Saturday, December 15, 2007

Take me down the the Paradise City

We packed our bags for Florida and my brother-in-law, James, told us to only pack shorts.  It was a little hard to believe, but we figured he knew what he was talking about.  We landed at the Fort Myers Airport at 11:30 and it was about 75 degrees. That's a bit of a shock considering there were snow flurries in Portland, and it was about 12 degrees when we stopped over in Denver.  It's been over 80 every day.  The picture above was from our table at the Naples Beach Club where we ate dinner a couple nights ago.  We enjoyed a great meal while watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.

It's been a fabulous week, but I think we're all ready to head home.  Today is graduation day for my sister-in-law, Marty.  We'll be partying with family all day at James and Marty's place.  We started roasting a whole pig last night and it should be done in a couple of hours.  (I'll post pics of that when I get a chance...totally disgusting).  We head home tomorrow. I'll plan on wearing my jeans.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

My First Week

It's been a little while since my last entry. I decided to take a couple of weeks off between Gateway and Compass in order to recharge, and rest a little. It was nice to get some extended time with my family. We're actually heading to Florida tomorrow for a week, so once I get back I'll be getting into full swing at Compass.

This was my official first week at Compass, though, and it was great to get going at a fairly reasonable pace. Especially considering the season. (I should be going crazy right now...instead I'm going to Florida.)

I got my office setup, and purchased a laptop (a MacBook Pro, totally awesome!), and worked on some graphic design stuff as well. I think most of my week has been spent in meetings.  I've gotten to know the staff and am getting a feel for how the church operates.  I think for a first week I was pretty productive. 

My favorite project right off the bat was working on promotions for our Christmas Eve Service.  We've got an amazing tattoo artist, named Mav, that created the front of our Christmas Eve Invite.  We're doing a mass mailer to our surrounding community, and made a 6'x6' banner that will hang in front of the church.  Check it out...
Another part of my first week at Compass was continuing to work on my fundraising.  We've had a couple of amazing one-time gifts, but most of the support has come in $35-$100 monthly commitments.  Right now we're at 81% of our support! Praise God, and thanks to those of you that have made a financial commitment to our ministry.  We're still in need of about $260 per month in order to reach our goal of $1500 per month.  If you're reading this blog, you're supporters.  Call, give, pray, think about us often, and if you know people that are curious about Jesus that live in West Vancouver, send them our way.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Farewell Gateway

Yesterday was my last day as worship director at Gateway Community Church. It was a pretty emotional day, but it was good. I was so blessed with the many stories of how God has used me in people's lives. It's not often that, as a pastor, I get to see the fruit of ministry in such a concentrated time period.

Another huge blessing was the guitar that they gave me. What an amazing instrument. I couldn't stop playing it last night (ask my wife). I've included some pictures so you can enjoy it to.

Praise God for 13 amazing years of ministry at Gateway. It has been the foundation that all of my future ministry will be built upon.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Last night we had a great time leading worship and sharing about our journey to Compass. There were about 20 people from Gateway there and I'm so thankful and encouraged by their support.

After the worship night I was able to present to a few people the way that God has brought us to Compass and a little about what we'll be doing there. One thing that we were able to share was this video that give some short snippets of testimonies from two Compass individuals. It's pretty cool to become a part of a ministry that has more than just a great vision, they have great results, too. This kind of life change is what I'm excited about being a part of.

Enjoy the show!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Meeting Micah

When the house sold, one of my first calls was to Micah Dodson. He was the pastor of a pretty young church plant in Vancouver and it made sense that if I were thinking of getting involved with something in the area that I should contact him. We sat down for coffee having never met one another and began talking about our vision for how we thought a church ought to operate. It became apparent that our sensibilities were very similar. We talked through a number of different ideas, philosophies, and doctrines and found it to be a surprisingly encouraging conversation. Near the end of the conversation Micah said this to me, "I don't want to try to tell you what God's will is for you, but..."

-Pause here for a moment-
Whenever a Pastor says, I don't want to tell you what God's will for you life is, don't fall for it. They do, they just don't what to tell you that's what they're doing. It's very tricky.
-Please continue-

At this point he began to tell me about how Compass had just been sensing a need to bring on a single point person to oversee their worship ministries. They had made the decision to begin praying about what the position might look like, and shortly after that I called and set up this meeting. I didn't know that Compass was hiring, or if what they were doing was anything that I might be interested in being a part of, but when we started putting together God's leading in both of our hearts, it seemed like something that we shouldn't just ignore.

The next time we met, I brought a list of things that I valued in a church. As Micah and I talked through that list it was confirmed again that our passion for how church should be done was completely compatible.

At that point it became clear that I should pursue the open position, so I submitted a resume and began the official interview process. It seemed that every step that we took was another confirmation. One huge hurdle for people to come from an established church to a church plant is fund raising. For me, this wasn't scary at all, it was just another opportunity for God to prove that he was going to provide for us. It was another way that we could trust Him. I was excited to do my part and then watch God do His thing. He has already begun to do that in amazing ways!

Our Next Big Move

As we prayed and sought God's desire for our lives we began to wonder what our next move ought to be. At the same time we were feeling like we were outgrowing our little 1200 sq. ft. home, so we thought maybe the next move for us was actually to move! Honestly I wasn't really excited about it, but it became clear that if we were going to do it, the summer was a good time. I also thought that if we put it on the market it would give me a little motivation to look into other jobs. The real estate market is not exactly hot right now, so I thought I would have a chance to ease into this idea of moving. As it turned out, it was highly motivating because we had a great offer the first day!

I went into full panic mode and started filling out applications and making phone calls. We began looking for houses all around Vancouver, but ended up feeling drawn once again to West Vancouver. We found a house that met our needs and our preferences and we moved in the middle of September.

So by this point we had sensed that God was calling us to minister in West Vancouver, we had a desire to move to West Vancouver and found a house that we loved there. All I needed to do at this point was find a job! I knew of two churches that were doing something that I might be interested in getting involved with. I made two calls, left two messages and just waited. A couple days later Micah Dodson of Compass Church called me back and we set up a time to meet and chat about ministry in West Vancouver.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Only Thing You Know is Where You've Been

I suppose sometimes God lays something on your heart in really huge and obvious ways, but most of the time He's more subtle. It's only when we look back that we can see with such confidence that God was in it. At the time you might just sense a slight nudge, or something might catch your ear in a peculiar way. When it's over we look back and make all of the connections and say, God did this amazing thing!

I think there are many reasons why God might choose the still-quiet-voice approach over the in-your-face approach, but one in particular strikes me as particularly relevant to our situation here. For Jenn and I, it was critical that this ministry move was something that we did together, with one heart. It was also something that had to be clearly marked with the fingerprints of God. When that kind of confidence is there it means that we can't run away when things get tough, and we can't take the credit when things go well.

As I began to pray about where God might call us to ministry, I sensed a call to West Vancouver. When Jenn really felt like it was time to move, she fell in love with a house in West Vancouver. These two events may not have had any impact on their own, but together and in the context of everything, it became clear that this was another prompting of the Holy Spirit. Another nudge to take the next faith step in our journey.

If I would have approached Jenn a year ago and said, "We're moving to West Vancouver for ministry, I'll fill you in on the details later, just trust me..." I image it would have been met with some resistance. Allowing God to do His work simultaneously in both our hearts has shown us how God uses the still small voice to prompt us because we need a little time to adjust our thinking. Then, when our thinking is adjusted, he doesn't waste any time.

Pointing our Hearts to the Big City

When we began thinking about where God would have us plant a church, we thought that a city would be a great place. It's a funny thing that the population density of an urban area is much higher than that of a suburb, but the churches seem to be moving to the suburbs. Don't get me wrong, we need churches everywhere, but I think churches ought to be where people are. The idea of a cool restaurant, the headquarters of a bank, a night club, and a church all on the same block sounds really cool to me. Churches should be where everyday life happens, and they should be a vital part of it.

As we started praying about a specific area to minister we got out a map and looked at demographics. We talked about a lot of places around Oregon and Washington that were growing or needy and one area in particular was West Vancouver. I wasn't sure why at the time, but that stuck with me and Jenn and I began praying about what that would mean for us.

We didn't really know what would come next. We patiently waited for God show us our next move.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Take it from the top

A couple of years ago I started getting together with a few guys to dream about what church would be like if we could start from scratch. What would we keep, what would we tweak, and what would we do without altogether.

One thing that we all agreed on was the importance of relationships. Whether it's a pastor or first-time guest everyone should feel loved in a powerful and tangible way. If Christians are to be known by their love then relationships have to be at the top of the priority list. Love doesn't happen apart from relationships.

Another thing that we got excited about was teaching that deeply impacted the people listening. We weren't interested in fluffy self-help, nor did we dream of a church where the teaching was so "high and lofty" that it didn't connect with real life.

We talked about the importance of creating a visually engaging environment that would move people to worship. Art has a sense of transcendence and immanence that reminds us of what God is like. There is an aspect that is very real and right in front of us, and then there's an aspect that mysteriously goes beyond what you see. This is important to our culture and it often overlooked inside the church.

We also wanted worship that was relevant to everyone who was there. People connect with God in different ways, they're at a variety of places in their spiritual journey, and come in with different needs on any given day. That means that quality and consistency are important, but authenticity, transparency and spiritual sensitivity are critical.

We began talking about what it might look like to put some of these philosophies into reality, and we quickly realized it was much easier to dream. Since then we've gone in some different directions, but one thing that we all realized at that time was that we should be doing something to make the Church better and more effective by following the prompting that God placed in our hearts.