We're Moving!

We are Moving!!!

When: We are leaving Florida September 15th

Where: Denver, Colorado

Why:

At the end of April we felt God’s call on us to plant more churches. We had the opportunity to attend a church planting conference in Orlando with our staff and volunteer team from Discover Church. Since January, we have been feeling a stirring in us for something but didn’t quite know what that was. We thought maybe we should try living in a new neighborhood, or even the possibility of starting the next church plant out of Discover Church in the next town in this county. We knew God was doing something in us, but until this conference we were unclear as to what that was.
The first full day of the conference, Benj went to an early morning Bible study with Rick Warren and really benefited from the things he was teaching. Benj felt as though God was speaking directly to him about planting churches and felt as though we must plant the Church not just a church. We must live out the Gospel and live our everyday lives with people that need Him in that city. Pastor Rick taught about how there is nothing wrong about having a small church, but there is something wrong about having a small vision. At this point Benj thought of Denver, Colorado and not knowing why, just wrote it down and began praying for direction from God.
All the while, God was speaking to me as well. That same morning, I was feeling God speak to me through a seminar I attended. Sitting there, I kept hearing God say “be prepared.” As I listened to the speaker, I was touched by the lesson in a way that made me listen to God’s voice saying that we were about to take a big step of faith and to be prepared for it.
The next evening, we were able to have some time to ourselves to talk and Benj was able to share what God had laid on his heart! It came as no surprise to me and since then we have been praying together that God would guide us as we make big changes in our lives.
Something that truly burdened our hearts at this conference were what they called Missional Communities. We learned a little bit about them and fell in love with the idea of doing church this way. Missional Communities are bigger than small groups and they do life together, serve and grow together. They are meant to provide a way of growing together while serving and loving on the city that you live in. They are similar to small groups in the way they meet and accomplish discipleship, however, with a vision and purpose in mind to listen to the community and then go and serve in those ways. Currently our favorite part of the week is when we get to have friends in our home, eating, learning, and spending time together! It has placed a love for hospitality and discipleship in our hearts that we look forward to doing more in the future.
Some of you may be wondering why we are leaving Florida! We love Discover Church and we love the people that have become family to us. We are sad to go, but excited that God calls His people to something not from something. We know that God has His hand on Discover Church and its people and we are so thankful that He is already putting people in place to take on our responsibilities and opportunities to serve. We know that if we were disobedient and didn’t leave, we would not only be ruining our own opportunities to follow God, but also keeping others that are here from their opportunity to serve in new ways! We know we would be holding back Discover Church if we were to stay. We love this church and will continue to pray for and support them because we know that God had us here for the right amount of time. We know that our plans for this next church came from the teaching and the values of what we are doing here. We feel as though this has been a training ground for what is to come in Denver!

Our Plans:

We are leaving Florida September 15th and will visit our home town in Ohio for a couple of weeks. After that, our plan is to live with Benj’s brother and his family in Idaho for a short while so that we can plan and prepare ourselves for what God wants us to do in Denver. We have the opportunity there to rest and to really ask God to prepare our hearts and to do some training. This will also give us the opportunity to work and pay down some school debt and have valuable time with family! We will be able to drive to Denver in the midst of this time and find a place to live, work, and be a part of the city. We are excited for this next step and ask that you would continue to pray for us as God leads on us this adventure! There are a lot of questions that we don’t quite have answers for yet, but we know that God is faithful and He will provide in every step of the way. We know that God is preparing us and others around us for new steps of faith and we pray that He gives us the strength to say “yes” to Him and follow Him as He leads!