It’s getting to that time, where we need to start thinking about accumulating supporters.

So if you read this blog, you may well be one of them.

Heh.  Don’t worry.  We aren’t asking for money (yet!)  At this stage, we would like to build a base of prayer support.  If there is one thing to be learned from Philip and Beth’s experience with Community of Hope, it is that prayer support is one of your most important weapons.

Given the next big thing on our agenda will be a scouting trip to Alberta in March, now would be a great time to get prayer warriors interceding for us.  We will have a very significant decision to make in looking at a target community, culture, and people.  We will need wisdom and discernment, and we will also be begging God to make our sight clear and unclouded by our own selfish preferences.   We will also need prayer to direct us to those who we need to talk to locally, or even those who God wants to talk to us.  There are so many things that could come out of this trip, but we desire God’s handiwork to be all over it, and that takes prayer.

To that end, we are now compiling a list of people who would like to receive an emailed monthly newsletter updating them on our journey, and outlining our current prayer needs.  I have a number of people on a list now, but I haven’t actually asked them if they’d like to receive this prayer newsletter.  So, to that end, I want to ask all of our readers here if they would like to sign up to receive it.  If you come here and read this blog, then you already have some interest in our endeavours.  All we are asking for is that you consider committing to praying for us – daily, weekly, as often as you can, with a focus on our current needs.  If you would like to receive this newsletter, please sign up by dropping your email in this handy-dandy newsletter signup below.  Note, this is different from the email sign up on the right.  That one is to have the blog posts emailed to you instead of having to surf here on the internet.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Issue 1 will be emailed in early February, and every month after that.  Thanks again, and God bless you for your interest!

I keep on thinking “The Scouting Trip” seems like such a lame name for what we’re planning to do in a couple months.  But to explain more means to be much more long-winded than I want to be.

But yes, that’s the big news.  We’ve set a week aside now.  March 22-28 we will be touring through the five cities (Spruce Grove, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Okotoks and Cochrane) we are considering for our church plant.  The really cool thing is that we have local ministry leaders we can meet with in two already, and I am hopeful we can meet with someone in each city to get the lay of the land from people right in there already.

Last night I had a very interesting conversation with Jason Wilks, who just started Pathway Church in Medicine Hat.  He had all kinds of things to say about his church planting experiences, and what’s been his challenges where he is.  He is also connected to a number of other pastors in various towns we are looking at so we may be able to mine him for more contacts to speak to.  It’s all very exciting to me, to network and try to congeal the best path forward.  (And yes, I meant to use the word “congeal” to what I want to do with a path!)

But I have a request of you, our readers.  Please make an appointment to pray for us both leading up to that trip and while we are gone – for safety, for discernment, and for God to reveal his will for us.

It is amazing how one little picture can change just about everything.

Since that ultrasound image showing our twins came home on Thursday, we’ve been rethinking all kinds of things.  Basic things, like how the house operates.  We’re definitely getting even more serious about teaching the boys that they have responsibilities as part of the family that must be done, because we can’t do everything for them.

Like who gets which bedrooms.   We do have a spacious house which we are grateful for.  Some have asked us if we will need a bigger one – not before we move to Alberta.  The current computer room will most likely become Dylan’s room, and Dannan will move into Dylan’s old room, with the twins going into Dannan’s room.  The desktop PC (which is getting used less and less) will be moved over the garage into the guest room/study/storage room.

Like what cars we drive.  The minivan, a really good vehicle which has served us well, will have to go, to be replaced by either a Chevy Express or a Ford E-150 passenger van.  Both feature at least 12 seats (though we will only need 8).  To minimize any new debt, I have suggested we trade in my new Caliber for the big van, then sell the minivan privately and use the proceeds from that to buy me a used, instead of new runabout.

Like when we leave for our city tour of prospective church planting destinations.  We were originally thinking June but now, Cheryl will be 7-8 months in June, and probably at least as big as full term.  We have to go sooner.  At this time I am thinking March, but we haven’t decided for sure yet.

Like how we school our kids.  Cheryl loves homeschooling, and I certainly prefer it to public school, but with 3 infants in the house, and me working full time, I am concerned that Cheryl will be overwhelmed.  A season in school may be where we have to go with the older boys.

It sure is an exciting time.  I don’t regret what God has gifted us, but it is sure taking some out-of-the-box thinking.  If this is God’s way of training us for flexibility and problem-solving, then we will come out of this once more even more conformed into the shape he needs us to use us.  And that’s exciting.

What a day yesterday.

I left work, knowing that my wife was going for an ultrasound. An unexpected pregnancy was suspected by the midwives as being “molar” which means it could just be a bunch of undifferentiated cells reproducing a baby-like rates. They’re bad because they can be cancerous. Think D&C, then chemotherapy, and you get the state of mind my wife and I were in.

At the same time, just before I left, the biggest single sale I have ever made at work called… to cancel. He said it was because his car had been totalled by a garage who was supposed to repair it. I actually believe him, as his was the most airtight sale I have ever made – he even had his wife approve the sale with him explaining it to her before we closed it. Anyway, he expects to have his finances re-sorted in a month or so and expects to do it then.

Two punches.

I went home with a pretty heavy heart. I wait for my wife to come home from the ultrasound. She says they had to check twice – there was something odd.

But they figured out what it was.

Twins.

I could be upset, shocked, unnerved, fearful, desperate, any number of things right now. We hadn’t closed the door to another child, but we didn’t expect two at once! I certainly have no idea how in the biggest recession to hit real estate since 1929, I am going to make ends meet with my job, which sells software to realtors. But God’s got to have a plan, because I sure don’t. And I am so curious to see what it is.

(Crossposted to Confessions of a Shiftless Mind)

Still batting around this idea. I thought I would put it out to the readership. What would you like to see Cheryl and I talk about here on this blog? Please leave a comment.

So in my travels on the internets I found another Grace Brethren church planter. His name is Mike Silliman and he pastors a new plant called Elk Creek Grace Brethren Church in PA. He blogs at Mistake Maker.

Apparently, he has quite the collection of leadership CDs by John Maxwell, a famous speaker and teacher on leadership.  I actually have a copy of the Maxwell Leadership Bible, that an elder at Cedar Grove gave me once when I was picking his brain about how to develop my own leadership gifts.  He is giving away these CDs and is having a little contest to see who to give them to.   So, if you are looking for a little something to encourage you in this area, hop on over there and suggest a caption for the picture, and see if he picks you.

Mike Silliman linked to this video which imagines what it would be like if Starbucks marketed like the church.

Disturbing.  Dangerously disturbing.

Starbucks Church Marketing

Check it out, feel free to comment on how you are challenged by it.

Because the Bible connects to things I see, hear, do, and think.  And every time a connection is made, another verse is written on my heart.

I find that when a Bible verse links up to something that has happened or is happening, the remarkable nature of the coincidence never fails to trigger my long-term memory, and helps me to recall that verse.  Even its location.  And when the most important book ever written becomes more and more internalized and committed to memory, well, that is just sweet.

I was watching a video, which I ran across on a political blog, Dr. Roy’s Thoughts.  It was a debate between Christopher Hitchens, famous atheist and author of “God is Not Great” amongst others, and Frank Turek, co-author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”.  In the debate (if you’d like to watch it, it is here – watch out though.  It is 2 hours in length), Turek provides a battery of proofs for the existence of God, whilst Hitchens basically says, repeatedly, “I don’t have to prove God doesn’t exist.  We all know he doesn’t, but if he does, he’s a cruel tyrranical monster.”  Not much of a debate as far as that goes.  One person in the audience even challenged them both to state what it would take to cause them to doubt their position.  Turek answered honestly, stating what would have to change for his faith to be shaken.  Hitchens refused to answer.

Then this morning when I picked up my Bible, I opened to 2 Corinthians 3.  Paul spoke of the effects of the Law on the Hebrews when he wrote, but this blindness affects all who do not turn to the Lord.

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Hitchens’ mind is hardened – calcified even.  All he sees is the wrath of God, much like those under the Law.  He refuses to even consider the possibility of God, because he sees the condemnation and wrath and he hates the idea of anything greater than him that he must submit his authority over himself to.  Like Turek pointed out in the debate, hating your father doesn’t make your father not exist.  Even if your brother is a mass-murderer, and he claims his daddy told him to do it, this does not mean that your father doesn’t exist.  But yet, Hitchens continually appealed to such emotional images to turn people emotionally away from God, rather than consider his existence rationally.

But all it takes is one turn towards the Lord.  Just to look into who God really is, and the veil will be drawn away.  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  That is the truth that Hitchens utterly lacks.  All he sees God as is a monster that seeks to steal his freedom.  But he does not grasp that freedom to wrong himself and others is no freedom at all – it is enslavement to evil.  He demonstrated over and over that he knows right and wrong, yet he values the wrong he does so much that he will not consider the freedom of love.

So, now, I know.  2 Cor 3 – Now God is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  Thanks, Christopher Hitchens for writing that truth on my heart.

Matt Sweetman was challenged by Ed Stetzer’s words cautioning about the creation of a new way of doing church rather than actually reaching new people with the Gospel.  I’ve wrestled with this from the first, when we came onboard with Community of Hope to help launch this new church plant.  How much should we be prioritizing and seeking Christians to join us in this enterprise?  How much should we be focusing on straight out evangelism, and where is the balance with discipleship?  When have we turned too inwards to reach out?  These tensions are the bane of all churches – part of the problem with North America’s churches in general has come from answering these questions incorrectly, or refusing to even ask these questions.

On the ground, there is a recognition that to start something you need something.  Life does not come from nothing – it comes from a seed.  A church plant needs a core – a seed to synthesize and reproduce.  When Philip and Beth came to Surrey to begin Community of Hope, they had no seed – they needed a seed.  They recognized that it is hard for people to visualize the community that was to come unless there already was a microcosm visible that they could use and model.  Our first core group was that model.  But it needed to be bigger.  But let me step back for a second.

You can, as a pioneering church planter, seek to start that core using new converts.  You could bring people to Jesus, lead them to salvation, then disciple them to the point where they are good models of the type of Christian you want your church to be filled with.  It takes much time and energy for this to happen.  But looking around inside and outside of churches, I think the pragmatic has to recognize that even though the Reformation sought to do away with the Augustinian idea of the invisible church – a church of true believers within the larger church which may or may not include the saved – it is nonetheless still true right up until today.  Even Jesus said that not everyone who cries, “Lord, Lord” will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The longer I serve in church the more I realize that there is more to this walk than the simple saved/unsaved dichotomy.  There is also the whole scale of sanctification that people work through as they work out their salvation with fear and trembling.  To characterize, there are mountains of people, in solid, evangelical churches, who feel no need to pursue instruction – to continue their discipleship and deepen their walk with God, outside the occasional shopping trip to the Christian Bookstore and the purchase of “Your Best Life Now” or “The Purpose Driven Live” which will then collect dust on their bookshelf whilst they read one of  Barack Obama’s biographies or the latest sequel to “Twilight“.  There are still more who are content to simply come on Sunday, listen to the sermon, sing a couple of songs, and go home and watch the football game sunday afternoon without any conception of the importance of service, in the sense of the one they claim to follow, who “came not be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many“.  These people, too, need a church plant to revitalize, activate, and engage in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Who are these people?  They are legion.  And they are wasting space in our churches – swelling the numbers and making leaders feel like successes, when in fact they are presiding over the dead.  The church is to be a light in this world, not a weekend social club, or at best a religious Elks community service club.  When people aren’t discipled properly, they think a stunted, dwarfed faith is complete and healthy and that is just sad.  I fully agree that the church is there to proclaim the Gospel to the lost, but the Great Commission says to make disciples, and if there are people who have a knowledge of Christ, and may even claim to be saved, but are not exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit, are living as the world does, and do not follow Jesus with more than lip service, then they need our church plant too.

So a church plant must seek to share the gospel with the lost AND teach his disciples to die to themselves and follow Jesus.  A withered, weak vine will produce few fruit, but a strong, healthy, vibrant vine will produce abundantly.  Keeping a vineyard is not just about planting seeds, it is about pruning, watering, harvesting, and protecting the living vines that grow as well as the new sprouts you seek to start.

That is what I think has been happening largely at our church plant.  Initially we found ourselves meeting many people who you might call nominal Christians.  We ourselves, the core team, was in many ways nominal.  We were stunted and immature.  We have spent a lot of time and resources in maturing and growing in health.  When we were unhealthy and stunted, we produced little fruit.  But as we mature, we will produce more and more.  That is why I expect great things at our church this year.

I am excited, because when we go to plant our own church, we hope to take a cutting from a healthy vineyard.  We pray that we ourselves are part of that cutting.  Starting a new church with a healthy, vibrant core should allow us to start quicker and reach more people for Jesus sooner than even Community of Hope has – not because we are better, but because we will benefit from all the nurturing and all the nourishment that Community of Hope is providing us now.  That too is very exciting.

It’s been exciting the last week or so, with people actually expressing interest in our dream of planting a new church in Alberta.  We’ve had several very valuable conversations and several people approach us with interest in joining us already.  I think there are more out there too – it is just a matter of time until they make themselves more clearly known.

Of course, I think a large part of momentum building is proving oneself capable.  In that sense I am looking forward to the challenge of a number of different tasks in front of me and us.  Each step is a step of growth and a step closer to our goal (if that doesn’t sound too cliche’d).

In the immediate future, of course, I have a little more to take care of with that looming paper.  Once that is done, then it will be on to licensure – and then after that, I think, Cheryl and I will be focusing much more on what we can plan for the plant plans.