The Church Plant Wilderness

"The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception.

~Proverbs 14:8

Throughout the past four years of dreaming about this church plant it has always been our goal to be patient, wise and prudent in moving forward. Our hope all along has been to please God and to follow His vision and His dreams for us. Certainly there are temptations to move forward too fast - putting God's timing as a second priority. There are also temptations to move too slow - being held back by distractions or fear. Yet the personalities of our leadership team (and the entire leadership team of h2o) seem to be consistently cautious (in a good way).

This cautious tendency led to the decision last March to delay the church plant from the summer of 2007 to an indefinite time in the future - with a re-evaluation this March to determine the progress of those factors causing a delay: namely the readiness of our team and especially the readiness of Bryan. Over the past month, Bryan and I have had much discussion about the re-evaluation that will occur in March. He has been sharing that his feelings have not changed - in fact, his readiness to plant a church seems to be at a lower level than before. For this reason, he is leaning against being a part of this team. He and I have had some good talks about this, and we are continuing to talk (our talks also include the h2o leadership team). In many ways this has been sad for both of us. We remember the days long ago of sitting in a coffee shop in Bowling Green that doesn't even exist anymore (Court St. Cafe') dreaming about one day starting a church together.

And so now we must decide if (and how) this dream can still go forward potentially without Bryan. We have felt strongly that having two ordained pastors is the ideal formula for church plant leadership. While my own ordination is a little uncertain, it seems like it could happen within the next year (ultimately, this process is in God's hands). So I will be spending the next few months (until March 1) seeking God to see if He would ask me to plant this church as the only ordained pastor. I am looking forward to this process and I take it very seriously. I'm excited to look to God for something so specific. I really think that I will be learning a lot about myself over the next couple of months that will potentially have a lasting impact on the rest of my life. Please pray for me and for my ability to hear from God on this.

In addition, Emily has been sharing lately that she is most likely not going on the church plant. Without Bryan and Emily we will only have two full-time staffers (myself and Matt). This creates a need for the h2o staff team to pray again about joining us and helping to plant a church. We would hope to have at least one or two more staffers join us.

My heart is still for Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh. This campus is still at the top of my list for our destination - it seems to line up best with our original vision. I've been presented with a few other options that I want to be faithful to pray about as well, but at this point those seem to have a lower priority.

I know for many of you this has been a long (and at times difficult) process. Some of you have been on board with this vision since it was first made public. We have taken several trips together and have even dreamed together about what a church composed of "us" would look like. Thanks for your patience and for your desire for God's timing as well. At times, I have viewed this as sort of a "wilderness experience" for many of us - a time of testing and refining. We are giving God a chance to root out our issues (as He has definitely been doing) and teach us lessons that will profit us no matter what happens with this dream. Thanks for sticking with it! I will keep you updated in the months to come. I'll let you know ASAP of the December meeting time. This weblog was originally meant to be a chance to post thoughts and discuss, so please feel free to post comments. I would love to know where you are at with all of this - what God is teaching you and how you are feeling about the newest updates.

In Christ,

Jason