Matt Chandler - Lessons from the Precipice

Well, good morning! It’s good to see you. If you can do us a favor and shift towards that wall, if there are any open seats, we have a long line still trying to come in. So, if there are any open seats at all, please shift that way. If you are saving seats for someone, I appreciate that, but it is 10:50, which is 20 minutes past when the service starts. I understand there’s coffee to be had and various issues that could come up. A child’s shoe can get lost at any moment and set you back 20 minutes, but we need you to give up seats for those who aren’t here, for the people who are here. So, if you can make that shift, it would help us ensure that everyone can get in.

Let me welcome back our South Lake campus and our Fort Worth campus. They have been off-stream for months as they prepare to become autonomous churches, but they’re joining us here this first week of Advent. As you can tell, I think the production team outdid themselves here in floral arrangements; they did an incredible job.

Now, with that said, I want to actually start Advent next week, not this week. The church calendar is a wonderful tool given to us by God to shape and orient the hearts of God’s people to the rhythms of grace that He would have us live in. However, today, in the life of our family of faith, is significant for multiple reasons. It was ten years ago today that we moved into this building after being jammed up in six services in the red brick building and turning away attendees, much like we’re doing this morning—turning people away and trying to find a way to make this work. In a very real sense, we became known as the «turnaway church,» and God help us, we are doing it again.

We found out that this Albertsons was going to open up, and we laid it before you: we knew we had to do it. We started our first giving campaign called «We Need Four Million Dollars in the Next 60 Days,» and you crushed it! You raised the money we could not initially afford. You gave sacrificially; I knew some people who sold cars, and I wondered, who just has a car lying around? And you gave! Then we moved in, and we realized, oh no, we had to retrofit the building, which required ten million more. So then we had to raise additional funds, and we did.

Ten years ago today was our first morning in this building and our first morning streaming to our campuses—not South Lake and not Fort Worth, because they didn’t exist yet. But we were streaming live to our campuses. I missed all of it; on Thanksgiving morning ten years ago, I woke up to the sound of Lauren preparing in the kitchen to take food over to my in-laws' house to celebrate Thanksgiving. I got up and asked how I could help. She asked me to give Nora her bottle. Nora was six months old at the time, so I grabbed her, gave her the bottle, and then burped her, which was a risky endeavor with our youngest. With the other one, not so much, but Nora could wet the room at any moment!

After that, I put her in her Johnny Jump Up, which is that little spring contraption of joy in the doorway. She jumped up and down while Audrey and I were on the couch watching *SpongeBob SquarePants*. You can email me about that if you’d like, but I love SpongeBob; he’s a crazy optimist. Then, I sat down in my chair and have no recollection of what happened next. I woke up in the hospital an hour later—I had a grand mal seizure in front of Audrey and Reed. After they performed a CT scan, they informed me that they found a shadow in my right frontal lobe and wanted to do an MRI.

I will never forget the doctor here in Louisville scooting up his little stool as close to my bed as he could and saying, «Hey, there’s a mass in your right frontal lobe, and you’re going to need to reach out to a neurosurgeon.» At that point, I didn’t even know how to process what he said; I just wanted out of the hospital. The whole family had been waiting around all day, I bit through my tongue during the seizure and was in a lot of discomfort, and I just wanted out of there. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get released from a hospital, but if you work in hospital administration, God bless you; you can do better!

It felt like they had to call the President of the United States or something to get approval for my release. Finally, I got out, and I am an optimist. I figured, okay great, I’m going to see this neurosurgeon…