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)