Lessons from a Wild Ride
Twenty years ago today Austin Christian Fellowship held its first Sunday event. We rented the theater at the Austin Community College in downtown Austin, loaded in a bunch of equipment we really didn’t know how to use, and tried to have a church service.
And then, we had to do it again the next weekend!
Nine months before, we had gathered in a living room and prayed for God to make us a church. There were probably less than a dozen of us in that living room.
An early version of AFC’s youth group. Today the ministry reaches hundreds of kids.
Today, over twenty years later from that first little meeting, we’re still here! God has come through for us on countless occasions and in unimaginable ways.
And so in honor of what God has done for twenty years in and through ACF, I’d like to offer a few life lessons Susie and I have learned as we’ve been on this wild ride. I think they will encourage you.
Lesson 1–God honors obedience.
To say that the math didn’t add up for Susie and me starting a church would be an understatement. I had unlimited opportunities and a great career path laid out in the established church system of which I was a part. I pretty much had the opportunity for a great salary and benefits and a national TV preaching audience.
But God’s call on our lives was undeniable. We couldn’t be obedient to God and walk out that other safe and attractive path. To start ACF, God required us to walk away from all sorts of security and comfort zones and completely trust in him.
Today, twenty years later, I can honestly say that Susie and I have no regrets. What we have gotten to see and experience–miracle after miracle–and how we have grown, goes beyond anything we could have ever dreamed up. God has honored our small steps of obedience over and over again. And, he’s poured way more into us than anything we may have given up in our obedience. The win has been all ours.
God honors obedience.
An ACF baptism
Lesson 2–God honors giving.
Susie and I have always been givers (by that I mean that we’ve always given ten percent of our income to our church), but I had never led a church to be a giving church. Somewhere along the ACF path God stepped in and asked our church to start giving. So way back in 2005 we set a goal to be a 50% giving church. By that we meant that we wanted to work toward giving 50% of our offerings away.
At the time, we were only giving away 1% of our offerings, so this was a seriously big, hairy, audacious goal.
We started by jumping to 10% giving the first year. The next year 11% (we had a bit of a faith crisis that year!). Then 20%, and we’ve up our church giving 5% a year since then.
Today, our church gives away 45% of our offerings and next January, God willing, we’ll go to 50% giving. Yea God.
People always ask me what we had to limit or say no to in order to give so much away. I can honestly say, Nothing. In fact, it’s been just the opposite.
Over the past several years as we’ve given away money:
Our staff has more than tripled
We’ve planted three churches
Our ministry impact has grown to a world-wide reach
We built a $1 million youth build and paid cash, without even having a fund-raiser
And we paid off our original $4.5 million debt ahead of schedule.
A beautiful Nicaraguan family we got to serve
Of course, none of this has been easy. We’ve had to pray like crazy and repeatedly wait for God’s provision. But in the process, we’ve a masters level education in faith. We’ve also learned that the old cliche “you can’t out-give God”isn’t a cliche, it’s true.
God honors giving.
Lesson 3–God loves skeptics, atheists, agnostics and ever other form of unbeliever.
Much of the conviction that led to the founding of ACF was for the lost and unbelieving who often find the church to be unwelcoming, unhelpful and irrelevant. God directed Susie and me to start a church in Austin with that one missing sheep in mind (see Luke 15:1-7).
As a result, we’ve had a front row seat to countless conversions and baptisms of some of those people who you would never expect to darken the door of a church.
One such man was Mark, a 28-year-old agnostic who’s wife died eight days after giving birth to twins. Her tragic death did little to help Mark look toward God. But Mark did allow our church to serve him my helping him care for his newborns and his toddler.
Over the years, through many friendships with Mark and countless prayers, Mark came to believe in Jesus. It was one of the greatest conversion experiences I’ve been privileged to see. Today, Mark and his family are still walking with Jesus and attend our ACF Brushy Creek Community, where he serves in the missions ministry.
That kind of story has been played out countless times in the last twenty years at ACF. God has repeatedly shown us the value of that missing one.
Opening day at our Four Points building, September 2003. It rained and rained!!!!!
I have so much more I could say, but I simply don’t have room here.
If you want to know more about the vision, values and adventures that have marked ACF the last twenty years, check out the message series TWENTY on the ACF web site. Each week in January we’re talking about a unique piece of ACF’s mission and history.
My bottom line: Thank you God for your faithfulness and for allowing Susie and me and our family to be part of this great work.
