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My newest scheme is to read through Acts, which aside from being one of my favorite books of the Bible, is a great “church planting” book. I’m going to attempt to follow along in a couple commentaries as well: Ajith Fernando’s Acts and N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone (Parts 1 and 2). Here’s a great bit by N.T. Wright on the resurrection:

‘Heaven’ may well be our temporary home, after this present life; but the whole new world, united and transformed, is our eventual destination. Part of the point about Jesus’ resurrection is that it was the beginning of precisely that astonishing and world-shattering renewal. It wasn’t just that he happened to be alive again, as though by some quirk of previously unsuspected ‘nature,’ or by some extraordinary ‘miracle‘ in which God did the impossible just to show how powerful he was, death suddenly worked backwards in his particular case.

It was, rather, that because on the cross he had indeed dealt with the main force of evil, decay and death itself, the creative power of God, no longer thwarted as it had been by human rebellion, could at last burst forth and produce the beginning, the pilot project, of that joined-up heaven-and-earth reality which is God’s plan for the whole world.

Great point that the resurrection wasn’t merely a signature miracle. No, it’s our first and foremost example of what God does when “given” a free hand, unchecked by sin. The resurrection is what redemption looks like when the defenders have been left in the dust and there’s an open court in front of it (bear with me, it’s March). Eventually we’ll all experience this.

I mentioned that I was born in Lawrence, Kansas, which is essentially a mini-city with a thriving music and arts scene, a diverse population, and the most storied and awe-inspiring NCAA basketball team in the nation. My parents were part of a college town church plant pioneered by Great Commission Ministries, and when the church moved to the greater Kansas City area, we followed. This was kind of a let-down in that there were no back alleys to run down with my friends, but cool in that we found other things to do, like rig the local park with booby traps and throw snow balls at Suburbans.

Fast forward to now, and I’m still in the Kansas City area, church planting is still in the air, and I’m still predisposed to throw things at Suburbans (mostly because I’m jealous). On to the important stuff: While I was in college, Lindsay and I met at a church where my dad pastored, enjoyed an awkward friendship for about a year and a half, and started dating so we could relate naturally. That worked out pretty well. We got married in August, 2001, spent a few years learning how to live together, and started making little Vanderhorsts.

God hijacked my dream to pastor a young, hip, collegiate church (it was the cool thing to dream that year) and replaced it with the puzzling, nagging desire to start a new church plant that would take the gospel into a part of Kansas City where people weren’t hearing it.

For about a decade, I had felt a strong desire to invest myself in gospel ministry, so after I completed my English degree (Thomas Edison State College), I concluded that it was time to act on that impulse. Also, I didn’t want to spend my life writing catalog descriptions and bad poetry–so I signed up at a nearby Baptist seminary to develop my theological moorings and prepare myself to effortlessly handle whatever the world would throw at me in the years ahead. Ha ha ha.

While learning about biblical Hebrew, systematic theology, and what the heck the Baptist General Convention is, God hijacked my dream to pastor a young, hip, collegiate church (it was the cool thing to dream that year) and replaced it with the puzzling, nagging desire to start a new church plant that would take the gospel into a part of Kansas City where people weren’t hearing it. I started considering the Bible pattern of putting God’s truth out there in culturally targeted ways that didn’t dull the gospel’s ability to make your jaw drop. I started thinking about what a new church could look like and started talking to people about starting one.

And here we are. Lindsay and I are getting ready for the next step, which will involve training our kids as greeters, collecting money, praying desperately, and bringing a group of humble, others-focused people together to serve Jesus and our neighbors in Kansas City. When the time is right, we’ll go for it.

That’s us. Feel free to introduce yourself, we’d love to hear from you.