Someone out there is ready to QUIT. You are BEAT-DOWN, you feel ABANDONED, ABUSED, USED and you are SICK and *&^%*&^%$*%^**# tired of it. You have been called a LIAR, LACKING INTEGRITY, AN IDIOT, A SINNER, and other names that I can’t print here.

And these are supposed to be the PEOPLE OF GOD?

Yeah.

Don’t be one of the 90% who wuss out unless GOD tells you to move on. GOD, not MAN!

I have heard that only 10% fight the good fight and finish the race. Yep, 90% of those who start in “vocational ministry” QUIT for various reasons.

I am one of those fighting some of those fights, those thoughts, those fears with you, that come from those “Men and Women of God.” Not that I am perfect or have been right all of the time either.

But I am determined to be one of the 10% of the WARRIORS who cross the finish line.

After all…My SAVIOR got the smack down of death by THE PEOPLE OF GOD and finished as a WARRIOR. He knows it worse that we ever will.

So who am I to complain? Let’s suffer well for HIS KINGDOM TOGETHER. You are either going to be a WARRIOR or a QUITTER. What will it be?

Hang in there fellow warrior. The Kingdom of God was given to us to expand by HIS power. Receive it, walk in it, drink it in to the depths of your soul and tell the DEVIL TO GO BACK TO HELL WHERE HE BELONGS in JESUS NAME.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” [2 Timothy 4.7]

Dang, many of you have been asking about the latest gossip. Well here it is:

1. I am preaching at K2 this weekend. Way excited about our partnership that is emerging.

2. Working on developing our launch team here in the SW valley. PRAY FOR US!!! Prayer is the weapon that will unleash the most chaos on this land.

3. Praying for our launch team in Ohio and other partners who are moving here and joining us to plant churches in the 22+ cities without 1 church in them. The other cities are way behind too. [and that's just the tip of the iceberg].

4. Working through new thoughts and models of ministry after viewing first hand a post-christian UK and where America is headed. Thanks to this amazing man of God for being our host. He is BRILLIANT, and made us official EVERTON football fans. That trip messed me up. Looking forward to blogging about it when I can wrap my mind around all of it.

5. We are developing sites to hold Alpha Type groups to reach out and dialogue with those who are unsure of their faith if they have a faith walk at all. Thanks Mikey for your work on this. And no, we won’t be in churches. Think: bars, pubs, cafe’s and community centers. We pray that this is the basis for our launch team, not just Christians who leave our mother church to help plant. [nothing against Christians of course:]

6. Still working on that name for our local church tribe name. Probably freaking Patrick out since he has to figure it all out once it gets a name from above. I think God is speaking. I like the following names…

7. Working on raising funds beginning big time this month. It’s time. If you know me, you will probably get an ask, so just pray now, and give something. Anything. Every bit counts. They aren’t planting churches for free any more for some reason Thanks to Patrick and Kym for all of their work on this.

8. THE STICKS is heading to ChurchPlanters.com VELOCITY CONFERENCE in February. Let’s meet up at the pre-conference that we are doing. We are also totally re-doing the website and blog to make it a place for INSPIRATION, ENCOURAGEMENT, EQUIPPING and NETWORKING. Look for the start of this in late February. Again, thanks to Patrick [and his amazing wife Leah for letting him] for the lead work on the re-design and our Sticks team for the content. Patience please.

Lastly, gatherings are planned for November 9-10, 2010 [Southeast--HERE, and yes Perry Noble is confirmed to be there along with our STICKS TEAM], Winter, 2011 [Midwest] and Spring, 2011 [West--HERE]. Want to host a STICKS CONFERENCE? Hit me. Yep…it’s on. And yes, we still have some spots left in our coaching network…shot me an e-mail me if you want a spot.

9. THE STICKS board [dang, we are getting organized] is meeting in a secret location for top secret meetings on top secret things. Well, not really, but we do hope to see the sun where we meet up for the first time face to face instead of all the phone meetings. Great group of leaders who care about small towns and hard to reach places and doing big things with little resources, leadership, vision, etc. Thanks to THIS GROUP for the grant that they gave to THE STICKS. We couldn’t do it without you.

10. Hanging with my family is still my top priority and passion. I have learned to fall in love more with them than my mistress, the church over the past 3-4 years. It’s a freeing feeling. Sitting right now in a coffee shop with my bride while she is looking at the latest fashions in a mag, I am typing this out as we get some QT together. I pray I never go back by God’s grace. I really love them more than ministry. And my marriage is stronger right now than at any other time in our life. It really is. How ’bout it?

11. And yep…we deeply miss all of our friends and family at New Hope…don’t think there hasn’t been the frequent thought of: Let’s just go back and end this struggle we face here. But while some of you might be happy [us included] our boss might not. Don’t give up on your calling friends.

12. Yes, that boss is God. Who were you thinking?

13. While we have that ever tangled web of partners that is hard to keep straight, even for us, we welcome our latest partner that will be our lead supporter as an organization. Dr. Stephen Gray is a man after my own heart, or is it the other way around? Either way, I am beyond excited to be partnering with them to plant churches here in Utah and around the world. You can check them out HERE. They will also be handling our central funding as we kick off our fund raising surge this month, so if you were sending funds or want to send us some jack, start sending it here as of this week:

National Missions   c/o: Mission West Church Planting    100 Stinson, Dr.    Poplar Bluff, MO   63901

14. And yes, with fund-raising trips, speaking events, learning events, life has been crazy. I am blessed that I get to travel all over and learn, serve and grow and almost every time others get to pay for it. Free travel, learning and networking…not a bad gig most of the time, considering the economics of a church planter!!!! God is blessing as I am learning, serving, growing and hopefully giving back at the same time.

14-1/2: I have something SO BIG to announce that if God is not in it, we are destined to fail, but since we are still working through it, I figured I would just whet your appetite. It’s not from us, it’s not our plans, we aren’t this dumb and crazy. We’ll see if it come to fruition…standby.

15. Ending here since my wife just looked at her watch and gave me the eye…we are loving building relationships here and just getting to know our new community. That is our main job, to learn this community as we seek to bring the glory of God and His salvation to a desperate place. To love this community. To serve this community. To do life in this community. It’s not about just “planting a church” This is what it’s all about:

The Barista who works here at this coffee shop is coming to church for the first time this weekend. That’s all the gossip that you need. It’s on…

You might complain, avoid, loathe, love, wish you could change, despise or shut out your family, but there is 1 thing that they can do that is life changing if you will listen and allow them.

If you are humble enough to chew on this 1 thing and spit out the fat that is inevitably there, this 1 thing just might change your life. This 1 thing will humble you, beat you down, anger you, and all out insult you. But it will shape and grow you if you will let it and if it is done in love [or even when it's not if you will listen closely]. By now you are saying…give it to me. My point exactly.

If there is 1 thing that your family can do that most others cannot do, it is to speak truth into your life, many times whether you want it or not. You know…those statements that you despise, that are 80-90% of the time spot-on truth?

Give it a go sometime…ask you family to all out lay down the truth [in love, if that is possible.] Why is that? Because they will always be your family and they have more than likely seen you naked in more ways than one. They know you better than most. Even if you have not seen them in years, they still know you better than what you might think. [By the way, that is why you don't like being around them for too long:]

When I live life with my family, they could care less how important I think I am, what accomplishments I have made that month, what book I am working on or what conference I have spoken at. They don’t really care about that. They know all of my past fault as well as my future potential. They have seen me at my worst and at my best and they still love me. [I think:] They aren’t afraid of being demoted, fired, or tossed aside, because we will always be family.

And sometimes they are the best ones to put a beat-down on you if you are willing to listen. I know there will be dysfunction if some of this, but hearing them out will show you many things that others are not willing to say to you.

Go ahead, give it a try. It’s free. No fill in the box tests, sofas to lay on, quarterly reviews, insurance cards or co-pay required. Thanks to my family for being real with me, and allowing me to be real with you.

It’s very frequent that my birthday falls on Martin Luther King Jr. birthday. Growing up Lutheran as a child, I always had a white man in mind on this day. It took me a few years to know that they are 2 very different people, but with 2 very similar attitudes.

I pray that I share a little bit of their pioneering legacy and am very proud to share this day in a tiny way with Dr. King, a pioneer like no other.

Leaders, if you are serious about casting a God honoring vision, then you must read THIS blog post by Michael Hyatt. Listen to the speech again on his site. Learn, soak it up, be inspired, and prepare for change.

Tonight my family will sit together and listen to this speech and discuss it in detail.

If you listen to the Spirit of God and receive HIS vision, and then learn to cast it like THIS, Look out. Because this is vision that changed not just a church, or a city, but a nation and the world.