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This past July marked 13 years in ministry for me. I led in many different capacities at multiple churches over these years, and I’ve learned a lot.

Mostly the hard way.

I’ve made countless mistakes. I’ve been arrogant, stubborn, doubting, and selfishly ambitious. Luckily I read a Bible full of people like me – sinners and screw ups who God uses in powerful ways. I remember meeting a few years ago with someone who knew me way back when, and at one point I said to them, “man, I was an idiot.” And they responded, “Yeah, you were.”

Boom. How’s that for honesty?

Yet looking back is not without celebration. I look back on people coming to faith and being baptized, lonely people finding community and wholeness, broken people finding wholeness and healing, powerful times of worship in the presence of God… I could go on and on. God has been so faithful! Tears well up in my eyes remembering what He has done.

Yet among both the messiness and the beauty, the hard days and the celebration, I look back and have one, glaring regret. It’s a regret that has simmered under the surface for years, nagging me and insisting on being addressed. It’s something I’ve wanted, agreed with, desired, and even tried on occasion. But it never took root. I always felt inadequate. I’d never really seen it lived out up close, and I was so afraid to try…and fail.

But I want that to change. And I’d would venture to guess that when you hear it, you’ll want it to change in your life too. In fact, I get the sense that if this changed, everything around it in our lives would change. It’s not some ministry magic bullet. It’s not the latest trend in church, not a strategy or a model or idea for improvement. In fact, it kind of makes those look silly.

This Sunday, I want to share with you what this is. In a way, it will be part repentance and part vision for what can be. In me, in you, in all of us at Restoration.

I pray you’ll join me Sunday night. I think what we’re being called into together, if we have the courage to step into it, will radically transform us as individuals and as a community. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for more.

So I’ll see you Sunday night!