THE CITY 3rd birthday

Church Planting In Austin: Reflecting on our Call to plant a Church

Church Planting In Austin: Reflecting on our Call to plant a Church

Reflecting on our Call to plant a Church

As we are celebrating our third birthday as a church I am compelled to reflect on our calling to plant The City Community Church. During the last couple of years many people have asked me 'why did you plant a church, wouldn't it be easier to work in an existing ministry?' To be honest during some of the hard and frustrating times during these last couple of years I have asked myself the same question.

I believe without a shadow of a doubt that God called us to plant The City Community Church in Central Austin, and it is this certainty of calling that has sustained us during some of the tough times during these last 2 years.

Allow me to reflect about the journey: While we were serving at Central Christian Church, an established church in CA (2200 average attendance), the elders approached me with the proposition to enter into a succession plan to become the next senior pastor of that church. At the same time I received a couple of other unsolicited inquiries to become senior pastor at other churches. The opportunities for new ministry caused us to rethink our ministry and where we felt God was leading us. It quickly became clear that I not only would love to be a lead pastor, but that I felt God's specific calling in that direction. In response we began pursuing conversations with our current church about a possible succession plan.

The prospect of being responsible for a church rather than just one of its ministries was both compelling as well as frightening. I began researching churches that seemed to be growing and having a significant impact in their cities only to find out that most of them had been somewhat recent church-plants. I began reading about church planting and talking with my friends about church planting. The more I read and researched the more I felt compelled to move toward church planting. The statistics are staggering. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 churches close every year, some statistics have the numbers as high as 7500. While roughly 4000 churches are started each year, just to keep up with population growth we would need to see 3200 new churches started per year. I am no math-wiz but even to me the discrepancy is painfully obvious.

Simultaneously to researching how to start a church and praying about church planting, we started hearing and reading about the city of Austin. The city, or various bits of information about the city, seemed to pop up nearly everywhere, the news, the paper, people we met on vacation, you name it. During that time I received a package from a church in Austin that was designed to attract a new student ministries pastor. The packet included a video message by the senior pastor talking about the city of Austin, the church’s vision to reach every man woman and child and the strategic positioning of Austin as far as Education, High Tech, Entertainment, Politics, Legislature, and Business were concerned. While I was not interested in the advertised position I was gripped by the vision outlined for the city. Andrea and I did some research and found out that as a part of their vision to reach every man woman and child in Greater Austin with the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ, Hill Country Bible Church had an extensive and ambitious church-planting strategy.

After over a year of being in touch with Hill Country Bible Church we accepted the invitation to come to Austin for a church planters assessment. The three day assessment was intense and only showed me more clearly that I did not know how to plant a church. At the end of the time the assessment leader told me that they were about to invite us to come to Austin to plant a church and I told him flat out that I would refuse that invitation. When we returned home we continued to pray about our potential future as church planters, and while the task seemed daunting and some of the uncertainties about finances, kid’s schooling, leaving friends and a secure future at our current church continued to trouble us, the vision we felt God had given to us for Austin caused me to call Hill Country Bible Church and ask if I could still join their Church plant Residency program.

Without a doubt these last couple of years have been some of the toughest times Andrea and I have ever experienced. Finances, health issues, spiritual attack, uncertainty, depression, and anxiety about our fledgling church-plant have been intense at times, but I am so glad that God has chosen to bring us to Austin to plant The City Community Church. His grace has been so evident and the grace-stories of salvations, radical life-change, financial provision and the ongoing generosity of our people have been nothing short of miraculous and so fun to experience first hand! I remember talking with Robby Forsythe, my friend, fellow elder at The City and Worship Pastor at Central Christian Church, before moving to Austin and saying I longed to experience God's work in people's lives more. I remember saying something like this "I am tired of telling stories from months or even years ago, I want to tell stories from right now!" I am thrilled that by God's grace I can...

(I am making a video of some of our story and will post it here soon.)