Category — CoastlandTampa

The goal we aspire to at the end of these weeks – as I wrote on Monday – is to become fairly professional.

To be perfectly clear – we are not grasping to become excellent. 

To quote the mohawk wearing prophet of the 80s, Mr. T – “I pity the fool who is reaching for excellence.”

Some may naively think God is into excellence.  You couldn’t be further from the truth.  “I’ll do my best for God” is not what excellence is about in the least. 

The “I’ll do my best…” line is another topic to open up (which could be great / could be something else – we’ll save that for another time). 

Excellence was a short-lived trend Tom Peters started with his mega-selling book of the mid-80s In Search of Excellence.  In church world years, that means the most advanced echo-ish thinkers and writers picked up on Peters about 7.5 years later… with the rest of the church getting it 15 years later.

Jesus has never been about the message of excellence.

Quite the contrary in fact.  Jesus had a ministry to those who were wrecked by those who in God’s name forced excellence upon all around. 
The gospels do have a repeating story of people being called to matters of excellence.

It is the "You’re not quite good enough" message that is often repeated by Temple leaders on page after page of the gospel accounts.  Their line to those who came to make a sacrifice was “Your dove is not quite good enough sacrifice material.  However today we happen to have a special on sacrifice doves.  Tell you what we can do for you – I don’t know what I’m saying – I must be out of my mind to talk this way – if my boss heard this crazy talk I’d be canned in a second… Yes this dove is somewhat more expensive than what you can afford (ten times more), but hey, it is expensive in order to please God… You need to have a perfect sacrifice.  That’s what sacrifice is all about… We are building our empire here… someone has to foot the bills… Doves don’t grow on trees you know” (Yes they do sit on branches in trees but that’s not the same).

CoastlandTampa has now done a couple of ‘Pre-Launch’ weeks.

We met with leaders only for a few weeks in the upstairs Great Room of a home on the far east side of Tampa, outside of our focal area. Our strategy has been to move from being off the radar screen, not even findable, to very visible in the I-4/I-75 area of Tampa.

In our four-week ‘Pre-Launch’ phase we have been meeting at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in our prime target area. This preparation has helped us to work through the bugs in our systems so that when we launch on February 10 we are ready for prime time. So far, so good!

It is becoming increasingly apparent that what we are being called to do here is marked by reproducibility.

As we have been planning things for quite some time now (see earlier this week – talking years) – I wondered how we were going to be able to encourage those who would follow after us in launches to come.

With limited up front cash, we are challenged to step up with creativity…

This past weekend was our super under the radar, super soft launch (think I’m developing new language for future planters).
Great vibe.  Went from just one or two moving parts on the “Model T” to another one or two.  The plan is to have a functional gathering that is not only fun, inspiring and safe (had that on week one) but is technically in sync with where we want to be – at least registering on the minimum matrix.

We are working on our Phase I launch.

This is challenging in that the funding we had prayed for has indeed been provided, but not in up front cash.  We prayed for at least a million in provision.  Yes, that has come in but to the pastors and interns who are working with the Coastland launch and establishment.  In fact, when all is tallied, that two plus year total is far more than that amount.
 
Our challenge now is the need for up front launching cash.
 
We were given an offering a couple of weeks ago that was well intentioned but the net of it was far less than I anticipated frankly.  I am grateful for every dollar provided.  I also think strategically.
 
Now we pray, we work, we serve.