Three years ago I was facing a decision that required more wisdom than I had. The future of our church depended on it. If I got it wrong, we might never recover. But if I got it right, we could reach a lot more people with the gospel and expand our impact tenfold.
We were at the halfway point of a financial campaign that was funding the construction of our church's fourth campus. The campaign was going well, commitments were strong, and we were paying our bills. And six months into it, our new campus was already filled.
Some decisions will come to you only when you pray for God's wisdom. And the most difficult decisions often require an extended season of prayer.
Our leaders, always forward looking, were talking about putting a fifth campus in another Twin Cities suburb, and on paper the project looked doable. Our rationale went something like: "If we can raise this much, borrow that much, prorate it out over 15 years, get 1,500 new people giving by year two, survive the pinch points along the way, and fill all the new staff positions with proven leaders, we're golden."
I thought: That's a lot of ifs for such a big decision.
One of the warnings Jim Collins gives in his book How the Mighty Fall is, "Don't blow a hole below the waterline." He says that all successful organizations take risks, but they avoid putting themselves in a position that, it they fail, it would blow a hole below the waterline and sink the whole ship.
Our church has a great board, and I don't fault them for wanting to accelerate our growth. But I was so unsettled about this initiative that I called an emergency meeting to go through all the details one more time. After that meeting I told them that I still didn't have peace about it and that we needed another meeting, so we spent another late night meeting reviewing spreadsheets, fund-raising options, and income-to-debt ratios.
The next day, I had to fly to Norway for a ten-day trip to meet with churches and to speak at the Global Leadership Summit. So I ended the meeting by challenging everyone to spend the next ten days praying about our decision and when I got back, we'd have another meeting to make the call.
One of the voices I had in my head during this time was Bill Hybels, who once said, "There will be times when all your advisers will vote yes to something, but at the end of the day, it's your hide. You're the one who has to raise the money, lead the charge, and assume responsibility. There will be times when you have to stand alone and say no."
I wondered if this was that time.
Off I went to Norway, and at midnight I was sitting at thirty-five thousand feet, realizing that I was exhausted, and so were many of our staff members back home. My constant prayer was "God, what do you want us to do about this fifth campus?" For ten nights I lifted that prayer to God.
On the last night, I sat up in bed and grabbed a yellow pad. The thoughts were coming with such clarity that I knew they were from God. I wrote, "12 Reasons to Delay Our Fifth Campus." I had absolutely no doubt that God had spoken and I couldn't get home fast enough.
The news was met with a mix of disappointment and relief.
A year later, we opened that fifth campus but not in a new building with a mountain of debt and a burned-out staff. We opened in a high school. That allowed us to build momentum in that community without taking on a building program. I'm confident that it was a wise decision.
As I reflect on that decision and others like it, I've noticed there are four major streams through which wisdom generally flows.
1. The God Stream
James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all." I ask God for wisdom several times a day. Proverbs 2:6 says that "the Lord grants wisdom." There are some decisions that will come to you only when you pray for God's wisdom and he instills it in your heart and soul. And the most difficult decisions often require an extended season of prayer.
2. The People Stream
Who are the main people in your life, because you will seldom rise above the quality of people who surround you? Take a good look at your closest friends and colleagues. How wise are they, how moral, experienced, talented, or successful?
Who are your wise companions and advisers? If nobody comes to mind, that's trouble. And who are you reading? You don't have to know someone personally to gain from their wisdom; you can read it. Sometimes people say to me, "I don't like to read." And I say, "Then get used to failure" because nobody can make wise decisions without the wisdom from others.
3. The Experience Stream
In the last 25 years, I've been through six major building campaigns. And in every one of them we fell short of our goal, so they also made me feel like a failure, even though they eventually led to growth and greater ministry. Fund-raising campaigns and building projects are hard, and they wear me out. But with all six I gained invaluable wisdom by experience.
With each of them, however, I always had peace about moving forward. When peace was missing in the situation I just described, that was a signal to me. That single element, the lack of peace from God's Spirit, was the major factor in my decision to not move forward. I wouldn't have been able to discern that without the experience from the other five campaigns.
And you need other people's experience. Sometimes you just know you don't have the right people around the table and you have to have the humility and guts to acknowledge it. If you (or your team) think you know it all when you don't, you'll make costly mistakes. There's a reason why we have consultants, physicians, marriage counselors, financial planners, and lawyers. They have experience we don't have but need.
4. The Pain Streams
Pain is a powerful teacher, and there are two pain streams through which you can gain wisdom: your own pain or from someone else's pain. I figure it's always better to learn from someone else's pain.
When you see the losses that other leaders have suffered because they had poor boundaries, took on too much, burned out, cut corners, didn't get advice, or had a moral failure, you know to avoid those roads at all costs.
When the four streams of wisdom, from God, people, experience, and pain flow into your life, they form a mighty river of wisdom that blesses every aspect of your life.
Bob Merritt is senior pastor at Eagle Brook Church with six locations around the Twin Cities in Minnesota.
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