Wow, a lot has happened since I last wrote here. Sorry for my tardiness, but the roller coaster of life has been in full swing these last few weeks. Where do I begin…

Well, after week number four of our official public church launch we decided that our approach wasn’t working. We were spending more money than we had available, which is never good, and we were burning out our volunteers with setting up and tearing down. We also realized that planting a church in Decatur after only living here for three months is similar to moving into the city, hanging out for three months and then running for Mayor, it just doesn’t work. So, with the dawning realization that we desperately needed to become a real part of this community before we even considered launching our church, combined with the fact that most of our group is not indigenous to Decatur, and with the consideration that we were burning out very fast, we decided to move our meeting back into our home.

I admit, this was a very tough move for me, seeing what you have been dreaming of for the past 2 years come together and then begin to fall apart all in the course of two months is tough. But, now that I have had time to reflect and really understand what happened, and what is happening with our community, I can honestly say that I am more excited now than even to be starting a new faith community in Decatur.

Our vision and mission has not changed, but our approach has. We have always wanted to be a church of churches. That is to say, we want to be a church composed of Home Gatherings or “house churches” where life is lived in community and our spiritual walk is a journey taken together. I came into Decatur thinking that we would have our Home Gathering going and quickly start our Community Gathering (worship service where all of the Home Gatherings gather together). The idea was to bring new people into the large meeting and funnel them into the home meetings, a top down approach. This was the wrong approach for our vision and for this city.

So, now we are taking a bottom up approach. We are meeting in my home and really learning to be the church. Through doing this we hope to follow Jesus as a faith community and better connect with our city in order to love people and build relationships. Our hope is that our Home Gathering will then birth several other Home Gatherings and that these Home Gatherings will inevitably come together as a Community Gathering.

I feel like this approach is more natural and will flow out of relationships and discipleship. This will give our community depth and a passion for not only meeting the people of this city, but also connecting with them on a personal level.

This is a transition I’m excited about, please continue to pray for us as we learn to be the faith community that God would have us become.