Reflection on 2013

It has been a full year since the  "exodus" of several influential families from our church.  It has been a hard year, and yet also a year full of surprises and revelation and new opportunities.  As 2013 dawned, Jennifer and I felt that we were starting over at the church.  11 years serving at Here's Hope and we were basically back where we started from in attendance, giving and ministry.  But God had plans for us, to prosper us and not to harm us, and the journey into new fields was just beginning.

In late spring, I got an invitation from our local baptist association to take my wife to Amish country, for a free weekend with some other pastors from our association.  But when we arrived, the dozen or so pastors were ALL church planters.  We were the only couple who were not church planters.  We remembered what God had whispered to us about "starting over" and felt as if God was giving us instruction on how to do so.  Our church was the size of a church plant we had been a part of way back in 1987 when at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth TX called out a group to start a mission church.  We joined as lay servants and were a part of the church growing to over 600 people in just a few years. This memory was significant, because Here's Hope was only about 60 strong now, which meant we had to develop a mentality of church planters.  So, as we talked with the church planters on the weekend, we heard many ideas and strategies for growing a young small church.

When we returned home, I felt as if we were to do the things that one would do if we were starting over.  The first thing that God showed me was that I was to "get into the community and develop new relationships with unchurched folks."  So that is what I did.  During the summer of 2013, I joined the Senior Center in Madison and began joining a group of senior citizens for a lunch twice a week.  Before long, I had people coming up to me during lunch for prayer.  Then, in late summer, one of our church members who works at the Madison Library shared with me that the new High School next to the library lets the kids out and they flock to the library after school with nothing to do.  So, on a step of faith, I began visiting the library on Thursdays at 3pm, and just walking around talking to students.  Before long, I had several students who i met and established a rapport with.  Then in December, while at McDonalds, I saw one of the students who was there with his parents.  It opened up a dialogue with his family.  

During this same time, i met with a church planter and shared my vision of reaching the unchurched in our community.  God must have planted something inside of his heart, because he contacted the head chaplain for the county YMCA and that person invited me to become a chaplain for the Madison Y.  As I met for the first time withe the Madison director, she asked me if i thought if our church could conduct a VBS at the Y in 2014.  Wow.  We had decided in 2013 not to hold a VBS at our church for 2014 because it doesn't tend to attract unchurched kids.  But at the Y...if we branded it an evening camp with a Christian emphasis, we would have no trouble reaching unchurched kids.  

So, here we are, in the first Sunday of 2014, looking back and not feeling all that great about the struggles, but also looking forward to a year of promise.  What we see is opportunities to build relationships, reach people who are unchurched, disconnected, and without God in their lives, and to bring hope for the hurting and salvation to the lost.