The first ten years…
– Met at Daytona Beach during Spring Break of freshmen year.
– Courted, dated and were engaged long distance — Chicago to Boston.
– Married right out of college.
– Limped through four years of youth ministry.
– Did extremely “well” on the outside while in seminary: Leslie was a research assistant for two of the brightest New Testament professors in the world (Murray Harris and D. A. Carson), got her name in the acknowledgement section of a few of their books, and won several distinguished academic honors. Mike won two preaching awards and was the Practical Theology teaching fellow: that means they paid Mike to teach seminarians how to preach (Scary).
– But academics is not spirituality. On the inside, they struggled those six years — getting lost in seminary: losing spiritual vitality and ministry confidence, and even doubting their calling to vocational ministry.
– Lived most of our 20′s without mentors and without peers who were going through similar life transitions as us.
– Yet, at the end of it all, got called through prophetic directives to do church planting in the Bay Area.
– Asked, “Why us, Lord?” — especially given the struggles.
The next six years…
– Moved out with our friend, Ted Kim, and our son, Stewart, to the Bay area in obedience to God’s calling to plant churches.
– Started a young family, Stewart, Bennett and Emma — all born two years apart and all done while trying to grow and nurture the church plant.
– Struggled through multi-tasking and chaos-management while raising these four kids!
– Learned a lot about leadership and prophecy through Ted.
– Met fantastic people along the way who were open to new ways of doing things in order to reach others.
– Yet struggled still with inherited forms of church that were attractional, dualistic and non-replicating.
– Expected our story to look like another church’s that started around the same time as us and had 150+ at their first “preview service.” The Lord mercifully prevented it from happening.
– Mike got to a point where it was all just a “job” that lacked excitement, risk and visible signs that God was alive and well in what he was doing.
The last three years…
– Mike repented of the above, realized he had no idea of how to “make disciples” outside of a college context (other than “preach it and program it, and they will come”), and asked God to help him know what next steps were needed.
– God immediately gave Mike three opportunities to share Jesus within one week of repenting and began to push Mike out of the confines of the pastoral role and more into the community — coaching little league, intentionally making friends in our neighborhood, mining natural oikos groups, and “working” in cafes instead of the home or office.
– Mike and Leslie read Neil C0le’s Organic Church book on my church planting professor’s, Marty Schoenleber’s, recommendation. We were undone and had a Matrix “Red Pill” moment where we realized that we had a lot of unlearning to do.
– Mike and Leslie struggled, along with fellow leaders at baylight, to know how to contextualize and apply the gleanings from Organic Church (which starts at ground zero with not-yet-Christians, NOT an organized church community) into our established and organized church.
– Mike met Ross Rohde, prayed Luke 10:2 daily with him, prayer-walked, planted a few churches together, and saw the formation of “apostolic orders” (or “church planting fellowships” as we called them) sprouting all around the Bay area.
– Mike invested much time and energy in the apostolic orders in addition to ministry at baylight.
– Leslie went to a Listening Prayer Gathering at Jim Rutz’s house and took huge steps forward in organic spirituality and understanding of herself as an Eph. 4:11 prophetic person. Through that gathering, the Lord gave us seasoned people who could spiritually parent us.
– We grew through these interactions in our understanding of the Kingdom life, of spiritual authority, and what it means to be an Apostolic-Prophetic pair.
– We took huge strides forward in understanding our natural, God-given design
– We began sharing it with and living it out among our respective spiritual communities — understanding that these things are shown and caught more than they are taught.
– We began transitioning our primary “roles” into setting/building the apostolic and prophetic foundations at baylight and the “church planting fellowships.”
– We began to see our “parish” not just as a local spiritual community but, also, the local region and the entire globe that Jesus asked his followers to make disciples of.
– We began to see the importance of living/embodying the transformation we desire to see in the world: of being disciples worth reproducing.
– Update — For a written version of the last three years, click here.
Since the summer of 2009 …
– While coordinating an “organic spirituality” retreat with Bryce B@rnes and Dezi B@ker, we discuss the idea of a “base camp” with apostolic and prophetic foundations in Gl0be, AZ.
– God inclines us toward this new way and shows us it’s the direction of authenticity for all our latest convictions about how the Kingdom of God affects mission, community and spirituality.
– After a summer spent praying, discussing and visiting Globe, we decide the Lord is moving us in this direction and out of the Bay area.
– Currently, looking at a early January 2010 move.