Sun Stand Still

I believe you need to order Sun Stand Still by Pastor Steven Furtick. I read books. If you lead, you read.

In 2008 my family accepted the call to return to my hometown of Baltimore, MD to launch Captivate Church. I took time to travel the East Coast and visit with over a dozen great churches (usually a few churches a day). I met many friends during this trip and observed various ways God had gifted great leaders and teams to build great churches. There were some commonalities among them but I found that many of these churches possessed leaders who held strong to a few key principles that made their churches great.

At Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC I met Pastor Furtick for the first time. While my visit was brief, the impact will last a lifetime. Meeting his staff (I had a great time learning from Chunks Corbett and Larry Brey) gave me a great insight to the quality of people who are drawn to a Sun Stand Still vision. Audacious faith brings audacious partners.

Two major keys I found to be superior among the people of Elevation. The first is a tremendous sense of honor. Their entire church culture revolves around the theme of honor for their Pastor, one another and their guests. When you're with the people of Elevation you quickly find that they genuinely practice Philippians 2:4 "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also the interests of others."

The second key ingredient I observed in Elevation Church is the audacious faith with which they pursued life. This faith was everywhere: from the volunteers I observed mid-week serving in the office to the staff who all believe God was going to use Elevation to flip their city upside down. Up, down, left and right you can look around Elevation Church and see the "page 23 vision" coming life. The audacious faith that believes because God called us to it, he would see it come to pass. The type of faith it takes to see God make the Sun Stand Still is the same faith you need to see him move in your life and in the life of your city.

My outside observation is that Pastor Furtick seems to have written this book with an intention to impart to you the lessons of faith he's learned by seeing God grow a church from a handful of people to a multi-campus church that filled up an 11,000 seat arena in Charlotte this past Easter. Having read a pre-release copy of the book, I decided to have our entire church walk through this book together. I'll preach through the topics and our small groups will discuss its contents. We'll use the resources found at SunStandStill.org

Maybe your Sun Stand Still prayer is for healing, for reconciliation with a prodigal child or for your city to be changed by the power of the Gospel. No matter the particular prayer you will find inspiration in this book. Pastor Furtick shares story after encouraging story of seeing God move greatly on the behalf of the average man and woman of God. You are that man or woman but your faith need not be average. Go grab yourself a copy of Sun Stand Still today. Here's the link, stop reading and start buying.