A few years ago I heard a quote at a leadership conference that changed me. It was something like this…

“If you were to die or retire and someone came into your organization to take over as the head leader, what would be the first things they would change?”

Wow. What a question! I’ve been part of a lot of organizations that roasted the key leader. Everyone had their opinion about what the guy or girl at the top did wrong. And if they would just do a few things differently, we’d be much better off!

In that conference I realized that the person who would be roasted at OneLife if I didn’t continually ask this question would be – *gulp* – me!

So routinely we look at where we are and ask a similar question. Currently, I’ve posed this question to our staff guys and key leaders:

“If we could start all over again, what would we do differently?”

And guess what. Whatever the answers to that question may be, that’s exactly what we’re going to do! Because if we find ourselves talking more about how great it USED to be back in the past rather than how great it WILL be going forward, we have lost our vision and will soon perish (Proverbs 29:18).

Then it hit me. The same is true in everyday life. If I died and my wife got a better husband, what would he be like? If my daughter got a better dad, what would change? If my employees had a better boss, how would he treat them? If our church got a better pastor, what would he do differently? If someone could come in and be a more devout Christ follower, what would they give to Jesus?

That thought process is a game changer, because reality about Jesus is this: HE is our chance to start all over! It’s not about what we do or how hard we try to be better or do more. So give it up to him. And ask HIM, if I could start all over, what would be different? Then don’t just sit there. Go do it. Go start all over.

When generosity increases in a church, does it accomplish more than just padding a bank account or raising salaries? I’ve learned the answer is a big, fat YES!

A few short months ago, our 13-month old church was struggling financially. Attendance and ministry need had outgrown giving in a big way. The words “spending freeze” had become so common around our office that we actually started wondering if this was a church or the dang Weather Channel.

After a couple months of just hoping it would miraculously turn around, I decided we just needed to work on it. So we did. First up was a Christmas offering that we dreamed of reaching $10,000 (considering last year’s brought in a whopping $800, this was quite a stretch!). Lots of prayer and tons of hard work later we shattered our goal of $10,000 and topped $16,000!

Let the party begin. We had arrived!

That is, until January rolled around, our foot came off the gas, and we successfully had the worst financial month in our now 17-month history.

At that point we could just continue our spending freeze and hope for change to happen, or we could get intentional and strategic. So back to work we went, being intentional and strategic about creating a culture of generosity in our church. Vision casting, teaching, follow-ups, and online giving got our full attention. And the results have been nothing short of the miracle I was hoping for months ago.

Over the past three weeks we have seen the highest attendance, highest giving, and – most importantly – the most people to come to Christ in a three-week time period since our church began. Is it a coincidence that as generosity has increased so, too, has life-change and attendance? Not a chance.

When OneLifers become generous, spiritual maturity increases and they are more bought in to the vision. When spiritual maturity and buy-in increases, momentum increases. People don’t miss as many Sundays. They invite more friends. They pray for their church. The Gospel is spread, and lives are changed.

Creating a culture of generosity is about much more than numbers and dollar signs. It is truly about life-change and spreading the Gospel. But it takes work – work that’s definitely worth it in the end.

Thank you, OneLifers, for working to be a generous church!

* Special thanks to Casey Graham and The Change Group for helping me so much over the past few months to grow in this area! If you are a pastor or church leader, definitely check him out.

I once worked at a job where I was expected to put the company’s needs first. Work on a weekend? Why wouldn’t you? Stay late, take work home, and be available 24 hours a day? It’s what everybody does. Get used to it!

At least that’s what was said. And I couldn’t figure out why.

One of the things that I’ve seen destroy more families and more people is the idea that our jobs and professions define us. If I don’t work 60 hours a week, I’ll be viewed as lazy. If I don’t make more money this year than last, I’m a failure. If I can’t be reached after hours, someone else will take my place. And quickly our jobs become our identities. We live to work.

The flip side to that is a much freer place to be. Where work is a means to an end, not the end itself. Where I work to live. It pays the bills. Nothing more and nothing less! It doesn’t mean you can’t love your job. It doesn’t mean your job can’t make a huge difference in the world. It simply means your job doesn’t define who you are.

Now don’t get me wrong. We all have to work. The Bible is very clear about that and has a lot to say about laziness. And trust me…there’s nothing that drives me crazier than someone making excuses as to why they don’t have to work hard! Especially in the church world! But the Bible also has a lot to say about our identities being in Christ. It has a lot to say about true life being found in Christ – not our jobs.

So ask yourself this question today. Do I live to work or work to live? One leads to destruction and identity crisis. The other leads to freedom.

Read more about the balance of work and life in this great, easy-to-read book.

Rick Warren tweeted something interesting last week: “Anything that grows too fast never lasts.”

At first, that irritated me. Then I realized he was probably right.

God’s Word is full of analogies. Jesus taught with them in his parables. So looking to God’s creation it is clear that this is indeed a godly principle. Cancer grows too fast. Weeds grow too fast. Populations grow too fast and endanger other populations. On and on the list goes. Even businesses growing too fast is a problem. Just Google “grow too fast” and see all the examples.

The only problem is this…what is “too” fast? I don’t know. When it comes to the Church, the magnitude of lostness would seem to echo the country song “Too much fun, what’s that mean? It’s like too much money there’s no such thing! Like a girl too pretty, with too much class. Being too lucky, a car too fast…” Ok…you get the point. Can a church really grow “too” fast if it is reaching lost people?

I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so…

But here’s what I do know. We are running a marathon. If OneLife is going to put a dent in the lostness of our community, it’s going to take time. It means we must value rest and not be a bunch of sprinters. Our volunteers must rest. Our staff must rest. And our church must rest.

We are in it for the long haul. So that’s why I may be inclined to believe what Pastor Rick had to say in that tweet. 30 years after planting his church, they are tens-of-thousands strong and have sent tens-of-thousands of missionaries from their church to the four corners of the earth. They have made huge progress at battling the lostness in Saddleback Valley. But it didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t a sprint. It was a marathon.

For OneLife, we must not let our foot off the gast. Ever. But we also need to remember – it’s not a sprint. Let’s allow God to grow us at HIS pace, not our own. Because our pace may be one that is too fast and one that – on our own – is guaranteed to never last.

The third thing on The Gauge – OneLife’s non-negotiables – is that we will not be anonymous.

Throughout Scripture, God calls many people by name. Whether it was the disciples to join his ministry, Lazarus to come out of the grave, or Mary when she didn’t recognize Jesus after his resurrection, it seems important to God that we be known. As a result, we want to ensure that people coming to OneLife aren’t just another number. But just as God desires to know them deeply and intimately, we want them to feel known and not be anonymous.

This plays out practically in a couple of different ways. First, it is incredibly important and valuable to us that people get involved! If you are just showing up on Sundays then you are missing a huge point. Join a volunteer team. Get plugged in to a Community. Do something so that you cannot be anonymous and so you can know others and be known. This is also how we care for people. Time and time again people are in need but we never know it because they are not plugged in to the church in a way that someone can notice their need. So they fall through the cracks, all because they remained anonymous. The flip side is that when tragedy has struck a OneLifer who is not anonymous, we’ve seen real ministry happen. Whether it was the death of a baby, a spouse had a heart attack, a family that is falling apart, a single mom who lost her job, and on and on the list goes, we’ve seen some unbelievable stuff in just our first year. But we were able to minister effectively and quickly when people were not anonymous.

The second way that plays out is we simply don’t allow anonymity when it comes to the “structure” of our church. In other words, anonymous notes in the offering – they get trashed by our counting team without ever making it to a staff member’s desk. The “someone told me” comments don’t get heard until “someone” is willing to own them. Why? Because the urgency of the Gospel does not allow us time to deal with people or situations that lack so much confidence they won’t put their name to it. And when they do, we remember number 5 on The Gauge: we are laser focused! Life-change is what we are all about and when that’s the main thing, we must be more concerned about reaching than we are about keeping. But more on that one is to come later this week

So up next…Number 4. We are running a marathon. Check back in Thursday for more!