The Plan

On Sunday, October 31, 2004, Pastor Phil gave us the whole day to make a presentation to the church at Carbondale. On Sunday morning, we announced my resignation and provided the people a dialogue about the next generation. Our primary text came from the Old Testament book of Judges. It is an accurate description of many who live in our city today. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10) We talked about the need to reach to people in our church-rich city who would never walk into a building full of “Christians” any more than a robber would go strolling into a police station.
That night, we talked about how we might strategize to accomplish this task. At the time, I had formulated a few ideas. By that I mean, I had read some books. So I shared some fancy power point pictures and diagrams that I had probably copied from either Ed Stetzer, Ralph Moore, or Frost / Hirsh. And we told the people of Carbondale that in the coming days they would all be invited to go with us—anyone who felt so led.
By January of 2005, we had already begun to meet weekly with a launch team that had been assembled. We also held Q & A meetings at Carbondale every Sunday night in January one hour prior to the evening service for anyone who was curious about the new endeavor. Carbondale also sent us to a church planting “Boot Camp” that helped us to clarify our vision, our mission, and our strategies.
Now, if I had it to do all over again, we would have taken a lot more time to plan and to prepare before a launch date. But we didn’t know any better. So, on Sunday morning, February 6, at 10:00 am, we gathered for the first time in the Zarrow Regional Library meeting room right across the street from Carbondale. It was, all in all, rather inauspicious. I probably sucked. I often do. But we had a couple of things going for us.
First, we had already answered “yes” to the big question: “At the end of the day, did God call us to do this?” So, there was that. But second, out of the 40 or so people who had decided to come with us, there were more than a handful of us who were determined to figure this thing out.
So maybe that’s another thing we had going for us. We never claimed to know for sure what to do or how to do it. What we found out was that we had a group of people—some of them any way—who were willing to suspend expectations and to dive into this grand experiment together. What we had was an assortment of folks who would become a community which was willing to help us develop the culture, the values, and the praxis that would become Agora.

Who Will Go with Us?

In spite of our assurance that we had to do this, we still felt a lot of apprehension about how to proceed. We had read a couple of books on planting churches, but we had never done it before nor had we been a part of a plant. So, wouldn’t that be like reading a driver’s manual and then jumping right into a car and assuming that I can drive? I knew one thing: we would have to have help.
First of all, Pastor Phil had given us permission to present our vision to the entire church and to invite anyone who shared the vision to go with us. Not only was this a gracious gesture, it was nearly unheard of within the circles in which we ran. But before we were even ready for that we still had some work to do. We had to figure out what this new community would look like and why. We needed more training. And we needed some people we loved and trusted to help us dream and plan and to go with us to help.
It didn’t take us very long to deliberate as to whom we would ask to come alongside us. Two couples immediately came to mind, and once we had Pastor’s permission, we asked them to pray and to consider taking this leap with us.
I have to say that I don’t know what I would have done if either of them had said no. I was so convinced that they were the ones that I probably would have had to rethink the whole thing if either of them had said no. Thankfully, neither of them did.
David and Iva Gilliam had been friends of ours for more than a dozen years. We had been through a lot together and had served together in two different churches. David has a Christian Education degree as well as a Masters of Divinity diploma. Iva is an extremely talented musician and singer and one of the kindest, most capable people I know. Besides, we really love them. And you want to share this kind of experience with people you love and with which you like spending a lot of time.
Inexplicably, Dave and Iva said yes.
Now the Gilliams are pretty close to being our age. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just that we also felt that we needed a younger influence from the very beginning of this journey. If we were going to relate to the emerging generations we needed some of the indigenous on our team. So, the next couple we were compelled to invite was much younger.
Michael and Candace Marshall were leaders in the young adult department at Carbondale. I had gotten to know Mike in the ministerial training program that we had helped to start. Like the Gilliams, Mike and Candace had a definite call upon their lives and had demonstrated their abilities and their love for people. Now we were six.
Having these four people in the boat with us made the terror of it all minimally tolerable. Their yeses gave us impetus. But now we had to prepare to tell the church family about our plans, and see if anyone else would consider going with us.
O, wait! What was the plan?

Everything Changes

Everything started to unravel the day Darryl told us he was taking a hike. He had been asked to return home to the church (First Assembly of God) in which he grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He had already seen from his experience with Phil and me that you can “go home.” It was explained to him that this was an opportunity to eventually become the pastor, because the senior pastor there was getting ready to retire. That’s a whole other story that I’ll let Darryl tell.
However, Darryl’s leaving meant the death of the “Dream Team.” It was a great nine year run. But, as they say, “All good things must come to an end.” For me, it was the end of a very good thing.
With all the stuff Earl Creps had put into my head, with Darryl’s departure, with major staff modifications, and my own growing discontent with the “status quo,” it was inevitable that things would come to a head. To Phil’s credit, he recognized it for what it was.
A staff disagreement over changes that were being made, some not for the better and I had a melt down. This could have gone a lot of different ways, but Phil saw what was happening. He called me in one day, and we sat down and talked like we had so many other times. When “stuff” happens, like it always will, it really helps to have a mutual respect and a sincere love for one another.
We talked about the church. We talked about the stuff we were reading. We talked about the changes and the clashes.
He said to me, “You know, I’ve been doing things this way for a long time, almost 30 years. And I don’t think I’m ready to change everything. Because that is what it would take.” He said, “But I’ve heard you say so many times, ‘If I ever pastored a church… I’d do this or that.’” He told me, “Plus, you know how much I love this church and all of its people, many of whom would have to be dragged through this kind of change.” And then he added, “But what if you did it? What if you started something new based on the stuff we’ve been reading? What if you planted a new church and we helped you?”
I was stunned. Was he serious?
What’s really interesting about all of this is that before I ever came back to Carbondale, Phil and I started talking about planting a church some day. In the late 80’s, inner-city churches were the cool thing to consider. So we had talked about that. In fact, the youth pastor before Darryl had left to plant an inner-city church in Oklahoma City. But, up until then, I had never thought about it being me. And I don’t think either of us could have anticipated that it would be this kind of church.
I left his office that day with my head spinning. I had said, “Are you serious?”
He said, “Yes, very serious. Go talk to Vicki, pray about it, and then let’s get back together and talk some more.”
So I said I would.
Almost immediately the wheels started turning. I wasn’t sure where it all was coming from. I started talking about the culture of a church and its core values over programs and doctrine. This was long before I read about it. I started thinking about the failure of preaching to achieve any appreciable change in behavior. And I started asking what a church would look like and feel like that would embrace all who walked through its doors.
From before the beginning, the seeds were planted that would become Agora. But there were still several steps to be taken and more questions to be asked before we discussed anything as drastic as a launch date.

Associate Pastor of Music

I told you earlier that when the tornado hit, we did a lot of soul searching and rethinking as a church and particularly as a staff. We had time to think about what we were going to do when we got our newly reconstructed building with twice the space as before. We evaluated our strengths and looked honestly at the potential that was there.
Finally we decided that one of our strengths was our great staff relations and the talent that was contained therein. Phil, Darryl, and I were at times the three musketeers, the three tenors, or the three stooges, depending upon with whom you talked. We evaluated our strengths individually and collectively and looked at the giftings of the congregation as a whole. As a result we decided to do some restructuring.
We decided to change our titles to reflect a more unified and balanced pastoral approach. Darryl and I would both be associate pastors. And we decided to play to our individual strengths. Mine was music. And the giftings of the church as a whole included an incredible amount of musical talent. So I became the Associate Pastor of Music, and I took over the entire music program.
Darryl was the Associate Pastor of Students. And we let Phil keep his title as Senior Pastor.
Eventually we added Mike Atkinson to play the straight man. Not that he wasn’t really quick, really smart, and really funny. He was. And is. It’s just that we needed someone who could handle the business side. The three choleric sanguines needed a melancholy to balance us out. He became the Associate Pastor of Administration.
I really didn’t ponder it for very long, but I did wonder if I had been demoted. I decided quickly that it didn’t really matter. I was having a blast. I enjoyed the new challenge of a stellar music ministry. So I just put my head down and broke into a full sprint.
We had so much talent. In fact, while we were still at VBI, the orchestra would rehearse on Sunday afternoons. I had nearly 30 instrumentalists. One day the music guy from Victory came by to sit in on our rehearsal. We were a church of 500 people with an all volunteer orchestra of nearly 30 by then. While he had a handful of musicians in a church of 10,000. He was flabbergasted.
I could have been satisfied to stay there for a long time to come. But then came that Earl Creps guy and another tornado. Not a wind of destruction this time, but a wind of change.

Assistant Pastor

When I came to work at Carbondale in 1992, I was hired to be the Assistant Pastor. It was a transitional role for me. I had been involved in Church Music Ministry since I was very young—participant, volunteer, part-time, and finally full-time. So I had been a Minister of Music, but I had been feeling like I should be more involved with people and less involved in producing a product. (One church had actually called me the Minister of Fine Arts. But I was a choir director and a worship leader just like I had been everywhere else.)
As the assistant pastor, I got to be involved in every aspect of the church’s work. From administration to children, from Christian education to nursery, from calendars to communication, I got a taste of it all. And, because I was called alongside to help the pastor, and because my input was valued, I felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility to offer my knowledge, perspective, and experience to every major decision. I mean, I had already been in full-time ministry for what, seven years. And I had been watching people who were pastors since I was old enough to remember. What else was there to know?
Of course, Phil had already been on staff in this one place for 16 years and the pastor for 7. (What did he know?) So it was inevitable that Phil and I would eventually disagree about some things. Honestly, I don’t remember very many of those. However, I do remember one time when we did disagree.
It wasn’t earth-shaking. We both had strong opinions. Of course, ultimately it wasn’t my decision to make. But we disagreed. So, after the decision was made and carried out, I actually put in writing my objections to it. Seriously? Yes, I did. Nevertheless, I made it clear that although these were my feelings on the subject, I would back him and his decision. I assured him that no one would ever know that we had disagreed. Well, until now.
Now, you don’t know what it was all about, and I’m certainly not going to tell you. But, I think each of us believes he was right, all these years later. I mean, I believed that there were eternal ramifications to the decision. Not the least of which was probably Phil’s secret eye-rolling, “O, brother! What have I gotten myself into with this guy?”
Truth be told, Phil was always gracious toward my zeal. He never made me feel like an idiot. Frankly, I didn’t need his help to do that.

Who Gave You the Keys?

At the risk of overstating this, I have to say that coming home in 1992 to work in the church in which I grew up was the coolest. I could not have been more stoked. And working side by side with my cousin, friend, and “brother” Phil was almost too good to be true.
That’s not to say that it was without challenges. We had our work cut out for us when we got there. But we survived the transition. And then, in little more than a year, we even survived another transition—our first staff change. That modification in personnel necessitated our becoming interim youth pastors, which we had done before.
However, the guy Phil hired to step into that position could not have fit in any better with us. Even though he was 15 years younger, Darryl Wooton was and still is the man. In no time, we were known as one of the best teams in our region. The church flourished, and people wanted to hear from us the secret of our success. They asked for our advice on pastor and staff relations. We didn’t have much to tell them except, “We really love each other, and we love working together.” Apparently, that’s not all that common. But our years together will always be remembered as some of the most fun I have ever had in ministry.
We were having a blast. In fact, we joked about the inmates taking over the asylum. Phil remarked once that it was such a dream, and we were still such “kids” on the inside that we were expecting at any moment one of the elders to storm into our “staff meeting” over Chinese food at “Golden Palace” and say, “What do you boys think you’re doing? Who gave you the keys to this place? Give those back. We’re going to need some adults to take over here.”
But that never happened. They let us be in charge. And that could have continued until I retired as far as I was concerned. I think I could have been content to stay there for a long time.
But then the tornado hit.

The “Peacemakers”

I have only attended two Easter Sunrise Services in my life. The first was at Carbondale Assembly of God on Easter Sunday (duh…), April 6th, 1969. The second was at the infamous church I worked at in Georgia. I find it interesting that neither one of them ever did it more than once. Once was so enough.
However, on that auspicious day in 1969, there was a lot of time in between the sunrise service and Sunday School. So, several of us younger folks were wasting time in the “fellowship hall.” Someone had found a youth choir book, so Phil sat down at the piano while the rest of us stood looking over his shoulder. Before long, we were making some pretty good sounds. All of us read music well enough to read the parts, and soon we decided we might have something. Here are the names of the five youth who formed a new ensemble that morning, in alphabetical order: Paula Hale, Roger Sharp, Phil Taylor, Jeff Taylor, and Zelinda Warnock.
We performed a few times. Once even outside of our church, but I don’t remember where that was. People were impressed, primarily because we were so young. I was 13 and the youngest. But Roger was the oldest at only 16.
Ultimately, the three of us guys got together and had a serious conversation about the future. Because we were so young and also because we had some pretty big dreams, we decided that involving young ladies in our big plans might eventually end in disaster or at least drama. (Sorry, girls. In case you never heard the truth, this is it.) So the mixed quintet became an all male trio.
My dad had been a part of a group called the “Peacemakers” for a very short period of time. They already had business cards and stationery with my home address and phone number on them. So “Peacemakers” was as good a name as any. Better than most. Plus, now we had stationery. And cards.
These three guys—Roger, Phil, and Jeff—could never have imagined what they were forming. This was an alliance, a partnership, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. And the music we would make would take us all over the world. April 6th, 2009 will be our 40th anniversary as a group. We are still performing together after all these years. In fact, we just traveled to Russia where we performed in several major cities in beautiful old “opera houses.”
Over the years, we all traveled different paths. There were even periods of years when we didn’t perform at all. But our paths have continued to cross because of the one constant in all of it—our home: Carbondale. Where we grew up, where we met, and where we continue to connect.
So, you will have a hard time imagining what a thrill it was to be asked to come home to work in the church of my childhood.

No Place Like Home

Before I get into 1992, let’s go back to the beginning—my beginning—in 1955. (I know. It was like 3 years before the car was invented.) Like the starting phrase of a bad novel, it was a dark and stormy night, literally. And it looked like I wasn’t going to “pop out” anytime soon. So they sent dad home and kept mom. These were the days when dads had to sit in the waiting room anyway, so they thought he ought to sleep in his own bed instead of loitering in the lobby all night.
Dad was a little nervous, I think, so instead of giving the hospital his phone number—just in case—he gave them his boss’ number. So sure enough, in the middle of the night they called Hildred Tucker’s home and said, “Your wife is about to have a baby.” Hildred informed them that his wife Mary was lying in bed asleep next to him. Well, it didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. Hildred gave them dad’s number, and dad rushed up to St. John.
That night, the newest, youngest member of Mom’s OB/GYN staff was on call. Dr. Cohen delivered me early that next morning. (As a side note, that same Dr. Cohen, as the senior member of the same group, was on call almost 28 years later and also delivered our first daughter Whitney.)
By 1959, my family had moved to West Tulsa and we started attending a little church at the corner of West 48th and South 30th West Avenue. I grew up at Carbondale Assembly of God. In fact, I don’t remember anything prior to Carbondale.
In October of 1967, the congregation moved to its current location on West 51st street. I barely remember that. But in the previous summer of 1967, my favorite cousin Phil had moved from Muskogee, Oklahoma to Tulsa. That I remember well.
We were born seven months apart in 1955—he in May and I in December. But we loved one another like brothers from the time we were little. In fact, before they moved to Tulsa, anytime one of us would visit the other we would cry when it was time to go home.
“Why do we have to live so far apart? It’s not fair.”
So, it was a glorious day, the day they rolled into West Tulsa to live. And, while they were building a house in Berryhill, they rented a house a little over a mile from ours. That summer, we would walk to and from each other’s houses, because we could. It was 1967. (Cars couldn’t go more than 10 miles an hour that far back, I don’t think.)
One day, we were walking up 51st street on the way to our house and passed the home of an older boy from the church. He was out mowing his lawn. Roger Sharp was three years older than us. I was getting ready to go into the 6th grade. Which means he was getting ready to start the 9th. I was so nervous. I didn’t even know if he would know who I was. In fact, I still don’t know if he did. But I was determined to introduce my cousin to him and vice versa. I probably wanted them both to think I was cool.
Roger stopped his riding lawnmower, acted like he knew who I was—even if he didn’t—and couldn’t have been kinder to me and to Phil, the new kid.
From that summer to this day, Phil and I have been almost inseparable. People who have known us for many years think of us together. Many of those people believe we are brothers, when, in fact, we are closer than that. But in less than two years we would add another one to the band of brothers. That kid on the mower would form a fraternity with us that would take us all over the world together.

Three Churches

During the time when we were all reading the subversive materials that Earl Creps (Motto: “With a name like Creps, it’s got to be good.”) recommended to us, we talked at intervals about what we were reading. Finally one day, Pastor Phil said, “You know, I’ve done things this way for almost thirty years. I can’t see me changing everything at this stage of the game. Besides, I love this church and its people. This is home. It’s where I grew up. I just can’t bear the thought of what such a change would do to so many of them.”
I had to agree that it would take a huge paradigm shift and a painful and bloody battle to turn such a big ship at full speed. However, we did think it would be nice to see some different churches and how they operated. Maybe we could tweak things a bit. So, I was given a short sabbatical in the month of June 2004 in order to visit some churches that we thought might be able to teach us something.
I called a couple of friends who are well traveled, told them what we were doing, and asked them where they would recommend that I go. Besides a couple of places locally, we decided to go to three churches: New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Fellowship Church, and Prestonwood Baptist, both in the metro Dallas area. Thus, on two different weekends in June of 2004, my family and I made the trips to Colorado and to Texas to observe and evaluate what we saw and heard.
Now, keep in mind, I was still the associate pastor over music. So, I was primarily going to check out the music programs as well as going to assess the overall church experience. We had very little idea of what to expect. But, each one of the experiences blew our minds.
New Life Church was a well oiled machine. It was big and still growing. They were building their current sanctuary while we were there. The music was great; the preaching was above average. But the two things that impressed me the most were the small group concept and the large umbrella concept under which each of its different congregations operated.
New Life was, at one time, several different congregations meeting at different times with different pastors. Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Saturday nights, and each of the age group churches (youth, young adults, kids) were given equal standing. And, it seemed, that little care was taken to see that they overlapped each other. Whether or not it was that way behind the scenes, was not clear.
Prestonwood Baptist in Plano, Texas was huge! The sanctuary seated thousands. The choir loft alone seated 350 people. That’s twice the size of the average church. Its gargantuan size alone made it worth seeing. But, here again, I saw the multiplicity of ideas at work.
During the Saturday evening service we attended, under the same roof, but far enough away from the main sanctuary and parking lot, there was a wedding taking place in their “small” 400 seat chapel. Other than our curiosity and our roaming after the service, we would never have known that something so significant was going on in another part of this giant edifice.
Finally, we saw Fellowship Church (just seven miles from Prestonwood) in Grapevine, Texas. (Yes, just across the highway from the huge outlet mall.) Its pastor, Ed Young, is something of a celebrity. He writes books and gets asked to speak all over the place. Not many people start a church and within 10 years have 14,000 people. I have no idea how big it is now.
What I saw there that I took home with me was the relevant teaching and the visual message that the whole experience was. It was the first time I had ever been in a church where the two main speakers sat in big leather chairs and had a conversation in front of the whole crowd. Blew my mind.
When I went back to work after three or four weeks, I had a report prepared, but I wasn’t sure who to give it to. I knew we were never going to go there. So what was I supposed to do with all of this mind-blowing information?