A Moment of Clarity

We have been doing a series called Heroes. The series is built on three words that produce heroes: Clarity (to easily see, hear or understand), Compulsion (the irresistible urge to act) and Courage (faith in action). It always begins with clarity and it is what I have been praying for the most. Throughout this series, I have been throwing out various ideas that we could attempt in order to reach our community. When traditional methods of drawing a crowd (door-to-door, direct mailing, signs, ads, etc.) are not yielding the result you would like, you start looking at other ways to meet people and get our church some visibility. Some of the ideas fell on stony ground but some landed on fertile soil. I felt like we needed to act immediately but I still could not see with clarity what we should do. I felt that doing something was better than doing nothing but I didn't want to do the wrong thing or wasteful thing or unproductive thing. When you cannot see clearly what must be done, it is difficult to act at all. Last week, I had a moment of clarity. We were at the Jump Zone in Canton with all the Axios Kids. One of the dads, Greg, a fairly new attender at Axios, asked me a simple question: "When will the crowd start picking back up from the Summer?" I don't remember exactly how I answered his question but I could not get his question out of my head. My mind went from "when?" to "Will the crowd pick up again?" We had good momentum entering the summer but there is no guarantee that we will pick up where we left off. Which led me to think about how we created momentum this past Spring. We had a plan! We launched on March 18 with a series called "The Simple Life." We started a new series called "Prime Rib, Aroma Therapy, and an Invisible God!" on Easter, April 8. We followed that with "Mama Didn't Raise No Wimp!" on Mother's Day, May 13. With each we did appropriate mailers and ads. And we grew. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like I had a Homer Simpson moment - "Doh!" We need a plan! And almost immediately, a plan started to formulate in my head. My prayer for clarity was beginning to be answered. We didn't need to act immediately or just do a random act of kindness but strategically and purposely co-ordinate our advertising, community outreaches and invitations around significant days this fall. I know that I should have already known this but for some reason I was not seeing the big picture and only thinking of what should be done now. This clarity has generated excitement in me and is moving me to compulsion. I can't wait to get going. But now I must spell out the plan to Axios and pray that they will have the courage to commit the financial resources and personal energy it will take to do what God is leading us to do. When will the crowd come back? I can't guarantee it will. But I know that if we want to ride a wave of momentum, we at least need to start a ripple. So begin praying that on September 9, we can start with a big splash!