I've always wondered why it can feel like it's taking a long time to build something. There are days in ministry where you wonder if you ever going to "break the ceiling." As I've committed to be at Hope, I knew I was building for the long haul. It wasn't going to be a flash in the pan. It wasn't going to be something that comes and goes. I wanted to build for longer than that.

Rick Warren shared this quote which I loved:

"I can show you how to grow a healthy church. I cannot show you how to build a healthy church fast. A church that explodes from 0 to 20,000 in 6 months is not a healthy church, there's a word for that. It's called cancer. Churches that grow that fast are the hottest act in towns. They're not conversion-growth churches, they are transfer-growth churches... You cannot build a healthy church fast. You can get a crowd fast. But a crowd is not a church. I'm not interested in crowds. I can teach you how to get a crowd but a crowd is not a church. I'm interested in disciples."

I've been at Hope for 5 years now.

I can say that I've thought about being the crowd guy, knowing I could. I've seen other hot acts in town come and go. I've seen a lot of other youth pastors come and go. Now, I'm beginning to see the joys of building for the long haul. I'm having more fun in youth ministry now, then I've had before. Because the long haul is paying off.

In the last months, we have begun top hit discipleship hard with our students. Not that we were going soft earlier, but we've been coming at it strong the last couple of months and everyone in leadership shares the same feeling, "It's like we're falling off the edge of a cliff." We know the bottom is about to come out. But you keep feeling that it's coming. It's coming. It's coming. Is it coming? Did we get this right? I can tell you this though, when that bottom does come out, it's not going to be a flash in a pan for us. It will be the beginning of a revolution.

We build slow so we can build large.