As the Vision Room Curator for Auxano, one of the exciting things I am a part of is creating new resources for church leaders. In addition to the daily curated resources of the Vision Room itself, there is the biweekly release of Sums, our leadership book summaries. Both of these resources are free, requiring only an email registration available here.

Two weeks ago, we rolled out Auxano Founder and Team Leader Will Mancini’s latest book Innovating for Discipleship. It is  Volume 1 of The Church Unique Intentional Leadership Series.

We also released Issue #3 of the Unique 19 series – a look at vision-saturated churches you’ve probably never heard of. We call it the “list for the rest of us.”

Last week, we released the first of a new line of free resources called Team UP. In this inaugural release, we’ve taken our favorite 100 quotes from Rick Warren’s best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Church, and organized them for team discussion and vision implementation in your own church.

Enjoy this free resource and be inspired all over again by these timeless quotes here.

As I was doing the preliminary work during the summer on this resource (reading Purpose Driven Church again, selecting 150 quotes for our team to weed down to 100), I was reminded by the powerful influence this book has had on the church over the years. That was one of the reasons we chose it, and yet in the rereading I was taken back over 16 years to the first time I introduced PDC to the leadership team at the church I was the associate pastor for.

Earlier this summer during the infamous garage cleaning out, I had come across some of the files I had used, and a quick trip down memory lane uncovered the following:

When you look back with 20-20 hindsight, the inevitable will always happen.

The condition had existed for a long time. Actually, it started small but continued to grow. Everybody knew about it but no one really talked about it. As a matter of fact, it was easy to overlook. After all, things were going so well, and the future was bright. But trouble came just the same.

Throughout the entire area, the slopes of the mountains are filled with what geologists call “wedge failures.” That’s when wedges of rock are separated by a fault, fracture, or other weakness. That’s nature’s part.

Then man stepped in and built a road through the wedge failure areas. The road that was blasted through the mountains intersected the wedge failures. Weakened by the cuts made for the road, it was only a matter of time.

Add some rain as a lubricant, and whole sides of mountains can come crashing down on the highway. On July 1, 1997, a section of mountainside 800 feet high by 200 feet wider tumbled down onto I-40 near the TN/NC state line, closing all four lanes. Hundreds of tons of mountainside covered the highway; the rock that didn’t fall remained fragile and unstable.

When a rock slide closes the highway and you have to take a detour, you learn to rely a lot on road signs.

Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take.           Jeremiah 31:21

Isn’t it amazing how we think we are in control and have it all together with our plans – until we encounter a rock slide!

Tomorrow: What a rock slide has to do with Purpose Driven Church