About 8 years ago, while starting a campus ministry at GMU, there were a bunch of consecutive weeks where nobody showed up to the Bible studies that I was "leading." Each week I sat there awkwardly wondering what went wrong..."Maybe they thought I said 7:30?" "Maybe they thought I said 7:45?" "It's not unusual for college students to be an hour late...right?" During that time I decided three things: If God does not move, then I'm wasting my time. I thought I could build an aw

Pain and/or discomfort can be a strong motivator for someone to step out and try something new. That is not our story. There were a lot of times when relationships were strained and I wanted to do something different. I needed one of those cheap Southwest Airlines tickets - I wanted to get away. We refused to leave during those difficult times because I believe that God had a better idea, and I refused to let the cancer of quitting become a part of my spiritual DNA. (This no

The hardest conversation so far has been with our kids. I dreaded it because they have had the same friends for most of their life- and their friends are awesome. Like with many of the conversations, it was met with tears and concern about losing their friends - just like we expected. Everyone went to bed a little bit sad that night, but we woke up to something entirely different. The peace of God welcomed us the next morning with thoughts of adventure, and filled with hope f

With the help of our pastors and elders, we recognized that the burden in our hearts was a call from God to plant a church (more on that in a later blog) - the only question was "where." I have literally wanted to plant churches every place that I have ever visited - so that wasn't very good criteria. We spent a lot of our earliest energy trying to find a way to stay close because of our devotion to Grace Covenant Church, love for our leaders, and the fact that we never plann