Leaving it all out on the field!

My wife and I have a Starbucks mug collection that’s very special to us. We built the collection over years as we have moved and traveled and ministered all over the country and the world. In each place we’ve lived, in many places we’ve served, and in select locations where we have been impacted, we have picked up a coffee mug that bears the name of the city that has so touched our lives. Some mornings I feel like remembering Portland. Other times I want to reminisce about New York. Los Angeles, of course, is a favorite. And if anyone knows if there is a Fresno mug, we’d sure like to get our hands on one.

This morning Deborah poured her coffee into our Seattle mug! The pictures of the Pink Elephant Car Wash, the Space Needle, and Pike Place Market brought back fond memories of our first church plant (and our bi-vocation as Starbucks partners). More than the organization we started in Seattle, our thoughts turned to the people we partnered with.

It was a crazy time. It’s not a good idea to plant a church without a team, and I’d never suggest anyone try to do it the way we did. Deborah and our friend Amy Goosen and I moved from Fresno to Seattle—not knowing anybody, and not knowing the city—and we “hung our shingle” and started a church! Through some very generous Foursquare pastors and some sovereign encounters, we ended up with a core team of about 15 to 20 people in the next few months.

And none of us knew what we were dong. We just wanted to glorify Jesus and reach lost people.

After 2 years, we were meeting in a nightclub on Sunday mornings with no kids ministry space, no parking, and we had to clean up cigarette butts and hypodermic needles before service.

You’ve heard this story before: it’s the stuff of sermons and seminars and best-selling books. A small group of clueless but committed people start to meet in a challenging place and before they know it, God does a work and the church grows to thousands of people.

Except in our case that explosive growth never happened.

We did everything we could think of to minister Jesus’ life in our context, but after 2 years, our biggest service was about 40 folks in their late teens and 20’s. Despite all our best efforts and a wonderful and deeply committed core leadership team, we could never get the plane off the ground.

When the Lord called Deborah and I to Newberg Oregon to pastor the Forusquare Church there, it felt a little bit like a rescue operation. We loved the vision and the team in Seattle, but we just couldn’t give another ounce of spiritual, emotional or physical effort.

There is a saying in sports that when you give your best effort—regardless of the outcome—you have “left it all out on the field”. There is no holding back, there is not second-guessing, you don’t go home thinking you could have tried harder. You may not have had a perfect game; you may have made some boneheaded mistakes, but you know you couldn’t have done any more.

And that’s a great feeling.

We had gone to Seattle to plant a church that would bring Jesus glory, and we left it all out on the field. I know we were young and did some things that were counterproductive and worked with some wrong assumptions and philosophy and even made decisions that I would not let a young church planter get away with in my district today. But never in my life have I ever wondered if we could have tried harder. Never have I wondered what could have happened had our team been more committed. I will go to my grave satisfied that we obeyed Jesus to go and we and our team gave our whole hearts and our total effort.

And it’s been a great feeling!

I can still point to the scars that were created in that season, but I’ve never had an ounce of regret over any of it.

I want to encourage you today, whatever it is that God has called you to, give it all you’ve got. Don’t hesitate or equivocate; don’t pull your punches or hedge your bets; pull out all the stops (look that last phrase up…it’s got a great music reference).

Because at the end of the day—in the dusk of your life—you want to look back at both your successes and your failures without regrets, and the only way I know how to do that is to throw yourself fully into whatever you are doing with as much integrity and passion and energy that you can.

And then when you drink from the mug that reminds you of that season, you can enjoy your coffee, remember your life, remember your friends, smile about the life that you shared, and look with joy on both the triumphant successes and the glorious failures that came as a result of obedience to the Lord.