A few years ago at a dinner I had a brief conversation with a leader who was visiting from overseas. They dropped a bomb shell in my lap by telling me that I was being reactive in my ministry instead of being proactive, and asking what God wanted me to do and following that call. I left the meeting with my head spinning. I had a good job in ministry, which paid me and let me have free reign on what I wanted to do. But I felt that God was calling me to take a leap of faith and to start a ministry which would focus on the intersection between faith and culture and particularly the whole area of young adult discipleship. I stuck my head into Sarah’s office who worked next door to me and asked her what she thought of my idea, instead of giving me advice, she asked where she could sign up.
We resigned from our jobs and started planning what this ministry could look like. We had no money, no wages, no idea of how to set up a ministry. We simply had made a leap of faith. This leap of faith turned into Uber. Our plan was to keep things quiet for the first six months. But things took off quickly and before we knew it we were getting requests to come and help Churches, NGO’s, School’s and ministries. The next three years were incredibly hard, both at a personal and financial level. There were many moments when we seriously discussed shutting the whole operation down. But the whole time God kept saying to us to keep going.
Today Uber has a significant voice into the Church in Australia, increasingly this voice is being heard overseas. Recently we did our stats for the year in terms of our output and this is what we have achieved in the last 12 months.
Produced 2 new manuals
Published 1 new book
Produced and released 1 new dvd
Released 1 on-line novella/Photography Project
Maintained blog
11 radio appearances
88 Speaking gigs
Run 2 Uber Seminars
The wholesale numbers are that this year we have impacted
10,570 people direct contact through speaking and consulting
All of this we have achieved with three people who work on Uber for two days a week each!
I have been thinking since I read these stats as to how we have been able to have such an impact. I think at the end of the day it comes down to a few things. Firstly we did not ‘chase it’, when we started Uber, we were not trying to ‘get on the speaking circuit’. We initially only thought that would be helping a few organisations here in Melbourne. Everything that has opened up for us has come from God opening doors, not us chasing ‘the dream’. Secondly we risked big time, I have realised more and more that people who achieve impact for God and his kingdom almost always risk and take leaps of faith. There were options and jobs before us which would have been safe and secure, but would have distracted us from pursuing God’s agenda. Thirdly I think that we did not try and copy what everyone else did, people respond to Uber because it is a ‘different’ message, one that is often counter cultural. Too often in the Christian scene people simply copy what everyone else is doing. We tried to look for something that no one else was doing, a space to speak into in which there was a great need. Thus Uber has often felt like taking the road less travelled. One that his hard but infinitely rewarding.
So as I reflect over what Uber has done through us this year I cannot but help and marvel at how God uses broken, limited people like us who are willing to take the leap of faith and risk for him.
