree!

I was going through some old NCC paraphernalia and I came across a brochure from our first missions conference in 1996. Our goal was to give $5,000 to missions which at the time seemed like Mount Everest.
We're on track seven years later to give over $125,000 to missions in 2003. Zechariah 4:10 is one of my all-time favorite passages. "Don't despise the day of small beginnings."
Someday $125,000 will seem like "small potatoes" but we're going to be faithful with the level of resources God entrusts to us!