I have spent the last month at Cedar Ridge Christian Church. Much of my time has been spent meeting new people and experiencing how they do life and ministry. The pastoral staff at CR had been an incredible example of leadership — being open-handed and all about empowering God’s people to do His work. One of the challenges has been figuring how best to use my time and energy as we get closer to giving leadership to a new church plant. Unless something changes fast I feel a strong call to plant in or near the community we have lived in the last 8 years. In order to point things towards God I would like to share a few short stories of how we have seen God’s hand at work this past month.
In the near future I will share more details on the vision, but, in a nutshell, I feel led to start with discipleship groups and then I am hoping and praying that out of discipling people we will see multiplication and then see God plant a new church. This is a different paradigm than the attractional model of most churches (nothing wrong with that model) and is more of a missional church model. That may not mean a lot to you and that is fine — I will talk more in the future on the differences. Anyways, all that to say that Cedar Ridge is really not the same model of church that we are planning to plant. I knew going into our time at Cedar Ridge that they would be able to open some great doors for us and that it was a healthy place for us to be training and preparing. Little did I know at the time (God knew) that a separate missional church was sharing space with Cedar Ridge that is very similar to what God is asking of me. The door has been opened through Cedar Ridge for me to start spending more time watching, learning, and understanding the rhythms of this church. The church is The Gathering Network and I met with one of their pastors last night and have been given full permission to engage with them at every level of ministry. In Colossians 1 we see that Jesus “is before all things and in him all things hold together.” It is so easy to see how He has been working things out far ahead of my plans — what a great God we serve!
As I have mentioned several times before we have been in need of an extra set of wheels. My brother was awesome enough loan me his truck for 3 years while he was serving in Germany. A few weeks ago he returned to the States and needed his truck back and we were down to one vehicle. With my 35 minute commute it was going to be difficult to leave Stefanie with no vehicle and we asked that you would pray that God would provide something. Guess what? He did! One of the families at Cedar Ridge had an extra car and are letting us borrow it until the end of August. Please, continue to pray with us that God would provide after August and thank Him for his provision at this time — we sure are!
Soon, maybe tomorrow, I will be sharing with everyone where we sit financially and asking you to prayerfully consider financially supporting us over the next 6-16 months. Many of you are on board and/or have made special gift. Thank you! Many of you have expressed interest and we would love you guys to make a commitment. We are now set up to receive support online and there are several great options. Click the Pray/Invest link in the top right corner for more information on ways to give. Also, if you are like me and just need a monthly reminder please send me an email and we will set up an email reminder for you each month. Thank you again for journeying with us. May God make His name known and worshiped through us all.
Chris
God Provides!
Church Plant Journey 