Confessions of a Revolutionary

I want to be in the box. You know the box; it’s the one that gives a clear boarder defining the exact dimensions for how far a person’s life should stretch. Built with strict 90 degree angles it dictates just how far is too far and those inside never need to venture past the lines that contain them. Wanting the box and the comfort it provides is not something new for me; in fact, I have wanted to be in the box MY ENTIRE LIFE. The only problem is, I don’t fit.

The first time I realized that a box my size did not exist was in 1988. I was young and I was in love with basketball. My father was a college basketball coach and he was a very forward thinking man. He was able to see beyond the lines that other coaches at the time would not think to cross. It was common practice to put the tallest kids to play the power forward or center, thankfully my father was not a proponent of that common practice. He knew that my height could set me apart and give me an advantage if we pushed the limits. I was trained to be a point guard, and my father showed me how to block out the people looking at us who said that it would never work out. He taught me right then and there that I needed to find a way to get comfortable playing outside of the box. It was unorthodox, it felt strange, and it set the tone for how the rest of my life would progress with no respect paid to the box or its promised security.

Fast froward a few years: I am still in love with basketball and I earned a scholarship playing in my dream conference, the ACC at The Florida State University. College changed me in many ways, but the most profound was Jesus radically coming into my life. With this great shift, I yet again, tried to find a box I could fit into. The church I became a part of, looked nothing like me. The people were predominately white and not one of them could name a Jay Z album let alone a Jay Z song. It was strange and I was uncomfortable so I wasted no time making plans to find a church where I felt I fit into. My mission was successful and I found several churches filled with people who looked like me, talked like me, and understood me. I was all set to leave when a close friend of mine stopped me. He understood why I wanted to leave and he even agreed that the church I was at lacked diversity but he didn’t stop there. He challenged me and asked me “If you don’t bring the change, who will?” If I wanted a diverse church, I was going to have to take the first step. I learned one of the most profound principles behind culture in that experience: sometimes we need to stay and create the culture that should be there, sometimes we need to be revolutionary. Today, the church is known for being diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-generational. I did not do this on my own, but I played a part in paving the way and I stayed at the same church for 12 years until God called me to start my own.

I never really wanted to “do” ministry full-time. I enjoyed speaking on college campuses and preaching on the occasional Sunday morning but people who worked as ministers signed themselves up for “the struggle” in my book. Unless it was a mega-church, well established and looked exactly how I would imagine Jesus would want my church to look, I was not interested. I had overcome so many boxes, but this one was the most difficult of all. God was calling me to be a lead pastor, but even more than that, God was calling me to be a pastor and to keep doing what I was already doing.

At that time I had built a basketball skill training business called GameSpeed (the genesis of this is a story for another blog). GameSpeed was my dream and it was successful but God was calling me to more. At first I thought God wanted me to relinquish my growing business and step inside the box of “Church Pastor”. It seemed that God was telling me to choose. I had to pick the road of expanding my business or planting a church, there was no option for both. After struggling at this crossroad, I realized somewhere along the journey, that I had formed a mindset that there was a wall between sacred and secular, between entrepreneurship and church building. If I wanted to keep my business and do what I knew God wanted me to do, plant a church, what was telling me that I couldn’t do both? There was no model for how to do this, so again… I was searching for a box.

Of course I had seen pastors who were bi-vocational, but certainly not by choice. This was something new. This was God speaking to me that the church He wanted me to plant would not launch more churches before it would launch more businesses. I would come to pastor entrepreneurs who needed to know that the work they were doing was not limited by an imaginary wall separating sacred from secular. I could help people escape from the boxes they did not choose to be in.

What do you do without a template to follow? You do it anyway. Today, my wife and I both run thriving businesses that have cultures that affect the lives of the people in our city, and I just so happen to pastor a church at the same time. Our lives are busy, but the cultures we have created, make work to be what I believe it was intended to be… meaningful. Our church is no ordinary church; what God has used us to build is: multi-ethnic despite the box of the segregated south, we have multi-use space despite the box of the traditional church, we launch businesses despite the box of church planting centered missions, we have a location in a college town despite the box that says college students don’t tithe and it is sacrilegious to hold church service above a bar. The box is elusive and thankfully so; simply, we don’t all fit and we shouldn’t all fit. When we strive to be contained in a mold we see others fit into, we limit what God can do in and through our own lives.

Jesus had a box that so many tried to fit him into. They wanted him to be the one to establish the earthly kingdom, overthrow the Roman empire with his power and might. Jesus did establish a kingdom and overthrew an empire, He just did it very differently than expected. The bloodshed and iron fist were replaced with a life of loving servitude even toward his enemies and the greatest sacrifice this world has ever seen. I know that for at least one moment, Jesus wanted a box, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Luke 22:42. Jesus didn’t take the box the world tried to fit him in, instead He took the cross.

What makes you think a revolutionary isn’t scared? What makes you think pioneers don’t second guess themselves, have fear of man, have a desire to go with the flow, or stop and think “why me?” I wanted a title on my business card, I wanted a blueprint to follow, and I wanted someone who had already made it to tell me that all I needed to do was copy them and I too, could succeed. Instead what I got was painful and at times frightening. The fear of what if it doesn’t work, or what if it turns out so different from what I had hoped and dreamed of, what if all of the hard work and risk taking leads to nothing?

The walls of the box cast tall shadows that often keep us from getting too close or ever attempting to tear them down. I live in a box, but I am certain the box I have found is the box that Jesus meant for me. God gives us boarders to live within and spaces to inhabit, He defines us in a unique way that draws us deeper in love with Him. Let’s get out of the boxes, let’s be revolutionaries.