God loves doing things for which only He can get credit. I am overwhelmed once again that God has taken the story of our small church and trumpeted it around the world. We are a small band of Jesus followers, loving and serving a community that has been largely neglected in the city of Atlanta. But, people continue to be encouraged by what God is doing in and through us. Some say that we should expect God to do these things, because He is good. I fully understand that philosophy, but honestly I know people who are just as committed, dedicated, and loved by God as we are with almost no public attention being paid to them.

So, my simple response is a grateful thank you, to God who has done great things for us. I know that it is not because of any goodness of mine, or anyone on our team. The simple truth is that His hand is on our lives and ministry, and we are doing our best to keep in step with His movement. I have had two experiences that have reinforced this. I was recently at a church planting conference and with great regularity heard people from across the country say, “I have heard of Vertical Church, in Atlanta.” That is crazy. Then I ran into a ministry worker in our city and she said, “Yeah, I know about you guys.” It is so humbling, to hear that people know who we are.

This blog centers on the reality that we were recently featured on www.pastors.com a global site for church leaders. They interviewed me a few months back and last week the article went public. I am reminded of a simple scripture “God is the Judge: He puts down one, and exalts another.”  Psalm 75:7 If, God is exalting our story then, I am just honored to be a part of it.

Here is the article http://pastors.com/planter-profile-damian-l-boyd/

I recently completed a season away from ministry on some much-needed time off. In both the church and business world, it’s called a sabbatical. For most of the month of June I have taken time away for both my family and myself. After over 10 years of bi-vocational work at a national weather news station and work in the local church, writing a book, caring for a child with disabilities, starting a church, and keeping a marriage vibrant, I needed some time away to refocus, renew, refresh.

I rediscovered a truth; it’s often the silences that scream the loudest. I am naturally an extreme extrovert, so extreme silence is deafening for me, but a powerful contrast to my everyday life. There in lies a lesson that I am so glad I discovered so early in my pastoral journey. I can become so focused on doing the work of a minister that I can loose myself in the process. I can get so focused on what I am “doing” that I forget that I must first focus on “being”. It’s simply characteristic of my basic processing and can’t be fixed, but rather managed and kept under control. I have seen spiritual leaders make this mistake with catastrophic results. Now that I have that insight into myself, by God’s grace I won’t go down that path.

Another learning that came abundantly clear is that I don’t have to be the one doing everything. So many pastors create bottlenecks in their ministry because everything rises and falls on their ability. Early in our church development, we made it our desire to train our team well. To this day we have met more with our team to train than in public worship gatherings. They are highly gifted and well equipped enough to run the church in our absence. This is after only 5 months since launching. That is both humbling and encouraging to a leader. Vertical Church has become something we all are responsible for, rather than a personal project of my wife and I. It gives me so much hope for the future of this local expression of Jesus’ church.

One rediscovery was that I really love my family. I never doubted that fact, but life has a way of making us prioritize the least important things and neglecting those who should matter most. It is a beautiful thing to look at one’s wife after 12 years and be completely vulnerable and honest with her. It is a joy to be able to spend a day together and want to be no place else in the world, but there with that one woman. It’s a blessing to see a mystery in her that you still have yet to discover. To see the hope in the story that God is telling through my son’s life that humbles me and makes a proud dad all over again. I purpose to never elevate ministry over these precious people who in His wisdom God gave to me.

The interesting thing was I thought I would miss preaching most. I didn’t miss it at all! Please understand I am a preacher. I love speaking truth and watching God take my often-inadequate words and change lives. It is an honor to open His precious word and be commissioned with this task. I take it very seriously. But, what I missed were the people. Loving on them, connecting with them, getting to know and lead them. The faces of the people I lead kept flooding my mind. It took the utmost discipline to keep from calling and checking up on them. I learned that I am a shepherd, and I love being there for God’s people. I know several successful lead pastors who would say that this is their least favorite part of their job. I am just glad to find out that I am not one of them.

It’s amazing to learn things about yourself both good and bad. I believe that to grow and develop we must understand ourselves, even if what we learn is not the most beautiful sides of ourselves. I can now take these lessons and sure up my weaknesses and build on my strengths to make me a better Jesus follower, husband, father, and pastor. My encouragement to you is to get still enough to know yourself.

I have been wrestling with whether or not I would write this post. I think it is the most challenging one I have ever written. This is probably because it deals with the taboo subject of ministry and money. These two things are like the separation of church and state. It’s a concept that many would love to divide, but are inseparable in their very nature. So to whatever degree this post makes you uncomfortable, I think it is good, and hope it give you comfort to know that I had the same struggles writing this.

Basic principle: IT TAKES MONEY TO START AND LEAD A CHURCH! Okay, I needed to say that. Let’s not pretend that it doesn’t. Yes, the more important thing is to love God and to love people. Yes, we must serve selflessly the community. Yes, we must be “called” by God to do so. But, it also takes money, sometimes a great deal of money to plant a church. Most people, who think it is all about spiritual depth and passion, have never planted a church. To ignore the fundraising component in this process is to establish an early end date for a church.

A church planter places their livelihood and family on the altar when they decide to follow God on this journey. It’s a crazy thing to trust a God to start a church, you have to be a bit nuts. I remember vividly the day we had negative $137 in the bank with little food in our house, and our cars were running low on gas. That is when things get very real. There is a temptation to pack it up, and go work somewhere in fast food industry. Most new churches don’t close because of moral failures of the pastors or of a lack of vision, it’s due to a lack of money or financial strength. So, we established an urban missionary fund through a 501c3 ministry for our family to try to ease the immediate needs while building financial health.

Let’s be honest and deal with the elephant in the room. There are churches and pastors who misuse finances given in offerings. It’s true. The problem is there are so many more honest, good hearted, committed, fiscally responsible, spiritual leaders who will suffer because of the failure of one dishonest person. That means that the kind of church you want see thrive won’t. That is unacceptable! But, people will support not-for-profit organizations.  The sad thing is that the church should be at the top of the list. It’s the one organization that is focused on changing not only the behavior, but first the heart.

I have also seen established pastors refuse to invest in church planters because they see them as competitors. This is heartbreaking because churches should never compete with one another; our enemy is a real devil and all of hell. But, it can often be a challenge to see this plight when it’s been so long since they have planted and can’t remember the early days, or if they hired into a position with a salary and benefits already in place.

In our situation, we would not have made it if it wasn’t for churches and individuals who cared enough to support our ministry and family. We would have at least lost our house, and our health insurance, not to mention a God given vision. Money pays for our building. Their money has helped us serve and feed those in the community. Their money has allowed us to provide an under-resourced school with thousands of books. We are impacting people’s lives for the Glory of God, and it would not have been a reality without people giving. Add to that the statistics show that more people come to Jesus through new churches than through any other mission. That means we need church plants.

The sad truth is that it doesn’t take a lot. Our smallest donation was $2. That was just as significant as the multi-thousands given. Both the small and large amounts are vitally important to make a vision a reality. In giving to a church plant you are in part a kingdom investor. You make the work of His kingdom possible. In our situation we are reaching a community where there are college students and the urban poor. We can go years without being self-sustaining. If self-sustaining was the key than only the rich would plant churches in affluent areas. No one would ever try to reach the poor, whom Jesus cared for deeply!

It’s a hard conversation, but necessary. Money and Ministry are directly connected, and it doesn’t help to ignore it. I believe that we need to have a church planting support culture if we are going to see the impact that all Jesus followers desire. 

I was recently given the opportunity to interview with Outreach Magazine on the topic of church planting. They have been walking through the process of starting churches for a while. They somehow heard of our small church and decided that I had something to say on the topic. They inteviewed both me and several other pastors and I am the newest at this whole "church planting thing", but its an honor to have others think that our journey is worth highlighting. It's always mindblowing when God elevates your story.  The funniest thing is that they call me a church planting veteran. The truth is that you never feel like that, when you are in it! I pray that our story encourages you.

http://www.outreachmagazine.com/features/4671-launch-advice-for-new-church-planters.html

Easter weekend was a great time for our small and relatively new church. I have to say that it was Easter weekend because we did more than the traditional Sunday service. We engaged our community on both Saturday with the Vine City and English Avenue (the Bluff) community event and Sunday with the Atlanta University Center students. I am pastoring the kind of church where I am also honored to be a member.

It started with a simple idea of doing a summer project cleaning the Vine City community. The goal was the kind of service where we could invite college students and mission teams from all over to participate. We had been meeting with the local community leaders for months and had the reputation of “that church that serves,” which is awesome. Although a clean up is needed, it was important to me not to tell the community what we were going to do, but to ask them what they needed done. That is a mistake that many churches and organizations make.

As we were meeting with a local leader we were informed that they needed help with an Easter egg hunt in the hardest area in the neighborhood. We immediately said yes. I know eggs, bunnies, and baskets have nothing to do with Jesus' ressurection, but service does. We provided most of the food, drinks, a Portable Toilet, and some volunteers from our church and 5 students from Spelman College (who had never been in that community before). All of this was done in partnership with West Ridge Church who also provided a Moon Bounce for the children. The local civic leaders were blown away. They told us that without our contributions the day would not had been a success.

It was beautiful to see our church members and the college students engaging with people who were homeless, alcoholics, drug addicted, prostitutes, civil rights leaders, community activists, and roughly 150 adorable children. We have always had the desire to touch the community in this way, and to see it happening in such a quick fashion is overwhelming. We are actually doing the work we set out to do over 18 months ago. We fed over 300 people and had the opportunity to touch their lives and build more service opportunities in the future. Now, we have plenty of support from local leaders for our week of service!

Then on Sunday we had our worship gathering and took the opportunity to serve once again. We meet in the midst of the largest collection of African American campuses in the world. So, we always feed people after our gatherings. One big lesson I learned as a college pastor was, IF YOU FEED THEM THEY WILL COME! This time we decided to grill out on the “Promenade” in front of the church were students are walking back and forth.

We fed hundreds of students, campus police, university workers, and even had some of them tweet about, “the church giving away food.” With every plate we told them about our worship gatherings and handed them a flyer inviting them join us. Several students walked right in and took part in our worship. We even had one of the civic leaders who were impacted by our service the day before, and a couple Spelman students that served with us come. That is impact!

Make no mistake about it we have an underlying motive. We are building creditability to communicate the good news of Jesus. We will unashamedly serve the community like crazy people all for the opportunity to look them in the eyes and tell them the most important thing that can ever be told. We will by God’s grace continue to serve the neighborhood, because people won’t believe what we say, until they first see it in our actions. It is not enough to merely love God; we must also love the people He loves! That is why our church has had more times of service to others than we have had in corporate worship. But because we serve, we have students and community leaders helping us in our mission.

Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Mark 10:45 Should it be a surprise that a church serves others on Easter, when that day is the culmination of the ultimate act of service?  So, we will engage the city of Atlanta, for the glory of an amazing God who showed us how to serve on a rugged cross.