Well, since my family has now been living in Lawrenceville for a little more than a week, I thought it might be time to explain our move and how it relates to God’s call on us to plant a church of house churches. In order to explain this, let me take you through a brief (kinda) summary of the last year.

Slightly more than a year ago we moved down to Decatur so that we could get to know the city for a few months before launching our church service. We moved down here based on the support of West Ridge Church, several other churches, and the promise of support from an individual offering to give us $800 a month for rent, a promise that was later raised to $1000 a month. All of the support came in the first month, then in the second month, the “benevolent” individual didn’t pay. We were to only get one more check from her, which left me trying to start a church, and pay rent for the house that we had moved into based on her promise of support. Obviously this was a huge concern and I started working a lot more hours trying to pick up work doing web design so that we could survive financially.

We held our first community outreach in event in August of ’08 followed one month later by our public launch. The services were going ok, but early on our team started to fade for various reasons. As the team faded our attendance did as well, and about six weeks into it we were spending 6 hours a Sunday to set up and tear down for a service that only volunteers and a few guests invited from outside Decatur would attend. At that point our money was also running out because of the aforementioned financial problem. So, because of this, I felt the need to pull the plug on the service and regroup.

The regrouping came in the form of re-visioning, and God brought us to the vision that I am personally very excited about, but that our core team didn’t ultimately take to. The vision is to create a church of House Churches. One large body that is composed of genuine, fully functioning House Churches that will meet occasionally as a large body to stay on the same page, to be pushed to move forward and to be able to do some of the larger services that a large church can do for it’s community.

During this time I started struggling with some depression and our financial situation got continually worse (along with the economy I guess). I took a job working as a long term substitute teacher, while still working on the church and working on websites, a combination that almost killed me and definitely made me miserable to live with. This was the darkest time in my life.

Fortunately during this time God saw fit to put us in touch with a House Church in Lawrenceville where we have been attending the last few months. Their fellowship has helped us to walk out of a lot of the darkness that we have been dealing with as well as helping us to understand the dynamics of House Church which would have been otherwise foreign to us.

During our time with the House Church we have let them know our intense financial need and two months ago one of the church members offered to let us come and live in their basement for a time to get back on our feet financially. At the time I dismissed the idea because I knew that God had called us to Decatur and I had no intention of leaving. However, over the last two months of praying and thinking about our situation I have not been able to get this offer off my mind.

Finally, three weeks ago, after another week of working at least 60 hours I broke down and told my wife that in the current situation I could only provide one of two things; either for my family’s physical needs in terms of making us the money we need, or our spiritual and emotional needs, but there was no way for me to do both. This led to a lot more prayer and discussion finally culminating in our decision to take up that family on their offer and move to Lawrenceville.

We have done this because it will alleviate our financial situation by reducing our expenses significantly per month. This will allow me to pay off all of our debt in a little more than one year while allowing me to finally work a normal (45 hour) work week. This move will help us spiritually because we will be in deep community with the people in our church fellowship and will be challenged continually to grow in Christ. And, this will help my marriage because we will finally have a little extra money so that I can date my wife again, something that I have not been able to do in about 3 years.

During the next year, I will be working a few days a week in the City of Decatur School system as a Substitute teacher, and I hope that this will put me in the a position so that next year I will be able to work as a full time teacher, if that is where God is leading. I will also be working a few days a week at my web design business and continuing to grow that. We still intend to stay very connected to the City of Decatur and to the people that we have come to know and love there. But, for the moment, I feel very strongly that for God to bless anything that we will do from this point forward the first step in that process is to become heathy so that we can move forward from a place of strength, not a place of frustration and defeat.

I can tell you, this last six months has been the toughest of my life, and I am thankful to have survived it. I can also tell you that even through the despair of great failure that I am extremely excited about the vision that God has given us to accomplish and I have no doubt that He can still do a great work even through a broken vessel like me. I am thankful for the lessons that I have learned in this process, for the pride that has been stripped from me, and for my family and friends that have stood by me.

I truly believe that God intentionally led us through this dark time to bring us to the vision and purpose that we have today, and for that I am incredibly thankful. My path has been paved with more mistakes than I care to admit, but at the same time I recognize that without them, I wouldn’t be where I am, and I am happier now, with this vision, than ever before.

So this begins a new chapter in the life of the Walker family, one of healing, growing, and deep community. My hope is that this will also drive me to more writing, as I have missed it this past year. I hope to write about communal living and some of the dynamics of that we are sure to experience. I hope that you (the reader) will stay tuned into this blog to read about spiritual life in the context of deep community, it should be interesting.

Thank you.