Sunday my good friend Clayton preached for me. I haven’t heard the sermon yet, but they say he told a true story about me from my college days. Uh oh.
Actually, it’s a good story. It illustrates a core value that I’ve always tried to live by.
The short of it is: a little rumor started about Clayton when I was in college, and spread to a couple dozen people on my campus. Since Clayton was a national speaker (and still is), I was concerned about the effect this rumor (even though it was very mild… nothing extreme) would have on his ministry.
So I called him, made sure it wasn’t true, and then called a meeting of all the people who had been spreading the rumor or had heard the rumor.
My agenda was basically to tell everyone:
“Clayton is a man of God. When we pass along stupid rumors about a man of God, it hurts the work of God through his life. It’s apparent that you don’t know Clayton, and you don’t know what you’re talking about, so please shut up. God bless you, let’s pray… “

Ever since I gave my life to Christ as a 16 year old, I tried to remain devoutly committed to the sacred practice of keeping my mouth shut when presented with the opportunity to say something negative about someone God is using.
Even when the criticism is valid (because even the most anointed people stumble and fall), I see no value in spreading the criticism like gangrene.
Now, if I have a relationship of influence with the person, I do my best to talk with the person about the issue in a spirit of love and encouragement.
I’m not talking about sweeping stuff under the rug.
But if I can’t talk to the person, I’d rather pray for them than talk about them.
That’s just my philosophy. It has served me well. And it is thoroughly Biblical.

So, whether it’s how much Joyce Meyer’s jet cost, what cuss word Mark Driscoll said, or the dumb decision your pastor made last week, do yourself and the Kingdom of God a favor:

Speak truthfully, pray sincerely, and then practice the sacred act of shutting up.
After all:
Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls.

My Thank you Note

Pastor Furtick is out of the office this week and the staff is working up a few little surprises… so I’ve stolen a little airtime on www.stevenfurtick.com.

As Personal Assistant to Pastor Furtick, I have the unique privilege of working alongside of the greatest pastor in the world everyday.
This week our staff is taking on a little “thank you note” project and I’m so thankful for the opportunity God has given me to serve at Elevation. Since there aren’t very many people who have the opportunity to know Pastor Furtick the way I do, I’d like to share my thank you note to Pastor with Elevation.

I’m thankful that you are more passionate about reaching lost people than about image, politics and others’ opinions. You believe the message of the Gospel is the most important thing on earth and that’s exactly how I want to live my life, too. It’s exciting to finally live working towards something so much greater than myself.
I’m thankful to serve under a pastor who calls out greatness in people because I’ll never be allowed to settle for anything less than my best. Being challenged isn’t always fun but settling into mediocrity is dangerous and I understand that now.
I’m thankful that your gratitude flows from your mouth so specifically and so freely that it can be an example for me to follow.
And I’m thankful for the courage and boldness you exhibit. You wrestle through things none of us could ever comprehend so that it’s easier for us to follow in your footsteps as God leads so we all can continue to be a part of seeing people far from God, filled with life in Christ. So thank you for taking on the challenge of excellent leadership.
And for all these things someday I’ll give you my best rendition of Ray Boltz, “Thank You”. I can’t believe I just put that in writing!

I know many of our friends across the country have been faithfully praying for our Dominate campaign. For that reason, now that I’ve had the opportunity to share the results with our congregation, I’d like to share them with the rest of you as well. Rejoice in the Lord with us today. God has done something truly phenomenal here in Charlotte.

Injoy Stewardship Services, the company we worked with throughout the campaign, projected that $3 million over a 3 year campaign would be an extremely ambitious goal for a less-than-2-year-old-never-done-a-campaign-before church like ours. Especially when you consider that we didn’t even have a specific project to raise money for. You can read the details about that here.

Furthermore, we decided to shorten our campaign to a 2 year time span, a move that was also very likely to decrease our total amount. But we sensed the leading of God, and we asked Him to do something so enormous and accelerated through our campaign that everyone would know that it could only be God.
We fasted, prayed, cast vision, and stretched our faith to the limit.
Honestly, there was nothing that could have prepared us for the outpouring of generosity that we experienced:

The incredible people of Elevation pledged a total of over $6,400,000 to our Dominate campaign!
I don’t think any of us saw that one coming. We knew God was going to show up big, but man! Over 6 million dollars in total pledges… it could only be God.

The most encouraging statistic of the entire campaign is the sheer number of families and individuals who participated. Injoy told us that the percentage of our people who participated was in the top 1% of all the campaigns they’ve ever conducted (they’ve conducted quite a few). In other words, we didn’t really have a bunch of fat cats making this thing happen. The success of our campaign is a testimony to the power of everybody. Commitments ranged from kids who gave all of their Disney World money (they had been saving for a year), to people who cashed out their retirement accounts. We all did all we could do. We reached our corporate tipping point.
And now, God will receive all the glory.

Oh, and you gotta check this one out. During the Dominate series, our attendance went up. I don’t understand it either. Our highest attended series in the history of the church was our capital campaign. It could only be God.

Now, Elevation is strategically positioned and resourced to Dominate our city with the Gospel and grace of Jesus. We are positioned to engage with any opportunity for expansion that God brings our way. The vision of 10,000 by 2010 will come to pass as we continue trusting God with a revolutionary faith.

I am so proud of you Elevation Church. And the best is yet to come. All glory to Jesus!

Here’s something I’ve observed about the cycle of temptation and sin:

When we are tempted to sin, Satan’s primary strategy is to convince us that it’s not a big deal, and that God won’t really care if we do it.
After we’ve given in to the temptation and committed the sin, Satan flips the script. Now his chief aim is to make us believe that what we’ve done is so bad, God no longer wants anything to do with us.

This is why your first inclination after a spiritual failure is to run and hide from God. The last thing you feel like doing after blowing it is approaching God through prayer, or through any other means, for that matter.
But a thorough confidence in the grace of God and the power of the cross can help you turn the tables, and beat the enemy at his own game.

Instead of allowing your sin to drive you away from God, let it drive you to Him in repentance.
Because it’s precisely in those moments of failure that you need God’s presence the most.
After a spiritual defeat, don’t wait for the feelings of guilt and shame to go away before you go to the Lord. Receive the guilt as a gift to remind you how deep your need for God’s mercy really is. After all, you’re no more worthy of His love on your best day than you are on your worst.