Since Whitney and I began our journey with Jesus, we have always desired to be sensitive to God's leading on our lives. This included interning with Cru, and then joining staff. We talk often with students about a willingness to follow God and go wherever he would call you to go, say whatever he would call you to say, do whatever he would call you to do, and to give whatever he would call you to give. We have really prayed that God would make that true of us as well and not just our students. Well, that is easy to pray and hard to follow. But, by God's grace and power, we are trying to follow.
Over the past few years God has been slowly tugging on our hearts and moving us in the direction of Church planting. This started with our experiences of a gospel-centered church, New Life Presbyterian, that we have been involved in for the past few years and has been fueled greatly by our ministry to college students at Ball State. We have encountered countless students that have some church background, being from the midwest, but know nothing of the gospel and do not have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This burdens our hearts greatly and ignites a passion within us for this not to be the case.
Simply put, we want to see lost people come to know Jesus, so that the gospel will go to all nations and the great commission will be fulfilled (Mat. 28:18-20). This has always been our motivation. And as we have been seeking The Lord about how to best steward our gifts and lives towards the completion of this, church planting has been His answer. Research shows that new churches are usually far more effective at seeing people come to faith in Jesus and engaging unchurched people with the gospel in a community. This is why we are sensing a call not only to plant a church, but to commit our lives to planting churches that plant churches that plant churches...until Jesus returns.
We have for the last few years believed that God was calling us to church planting, but thought it was still years away. But, God has a way of changing our plans and bringing things in his timing. God has surprisingly presented an opportunity through our local church, New Life Presbyterian, for me (Josh) to take a full-time role as a church planting apprentice. This support-raised position will allow me to finish up my seminary, pursue ordination, learn a whole lot, and begin the work of planting a church. Our current timeline is to pursue launching a new congregation in 3-4 years. We are still determining location, but have narrowed it to somewhere near our current location.
In order to assess our readiness to such a task, the church sent us to the church planting assessment center for our denomination, the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America), earlier this February. This weeklong intensive assessment was so helpful and confirmed many of the things that God was doing in our lives and that others were recognizing. We were given the go ahead for church planting after completing an apprenticeship. This was incredibly encouraging as the assessment center has a very high rate of success for establishing self-sustaining congregations, especially when compared to the national statistics for church planting. This has given us incredible confidence to move forward- not confidence in ourselves- but in the one who has called us- God himself.
In light of all of this, we are leaving staff with Cru in June of 2014 and beginning our work in church planting. As an apprentice, I want to take the posture of a humble learner and soak in as much as possible over the next few years to prepare me for a lifetime of work in church planting.
Please pray for us as we get ready for this transition. Cru has been so much a part of our lives for the last decade and we are not sure what it will be like to leave (though we hope to volunteer some time with the Greeks!). We have shed many tears about this when we think of all the ways God has used this wonderful organization and the people on our teams to shape us and our walks with God. It has been difficult to process all of this over the last few months, especially as I do things like give my last official weekly meeting talk as a Cru Staff guy last night (3/27/14). But we are confident in what The Lord is calling us to do and so we want to step forward. So, please pray that God will continue to show us the way forward as we trust him, stepping out of what is comfortable to us now and into the unknown.
As we prepare to leave staff, a few things that we would like to say to all those who have been a part of our Cru lives (staff friends, students, supporters, family, friends):
- Thank you. We have been overwhelmed with emotion several times (knowing more to is to come as this gets closer) when we think of the very specific ways that you all of shown us Jesus. We cannot think of better way to spend almost all of the last decade as students and now staff with this wonderful thing called Cru.
- We are incredibly indebted to Cru. This sounds like a repeat of #1 because it is a repeat. I just can't say it enough, we are so thankful. The way that we walk with Jesus, study the Word, participate and are committed to Evangelism and Discipleship. All of it, in so many ways is connected to our time in Cru. This is one of the things that fuels us forward. We want to take everything that Cru has taught us and apply that to the work of Church Planting so that all nations will hear the gospel and that Jesus will be lifted high.
- If you ever have the opportunity to support, join, volunteer, go with, or otherwise rub shoulders with Cru staff- do it.
- A special note- if you are on staff- please still be our friends! We love you all!
We will be sending out more updates on all of this and what God is doing so stay tuned or sign up for our email updates through mailchimp.
In Christ alone,
Josh, Whitney, Tyko and Finn
