© 2013 by Vince Antonucci

Published by Baker Books

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakerbooks.com

Ebook short taken in part from Renegade: Your Faith Isn’t Meant to Be Safe, published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

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ISBN 978-1-4412-4240-2

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

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Praise for Renegade

“In Renegade, Vince Antonucci will make you laugh out loud, tug at your heart with inspiring real-life stories, and challenge you to live a daring adventure with God.”

Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC, and author of The Circle Maker

“If you are tired of a mediocre faith, Vince Antonucci’s book Renegade will inspire you to an all-in, fully surrendered, self-sacrificing faith journey with Christ.”

Craig Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv and author of Soul Detox

“Vince Antonucci’s writing always challenges me while making me laugh. In Renegade, he pushes all of us to live with radical faith in a radical God. Vince does more than write this story, he lives it and gives us a compelling picture for what the life of faith looks like.”

Jud Wilhite, pastor of Central Christian Church in Las Vegas and author of Torn

“The message of Renegade will teach you, entertain you, inspire you, challenge you, and convict you. . . . My prayer is that this book starts a movement of renegades who turn the world upside down.”

Kyle Idleman, teaching pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY, and author of Not a Fan

“If you are tired of a play-it-safe, go-through-the-motions faith, then Renegade is exactly what you need. Authored by a guy who is a serial risk-taker, this book will have you laughing while at the same time discovering that faith was always meant to be a daring adventure! Renegade is a book for all of us who want a faith that is more than knowing what Jesus would do, but rather doing what he would do!”

Dave Ferguson, pastor of Community Christian Church and coauthor of Exponential

Contents

Cover   1

Title Page   2

Copyright Page   3

Endorsements   4

Introduction   8

Day One: Creating Your Plan   16

Day Two: Your Destinations   17

Day Three: Measurable Goals   19

Day Four: Your Current Location   22

Day Five: Habits and Rewards   23

Day Six: Obstacles and Companions   26

Day Seven: The Renegade Question   28

Notes   31

About the Author   33

Back Ad   34

Back Cover   35

Introduction

It was early January, about two years ago, when I found myself sitting on a bed in a Las Vegas casino hotel room, crying because of what I had just done. I didn’t want to spend my life full of regrets, but after what had just happened in that bed, I could now see it stretching out before me.

What had I done? Well, before I get to that, I want to share with you the road trip my family returned from yesterday.

Road Trip

My family is into vacations. This year we decided to go on a road trip. We had never seen the Pacific Northwest and thought it would be fun to take our minivan on the highway for nine days. We started planning as soon as we locked onto the idea. We got out maps. We googled “Things to do in Oregon.” We found blogs where other families had recorded the details of their Pacific Northwest road trips. We consulted a website that listed restaurants that had been featured on television shows in every city. We made all kinds of reservations.

Now some people are not planners, and may even scoff at our family’s preparations. But if you don’t plan a road trip in advance, here’s the reality: you may experience a few pleasant surprises along the way, but there will be more disappointment. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “What? There are no rooms available in Yosemite? Where will we stay?” And, “What? There are no spaces left for whitewater rafting? But we really wanted to do that!” And, “What? We were that close to Crater Lake? We would have gone there if we knew!” Even worse, if you fail to plan at all, you might not even get to where you planned on going.

Life Planning

Life is a lot like a road trip. We’re going somewhere. There are some unexpected surprises along the way, some things for which you can’t plan. But a lot of life you can plan. Some of it you should—and some, you really must. Because if you don’t, too often you’ll end up missing out and be very disappointed. And, even worse, you might not even get to where you planned on going.

And this brings us back to me crying on the bed in the Las Vegas casino.

What had I done? Well, let me assure you, I was alone in that hotel room. In fact, I had been by myself for a couple of days. And what I had done was a spiritual retreat.

Why in a casino? That is a great question. I had asked my wife to find me a place where I could be by myself for a few days, and she booked me a room in a casino in the next town over from us. “Really?” I asked. “For a spiritual retreat?” She explained that it was the least expensive room she could find. (We are very cheap people.)

My sole purpose for this retreat was to discover my soul purpose. I wanted to come to a fuller understanding of my life’s mission.

I started this journey of discovery by focusing on the end of my life’s journey. I imagined my funeral. I visualized a church, a coffin, pictures of me, flowers, and people filing in and finding places to sit. At one point in the service, people were given the opportunity to speak. My wife, my son, my daughter, and some close friends each walked up to the podium. What would they say? What would they remember about me? What impact would I have had on their lives?

Thinking it through, actually visualizing it, and imagining the words they might say left me in tears, because I knew someday this fantasy would be reality.

And may I share an obvious truth? Someday each one of us will be in the box. There will be an end to our life’s road trip. And we can consider that a morbid reality we’d prefer to ignore, or it could be the reality that changes everything for us.

What Kind of Plan?

In that hotel room I developed a road map for my life—a plan that would give me direction each day of my journey and hopefully help me end up at the right destination.

So let’s think about what your road trip should look like, and where you want to end up. I obviously don’t know, but I do know it won’t just happen. People don’t fall into living the lives they want to live; they don’t mistakenly meander into a meaningful existence.

The Bible warns us that life is short and we only get one shot here on earth to get it right. Psalm 90 says, “You sweep people away in the sleep of death—they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered” (vv. 5–6). So what should we do? We’re told a few verses later, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (v. 12).

To live the life we want, we need to live life by design. We need to number our days, to lay out our lives, and we need to do so with wisdom.

I have friends who are the impulsive, freewheeling type, and the thought of planning anything turns them off. They don’t even want to think through the upcoming weekend, so the idea of planning out their entire lives sounds absurd. And . . . tedious. And . . . really, really absurd. And you might be that type. If so, you can wait till Saturday to decide what you’re doing this weekend, but you really need to take the time to create a plan for your life. You can be spontaneous in all kinds of ways, but there are some critical factors of your life that require intentionality.

Gary Kasparov dominated the chess world for several decades. In his book How Life Imitates Chess, he writes, “A Grandmaster makes the best moves because they are based on what he wants the board to look like ten or twenty moves in the future.”[1] People who are masters at life know what they want their lives to look like ten or twenty years in the future, and live today in a way that will get them there.

Putting this plan together will be difficult, and probably amazing, and time consuming, and emotional—and worth it. Many people find that putting together this kind of plan is the key that allows them to move forward and start living the life they’ve always wanted to live.

So I want to show you what I did in that hotel room. And it’s probably not much different from many similar plans or “systems” you can find in blogs and books, except we’re going to take this in a different direction and one step further than any other “life-planning” tool I’ve seen.

I’ve seen other life plans written by and for Christians, and I have a problem with them. My problem is that they could just as easily have been written by and for non-Christians. Shouldn’t the life plan of a follower of Jesus be significantly different from the life plan of someone not following Jesus?

Darren Whitehead and Jon Tyson express this well in their book Rumors of God, in which they ask the reader to think of what they want in life:

Let me guess. You would like to have more money—financial stability. A comfortable living environment would be nice, perhaps a newer car. You’d have a progressing career, be respected in your field. You’d like to have emotionally healthy friends, who are energetic, encouraging, spontaneous, and fun. Maybe you’d wish to change something about your appearance—lose a few pounds, be taller, more athletic. If you’re single, you might desire to find a life partner, someone supportive, kind, and attractive (not just on the inside).

Maybe you want to have kids. Or maybe you already have kids, and you want them to be well-educated, high-functioning, successful, well-mannered children who do better in school than your friends’ kids.

Or perhaps you’d like to be famous and influence millions of people around the world for the greater good.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these dreams. They are the carrots the media dangle in front of us. But what’s interesting is that, for the most part, the desires and dreams of Christians are the same as non-Christians. Essentially we are dreaming and longing for the same things. This seems odd—shouldn’t we be different from non-Christians?[2]

In his book Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn writes that we are being manipulated “in the most insidious ways.” We are “under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence.” And, Lasn contends, we have given ourselves to carbon copied aspirations that aren’t even truly ours.

“Dreams” by definition are supposed to be unique and imaginative. Yet the bulk of our population is dreaming the same dream. It’s a dream of wealth, power, fame, plenty of sex and exciting recreational opportunities.[3]

What we’re after is what everyone is after. It’s what the world tells us to be after. And so if we take time to chart out what we want to accomplish in life, what we hope to accumulate and experience, there’s a decent chance that our plan will be misguided. That it will set us up for a goal-oriented life, but not necessarily a God-oriented life. For a “successful” life, but not a supernatural one. For an accomplished life, but not an audacious one. For a self-fulfilled life, but not a self-sacrificing one. For a respectable and responsible life, but not a renegade life.

God has called us to faith, and faith is always dangerous. Faith always feels like risk. God doesn’t call us to be the same as everyone else. He called us to be different. He called us to the lunatic fringe. He called us to be renegades.

A renegade is a person who rejects conventional behavior, who refuses to do what others are doing, who realizes there’s a different beat they can dance to—and it’s better. Once they start walking their unique path others may follow, but at first it can be lonely. But that’s okay, because a renegade realizes “normal” isn’t working for anyone else, nor is it working for them. So they abandon normal to find right. It isn’t easy, but it’s the only way to truly live for God.

It isn’t easy because it requires something radical from us. God isn’t looking for the halfhearted or the lukewarm. Anywhere we look in the Bible, we see that we are meant to be all-in when it comes to following Jesus.

I’m saying that we leave behind the religious approach to God most of us take, which leads us to a cheap imitation of following him. We may not have to abandon our faith but rather abandon our way of doing faith—the way of faith we learned from our family, our friends, and what we’ve known before. We may have to go a bit rogue to find a religion-free relationship with God that leads to true intimacy with him and true influence in this world.

We’re going to construct a road map not to a respectable life but to a renegade life.

To do that, we’re going to depart from the norm in two vital ways. First, we’re going to ask God to help us find ourselves in his story, rather than creating a great story for ourselves.

In his book Disciple: Getting Your Identity from Jesus, Bill Clem creates the following scenario: imagine two drama students, each with dreams of making it big as actresses. One day the first drama student comes up with a plan. She decides to create her own play for her to star in. Though she’s never written, she starts working on a script. Once it’s completed, she realizes that she can’t afford to pay other actors and enlists two of her friends to take the other roles. She doesn’t have money to rent a venue or create a stage, so she talks her parents into allowing the play to be performed in their garage.

The second drama student auditions for a small part in a Broadway play in New York. She gets the part. It’s a small role, but she’ll be working with some of the best actors, acting coaches, directors, and producers in the industry. And the script is written by an outstanding playwright.

What’s the difference between the two scenarios? Clem writes, “The Broadway play places our student in a world way bigger than herself that involves staging, famous people, promotion—even with a walk-on bit part, she belongs to something huge.”[4] The girl in the garage, on the other hand, is trying to convince herself that she’s constructed something worth being a part of, something better than the other alternative. But, in reality, she has constricted herself to a small story played out in a small setting.

Clem explains:

These illustrations are meant to parallel the difference between inviting God into our story (which gives a big-guest appearance to God in a small-time show called “My Life”) and being offered whatever role God gives us in his epic drama. Our personal story is actually a distortion of reality and a desire for significance. God’s story is reality, and significance can be ours with even a walk-on bit part, because pleasing and glorifying the Creator is the most significant experience offered to created beings.[5]

I don’t know about you, but I want to be a player in Jesus’s story, the epic tale of God and his kingdom, even if it’s a small role, not the main character in my little self-centered story.

So the first difference is that we’re going to ask God to help us to understand him and his story, and how we can be a part of it, even if that doesn’t look like success in the world’s eyes. Second, we’re going to add some faith-filled risk to our life map. To try and make sure we’re aiming for a God-oriented life, we’re going to inject some God-sized (and preferably God-ordained) risk into our plan.

On our recent family road trip, my kids watched the movie Alice in Wonderland. One of the film’s themes is doing the impossible. At one point Alice says, “This is impossible,” to which the Mad Hatter replies, “Only if you believe it is.” Alice tells him, “Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” The Mad Hatter tells her, “That is an excellent practice.”[6]

The next day they watched Pirates! Band of Misfits. One of its themes—doing the impossible. Toward the end of the movie the main character, the Pirate Captain, decides he is going to singlehandedly take on Queen Victoria and her forces by attacking her ship. Charles Darwin (yes, Charles Darwin) tells him he can’t do it, that the odds are impossible. The Pirate Captain quickly responds, “It’s only impossible if you stop to think about it.” Later he admits that what he did was idiotic. His friend agrees, but says it was, “Terrifically idiotic.”[7]

Not long before our vacation, we saw the movie We Bought a Zoo, which was kind of about . . . doing the impossible. The main character, played by Matt Damon, builds his life on the philosophy that when you face a seemingly impossible situation, you just need to muster up twenty seconds of insane bravery.[8]

Question: Why are so many popular stories about doing the impossible? I think it’s because God hardwired it into our souls: somewhere deep inside we know we were meant for more than our mundane everyday routines. Something inside pushes us to move past our selfish existence and to live brave, idiotic lives of self-sacrifice for God and others.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to include in our plans. God has called us to a life of faith, and faith always includes risk. So we’re going to pray and ask God what risks he may be calling us to take for him and for the sake of others.

By the way, there are people who actually take such risks. On our family vacation we had two Sunday nights where we ended up getting off the road early, and so we spent time watching television in a hotel room. We checked out Secret Millionaire, a show that features wealthy people who volunteer for a week or so in nonprofit community service organizations in impoverished neighborhoods. The stories of the people who started and lead these organizations are amazing. One eight-year-old boy started a homeless ministry, feeding people on the streets. One lady invested all her money, including her entire retirement savings, to start a ranch in the middle of a downtrodden part of Los Angeles to get kids off the streets and engaged in the productive task of caring for animals.

People are taking great risks to do something terrific with their lives, and you can too.

The cool thing is that when you do that, it makes your life great. In fact, the millionaires on these shows—who have accomplished the kinds of goals people would typically include in a life plan—confess that their few days of volunteering to meet the needs of others was the best experience of their lives. Isn’t that interesting? Serving needy people feels better than making your first million, moving into a mansion, driving a Lamborghini, or vacationing in Paris.

So why not create a life plan that includes pouring ourselves out for God and his kingdom and his world? We’re going to plan on taking risks that we would never take if not for faith. We want our plan to revolve around God, not around us and what we can accomplish on our own.

So are you ready to put together your life road map?

We’re going to break construction of this plan into seven bite-sized chunks. Set aside a little time each day for the next week, do the work, and you’ll be rewarded with a life-changing plan to help you become a renegade.

Day One

Creating Your Plan

Picture your life as a journey, almost like a road trip. Your goal, of course, is not to arrive at random destinations but to live in a way that will get you where you want to go. Your answers to some critical questions will come together to create a plan that will help you determine and reach your destinations.

Question One: How does your life break up into different journeys?

Everything in your life is integrated, but for our purposes it will help you to divide your life into different journeys. So what are the important journeys you are currently on? My list has eight different journeys: God, Character, Health, Finances, Wife, Kids, Friends, and Ministry.[9] Those are the “categories” of my life that are important to me. You may add your career, or a hobby you’re passionate about, or the hundreds of orphan Guatemalan toy poodles you’ve adopted.

Take some time to make a list of your life journeys.

Day Two

Your Destinations

Question Two: What destination do you want to arrive at for each journey?

This is where the imaginary funeral comes in. In this step you’re visualizing what your life would look like if it came out right. What do you want your spouse, kids, and friends to be able to (honestly) say about you? In what ways will you want to have served God and have made an impact in the world? In what kind of shape do you want to be in both financially and physically? What do you hope to accomplish in your career?

When you write this, write it in the present tense, as if these destinations are your current reality, even if they’re not. That way each time you read this, it will help you to imagine what it will feel like when you reach each destination.

So, for instance, here is the destination I wrote for my relationship with my kids:

I am an example to Dawson and Marissa of what it looks like to radically love God and love people. They know that I don’t love perfectly, but I don’t pretend to, and my passion for wanting to love God and people, and my authenticity about it, allows them to follow my example.

I love my kids unconditionally, and they are secure in that. But I love them too much to not help them become more like Jesus. So I lovingly encourage them to completely live their lives for him.

I believe in my kids and I am their number one fan. I do everything I can to help them become everything God has in mind for them, and to accomplish the dreams he puts in them.

I am always available to my kids and they know it. I make time for them so we’re together a lot. We plan and do lots of special things together. I am fun to be around, and they want to be with me.

Together we are living dangerous lives of faith because we follow Jesus, and he leads us to places we’d never dare go without him. We do it gladly because we’re willing to do whatever it takes to follow Jesus and help others to know him.

Take some time to prayerfully write the destination you want to arrive at for each of your life’s journeys.

Day Three

Measurable Goals

Question Three: How does that destination translate into specific, measurable goals?

You’ll find it helpful to translate each of your destinations into some specific, measurable goals.

For some of your journeys, this will be complicated. For instance, it might be difficult to make specific, measurable goals for your relationship with God or with your spouse. For other journeys, perhaps your health or finances, it will be relatively easy to create goals.

Even if it’s difficult, you’ll find it helpful to translate your destinations into goals because your plan will become more concrete. It will feel less like a hazy feel-good dream and more like something you can take steps to move toward.

One option is to create long-term life goals. A life goal might be to give one million dollars to God’s kingdom, or to never weigh more than 180 pounds, or to launch a business you enjoy running and that provides you a healthy income until retirement.

Or you may choose to create yearly goals. A yearly goal could be giving 11 percent of all your income back to God, or to run a half-marathon, or to go back to school to get your MBA.

Personally, I tend to prefer quarterly goals. The smaller time frame eliminates the option of procrastinating. It forces me to jump into action and start accomplishing the goal immediately. And as I accomplish my quarterly goal, I find myself a step closer to moving toward my ultimate destination. So I look at where I want to go, and then decide on a critical step I can take in the next three months to move me closer to where I need to be. A goal for a quarter might be to redo your family budget, to lose ten pounds, to read a book on entrepreneurship, to read three books on parenting, to take your spouse out on twelve dates in the next twelve weeks, to do a spiritual retreat, to take a seminar on public speaking, to confess a struggle you’ve been having to two close friends, or to read through the four Gospels and rejoice again in who Jesus is.

If you do quarterly goals, you probably don’t want to be juggling too many at one time. Less is more. If you have five to seven life journeys, I’d suggest having no more than one goal for each that you’re intentionally working on at one time.

So what specific, measurable goals do you need to create?

Question Four: Why do you want to arrive at that destination and arrive at those goals?

In his book, Start with Why,[10] Simon Sinek writes that what influences people to action, and to persist, is not understanding the what or the how but understanding the why. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Steve Jobs were inspiring because they started with why. It’s true for you as well. What will move this from being a plan on paper to being your actual life is not the what or the how but the why.

So why do you want what you’ve put down on paper? What’s the reason? How will you benefit if it really happens? How will others benefit?

I’d suggest that your why needs to include some sense of following God’s plan for your life. God does have a plan for your life (see Jer. 29:11), and you don’t want to make your own plan that leads you to miss out on his. And, by the way, God’s plan for your life centers on him, not you (see Rom. 12:1–3; Col. 3:1–3, 17). We’re not inviting God into our stories but submitting our lives to his will so that we can be a part of his story. So if your plan isn’t focused on God and your greatest goal isn’t to live for and please him, your plans and goals are too shortsighted, too self-centered, and too small.

So, take some time and answer the question: Why? It’s the why that will get you started toward your destination and keep you motivated when the journey is difficult.

Day Four

Your Current Location

Question Five: Where are you in each journey at this time?

In this step you’ll take a long, honest look at yourself and put down on paper where you currently are in each journey. The answer may be encouraging or it may be disheartening. Either way, you need to know where you are now if you’re going to get where you need to go.

Here’s what I wrote at one of my quarterly reviews about my current location in my journey as a father to my kids:

I’m not a good enough example of loving God and loving people. They know I love God and people, but I don’t think they see enough passion in me.

I do think Dawson and Marissa know I love them unconditionally, and that I love them too much to leave them the way they are.

I believe in my kids, but at times I may be too focused on their faults and “improving” them as people.

I’m available and around, but I am often too stressed in life and too easily stressed at home. At times I’m not that fun to be around.

Take some time to write down where you are in each journey right now.

Day Five

Habits and Rewards

Question Six: What’s the path to get you from where you are to where you want to be?

If I walk out of my house in Las Vegas, jump in my car, and just start driving, hoping that I end up in Miami, it’s not likely to happen. In fact, there’s almost no chance. To get there I need a plan, a map, or a GPS that shows me what roads to take.

We won’t get where we want to be in life just because we want to get there. Hoping isn’t enough. We need a plan. We need to know the roads that will move us toward our destination. Your initial attempt at making your plan will help you see how you’ll get there, and every time you read it you’ll find yourself recommitting to following that path.

Here’s the path I wrote for my journey as a father to my kids:

I will lead and encourage my kids to have their own faith and relationship with God through Jesus, and to read the Bible and pray every day.

Every day I will pray for my kids and tell them that Jesus loves them and that I love them.

I will look for teachable moments to lovingly help my kids better know Jesus and what it means to follow him. I will graciously bring them back when they get off course.

I will make sure we have a “family fun night” every week.

I will take my family on a vacation every year, and at least one “weekend” getaway. I will institute lots of meaningful family traditions that will help bond us together.

I will do two years of one-on-one “discipling” with each child while they’re in high school. We’ll read books together, discuss the tough questions, and talk about life.

One way to think about these paths is that they’re often habits you build into your life. Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” There’s a lot of truth in that. In a sense, we are a bundle of habits. So what collection of habits would turn you into the kind of person you want to become?

As you discern them, come up with triggers that will help you to engage in those habits. A ton of research has revealed that we’re far more likely to practice new habits if we create triggers for them. For instance, recently I wanted to start running four days a week. To help myself, I put out my running clothes and sneakers the night before. Seeing all that when I wake up helps trigger the habit.

So what habits do you need, and what could help you to trigger those habits?

Also think about rewards you can place in your life to celebrate actually doing those habits. Again, research tells us that if we strategically plan on celebrating when we practice our habits, there’s an increased likelihood we’ll actually practice them. The celebration doesn’t have to be significant. I have a phone app that records how far I run each day. Getting to see how far I went and watching my total miles add up week by week makes me feel good and is celebration enough to help me put those sneakers on each morning.

Focusing on the rewards is especially important when you add some risk and make this a renegade life plan. (That critical step is still to come!) When you deviate from the norm you’ll be tempted to “come back to reality,” to stop dreaming and daring big. You’ll be intimidated by the risks involved, and it’s so easy to decide to just play it safe. So it’s critical to not only count the cost but to count the reward. What will the payoff be for the risks you’re taking? Will it put a smile on God’s face? Will it give you a sense of adventure? Will you make a greater impact with your life? Will you give your kids an amazing example to follow? Will you finally feel like you’re living the life you were meant to live? Focus on and find ways to celebrate those rewards.

So what habits do you need, what could help you to trigger those habits, and what rewards can you place in your life to celebrate actually doing those habits?

Day Six

Obstacles and Companions

Question Seven: What are the speed bumps and roadblocks that will slow the journey to your destination?

This isn’t a fun question, but it’s a realistic one. The journey won’t be easy. If it were, everyone would live the lives they want to live. But the reality is that very few people do. You are going to do it, but it won’t be easy. So why don’t you at least acknowledge what you foresee as your speed bumps and roadblocks? That way when they come up you won’t be surprised, and they’ll be less likely to deter you.

It’s not enough to just identify the obstacles. You need a plan for how to overcome them. You’ll be much more levelheaded and capable of forming a better strategy now than when you are in the middle of difficulty.

So . . . how will you get past the speed bumps and roadblocks?

Question Eight: For each journey, who do you need to take with you?

Often when you go on a road trip you have someone with you. And on each of the journeys that make up our lives, it may be helpful to have a companion. It might be a partner, a mentor, or someone you’re mentoring. In this step decide and write down whom you need to take with you to help you get to each destination. For your journey with God, it might be a few accountability partners. For your journey with your spouse, it will obviously be your spouse, but it may also be a couple to mentor you both on how to do marriage right. For your health, it might be a physical trainer. For the impact you want to have through serving, it could be your pastor.

Day Seven

The Renegade Question

Once you’ve made your way through those questions, you’ll probably need to do it again.

Why?

What I’ve proposed—these questions you’ll be answering—are much like many other life-planning methods. As with those, if you follow this plan and truly apply it, it will help you to live a better life, a good life.

But will it lead you to a renegade life?

Because—remember—we’re not trying to be respectable; we’re trying to be risk-takers for Jesus. We’re not trying to be dignified; we’re going for dangerous. Not happy but holy. Not selfish but selfless. Not accomplished but adventurous.

And so, as you go through these questions, as you think about who you want to be, who you want your family to be, what your goals are, and what you want to accomplish with your life, you need to be asking yourself questions such as:

What would I do for God if resources were not an issue and I knew I could not fail?

How would I live if I really believed my life had supernatural power behind it?

What is the boldest thing I can imagine doing in this area of my life?

What about my life is inexplicable without knowing that I live for Jesus and have the Holy Spirit empowering me?

What in this plan cannot happen unless God is in it?

Thinking like that will lead you to a renegade life plan, and hopefully into living the life of a renegade. It should change some of the destinations and goals you set for yourself. Perhaps instead of a goal of giving 10 percent back to God, you’ll have a goal of giving him 50 percent. Maybe you’ll have a goal of your family living together in a third world country for at least one month. You might dream about spending one hour of each day in an intimate time with God, or running a marathon, or leading one hundred people to Christ, or starting a business that will employ one hundred people, or launching a ministry in your church to help an impoverished minority people group in your town.

You only get one life here on earth, and God has invited you to live it with him and for him, to be a part of his great and epic story. He’s called you to something radical, and through your intimacy with him he can equip and empower you to have great influence for him. So don’t focus on what you’ve already done, what others have done, or what you think you can do. With him, anything is possible, and he can do more in and through you than you dare imagine. So dream big, and make your life plan a renegade life plan.

Living Your Plan

If you do this, you’ll have a plan. Now you have to start living it.

I would encourage you to read it every day for at least the first month after you write it. You want to burn it into your brain. It’s probably not the way you’ve been living, so there’s a kind of conversion or rebirth that needs to happen. So read your plan each morning when you wake up or every night before bed until you’re sick of reading it.

After that first month your plan can’t just sit and collect dust. Get it out every quarter and do a review. I use this time to update my answers for the “Where are you in each journey right now?” question. Because I use quarterly goals, I also evaluate how well I did in reaching them. Then I create new goals for the next three months of my life.

How you implement your plan is up to you, but implementing it is not an option. Living the same way you’ve lived isn’t an option. A halfhearted, boring, but decent and respectable life is no longer an option. God is calling you to something better. He’s calling you out of your small story and into his big one. He’s calling you to a full life. He’s calling you to a dangerous faith. He’s calling you to become a renegade.

Notes

Introduction

[1]. Gary Kasparov, How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), 18.

[2]. Darren Whitehead and Jon Tyson, Rumors of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 12–13.

[3]. Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America (New York: Eagle Brook, 1999), xiii.

[4]. Bill Clem, Disciple: Getting Your Identity from Jesus (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 15.

[5]. Ibid.

[6].  Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton (Disney, 2010), DVD.

[7].  The Pirates! Band of Misfits, directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt (Aardman Animations, 2012), DVD.

[8].  We Bought a Zoo, directed by Cameron Crowe (2011; Twentieth Century Fox, 2012), DVD.

Day One: Creating Your Plan

[9]. I want to be clear that I am proposing a fallacy. God is not a category in life. He is life. He’s not one of the things we include in our life. He is our life. And he is the foundation for and permeates every other category. He is the driving force in my character development, the organizing principle in my finances, the owner of (and resident in) my body and therefore the critical issue in my health, and so on. For planning purposes, it’s simpler to let God have a category of his own, but we’re going to have God front and center as we plan every other category as well.

Day Three: Measurable Goals

[10].  Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Action (New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2009).

About the Author

Vince Antonucci became a Christian out of a completely non-Christian background, which has led him to start two churches for people who don’t like church. He was the founding pastor of Forefront Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where 72 percent of the people attending were previously unchurched non-Christians. Vince then moved to Las Vegas where he started a new church, Verve, in the heart of Sin City, just off the Vegas Strip. He blogs at www.vinceantonucci.com. He speaks and coaches on having a unique church with vision clarity for Auxano.com. Vince is the author of I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt (2008), Guerrilla Lovers (2010), and Renegade (2013). He loves spending time with his best friends—his wife, Jennifer, and kids, Dawson and Marissa.

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