Acts 29

Veritas Church is a 9-month old church plant in Decatur, Georgia – NPR, Blue state heaven and highly unchurched. Our average attendance is about 50. Since Donald Miller was going to be in town for the Catalyst Conference, we invited him to speak at our plant on October 9. He did and we learned a few lessons. By the way, he’s a prince of a guy and we thoroughly enjoyed having him speak at Veritas.

1. Think big and be persistent.

Donald Miller is in demand as a speaker. When I first thought of inviting him to speak, my first response to myself was, “Several churches have probably asked for the same thing and it probably won’t happen.” Thank God I listened to my second response to myself instead which was, “What the heck?” I called and his booking agent at first didn’t respond. I tried again and the agent said, “Several churches have asked for the same thing and it’s not going to happen.” I pushed harder, continuing to try and book him. A few weeks passed with no response and finally the agent emails me to say, “Hey, looks like this is going to work after all.”

2. If it’s consistent with your mission, be willing to lay out the money.

Church planters don’t typically have a lot of extra cash lying around, but who does? In the end, big results almost always require big investments. We established that writing the check to have Donald Miller to speak at our worship gathering was consistent with our mission to be a missional church. We felt it was likely that Donald Miller would attract a crowd and connect with our NPR context. Knowing that Donald loves Jesus and actually has the attention of blue state people was too good of an opportunity to pass up. We decided to seize the day. The results were great. A few hundred people came and we made lots of new contacts with un-churched and de-churched people in our community.

3. Decide what your mission is and stick with it.

We had two goals in mind – to begin to connect with the unchurched and dechurched community of Decatur and, unapologetically, to increase Veritas Church’s visibility in our community. As you could well imagine, we had lots of Christian groupies who wanted to bring buses of Christian groupies. Our mission was not to give more “Christian calories” to every Jesus freak in the Southeast. Networking was not our primary goal. When a para-church organization called from a well known University in another state to say they wanted to bring 60 of their leaders to our worship gathering, we said, “No thanks.” Most understood.  

4. Get around the middle man and talk to the main man.

This was my biggest mistake. I counted on the booking agent to do what he said he would do. The booking agent told us that Donald would probably do a lengthy reading and then take a few questions, followed by another reading. I explained to the booking agent that this was our worship gathering and that we would rather hear Donald speak from his heart rather than do a reading. The booking agent did not communicate our wishes. Let me emphasize that Donald was amazing and the consensus was overwhelmingly positive, but our desires were not passed along. As the shepherd of the flock, I should have made every effort to communicate what we wanted directly to Donald. I didn’t and that was my failure.

5. Everything you do communicates who you are.

Donald speaks like he writes and a number of Christians are offended by that. He isn’t Republican, he isn’t a big supporter of W., and he writes about penguin sex.  In other words, he’s perfect for Decatur, GA. Not that I know how most Decaturites feel about penguin sex, but I know they are more Anne Lammot than James Dobson. Donald’s presence and his style of communicating communicated who we are. The funda-maniacs and hard core Bible belt people who traveled in from Cumming, Georgia (Ed Stetzer’s neighborhood) probably left saying they were offended and will never come back. That’s okay. That’s not who we’re trying to reach.

6. Keep expectations realistic.

Attractional events are not magic bullets. Our attendance didn't sky-rocket on the following Sunday. We viewed this event as one more opportunity to put Veritas Church in front of our community and another opportunity to connect with the lost.