I don’t know.

Those are liberating words. Yeah, really. Not words a leader is naturally drawn toward, but words I’m trying to become more and more comfortable with everyday. Those words don’t make me weak. They make me honest. Fact of the matter is, sometimes you don’t know either (yeah, I know who you are).

Having it all figured out is not a pre-requesite of leadership. If it were, only good actors would lead. But just like all of you, I fight the desire to always have the perfect answer, to know the score, to have thought through every possible situation, equation, and outcome before it happens. Oh, and we also have to innately know the contingency plan, too.

As a church planter, I involuntarily desire to eloquently answer every structural, organizational, and visional question that comes at me. “Of course I know the strategic intent of our planned infrastructure’s capabilities to handle economic downturn over the next three years.” (Liar! I don’t even know what that question means).

And as a pastor, I’m required to understand all the theological minutia of God’s will, His plans, and His ways. Right? If not, why am I even here? So we make ourselves look good. We give the pat, trite, Christian answers (that really help no one). We squish the ungraspable nature of God into our little box so that people think we’re good at what we do.

Here’s the deal. Sometimes we just don’t know. All of us. And that’s OK.

I don’t want all the organizational answers. Not knowing gives me the liberty to experiment, to dream, to try new things never done by anyone before. It gives me the right to fail and get up and try again. That’s where greatness begins.

And I don’t have all the theological answers. I don’t want a God I can fully explain, that I can fit within the scope of my little world and perspective. I want a God that blows my mind with the unfathomable scope of His nature and being. Sometimes His will is simply beyond my ability to comprehend. It keeps me honest. It keeps me dependent. As Andy Stanley so eloquently says, “focus on the undeniable, not the unexplainable.”

In my life, I’ve found that God often gives me just enough of the picture to keep me moving in His direction. I’m learning to live with that ambiguity, to thrive within those unknowns. It’s a beautiful thing.

So, here’s the deal. I don’t know. Yeah, I said it. I don’t know. Feels good. Maybe you should admit it, too. Wisdom begin there.

Nathan and I just got back to the hotel after the opening night of the ARC All Access Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.  It was a great evening of worship, challenge, and reconnecting with new friends and church planters from all over the country.

I love the spirit of ARC pastors. My heart is naturally drawn to them.  There’s a sense of reckless abandon in the ARC, of freedom to follow God-given passions without boundaries or barriers.  That’s so refreshing in a culture where most churches are more concerned with looking backward than into the future.  I really feel at home here surrounded by like-minded people.

But back home I’ve also found myself interacting with pastors and spiritual leaders who question the validity of my innate expression and vision for church.  There are days when my mind swirls with the all the different voices and opinions, and in earlier days it would have overwhelmed me.  Today, I’m honestly learning to welcome it.

One of two things always happens when I open myself to challenge:  my mind is exposed to something I just wasn’t thinking before, or I deepen my beliefs and solidify my “why.”  Either way I win.

I think a lot of good-hearted, God-fearing people run from challenge.  They only hang out with people who think like them, talk like them, act like them, and encourage their preconceived notions.  But if our perspectives can’t survive exposure to opposing viewpoints, how authentic are they in the first place?

In the midst of all the voices, ask yourself one vital question:  “what is God really saying?”

As children we’re naturally inquisitive.  We question everything.  Not out of doubt or distrust, but simply because experience has given us no point of reference.  So we ask…sometimes obnoxiously, often irritatingly…why? I can subliminally hear my 3 year old son pepperng me even now.  “Why daddy…why?  Daddy…why?  Why?  (Because I said so!  Every dad’s trump card, right?).

But somewhere along the line, most of us lose that curiosity and one of two things happens.  We either stop asking why and all of life becomes habitual, cultural, the norm.  Or we can’t find a good answer to why and cynicism and disillusionment overtake our sense of wonder.

Why do we go to church? Now there’s a great question that many of us have simply stopped asking.  We do it out of habit, out of ritual, out of obligation.  Our parents made us.  Our guilt drives us.  Culture overtakes intentionality and we no longer even ask the question.  We just do it…because…just because.

Or we just never found a good answer.  Watching others do something we see absolutely no reason for is a recipe for cynical skepticism.  Some of us live underneath layers of unanswered “why’s,” and they’ve made us cold, hard, and calloused.

God is not afraid of our why’s.  In fact, He wants us to ask them, dig into them, mine them out.  He loves our pursuit.  Have you stopped asking?  Lost sight of a good answer?  Go ahead and ask it…why? You just might be surprised at the answers.

I want to take a second and introduce you to a good friend of mine, Rod Arnold (and not just because he just posted about us on his blog…well, at least not totally).  I first met Rod through our connection as songwriters with Integrity Music and found him to be an incredible mind with a deep love for the church and passion to see it become all God created it to be.

Rod just launched a new organization called BrandSmart Marketing to help churches and organizations with their marketing efforts.  Church marketing is nothing new, but Rod’s approach is.  If your church or organization could use some help honing its message, I would strongly encourage you to read his new book, What Smart Churches Know, or contact him directly.

The term marketing doesn’t always have the best connotation in church circles.  It’s easy to see it as a secular pursuit, convincing someone to “buy” something through clever or manipulative tactics.  But let’s not define the whole by its abuses.  As the great author and pastor Mark Batterson says, “the greatest Message deserves the greatest marketing.”

I’m not one of those guys who thinks there are no absolutes.  You know those people, the ones who are convinced every answer is the right answer and that truth is relative.  They usually wear tie-dye shirts and drive 30 year old vans with couches in the back (you know who you are).  That’s definitely not me.

But I have to be honest, I’m getting tired of the litany of arguments flying around the Church that somehow place unrelated things on a sliding scale with one another.  Seeker-sensitive vs. Bible-based.  Missional vs. Attractional.  Large vs. Authentic.  I think we’re so bent on placing spiritual labels on things that either define our preferences or challenge our natural tendencies that we end up having completely irrelevant dialog.  Have you noticed your own propensity to spiritualize your own personal preferences?  (I guess I’m the only one?)

Who placed these things on a sliding scale anyway?  Why does being cognizant of the spiritual condition and Biblical knowledge of those who find their way into our weekly worship environments suddenly mean we can no longer be Bible or truth based?  (If you want my honest opinion, I think we WAY over-estimate the Biblical understanding of long-time church attenders anyway).  Who decided that having more than 200 people in your congregation suddenly meant you could no longer be genuine, vulnerable, authentic, or effective?  Why does building a weekend worship environment that attracts a crowd automatically mean you can’t missionally care about the city you’re in (or vice versa)?  Where was I when we had the meeting that put these things on a comparative continuum?

The truth is we’re greedy, jealous, broken people.  Yep…me too.  We thrive on comparison and impulsively throw stones at things we either don’t understand or that offend our religious culture or sensibilities.  Those who love the status quo angrily accuse those exploring new modes of expression of leaving “the way.”  And those who have grown tired of bowing to the way it’s always been done often swing the pendulum so hard in the other direction that the baby and the bathwater go spiraling down the drain.  We’ve allowed ourselves to be defined by our worst abuses.

If the goal of the church is to accurately reflect Jesus to the world (the Bible refers to us as His body), I think we’ll find that the answer isn’t in sliding our personal expressions up and down a man-made continuum in search of the one perfect answer, but in truly and completely embracing the character and nature of the One we follow.  He has an uncanny way of messing with my view of reality.

If that means I need to invest in some tie-dye and a ’74 Dodge van, I guess I better get to shopping.