I took some time yesterday to digest John's sermon about overcoming fear and anxiety, especially how it relates to parenting my kids and leading our church.  In both realms, I think I came to the conclusion that protection and expansion are in an inverse relationship to one another.  What that means is that every measure you to take to protect something or someone, you automatically take away a corresponding measure of expansion or growth.  In the same way, every time you allow something or someone to expand or grow, you automatically take away a corresponding measure of protection.  Thus, these two very good things are in an inverse relationship and by definition we can't hold on to both of them at the same time. 

This plays out in parenting in the following ways.  If I want my children to grow and mature and learn to make decisions, I have to relinquish some of my protection in their lives and give them more freedom.  I could choose to protect them forever, after all I have a lot invested in them!  I could choose all their friends and guard all their time and provide them with complete protection.  However, that fearful, protectionist mentality would definitely rob them of the ability to grow in maturity and responsibility.  It would rob them of the ability to mature into an adults, so I would have safe, spoiled kids in 20 year old skin.  With kids, there is a delicate balance here, no doubt, and one in which I wish I were a lot more skilled.

The same principle applies to the church.  I recently read a great book, entitled It, by Craig Groeshel.  In this book, he recounts how a nationally known church had to wrestle with this principle.  After starting off as mavericks and great risk takers for Jesus, choosing expansion over protection in every realm, they found themselves in a church plant of 10,000 with great success by every measure.  But at this point in the game, they made a critical mistake.  They began choosing protection of their past successes over the expansion of their future vision.  Their words to Craig were basically the following, "We took a lot of risks in the early days and God blessed it, but we can no longer do that.  We are just too big to fail at this point.  The cost would be too high."  This new strategy of measured protection over risky expansion began to undermine and even destroy their church, as it always does.  After all, their early success was built on risky expansion, not protection.  Fortunately, though, this church had some great outside advisors, and after several years of seeing their protectionist strategy bring only stagnation and decline, they returned to their original strategy of risky expansion.  

In a similar manner, we find ourselves at that point at Radius.  Our worship space has been about 85-90% full on Sunday mornings for about 4 - 6 weeks now and it is a blast to be there.  The worship is awesome and the congregation has a tangible buzz of excitement.  It is a great time to be at Radius and our gut reaction is to 'protect' this awesome Sunday morning worship service.  But as John said on Sunday, that would be a wrong conclusion based on a wrong motivation.  It would be driven by a desire to protect this thing that "we have" here at Radius on Sundays.  But that choice to protect it would, by default, be a choice not to expand it, not to share it with others.  On the other hand, we can choose to do what Radius has always done - risk it all and expand.  As opposed to protecting what we already have, we can choose to expand once again, believing that God will provide something even better for us in the future.  That is where faith comes in, as we have to believe today for something that is currently unseen (i.e. a second service of several hundred people worshiping our God and learning to follow Him). 

So here we go on a great new adventure at Radius.  We will expand our one service into two in July and take another risky step of faith, believing that God wants us to reach 400 more people in the Midlands, not just another 40 we might currently squeeze in.  This is a great spot to find ourselves in, as 90% of all churches currently find themselves in a state of decline, not growth.  So I am pumped that God has given us this precious gift of continued expansion, as it requires us to continually return to one of our core values as a church, namely, expansion of God's Kingdom through risky, faith-filled initiatives. 

If you are one of the current 400 that call Radius your home, I invite you to engage even further in this faith journey we are on by asking God what part you will play in seeing new people experience the Jesus who changed your life.  We will all need to work hard for this season, but it will be a blast to do it together.