If you are interested in getting the inside scoop on what’s next, or to pray and support us in launching the new church, click here.
It’s with a great mixture of excitement and sadness that we want to share some important news with our Arizona friends and family. Over the past month, Bethany and I have been praying about an opportunity we received to help start a new church. After taking time to pray through it over the past month we’ve become convinced that God is in it and that we are being invited to go.
Over the next few months, we’re planning to move to the outskirts of Orlando Florida to partner with some other church-planting friends of ours to begin a new church. We will stay put at least through May, finishing out the school year here in Arizona. Many of you know some of our story. We’ve had the privilege twice before to help begin a new church to reach a new community of people here in Arizona. At this time, we believe that God is calling us to do so again, just a little further away.
As we’ve prayed, we’ve really felt the weight of what that means we leave behind. Our lives have been built here. Our families are here, we love our church here, and God has used us here.
And yet God has called us to make disciples of all nations.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
-Matthew 28:19-20, ESV
Sometimes “go” means, well, go. Sometimes following Jesus will require moving. (As a side bonus– it’s likely this verse could be better translated, “as you are going, make disciples…” as if going places was a natural and expected thing. Ok– side bonus over).
I sometimes take for granted that my church is just normal. As if it’s just normal to baptize hundreds of people every year. Or that it’s normal for your kids to love church, and to feel comfortable inviting your friends who don’t know Jesus to church with you.
In reality, it isn’t normal. Normal around the country is that more churches are declining than growing. Normal in many places is that there are no healthy churches rallying people to reach their friends for Jesus.
We’re praying God would use us to help change that, for a part of the country that really needs it.
We are so thankful for a church family that has impacted my wife, our children, and me in ways that are impossible to measure or repay. To my Arizona family, friends, and church– we love you guys! We hope you would see this move not as leaving you but as you sending us.
We know God is faithful and the faithfulness of God is our foundation for courage. Therefore, we have the courage to leave behind what’s familiar and follow him into the unknown. His faithfulness also gives us faith that what God is doing in and through Sun Valley East Mesa will move forward to greater impact.
P.S.
If you are interested in getting the inside scoop on what’s next, or to pray and support us in launching the new church, click here.
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