Today makes 2 years

A bit of transparency for you on this our 2-year anniversary.

Well, today makes 2 years that Focal Point Church has been around. We've overcome many obstacles and we're beating the odds when it comes to church planting. If I am to be honest, we're not where I expected us to be at this point but I suppose I didn't expect a lot of things along the way.

We've had what I would describe as three distinct congregations since we started the church.

1st Congregation: The Planting Congregation
This was the group who stepped out with us from our mother church. These were the total of 21 people (14 adults and 7 kids). This "core" was vital to our initial launch. They were the people God used to help create what would become Focal Point Church. We met initially on Sunday evenings while we all attended church in the morning at our parent church. I was 25 years old with two church plants under my belt as the Youth Pastor and these are the initial group who felt God was calling them to come with me to start something new in our area. I made a LOT of mistakes then but I did learn a ton as we went. Obviously these folks had church background and no matter how much we talked, it wasn't until we got going did many of them 'see' where we were headed. It took a lot of faith for that initial group to get going with us. Only four people from this group is currently active in our church. My wife, myself a single dad and his daughter.

2nd Congregation: The Overlap Congregation
The second congregation we had was basically new converts and transfer growth. By the time much of our core had gone, we had already attracted our share of church-shoppers. These are the 15-year Christian vets who wanted a church for themselves. The good thing about this group is that they usually are committed to tithing and serving so you don't have to teach this... the down side is that they have a 'way' they want things done. SO many conversations about vision and sticking to our distinctness... saying "no" a lot. Trying to teach boundaries and keep my own was a big deal. The other half of this group was our newcomers. These were the unchurched and/or de-churched who started to attend. At the time we were meeting in a roller skating rink so it also took a lot for this group to come. The thing I liked about the newer people was that since their lives were changed at Focal Point, they believed in what we were doing. So on one hand I was trying to tone down the veteran Christians (wiped a lot of noses and doing a ton of unnecessary explaining as to why we weren't going to do their favorite program). In many cases I'd even say my mistakes here were not to spend more time with the new folks in our church. It took a little while before I realized that I had to stop it. This was also a period of recovery as I was having difficulty trusting since the departure of many of our "core" team the previous October. It was definitely a 'perserverance' stage for me.

3rd Congregation: The Present Congregation
Well, on November 13, 2005 I had come to the end of my proverbial rope. I felt frustrated, hurt and in many cases abandoned. You see, we had gone for months with this lackluster attitude. We experienced some highs in attendance and a move (to a high school) but then it seemed as if our momentum was gone. I had people dishing out gossip, people dropping the ball left and right and it seemed like no who was passionate about truly reaching people for Jesus. Our finances were okay but aside from that it seemed like we had become stagnant. We weren't moving. So, what did I do? I challenged our people in the most basic, bottom line way I could. I explained who we were and where we were going and I said "If you cannot give your 100% to this vision or to me as your Pastor, please do not come back next week. This church will love like it's never loved, serve like it's never served and give like it's never given."

Well, that week I spoke to 4 families who had decided that it wasn't for them. I had some people say to my face "We don't want to have to worry about doing anything on Sundays. We just want to come in and enjoy ourselves." Wow! Some of the long-term Christ followers. What a statement. We had others talk about how they were concerned about things... then everytime I asked what the concerns were we came to the place where it was in fact their lack of boundaries and wanting to 'fix' people. It wasn't that there were legit problems... it was a Chicken-Little approach to life and wanting to make everyone perfect. Two other families didn't even bother to sit down with me. They admitted that they had no problem with me or the church... they just had never felt completely at peace (two more long-term Christian couples). I responded gracefully to both of them. Neither of them had been involved in serving or fully tithing to the church.

Quite honestly... that message had it's intended effect. For the most part we didn't have to replace hardly anyone in areas of service. What we did lose was half of our budget. You see, the two couples who sat down with me were the top two givers in the church. I knew this going in. We lost just about 1/2 of our monthly tithes when they departed. It was tough. But it was a must.


I will never forget sitting at lunch with a young couple in our church (who reads this blog) one day after that. The guy said "Tally, we were talking the other day on the way home about how tough that was for you to say what you said knowing that the church would lose a lot of money. We want you to know that we appreciate that you are willing to do it anyway. We've never met a Pastor who would have been willing to do that." I can't tell you how much those words ministered to me.

Since that day we've seen a TON happen in our church. We moved basically two weeks later from a high school into a Girl Scout building to save money. We spent the month of December as a core group again. After much prayer God provided a way for us to get out of our church office. We were locked out of the Girl Scout building on New Years day after the custodian decided not to show up. That next week we had an agreement with our current location "The Cinema Cafe" to hold services in their facility. We've seen a huge attitude adjustment within our church. Most of our people are serving, most are now giving (we had couples go from $20/week to $95 and one couple went from $100/month to nearly $500.... these are twenty-somethings). We haven't made up the difference just yet but we're on our way!

So as I look back on our first two years I say "No, we're no where near where I thought we'd be by now." But I also have to be honest and say that I've never felt more excited about this opportunity to lead this church. We are doing the right things and working hard. As we look forward over these next few months I'm begging God for an increase of people. I'm asking God to pour out his blessing on this body. Focal Point IS the right church for this community. The community just needs to experience it and I'm certain they'd agree.

The challenge we face today is what I call alphabet soup. If you pour a bowl of alphabet soup and you only look for the p's... you have to wade through a lot of other letters. At some point it may even get frustrating. You see, that's the position we're in with our community. We have the right atmosphere and message but we're surrounded with other church plants that are flash-pan plants. They come and go without the leadership and structure to sustain them. We have that... but not the 'buzz' just yet. We're attempting to change that right now.

We're doing 30,000 mailers (10,000 homes- three different dates [last week, April 1st and May 1st]) We're also doing an Easter Egg Hunt and Carnival on April 8th. We're advertising that all over including with the preschools in our area. We're doing Free movie days at the Cinema Cafe'. We're setting up an advertisement stand at the mall in the cafe where we meet where we will auction off ipods as a way to get attention to the fact that we're meeting there each week.

The quality of our service is much-improved. The attitude of our church is very good and morale is high. We're praying now for the increase.

If you think about it today please toss one up for us. I'm excited about what the future has now that we're on this side of our storms. I believe God is going to unload his blessing on us and bring people this way... it should be an exciting few months.