Plan away....but, God has the final say...

I've been in 'crunch' mode for the past month or so getting ready to start a new church (with a great team I might add) here in Dallas, Oregon. This morning, as I was praying and reading through Scripture, a new insight from God really sunk in. Me, the staff, and our Launch Team have been planning and working hard, and, we've been staying in constant prayer. Even with all this momentum, I've been anxious and worried about whether or not this church plant will work. I confess that I've stressed over no one showing up on Sunday...oh me of little faith right? Well, in reading Proverbs 16 today, I had a 'divine moment' if you will. Three times in that chapter, it says, in effect, plan away, but, God has the final say. The whole chapter starts and ends that way. This gives me a bit of peace...all our plans will succeed with God's hand. Our job is to be faithful, diligent in planning and working, and then rely on God to do His part - the BIG part...whew! I feel better already...

MCC sealed the deal!

After we met the staff of Monmouth Christian, we were pretty impressed! The talents and Spiritual maturity we encountered made quite an impact on us. With a group of committed followers of Jesus ready to help us and even mentor us in the process, we sensed God's involvement in a powerful way. Having a 'mother church' so close and willing to make this mission happen helped us begin to see church planting in Dallas as pretty doable. We returned home with a lot of excitement, and yet a lot of fear for the road ahead. In fact, our next fear was informing our church family in Maple Valley about our decision. That was really, really tough...more on that soon!

Asked for a NO, but God said...

That's right, after we prayed for a simple 'no' from God, friends, family, coworkers, etc. all of them overwhelmingly came back with "YES"! So, the sense of calling was growing and, even though we were sensing a strong leading, we wanted more clarity about Dallas. We wanted to know if it was the right fit for our family. As a kid, I spent a lot of years in Dallas, but now I wasn't sure if our next church planting adventure should be there. To help us, the staff from Monmouth Christian Church, led by Stan Peterson, invited us down to meet the staff and get a better feel of the community. We journeyed down from the Seattle suburbs to check it all out. At this point, you might be thinking that we had a bit of a 'Jonah' complex...meaning that God was clearly calling us and yet we were looking for a different message. We really wanted to be sure, though, so, we made the trip down to Oregon. You might guess what we discovered...(to be continued)

Asking for NO!

Ok, so, I promised to keep writing about my experiences with starting a new church, and, I'm behind (like so many other projects these days). Any-who, my wife Jackie and I began to dream about the possibilities, but, we were also asking God for a clear NO. In fact, we agreed to go to a church planter assessment in February 2007 thinking that they'd see how imperfect we were and help us with God's NO. As it turned out, they put us threw the ringer with questions, interviews, social interactions and other tests and instead of NO, they said, YES, green-light go! So, the plot thickened for us...is God really needing us to step out in faith again and this time lead a church plant? Surely not, right? Thats when we decided to go to friends, family, business associates and others in our lives who could shoot straight. We asked them to pray, fast, and consider this decision with us...you'll never guess what they came back to us with...(to be continued, heh, heh)

No fear of God...from Psalm 36

Last night at our prayer walk for the Dallas community, many sensed the weight of people who don't have any fear of God. So many in the city don't even consider God at all in their life decisions and are blinded by this neglect. The Psalm talks about people who, when they don't fear God, become arrogant in their confidence and live confused about evil and good, unable to know which is which...wow, God, help me and the launch team reach people like this...Amen.

Starting a new church...the journey begins...

Ok - over the past several months, I've been thinking I should document this journey of starting a new church, and, this morning, well, I think its time to begin. Since last night was one of the first official meetings we conducted with some of the 'launch team', I thought this documentation was well past due! You see, last night we met (over 20 of us) to pray around the town and seek God's wisdom in planting this church here...it was really cool! Back to what I started here...anyway, I was in Spokane in January helping a friend of mine lead worship for a men's purity conference (Pure Warriors) and I got a call from Jim Penhollow of East 91st Street Christian Church who lives in Portland and works to recruite church planters for the Northwest. Since he was instrumental in 2003 in getting me to leave a wonderful life in Tennessee for the unknown world of helping to plant a church in the Seattle suburbs, we had a bit of a track record. Anyway, after a quick no, but a promise to pray, I returned to the Seattle area to begin praying, dreaming and thinking about the possibilities...(to be continued...)

God-Directed!

There is a passage in the Bible in Acts 16 that never fails to ignite my curiosity. In this section of Scripture, Paul and his companions are traveling around the ancient world spreading the good news of forgiveness through Jesus and planting new churches. What is odd is in verse 6 where apparently Paul was ‘prevented by the Spirit’ from preaching in the province of Asia, but then, in the next few verses, Paul has a dream or vision showing someone requesting to hear Jesus’ message, and so, Paul concludes this was also God and thus enters Asia. It’s even more interesting to learn that from that point on, Paul and his traveling buddies face some pretty tough resistance to their ministry of telling Jesus’ story. You might think they’d start doubting that vision.

The reason this Scripture has always made me feel a bit unsettled is because I wonder what messages God has directed toward me through dreams and visions and through the Holy Spirit, and, I’ve been too boneheaded and missed them. In fact, I’ve wondered how of God’s direction we’ve all missed. So, recently I’ve resolved to try and give God more and more opportunities to speak into my life His plans. In Bill Hybel’s book Courageous Leadership, Bill highlights ways to maximize our ability to hear and receive vision from God, which he forms in a series of questions like: Have we totally given God our lives? Have we asked Him about what vision He’s got for us? Have we fasted? Have we prayed? Have we been quiet and waited in silence for Him? Have we cleaned up sinful patterns in our lives? Have we weeded out all the distractions and noise that would keep us from hearing what God might be saying? Have we read about, traveled to and looked at areas where God is already working for inspiration? (pg. 37 & 38 of Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels Zondervan © 2002)

As we enter year 3 as a church, I pray that we would all get rid of anything that prevents us from really hearing from God and seeing His vision of where He wants to take our church!