pat loughery

Church planting is, in my experience, an exercise in trusting God in the absence of any reason to do so. It’s a matter of trusting against all odds that God really DOES want to birth something – that thing that’s deep within your heart, the thing that’s bursting out, and continually checking that thing in your heart against the plumbline of God’s desire. Is what I want also what God wants? Or how much of me is in it?

We had a weird, wonderful day today. We had four of our regular families out for whatever reason, sick or travelling or working to beat back the holiday rush – which really just leaves us with 2, counting my own, and no guests. So 4 adults, 6 kids. All week last week I had a brutally hard time preparing a sermon for this weekend. Partly because we’re at an awkward size – 12-20 people. A bit bigger than a home group, quite a bit smaller than most churches. Partly because I just couldn’t get a handle on what God was doing in us for Christmas. Partly I suspect because I avoided it. So anyway I was working on a final draft late last night, after I finally got some momentum and felt like God was showing me how to handle the Luke 1:26-38 text we were using.

Two of the families missing are our setup team (them, and my family). So I got there early, set up the room, made coffee, did the decorations, etc. We’ve got a couch and a bunch of old poofy chairs in our room, so I set those up in a big circle. Brewed about 30 cups of coffee.

And in the end, it was just my family of 3, my worship leaders and their 3 kids, and our neice and nephew. So we sort of look at each other, sing some worship (which was awesome; Dave rocks in the same way that JT and Wilcox rock). Afterwards, we light the final Advent candles.

Our order of service has the kids in with us during worship and announcements, then we bring them up front, pray over them as a church (led by my wife Shannon), and they go off to kids’ church while the adults stay with me. So I asked Dave and Cody if they wanted to hang out in here, and we’d discuss the Luke passage, or go play with the kids. That was a no-brainer for them. We went to play with the kids.

And I realized something – I’ve known, abstractly, that my wife’s great with kids. I see her with our daughter, and with neices and nephews, and she’s great. But she takes a class of 6 kids, from 15 months through 8 years old, and teaches them the manger story so that each of them get it. She was awesome.

The kids then did some games to burn off energy, and they do a craft project, making a little manger out of a shoebox, Christmas cards and jungle animals (it turns out that for our kids, there were lions, tigers, monkeys and pigs at the manger).

The kids had a blast.

So then we tear down the room, and go back to our home. We’d wanted to have lunch with Dave & Cody and kids, so we were planning on that anyway because something good’s up in their lives and we don’t know what it is yet but they are excited to share.

A side note. Dave & Cody started leading worship for us in October (I think), six months in, after our first worship leaders and dear friends decided to step down and prepare for a move to Boston. D&C said up front that they would love to be involved, and they love North Bend and would like to live here someday, but they live an hour+ south of us, and own a home there. So they’d help us out through the end of December for sure, we’d all take the pulse of the partnership together, and we’d re-evaluate. But God would have to open some serious doors for them to be able to really plug in – they’d really have to move up here. Which would require a new job for Dave, God would have to work out a tricky clause in their mortgage so that they could sell, etc. And for 3 months it’s looked temporary, and that by next month we’d be on our third worship leader. I’ve been looking at my alternatives. Nothing very strong. Stuff looked bleak.

Anyway, their news is that it looks like Dave has an offer for a new job coming the pipeline, it may be a substantial raise, and they think they found a way to get out from their mortgage. And best of all, they feel like a couple weeks ago, somehow, Mt. Si just clicked as “their church”. Their kids love it. It actually looks like God’s running the big ol’ bulldozer, clearing the landscape and opening doors.

It’s hard to overemphasize how much hope this gives me. Way to go, God!