Lessons from Louie - The Past

Louie Giglio is a genius. I saw him years ago in Birmingham and I knew it instantly. He told the crowd of teenagers how powerful they were. In the middle of the massive blockbuster that was Titanic, he gave them the credit for creating the movement behind that movie and energized those kids in a way I did not think possible.

He is starting a church next year. After years of wild success with the Passion Conferences, he is striking out to do something new and different. In some way, we all are. Whether you're starting a new project at work today or beginning a church like my friend Kathy in Texas or just trying to have a better attitude at home, we are changing. And regardless of the size of the change, the core challenges when we try to "go new" are always the same.

Yesterday I heard Louie speak at North Point about the Prodigal Father. He didn't speak exclusively of starting something new, he didn't even directly cover the material I think this piece is going to touch on, but he did inspire me to finally organize and clarify a few things I've always thought about. Rules I think are easy to see alive and well in his organization. Here, in my opinion, is what I think the first rule of going new is:

1. Don't build your present in the past.

I heard a comedian once say that after a year or so he throws away his entire routine and starts fresh. He knows that if he's ever nervous on stage and needs a laugh, he'll just revert to old material instead of going through the uncomfortable process of coming up with new jokes and learning from the experience. He won't grow, so he essentially lights his old jokes on fire. The same thing can happen when we try something new in our own lives.

Granted, no one starts a fresh adventure by saying, "We're going to do it the exact same way it has always been done." We never do that. In fact we often do the opposite, saying that this new thing will be different and cool and original and nothing like what many of our predecessors did. But just like I touched on in the redundancy post, living in the past is pretty tempting. In some ways, we've mentally, emotionally and spiritually taught our bodies to react in certain ways to certain situations. So despite our new mission statements or hunger to go new, we find ourselves leaning back on old knowledge and old methods.

In some ways, we have to forget what we've done in the past. Louie touched on this yesterday when he mentioned the advantage people that haven't spent much time in church have when it comes to hearing a message. He used the word "inoculated" to describe what happens to someone that has been to church their whole life. It becomes harder in a way for them to hear the message because they've already heard it so many times and have built constructs about what it means over the years.

A book I am reading further cemented this idea in my head recently. In discussing a WWII Field Marshal named Erwin Rommel, perhaps the world's greatest tank commander, it mentioned that he once said, "Education is easier than reeducation." It went on to say:

"What Rommel meant was that education tends to burn precepts into the mind that are hard to shake. In the midst of combat, the trained mind may fall a step behind - focusing more on learned rules than on the changing circumstances of battle. When you are faced with a new situation, it is often best to imagine that you know nothing and that you need to start learning all over again. Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience - the best school of all."

I don't know much about the church Louie is starting, but I promise you one thing, it won't just be a Passion Conference in the form of a church. Louie and his team are far too smart to ever do that. It won't be a Passion Conference that happens to stay in the same venue all year long. It can't be because a church presents new challenges and new opportunities. And if you meet those with old processes and old approaches, it just won't work.

Go new by letting go of the old. Identify your knee jerk reactions that happen naturally when you are in a moment of stress or excitement or frustration. Understand what worked for you in the past and then make a conscious effort to not have your current situation defined by it. It's like photocopying a photograph. Despite how amazing the original image was, it always loses something when it's photocopied. The colors aren't as rich, the lines aren't as sharp. And each time we photocopy that image, or in this case that past success, the beauty of it diminishes.

Start new.

Counterbalance
There are times when learning from the past can provide you a shortcut to the present. Just as Louie will learn from the successes and failures of other churches in Atlanta, we too must occasionally avoid pitfalls and mines by understanding the landscape of what we are planning to do. As I mentioned on SCL, yesterday my daughter jumped in the pool when I had my back turned and had to spend a few hours at the hospital getting stitches. It would be incredibly foolish if the next time we went to the pool I decided to forget everything the previous pool experience taught me. If you can, try not to get stitches more than once in the same place.

Next Lesson:
Be you, not who you are not.


p.s. These are ideas I came up with, although they're common sense dating back decades, so if you don't dig them, blame me, not Louie.