I wrote this for a guy who asked me to contribute to his blog, and thought I’d share it on mine too!

Illustration: Have you ever been dressed to the nines for a wedding and had to stop along the way at a gas station? Feels pretty silly to be dressed so nice pumping gas. And it almost feels like you need to explain to everyone: “I’m going to a wedding…” whether they ask or not.

But when you get to where you’re going, you’ll look great. You’ll fit right in.

Church growth is like this. It feels silly sometimes to build structures and systems that accommodate more people than you’re currently serving. But you must. In fact, my mentors have told me to structure Elevation like we have twice as many people as we currently do.

People may even think you look ridiculous or pretentious at the level you’re at if you build layers of organization, infrastructure, or protocol that are bigger than you need at that point.

But who cares what all the people at the gas station think?

You’re going somewhere important.

And when you get there, you’ll be glad you dressed for the occasion.

(Special thanks to Ron Carpenter for the analogy.)