settling in...

i want to apologize for going so dark on the whole blog front. things have been a little crazy as we have tried to get settled in, here in austin. actually we are not in austin, just a little bit closer to austin. i never realized the truth of that until having been here for a little over a month i can count on one hand the number of times i have actually been in central austin. that said we are a step closer and will be making an even bigger step as we are starting to look at places in and around the downtown area.

our time in apartment life taught us that the most natural way to build relationships with people is to live life alongside of them. that is why we are anxious to get to downtown and begin living life alongside those we hope to minister to. i took an important step this week as i am looking to get on with a nice restaurant in downtown. i believe that this restaurant could provide the kind of income to make the move to downtown possible even prior to being at full support. i am cautiously optimistic that God will use this to facilitate our move.

in other happenings, i have made a few contacts that could prove very helpful in building a core group for the table. we will just have to see where these conversations go and how God uses them to bring to fruition the vision that He has given to me.

until the next installment... God bless

the big move

so the time has come... we are moving to austin. as of tuesday renee's and my 9 year stint in dallas will come to an end and we will once again be austinites. the move comes at a time when our ministry as a cares team at villa miranda apartments is coming to a sad end after 3 1/2 years.

we are both sad and excited about our move. sad to leave so many good friends, with whom we have shared the last 9 years. excited to see what God has in store for us on this grand adventure. oh yeah, there is a healthy amount of trepidation as well, as we are not entirely sure where the money for this adventure is going to come. well... that's not entirely true, we know that it will come from God, but the particular vessels from which He will dispense it are as yet not fully known. yet, i know that our God is Yahweh-Yireh (provider-God), and since all resources are his resources, we will be taken care of.

we can't wait to get started reaching the people of austin with the life changing gospel of Jesus Christ. i often tremble with expectation and yet realize that every day i come in contact with countless people who need to hear the life giving message of hope--even the days that i am not in austin. a wise friend of mine told me that most of our calling to ministry in a particular location is largely found in our preference and suitability for that place, yet that should not stop us from fulfilling God's command to minister and make disciples where ever we are. at the same time another wise friend of mine while affirming his "redness" confessed his love of "blue people." with that sentiment, i must concur. i love "blue people," they are very much interesting to me. oh yeah and "blue people" need Jesus too!

a prayer

i'm laying in bed unable to go to sleep. deep down something is gnawing at my gut. i feel sick, i feel weak, i feel inadequate, i feel like a failure, i feel scared. a prayer goes up...





Father in heaven.

oh God! help me!

i am overwhelmed.

i know you have given me this vision and i know it is good. i am scared. i am about to move my family to austin to do this thing and i cannot escape the fear of what happens if i am not up to the task. my failures and flaws are becoming readily apparent to me, and i am not sure i like who i see. how can you possibly use me?! and yet you have a history of using losers and wannabe's like me.

so help me God! help me not to become paralyzed by fear. give me the fortitude to push on when i am discouraged. give me the discipline to do the things i know i need to do, even when they are unpleasant to me. the task that you have laid at my feet is a noble one. it is one worth fighting for, worth dying for. why have i become so faint hearted?! make me a warrior! give me boldness and singleness of vision to pursue what you have placed on my heart. let me not whither in the face of adversity, because i cannot doubt that a vision as grand as this would escape the attention of our adversary. he will not let it proceed without a fight. this is just a taste of the adversity that will yet come. and yet, i cannot fail now. i cannot resign this dream to the dingy closet of memory, where broken dreams are left to gather dust.

as Jesus said, "our Father in heaven, may your name be honored." i want to honor you. i want to make your name great on the earth, and particularly in austin.

"may your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." i do this for your kingdom, to spread it here on this earth, in this city. may your will be done and your plans fulfilled in me and through me.

Jesus continued, "give us today our daily bread." provide me with the things i need to bring this dream into reality. give me the strength, the single-mindedness, the resolve to do what needs to be done. bring in the support. give us partners and teammates, who will hold us up in prayer, who will encourage us, who will give to your vision, who will champion us before the people they know.

"forgive us our debts, as we ourselves have forgiven our debtors." forgive me for all my shortcomings. you know my struggles and i give them to you. wash me and make me clean. make me suitable for your service. help me to keep a short record of wrongs. let me dwell in your forgiveness and make me mindful of anyone that i need to forgive.

"and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." again grant me strength and single-mindedness to avoid all that will distract and detract from fulfilling this vision. do not let the adversary gain a foothold in my life that will prevent me from doing your will.

i am weak. you are strong.

i am distracted. you are focused.

i am flawed. you are perfect.

i am unworthy. you are worthy.

i am unsuitable. you are apt.

i find my completion in you. i need you, because in my own strength i will fail. so Lord, i cast myself upon you, upon your boundless mercy, grace, and love, and plead for you to do this through me. make me your man for this task, so that i can praise your name and proclaim your story, your victory to everyone i meet.

amen.





if you made it this far, you have prayed my prayer with me. i have prayed this as i wrote it. true some of the thoughts were rattling around in my brain before i set my fingers to the keyboard, but i noticed in them incoherence. i suppose, as romans 8 says, that the Spirit was helping me and interceding for me in my weakness and incoherence since i did not know how to pray. maybe, he helped by congealing those unconnected thoughts into that prayer, i don't know. what i do know is that you prayed that with me as it solidified in my head enough that i could write down what was in my heart.

the table pt. 2

oh how neglectful i am. as i was posting the last entry, i couldn't help but think that i was missing a reason as to why i had chosen the table as the name for the church. as it turns out, i did forget a major reason for choosing "the table" as the name.

the reason i forgot is that i want this church to be known for its celebration of the Lord's table. i believe that the Lord's table is the physical symbol or representation of the gospel. 1 corinthians 11:26 says "for every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes." in other words by participating in the Lord's supper we actually share the gospel with those around us. because of this i believe that the gospel needs to be presented not only verbally, but also physically to those who attend my church who may not be Christ-followers. so what better way to state your intentions to celebrate the Lord's table than to name yourself after it?!

so anyway, forgive my forgetfulness and and add this to the other reasons why i want to call my church "the table."

the table

for anyone who doesn't know, i plan on calling my church "the table." i thought extensively about the name and the connotations of the name. i wanted a name that would be catchy and at the same time meaningful, and "the table" is the name at which i arrived.

community and fellowship are the first things that comes to my mind when i think of the table, something the church is supposed to be about, not to mention that these are deep seeded needs of our culture. i am reminded of the song "the table" by riley armstrong whose lyrics follow:

the table's where my father thanked the Lord for providing
the table's where he sat us down and told us to stop fighting
at the table there were tears, at the table there was laughter.

the table's where my mother brought the fruits of her labors
we never did go hungry although there were times we were able
at the table love prevailed, at the table love was always there.

chorus:
i was always safe and warm
sheltered from the sticks and stones
and although time passed by and we moved on
i will still pray Lord keep my family strong
'cause life out there isn't how life was around the table.

the table's where my family shared the joys and the sorrows
stories of the day and the goals for tomorrow
at the table someone listened, at the table someone always cared.

and i will never forget all the memories at the table
holidays with relatives and coffee with the neighbors
at the table we were home, at the table we were never alone.

bridge:
around the table we were one
'round the table we were fortunate to grow up
and as we ask to be excused we never will remove it from our hearts.

i know this song is written about a family's kitchen table and yet it carries a lot of the sentiments that i envision for the church. the table will be a place for laughter and tears. it'll be a warm and safe place where someone always listens and cares. it'll be a place of provision and a place for mediation. it'll be a place for family and friends, a place of unity. it'll be a place where we grow. and hopefully it will be a place that never leaves our hearts even if we move on.

i envision that the table will be people's second chance at church. to that end and in the spirit of the table, i chose psalm 34:8 to be the verse that expresses the mission and vision of the church. it says, "taste and see that the Lord is good." it's not taste and see that christianity is good, or taste and see that church is good. instead it points people to God. too often people have been hurt or burnt by christians or by the church. the fact is, people and human institutions can and will fail us, but the Lord will not. we desire to point people to Him and yet try to remove the barriers that inhibit people from participating in the human institution.

finally, in an attempt to remove barriers that may inhibit people coming, i left off the designation of church. i did not leave of that designation lightly as i love the church or at least, as a friend of mine pointed out, the idea of church. yet i do not intend for there to be any confusion that Christ and the gospel will be our central focus. and since the church is the body of Christ, our church will be a church regardless of it being a part of the designation. the upside, however, is that an individual who may never walk into a "church" may find their way into "the table."

i wish to make one last point and one which i will elaborate on further at a later date. the name "the table" plays into a ministry plan that i have to reach out to wait staff, bar staff, and host staff in the service industry. look for more on that later.

why austin?

"why austin?" you might ask, and in fact i am often asked that. i say "why not austin?" fact of the matter is that once you spend some time in austin, you will almost invariably want to spend more time there. first of all austin has hills and trees--scraggly spanish oaks and gnarled, towering live oaks. the scenery is actually something to look at unlike dallas' flat and treeless landscape, and you would actually like to be outside unlike houston and it's drinkable air. austin has lakes and swimming holes. it has parks as well as running and biking trails. in all austin is conducive to being outdoors. basically, austin is God's country and i don't know about you but i want to be closer to God, so why not go to his country?!

*i jest*

*but only partially*

austin also has a great culture. i love how business and the arts collide, how government and academia rub shoulders among the hippie holdovers from the sixties. there is a reason that austin adopted the moto "keep austin weird" and some call it the little blue dot on the big red map of texas. it's true that austin is more liberal than the rest of the state, and yet therein lies some of austin's charm. people in austin for better or worse really strive to live according to their beliefs and hold to them passionately. they will not casually adopt a new set of beliefs, rather they will carefully consider the options before deciding. the exciting part of this is that when they do adopt a new set of beliefs they jump into them with great fervor and activism. the down side is that it takes a whole lot more effort in smoothing the way and a whole lot more patience.

did you know that, by conservative estimates 70 percent of austin is unchurched? when you get into the heart of the city where i want to go that number climbs toward 80-85 percent or more. did you know that according to "operation world" that 1/3 of the world's population professes Christ while the other 2/3 are not. when i look at austin, and particularly downtown, i see more than 2/3 of the population that does not profess Christ. that's higher than the what is going on in the world as a whole--right here in the heart of the "bible belt!" you want to talk about a mission field?!

the difference between austin and the world at large is that the people in austin have exposure to christianity and are not simply uninformed. they have been exposed to christianity and have for one reason or another rejected it or are simply indifferent to it. if that were the case i believe my job would be an easier one. i would only have to confront them with the hope of the gospel. as it is, i not only have to confront them with the hope of the gospel but will also have to overcome their previous experiences that have led them to their indifference or rejection.

mark driscoll of mars hill church in seattle and matt chandler of the village church in dallas have the conversation about who has the more difficult job, mark trying to point people in the "godless northwest" to Christ or matt attempting the same in the "culturally christian" south. i would contend that austin combines the worst of each--in a very real sense austin emulates much of the godlessness of the northwest and yet is surrounded by cultural christianity that professes Christ without much life change.

earlier i mentioned people in austin do not tend to hold a belief without allowing it to impact them. as such they do not understand people who profess Christ without allowing his teachings to change them. and so hypocrisy in christianity is a huge stumbling block for austinites. when they see christians acting like the world they say "they don't act any differently from non-christians" or "if that's what it means to be a christian then i don't want to be that." the latter sentiment is particularly true when the christians adopt a "holier than thou" attitude toward others while not holding themselves to the same standard. in short a lack of authenticity and grace are major hinderances to many austinites' reception of the gospel, and is a significant part of my challenge. i want my church to be people's "second chance at church," to find in church and the people there what they have missed until that point. to do that we are going to have to look and act differently than their previous experience of church or christianity.

when you throw all these pieces into the great mixing bowl of my mind and then pour it into my heart the outcome is my reasoning and passion behind going to austin. i cannot boil it down to a single or simple explanation nor do i desire to. i prefer to wrestle in the dirt with all the facets and come out muddy because then i can be sure that i am where God wants me and not just where i, in my own humanness, want to go. about as simply as i can phrase it is to say that austin is my passion and it appears that it is God's as well, so i am in good company.

that's why austin!

first things...

where do i begin? this blogging thing has been on my mind for a while and yet it is a discipline of which i am not entirely sure. will i be consistent? will it be interesting? to these questions and many others i don't honestly know the answers. still, this nagging in my brain won't let me go to sleep, despite the late hour, until i get this experiment under way.

so hang with me. if you find my story compelling then share it and enjoin others on the journey that i have, with God and my family, begun. the crazy part is that many of you will know bits and pieces of my story and yet you might not have the grand scope. i write this as an attempt to consolidate my story and get all of you on board with where i have come from and where i am going.

so where do i begin? well let's jump in media res (in the middle of things). while attending the university of texas at austin, i had my crisis of faith, so to speak. for the first time, i was making my own decisions of who to hang out with, what to do, and whether or not to go to church. i had to choose to make my faith my own. during this time, i attended three churches in the austin area. the first church was too far to continue going regularly when i no longer had a ride. the second went through a hard change of senior and college pastors right around the same time many of my friends left and so did i. the final church was my church home until i left austin, first evangelical free church of austin, with whom i hope to partner in starting my church.

following college i ended up in dallas, where i married my wife reneé and tried to figure out what God had in store for me. i began to feel God’s tug on me toward going into full-time christian ministry, so i enrolled at dallas theological seminary, not knowing what i was going to do when i finished. during my time in seminary and as a result of a public shift toward being outwardly focused at our church, irving bible church, i began to develop a heart for the lost and spreading God’s kingdom.

reneé and i got involved with apartment life, an apartment ministry. i also got involved with the alpha program at our church and eventually interned with the externally focused ministries at irving bible. all the while i began to think about planting a church. at the same time, my heart was again drawn toward austin and particularly the downtown area. so there it is, an extremely short version of how I got here.

well i guess that is as good a place as any to begin and we'll see where this grand adventure takes us. Lord willing, it will take us to austin and through the foundation of a small expression of Christ's church.