the end of the beginning of the beginning

five months ago the fam and i moved to central wisconsin. as most of you know we moved here for the purpose of planting a church that has a passion for those who aren’t really the biggest fans of the church but are still interested in JESUS. for some people this means they have burned by a church. for others it means they have never really seen how a chuch can relate to real life. whatever their reason they are not going to connect with a church that has all the answers so we want to be a church that is okay with questions because we really believe that JESUS is the answer. i’m know that somewhere there’s a very effective plan for doing planting a church like this but no one ever told me where that plan was and therefore i have done the only thing pam and i could think of doing … hanging out and meeting people. i’ve been as close to being stalker as you can get without actually receiving a restraining order. okay, hopefully that’s not true, but i have looked for every opportunity i could find to get involved in random conversations and get to know people. the past five months have been the beginning of the beginning. last night was the end of the beginning because last night we had our first core group meeting. “core group meeting” sounds pretty formal for a group of people getting together to eat, read the 1st chapter of acts, pray, and dream about what a church could be, so i’ll just call it a gathering. anyhow our gathering was great (at least in my opinion it was). after it was through i kept finding myself thinking “a new church is going to grow from what we did tonight.” it was amazing.

now we beginning of the end of the beginning. due to a prior commitment we’ll miss this coming sunday but after that we’ll start having a gathering at our house every sunday night to eat, read the book of acts, pray, and continue dreaming. this will become the church and eventually we’ll have a public service (that should continue to have eating, biblical discussion, praying , and dreaming). my guess is that a once a month service (previews or trials) we begin in may and weekly services we’ll begin in september. of course, the weekly service isn’t the church. nope the church is the people and that began last night.

if anyone reads this blog and is around stevens point on a sunday evening please come and join us. the food will be good (if pam cooks instead of me) and the friendship will be excellent.