Posts Tagged ‘dreaming’

Todd // Let’s go…

August 12th, 2008

I have been drinking the church Kool-Aid for about 27 years.  My life has always been wrapped up in the life of a church community, and I can count on 2 hands the amount of times in my existence that I intentionally missed church on a Sunday.  I was born and raised into a church family, my mother is an ordained minister, and I sensed a call to ministry at the age of 12.  i never once wavered from that call, following it through my teenage years, into college, and then seminary.

I really like Erik’s sweet church planting story below where his heart felt strangely warmed after watching that video and he began to think seriously about planting a community.  Unfortunately, I never had a moment like that and I have always questioned that my skills line up with being a church planter.  However, I am passionate about the church and I want her to be the kingdom of God on earth.  I feel like a lot of people in my generation have a lot of negative things to say about the church (and they are right for the most part), but very few are doing the hard work to make the church beautiful.  For this reason alone, I am open to the idea of church planting as a really good way to make a difference.

I am not merely in the dreaming stages of community planting.  Through a long set of circumstances that I will not get into in this post, I am sort of in the middle of a church plant.  A little over 10 months ago, I started a house church where about 15-30 of us meet every Sunday.  I have been encouraged by our gatherings, and I am committed to this group of people and seeing where God might lead us.

I would like to use this blog as a sounding board for things that are actually happening in the house church.  I will be posting ministries that we are trying to start, problems we are having, complications we did not expect, etc.  I would love some feedback about what is happening, so I will cherish you comments/responses.

I really have no idea what I am doing with this thing.  However, I am coming to learn that if you wait to do things until you have everything figured out, you will spend the majority of your life waiting.

So, let’s go…

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Erik // My story of dreaming…

August 7th, 2008

There are two of us who will primarily be sharing on this blog. I’m Erik and Todd will be sharing as well [we will get some bio info up shortly]. I just thought I would begin by sharing a bit about how I started dreaming about planting a community.

It was the summer of 2001, I was getting ready to do an internship with an itinerate evangelist, Stephen Manley. I really felt like God was leading me into the traveling, preaching/teaching gig. I knew it would look a bit different than the guy I was going to be traveling with and a bit different than most of the guys and gals that I know who travel full-time as “evangelists”. First off I probably wouldn’t go by the title evangelist. But regardless of the unique expression my life might take I was feeling strongly lead into itinerate evangelism, being the traveling speaker guy.

Before my internship started that summer I lived with a family for about 4 weeks, the Moore family. {Side note; they were / are an amazing family. I feel like I learned a lot from living with them, interacting with them, and just watching them as they interacted with each other.}

Living with them had it’s perks, primarily the home theater they had in their basement and right next to the room I was staying it. I LOVED IT! Watched the entire Star Wars trilogy multiple times on the big screen during those weeks as the basement dweller. But I also picked up another random video. The video was a denominational video about ministry or something, not specifically about church planting. I watched the video for some odd reason. A chunk of the video happened to be about church planting and a pretty amazing thing happened. As I was watching there was a 10 minutes or so chunk of a guy sharing his heart about church planting and his story about planting a church. As I was watching this guy the Spirit whispered in my ear as he squeezed my heart and said, “plant a church, let this be your story too”. I began to cry (not something I do a ton) and sensed strongly that the whisper was the authentic stirring of the Spirit of God in my life.

Remember, I was about to leave on a summer internship to follow the calling I believe God had placed on my life to be an itinerate evangelist / speaker guy. So what was this all about. I didn’t get it. It seemed like God was giving me conflicting messages. How was I to sort all this out. I had the summer to think about it.

Throughout the summer I studied the book of Philippians and really started coming to a deeper understanding about community and connecting with people in ways that are formative in my life and theirs. The interesting thing was that Paul had these relationships but he was also a traveler, you might call him an evangelist or something. This interaction with Paul and his letter to the Philippians would play a large role in what I would soon come to understand as God’s direction for my life.

I had an amazing summer on the road. Learned a lot, met a lot of great people, and really felt a confirmation in my soul (my hunger, thirst, desire = nephes — Hebrew word for soul). It was a confirmation to be a traveling speaker, an evangelist.

Then I went to a denominational meeting and it happened again, God spoke.

There was a guy at this meeting telling his story. Guess what he was? You guessed it, a church planter. I would say crazy, what a coincidence but I don’t think it was crazy and it certainly wasn’t a coincidence. As he told his story I heard the whisper again and once again felt God squeezing my heart. Tears, prayers, questions, confusion, and finally clarity followed.

It was that weekend in August of 2001 that I felt God bring it all together for me. I asked him, do you want me to be an evangelist? He said, “YES”! Then I asked him, do you want me to be a church planter? Again he said, “YES”! So there it was, my clear answer? But was it clear? Actually yes, it was finally clear.

I have spent the past 6-7 years now dreaming of how my life will live out the dream God has stirred in me. The dream of planting a local church community while at the same time traveling, preaching the Gospel, raising up leaders, encouraging the church. I am still dreaming about how these things will come together but because God is leading me down the path I know they will!

The dream is to plant a church with a team. My hope is to learn to be the teaching pastor, cultural architect, lead visionary/dreamer. And while living out this role locally to also serve as a evangelist; speaker, teacher, mentor, church partner. To do this in & with other communities all over.

This is the dream. I am waiting for the right time and the right people to live it out. So for now I’m a speaker guy who dreams. Waiting for God to open up the doors so that the dreams he has stirred in my life can come to fruition.  The conversation that is this blog will hopefully flesh more of this out for me. I’m look forward to it.

Still Dreaming
Erik

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An introduction to dreaming…

August 4th, 2008

I think we all have had dreams at one point in time. Dreams that were birthed in our childhood about being firefighters, doctors, professional athletes, those kinds of dreams. Many of us also have dreams that have been stirred in our hearts and minds by a God who also has some dreams, some great dreams for his humanity and for all of creation. Too often life gets hard, plans get sidetracked, dreams get forgotten… but I think God continues to dream. He dreams about what the world will be like someday, he dreams about how relationships were created to be lived out and how they will be lived out, and he dreams about communities of people living the kind of lives they were created to live and will some day.

I think God gives us His dreams from time to time. He gives us these dreams of his so that we can live them out, so that we can be apart of bringing his kingdom, his dream to come to earth, right now as it being lived out in heaven.

This blog is a conversation, a conversation of two people (and hopefully more) who are dreaming of what a community would look like of people who are authentically following Jesus and wanting to live out the life God has dreamed for us to live.

We are dreaming about a community and what that community will look like, smell like, think like, breathe like, dance like… and most importantly LIVE like.

An authentic Jesus-following community is somewhat hard to define because they move, they dance, they journey in their context toward God, toward each other, and toward Jesus (& with Jesus). I think this difficulty is probably a good thing. It leaves room for the conversation and it leaves room for authenticity in a particular place, with a particular people. It allows the conversation to be contextualized.

Our conversation will consist of two guys, Todd Maberry and my self, Erik Willits. We will be sharing our dreams, our ideas, our experiences. We’ll be asking question questions that concern our context and our dreams.

Who hope to include some conversation with men and women who have planted churches and are leading communities. We’ll probably have some guest bloggers from time to time to who can give us some great insight into leading communities of Jesus followers.

Todd and I will also talk about some of the basics of communities and of church planting. Not everyone will agree on these and many people will have different opinions — that’s why we talk and we’re excited about conversations that will emerge here. We also hope to talk about some of the distinctive characteristics of communities that we hope to be a part of. We hope to hear your thoughts and feedback on these things as well.

Everybody has their own idea of what a Jesus-following community should look like, how the dreams of God should take on flesh among us. My hope here is to share some of my dreams and visions of what one of these communities will look like and in sharing, stimulate a valuable conversation for those were are leading and will someday lead, myself included.

How amazing would it be to plant a church with a year or more of conversation under your belt. Ideas tossed about and fleshed out in a conversation with church leaders and churches goers all over the world. To have the resource of a conversation like this is my hope here, a conversation that will someday be used as we form communities of people who are trying to follow Jesus.

Dreaming of a community…
Erik

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PS: Todd and I will be sharing over the next week or so our journey. How we came to even think about church planting and where we are at in the process.

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A community planting conversation…

June 18th, 2008

This is a blog documenting the journey of two future community / church planters, Todd Maberry & Erik Willits. Possibly they will plant a community / church together but who know where the Spirit might take them. This blog will document their journey, their conversation, their confusion & struggles.

This is their journey!

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Coming soon…

June 13th, 2008

We are getting ready to roll with the community planting blog.

The plan is to start the conversation in August. Until then we will be thinking / planning / dreaming

We are excited for the conversation to come.
STAY TUNED!!!

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