30 Minutes With David Chadwick

Editor’s Note: David Chadwick, pastor of Forest Hill Church, has to be one of the busiest guys in Charlotte. In addition to pasturing a fast-growing church with Sunday attendance now approaching 2,000, he is a chaplain to the Charlotte Hornets, host of a weekly radio talk show on WBT, and an advisor and mentor to various political and civic leaders. Forest Hill’s ministry is unique in Charlotte in that it intends to plant other churches rather than grow into a mega-church, though it has become large, too, with nearly 2000 worshipping each Sunday. In the past three years it has planted two churches, and it has plans to plant a church every year to 18 months. We recently sat down with David Chadwick to discuss the history and the future of Forest Hill Church.

Warren Smith: I wanted to begin by asking not about your church, but about you. Your personal ministry extends well beyond the church. You’ve got plenty to do right here. Why do you think it is important look outside the congregation you pastor to the community at-large?

David Chadwick: Another thing you might be interested to know is that the book I wrote last year with Dean Smith has been turned into a leadership seminar and I’m doing that now all over the state and all over the southeast. That’s been fun, to teach leadership to people who would never go to church. To teach principles that are eternal and true. In the reformed tradition, all truth is God’s truth. These principles are his truths. Hopefully, somewhere in the presentation, with one of the principles being "faith," someone might ask the question: "If there are principles, is there a principle-giver?"

In fact, there have been a couple of people who have heard the seminar, come to church here, and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.

But to answer your question: I feel like there are three ways a Christian can engage the culture. "Christ over culture" means I’m spending so much time in heaven I’m of no earthly good. My whole life is so spiritually rooted that it is almost Gnostic in its mentality. That causes a removal from culture.

The second view is "Christ against culture." This says the culture is evil and mean and I basically stand on one side of the wall and throw firebombs at the culture. I tell the culture how awful it is, how evil it is, how wicked it is, yet I never intersect the culture at all. We have examples of that in the city of Charlotte, and it does no good at all. Salt can’t be salt unless it is placed in the meat. Light can’t be light unless it is penetrating the darkness.

The third view, which is my view, is "Christ in culture." John 17 says, "As the Father has sent me into the world, so I send you into the world." To me it is the book of Acts. Jesus commanded in Acts 1:8 to go into all the world and be my witnesses. If you look at the end of Acts 7 they’re still hanging around Jerusalem. One of my favorite phrases is "If you don’t do Acts 1:8 God will bring about Acts 8:1." Which is God brought persecution into the church, and they went into Samaria to preach the Gospel.

I feel like that’s God’s call. Of course, the challenge is to remain pure and holy as you engage a very unholy culture. But I sense that "He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world." I walk in the world as one who is trying to winsomely engage the culture. My personal life’s mission statement is "to be a friend to seekers" because I believe people need the Lord Jesus Christ but they’ll never know Him unless I’m personally involved in their lives, caring for them, walking in the strength and personality of Christ with a winsomeness and a glow that would draw them not to me but to the Lord who lives in me.

WS: I think a lot of people resonate with the intention of those words, but struggle with the acting out of those words. How do you maintain purity and holiness while in the midst of a culture that is evil? What are the standards that you use to make sure that you maintain the purity and doctrine of the church? And what standards do you use on a personal level to determine what venues and formats you will and will not participate?

DC: I remain pure by abiding in Christ. I think the key to walking in the world is to walk with Christ. John 15 makes it so clear that this is where it begins. I have to remain connected to him daily. I spend time with Him. I journal. I make sure that I’m hearing His voice. He made it clear in John 10:27 that he will speak to me. When I do grieve Him – not if but when – He certainly lets me know.

Another key is to be so close to my wife Marilyn that when she sees things that are off-base she calls me on them. I really believe that your first accountability partner should be your spouse. We’re close enough in that "one-flesh" mentality that she has the right to do that to me. Sometimes hurting me, sometimes causing defensiveness, but nevertheless that opportunity to share is there with her.

Thirdly, I have a staff surrounding me that helps me ask those kinds of questions and tries to answer them with me. My closest friends are my staff members. I not only have a boss-underling relationship, but I have a peer-friend relationship with them that I have intentionally created here.

These three relationships – with Christ, with my wife, and with my friends – help me to walk in some sense of holiness and accountability.

Now, certainly there are some venues that I would refuse to be a part of. At one time I was asked to give the opening address at a place that sponsors abortion as an alternative. I had to ask the question: Do I place my conviction that I need to be among seekers so highly that I would go? Would it be perceived that if I did go that I supported abortion? I had to decide no. I think the phrase that guides me in those situations is never to go where I would be forbidden to do what God requires or requires me to do what God forbids. In that very simple maxim I find a guiding force that allows me to say yes or no.

Yet, as I walk into WBT, which is a secular station, and as I walk into these corporations, which are not led by godly principles, and as I try to engage the seeker who comes here, or a person I meet in the community, I feel that my first responsibility is to say to myself, "Lost people are really loved by God, and if they’re loved by God, they need to be loved by the God who lives in me." So my first response is to love them, and I try to separate behavior from personhood. I may not like what they do, but my first job is to love them.

Here, our whole deal is to let the Gospel offend people. I’m unashamed to let the Gospel offend people. I will preach the Gospel till my last breath. In fact, my first sermon here – 20 years ago – was from Romans 1:16, and it was titled "My Last Sermon At Forest Hill." I think people thought I was crazy – and over the years that’s been proven out! But what I was trying to say then was if this was my last sermon, what I would do is preach the Gospel. That is the only thing the church has to offer the world. We spend so much trying to compete with the world with different ministries that look like the world, that entertain, that get people here. We’ll use that methodology, but for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel. That’s the only thing we have to offer the world.

So if we offend people here, what we want to offend them with is the cross, but not other things. The church is so outdated in so many ways that they offend people so they never come back to hear the gospel.

WS: The idea of "Christ in culture" is a very Reformed idea. Another Reformed idea is the notion that we really don’t seek after God, but God seeks after us. Can you clarify what you mean when you use the word "seeker" and why you use that language when you know that man is depraved and is not disposed to seek after Him?

DC: Well, I certainly know that. I believe it is a great truth that God is the only true seeker and that we’re dead in our sins and trespasses.

I can’t explain it except that I know that the Bible has to relate to reality. If the Bible doesn’t relate to reality, then something is wrong. The truth is that there are people out there who don’t know the Lord and who are spiritually hungry. They are looking for something.

I would be the first to admit that if they come to Christ that was probably God stirring the dead embers of their soul. God was placing that hunger in their hearts. But the bottom line is they are out there. When they come into the church, you have two options. You have the option of communicating with them in forms and styles that are 400 years old that they don’t relate to. They might as well be in Ethiopia speaking Amharic and you’re speaking to them in English. They won’t understand.

Or you can say, "This is who’s here. I recognize that there is a neophyte, baby-ishness there. I can’t give them predestination, and the deeper things of TULIP, for example. They’ve got to drink milk before they eat meat. One of the criticisms that I sometimes receive is that it’s not enough meat. You can’t jam meat down a spiritual baby’s mouth. You’ve got to give them what they can have and then arrange other places where people can grow.

I don’t know how to exactly answer that theologically and biblically. I just know that there are people who spiritually seek. Of course God is the one stirring their hearts, but the truth is that there are people out there spiritually seeking.

WS: Of course, many missiologists would argue that where most evangelism takes place is in the home. Parents raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This suggests that worship and the community life of a church should be intergenerational, linked to tradition. Some 400-year-old forms are inaccessible to modern people, but there is also a great deal of richness and wisdom in some of these forms. Yes, it is a struggle for children to get through the old hymns and the old creeds, but over time that rich teaching becomes a part of their souls. Do you ever have a concern that your attempts to be "winsome" to people who may or may not be serious about their seeking, or have varying degrees of seriousness, that you might be falling down in your responsibility to support the community of believers, those godly moms and dads who need the help of the church in evangelizing and discipling their own children?

DC: That’s a valid question. But most churches are in that vein, would you not agree?

WS: I would agree that there are a lot of traditional churches that are dead spiritually. And there are a lot contemporary churches that are lively. But I don’t see a lot of churches that are offering the traditional forms for the right reasons that also have an aliveness in the Spirit. My question is really this: Is it possible to get both in this culture? Why do we have to choose between a dead orthodoxy and a lively heterodoxy? Neither of which provides the full counsel of God to the believing community or the non-believing community?

DC: It’s very hard. If your target is a certain kind of fish, you can’t catch that kind of fish with lures that don’t attract that kind of fish. There are two kinds of lost people out there. There are people who have given up on church because the forms and styles are absolutely dead. There is another group that has never been to church. Both are in Charlotte in increasing numbers. They’re moving here from the northeast and the west coast. A good number of Catholics who have a dead orthodoxy.

So, you’re asking the question: "Are we going to reach those kinds of people with forms and styles they’ve given up on or don’t completely understand?"

WS: Can you say with certainty that they’ve given up on the form? Or is it possible that they actually found the forms and styles comforting and nurturing, but the Holy Spirit had stopped inhabiting those churches, had been quenched? Through disobedience, liberal doctrine, whatever it might be?

DC: I can only tell you what I hear. They tell me that the forms and styles were boring and irrelevant. They meant nothing to them. They became so rote that they lost any spiritual vivacity in their lives. All I know is what they tell me.

You ask the question whether it is possible to create something that is a combination of reaching out and reaching in and I think the answer to that question is "yes, absolutely." I would ask anyone who questions what we are doing to come and look at the guts of our ministry.

First of all, listen to the testimonies of those coming in. People who have never been to church, people who have given up on church, are being born again and are alive in Christ. I was raised in the traditional church, and I never heard testimonies like that. For the first ten years of my ministry I had that kind of church here, and 5% of our growth was unbeliever growth, and the rest of our growth, which was fairly substantial, came from other churches. They were dissatisfied customers.

As we have made this transition over the past several years, and I have examined carefully everyone who has left here. Every one is someone who joined from another church previously. They couldn’t catch the idea that our job is to give our lives away.

I would ask anyone from a traditional church why it is that all these churches have caused in our land a sterile evangelical heart. Why isn’t our culture won for Christ if we’ve had a Christian focus in these churches for all these years. I would suggest it is because their forms became their god. In Isaiah 58 God says, "This is the kind of fast I want from you. To give your lives away." So what we’ve tried to create here is a desire for people to build relationships with their lost friends and let love be what guides us. And then get them involved in discipleship. We have 1100 of our 1600 people involved in small groups.

You can learn the basic orthodoxy without all the old hymns. In fact, I was in South Africa and I preached in a Presbyterian church and they sang five hymns and I didn’t know one of them. Their hymnody is totally different from ours. When I have someone criticize our hymnody, or lack of, I always say, "what hymnody are you talking about? Presbyterian hymnody? Lutheran hymnody? South African hymnody? Fanny Crosby hymnody?"

WS: Moving on to a few other areas. You guys are unique in a couple of ways. You’re involved in inner city ministry, interracial ministry, and other ministries that are not always part of a suburban church. You have also been heavily involved in church plants. You have chosen not to accept the false choice of being either big church or a church planting church. You’re becoming both.

DC: We’re committed to planting a church every 12 to 18 months. There should not be a tension between growing and planting – if your heart beats the Kingdom. My heart beats not to build a big church, but to advance the Kingdom of God. What drives Forest Hill is our vision. Our vision is to connect people to God’s compelling love. Therefore, we feel as though God’s call on his people is to give our lives away. If we want to reach people for Christ, every study shows the best way to do that is to plant churches. We had 50 to 75 people driving down from Huntersville to here on Sundays. As they began to have children, it became increasingly difficult for them. We said that was ridiculous, so we took those 50 to 75 and planted a new church with them and now they have 300 to 400. Growing out the wazoo.

With Warehouse 242, Todd Haun has a heartbeat for Gen X, and it became apparent that that is the next church plant. He began a Saturday night service that began to get 150 to 200. We planted him and now has 500. We had to give away from resources and, frankly, that ouched for a while. We gave away one of our best givers to Todd. To God be the glory!

I came back from vacation this summer and Richard Wilson, my worship and arts guy who had been with me for 14 years and one of my really good friends, said he felt God was calling him to be the worship and arts director at Warehouse. My first reaction was to say, "Every church planter who comes on staff from now on is going to have to sign an agreement that they won’t touch one of our people for five years. I can’t go through this. This is too hard." God did a number on me over that attitude. He took me aside. He took me to Matthew 5. If someone asks you to go one mile, go two. If someone wants your cloak, give your tunic also.

What God shared with me is this: "David, David. You don’t own anybody. Richard is not yours. It’s not about you. It’s about My Kingdom."

So we’re going to plant as many churches as we can, and those churches will have a particular DNA that is like ours in that they’ll be church planting churches too.




			David Chadwick
	It’s Not About Me; It’s About God’s Kingdom Editor’s Note: David Chadwick, pastor of Forest Hill Church, has to be one of the busiest guys in Charlotte. In addition to pasturing a fast-growing church with Sunday attendance now approaching 2,000, he is a chaplain to the Charlotte Hornets, host of a weekly radio talk show on WBT, and an advisor and mentor to various political and civic leaders. Forest Hill’s ministry is unique in Charlotte in that it intends to plant other churches rather than grow into a mega-church, though it has become large, too, with nearly 2000 worshipping each Sunday. In the past three years it has planted two churches, and it has plans to plant a church every year to 18 months. We recently sat down with David Chadwick to discuss the history and the future of Forest Hill Church. Warren Smith: I wanted to begin by asking not about your church, but about you. Your personal ministry extends well beyond the church. You’ve got plenty to do right here. Why do you think it is important look outside the congregation you pastor to the community at-large? David Chadwick: Another thing you might be interested to know is that the book I wrote last year with Dean Smith has been turned into a leadership seminar and I’m doing that now all over the state and all over the southeast. That’s been fun, to teach leadership to people who would never go to church. To teach principles that are eternal and true. In the reformed tradition, all truth is God’s truth. These principles are his truths. Hopefully, somewhere in the presentation, with one of the principles being "faith," someone might ask the question: "If there are principles, is there a principle-giver?" In fact, there have been a couple of people who have heard the seminar, come to church here, and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. But to answer your question: I feel like there are three ways a Christian can engage the culture. "Christ over culture" means I’m spending so much time in heaven I’m of no earthly good. My whole life is so spiritually rooted that it is almost Gnostic in its mentality. That causes a removal from culture. The second view is "Christ against culture." This says the culture is evil and mean and I basically stand on one side of the wall and throw firebombs at the culture. I tell the culture how awful it is, how evil it is, how wicked it is, yet I never intersect the culture at all. We have examples of that in the city of Charlotte, and it does no good at all. Salt can’t be salt unless it is placed in the meat. Light can’t be light unless it is penetrating the darkness. The third view, which is my view, is "Christ in culture." John 17 says, "As the Father has sent me into the world, so I send you into the world." To me it is the book of Acts. Jesus commanded in Acts 1:8 to go into all the world and be my witnesses. If you look at the end of Acts 7 they’re still hanging around Jerusalem. One of my favorite phrases is "If you don’t do Acts 1:8 God will bring about Acts 8:1." Which is God brought persecution into the church, and they went into Samaria to preach the Gospel. I feel like that’s God’s call. Of course, the challenge is to remain pure and holy as you engage a very unholy culture. But I sense that "He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world." I walk in the world as one who is trying to winsomely engage the culture. My personal life’s mission statement is "to be a friend to seekers" because I believe people need the Lord Jesus Christ but they’ll never know Him unless I’m personally involved in their lives, caring for them, walking in the strength and personality of Christ with a winsomeness and a glow that would draw them not to me but to the Lord who lives in me. WS: I think a lot of people resonate with the intention of those words, but struggle with the acting out of those words. How do you maintain purity and holiness while in the midst of a culture that is evil? What are the standards that you use to make sure that you maintain the purity and doctrine of the church? And what standards do you use on a personal level to determine what venues and formats you will and will not participate? DC: I remain pure by abiding in Christ. I think the key to walking in the world is to walk with Christ. John 15 makes it so clear that this is where it begins. I have to remain connected to him daily. I spend time with Him. I journal. I make sure that I’m hearing His voice. He made it clear in John 10:27 that he will speak to me. When I do grieve Him – not if but when – He certainly lets me know. Another key is to be so close to my wife Marilyn that when she sees things that are off-base she calls me on them. I really believe that your first accountability partner should be your spouse. We’re close enough in that "one-flesh" mentality that she has the right to do that to me. Sometimes hurting me, sometimes causing defensiveness, but nevertheless that opportunity to share is there with her. Thirdly, I have a staff surrounding me that helps me ask those kinds of questions and tries to answer them with me. My closest friends are my staff members. I not only have a boss-underling relationship, but I have a peer-friend relationship with them that I have intentionally created here. These three relationships – with Christ, with my wife, and with my friends – help me to walk in some sense of holiness and accountability. Now, certainly there are some venues that I would refuse to be a part of. At one time I was asked to give the opening address at a place that sponsors abortion as an alternative. I had to ask the question: Do I place my conviction that I need to be among seekers so highly that I would go? Would it be perceived that if I did go that I supported abortion? I had to decide no. I think the phrase that guides me in those situations is never to go where I would be forbidden to do what God requires or requires me to do what God forbids. In that very simple maxim I find a guiding force that allows me to say yes or no. Yet, as I walk into WBT, which is a secular station, and as I walk into these corporations, which are not led by godly principles, and as I try to engage the seeker who comes here, or a person I meet in the community, I feel that my first responsibility is to say to myself, "Lost people are really loved by God, and if they’re loved by God, they need to be loved by the God who lives in me." So my first response is to love them, and I try to separate behavior from personhood. I may not like what they do, but my first job is to love them. Here, our whole deal is to let the Gospel offend people. I’m unashamed to let the Gospel offend people. I will preach the Gospel till my last breath. In fact, my first sermon here – 20 years ago – was from Romans 1:16, and it was titled "My Last Sermon At Forest Hill." I think people thought I was crazy – and over the years that’s been proven out! But what I was trying to say then was if this was my last sermon, what I would do is preach the Gospel. That is the only thing the church has to offer the world. We spend so much trying to compete with the world with different ministries that look like the world, that entertain, that get people here. We’ll use that methodology, but for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel. That’s the only thing we have to offer the world. So if we offend people here, what we want to offend them with is the cross, but not other things. The church is so outdated in so many ways that they offend people so they never come back to hear the gospel. WS: The idea of "Christ in culture" is a very Reformed idea. Another Reformed idea is the notion that we really don’t seek after God, but God seeks after us. Can you clarify what you mean when you use the word "seeker" and why you use that language when you know that man is depraved and is not disposed to seek after Him? DC: Well, I certainly know that. I believe it is a great truth that God is the only true seeker and that we’re dead in our sins and trespasses. I can’t explain it except that I know that the Bible has to relate to reality. If the Bible doesn’t relate to reality, then something is wrong. The truth is that there are people out there who don’t know the Lord and who are spiritually hungry. They are looking for something. I would be the first to admit that if they come to Christ that was probably God stirring the dead embers of their soul. God was placing that hunger in their hearts. But the bottom line is they are out there. When they come into the church, you have two options. You have the option of communicating with them in forms and styles that are 400 years old that they don’t relate to. They might as well be in Ethiopia speaking Amharic and you’re speaking to them in English. They won’t understand. Or you can say, "This is who’s here. I recognize that there is a neophyte, baby-ishness there. I can’t give them predestination, and the deeper things of TULIP, for example. They’ve got to drink milk before they eat meat. One of the criticisms that I sometimes receive is that it’s not enough meat. You can’t jam meat down a spiritual baby’s mouth. You’ve got to give them what they can have and then arrange other places where people can grow. I don’t know how to exactly answer that theologically and biblically. I just know that there are people who spiritually seek. Of course God is the one stirring their hearts, but the truth is that there are people out there spiritually seeking. WS: Of course, many missiologists would argue that where most evangelism takes place is in the home. Parents raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This suggests that worship and the community life of a church should be intergenerational, linked to tradition. Some 400-year-old forms are inaccessible to modern people, but there is also a great deal of richness and wisdom in some of these forms. Yes, it is a struggle for children to get through the old hymns and the old creeds, but over time that rich teaching becomes a part of their souls. Do you ever have a concern that your attempts to be "winsome" to people who may or may not be serious about their seeking, or have varying degrees of seriousness, that you might be falling down in your responsibility to support the community of believers, those godly moms and dads who need the help of the church in evangelizing and discipling their own children? DC: That’s a valid question. But most churches are in that vein, would you not agree? WS: I would agree that there are a lot of traditional churches that are dead spiritually. And there are a lot contemporary churches that are lively. But I don’t see a lot of churches that are offering the traditional forms for the right reasons that also have an aliveness in the Spirit. My question is really this: Is it possible to get both in this culture? Why do we have to choose between a dead orthodoxy and a lively heterodoxy? Neither of which provides the full counsel of God to the believing community or the non-believing community? DC: It’s very hard. If your target is a certain kind of fish, you can’t catch that kind of fish with lures that don’t attract that kind of fish. There are two kinds of lost people out there. There are people who have given up on church because the forms and styles are absolutely dead. There is another group that has never been to church. Both are in Charlotte in increasing numbers. They’re moving here from the northeast and the west coast. A good number of Catholics who have a dead orthodoxy. So, you’re asking the question: "Are we going to reach those kinds of people with forms and styles they’ve given up on or don’t completely understand?" WS: Can you say with certainty that they’ve given up on the form? Or is it possible that they actually found the forms and styles comforting and nurturing, but the Holy Spirit had stopped inhabiting those churches, had been quenched? Through disobedience, liberal doctrine, whatever it might be? DC: I can only tell you what I hear. They tell me that the forms and styles were boring and irrelevant. They meant nothing to them. They became so rote that they lost any spiritual vivacity in their lives. All I know is what they tell me. You ask the question whether it is possible to create something that is a combination of reaching out and reaching in and I think the answer to that question is "yes, absolutely." I would ask anyone who questions what we are doing to come and look at the guts of our ministry. First of all, listen to the testimonies of those coming in. People who have never been to church, people who have given up on church, are being born again and are alive in Christ. I was raised in the traditional church, and I never heard testimonies like that. For the first ten years of my ministry I had that kind of church here, and 5% of our growth was unbeliever growth, and the rest of our growth, which was fairly substantial, came from other churches. They were dissatisfied customers. As we have made this transition over the past several years, and I have examined carefully everyone who has left here. Every one is someone who joined from another church previously. They couldn’t catch the idea that our job is to give our lives away. I would ask anyone from a traditional church why it is that all these churches have caused in our land a sterile evangelical heart. Why isn’t our culture won for Christ if we’ve had a Christian focus in these churches for all these years. I would suggest it is because their forms became their god. In Isaiah 58 God says, "This is the kind of fast I want from you. To give your lives away." So what we’ve tried to create here is a desire for people to build relationships with their lost friends and let love be what guides us. And then get them involved in discipleship. We have 1100 of our 1600 people involved in small groups. You can learn the basic orthodoxy without all the old hymns. In fact, I was in South Africa and I preached in a Presbyterian church and they sang five hymns and I didn’t know one of them. Their hymnody is totally different from ours. When I have someone criticize our hymnody, or lack of, I always say, "what hymnody are you talking about? Presbyterian hymnody? Lutheran hymnody? South African hymnody? Fanny Crosby hymnody?" WS: Moving on to a few other areas. You guys are unique in a couple of ways. You’re involved in inner city ministry, interracial ministry, and other ministries that are not always part of a suburban church. You have also been heavily involved in church plants. You have chosen not to accept the false choice of being either big church or a church planting church. You’re becoming both. DC: We’re committed to planting a church every 12 to 18 months. There should not be a tension between growing and planting – if your heart beats the Kingdom. My heart beats not to build a big church, but to advance the Kingdom of God. What drives Forest Hill is our vision. Our vision is to connect people to God’s compelling love. Therefore, we feel as though God’s call on his people is to give our lives away. If we want to reach people for Christ, every study shows the best way to do that is to plant churches. We had 50 to 75 people driving down from Huntersville to here on Sundays. As they began to have children, it became increasingly difficult for them. We said that was ridiculous, so we took those 50 to 75 and planted a new church with them and now they have 300 to 400. Growing out the wazoo. With Warehouse 242, Todd Haun has a heartbeat for Gen X, and it became apparent that that is the next church plant. He began a Saturday night service that began to get 150 to 200. We planted him and now has 500. We had to give away from resources and, frankly, that ouched for a while. We gave away one of our best givers to Todd. To God be the glory! I came back from vacation this summer and Richard Wilson, my worship and arts guy who had been with me for 14 years and one of my really good friends, said he felt God was calling him to be the worship and arts director at Warehouse. My first reaction was to say, "Every church planter who comes on staff from now on is going to have to sign an agreement that they won’t touch one of our people for five years. I can’t go through this. This is too hard." God did a number on me over that attitude. He took me aside. He took me to Matthew 5. If someone asks you to go one mile, go two. If someone wants your cloak, give your tunic also. What God shared with me is this: "David, David. You don’t own anybody. Richard is not yours. It’s not about you. It’s about My Kingdom." So we’re going to plant as many churches as we can, and those churches will have a particular DNA that is like ours in that they’ll be church planting churches too.