Downtown Kansas City Church Plant (Update 1)
Several people have come up and asked us what we’re up to these days, and I’ve been promising to write an update, so here’s my first attempt at what should become a regular feature here. If you know people who know us, feel free to send them a link–I’m in the process of figuring out the best way to communicate with a bunch of widely dispersed people at once.
Lindsay and the boys and I are in this weird state of flux right now, as I’m still waking up in the morning and realizing, Hey, I’m not in grad school any more, now my brain is mine to do with as I please…I finished my final seminary class a couple weeks ago, and I’m currently trying to do some freelance copywriting stuff as we get ready for the next phase of life.
On a nuts & bolts level, that means attending a church planter assessment with the Missouri Southern Baptist Convention in late August. If you read the Our Story page, you know my ties with the SBC aren’t very old. However, after four years of seminary, we have a lot of friends within the convention, and we value those relational connections a lot.
If things go well at the assessment (which Lindsay and I will attend together), we’re most likely en route to a church planting internship for six months to a year, in the greater KC area. That will give us the opportunity to get our hands dirty working with another young church plant, gain valuable experience, be part of the community. In short, learn and serve while getting some oversight and input as I put my own church planting strategy together and work to build a core team.
That’s our plan. In some ways, this interim is the calm before the storm, as our lives will look very different a few months down the road. As you can imagine, we’re very excited to move on to new things, and at the same time counting on God to meet some big needs. (One of those will be finding a new place to live, ideally near downtown Kansas City.)
As we move forward, we definitely covet your prayers. Feel free to shoot me any questions you have about what, why, when, or how we’re doing this church planting thing. We’d like to be able to hang out with all our friends at the same time, but since they’re scattered all over the city (and country), we’ll do the best we can with remote communication!
Grace and peace.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
have you asked GCM leadership if they would be interested in partnering with you and sending you out under their name?
July 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hey Ruth, good question. I’ve been out of the GCM loop for awhile, so I’ve misplaced all the cell #s of the leaders I used to have on speed dial.
Yeah, honestly, I haven’t had the chance to interact with many GCM people outside of Cornerstone…my understanding is, the association prefers to work through local churches. Maybe there’s a possibility we could partner with GCM via Cornerstone, but nothing’s been discussed so far. Lindsay and I love our Great Commission roots, so finding a way to partner with them also would be a “best of both worlds” scenario.