Many people have asked us, why Cleveland? Do you have family there? Did you grow up there? What side of town? I will have tackled two of these in the last Blog (Why Cleveland? Part I).
Why Cleveland?
The funny thing about telling people that you are moving to Cleveland is that I get the same response. "Have you ever been there?" Haha! As if, "if you had ever been there you would never actually move ther ... especially from Austin Texas!" Yes, I know that there is like 300 days of cloud cover, yes a ton of industry has left the area, yes half of the people are on prosac. Funny story, I work with a guy whose sister lives in Ohio. I was joking with him about everyone being on prosac and he said yeah it must be true, my sister has been on it ever since she moved there. (Well I guess it really isn't a funny story is it) On the other side, the Cavs are a growing team, they are going to be amazing as they mature. I have always been an Indians Fan and The Browns have had enough great draft pics to hopefully grow into some success. The beaches are awesome, Cedar Point is Close, there is a sweet zoo, and the list goes on ... not to mention there are actually seasons there.
More importantly than any of that, we know that this is where God wants us to be. There is no other place that I would rather be than in his will. We had visited the area twice last year and there was a connection there that I couldn't quite explain. There is a different mentality there that you can't really explain, but it felt like me. I remember thinking, these are my kind of people ... I have been missing these. We could do the same exact thing somewhere else and even get some good results, but complete miss all that God wants to do. There is nothing like the eternal effect you can have when you are right in the exact spot where God has called you to be. Right in the right place and at the right time. He has already set things in motion and really beyhond that, we could really live anywhere in the world and be completely content, but Cleveland and the surrounding area is our place in the world!!
What side of town?
We took two trips to Ohio last year. The first trip was mostly exporatory. We found out that Cleveland and the surrounding areas have 76 suburbs!! Holy Frijoles man! We had no idea. We bought the annual suburb rating edition of Cleveland Magazine. It was great ... it gave a lot of tremendous info and stats. We drove to most of the suburbs and and got it narrowed down a little to about 5 to 6 locations. We really feel like eventually we will have Venue locations in all of those initial cities.
The second trip that we took was partially a vacation. I visited my church planting/fight promoting/tatooed/real estate/Stage Building/Marketing Guru friend in Slidell, LA (Rob Braniff). Then we went to Augusta where I had the honor of marrying off my sister (Laurie) and visiting some family. We then got to spend a couple of days in a condo at Myrtle Beach with my wifes parents, her 4 brothers and their families. Then our crew along with Tim and Marla (part of the church launch team) headed up to Ohio. After we dropped the kids off at Nana and Papas, we spent a couple of days in the Cleveland area. I was actually surprised, because I really wanted to be on the east side of the city, but the more time we spent there the more we realized that we were supposed to be on the west side. We really feel like Avon is the city where we will begin.
Anyway, I hope that helps get a little into our heads and answers some the questions.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Why Cleveland? Part I
Many people have asked us, why Cleveland? Do you have family there? Did you grow up there? What side of town? I will try to answer these questions.
Do you have family there? Yes, most of both my wife's and my family live in northeastern Ohio. They all live about an hour to two hours from where we will be. We have been away from family now for about 10 years. Our visits to family always turn into at least a 2K mile drive (with 4 kids and one on the way we don't fly!). So having that much family only a couple of hours away will be amazing.
Did you grow up there? We mostly grew up there. We both grew up in Military famillies. Faith's Dad was in the Army and my Dad was in the Airforce. We both moved to Ohio in our early elementary school years and lived there until we got married and moved away to go to bible school in 1998. When we left Ohio I said two things: 1. I will never Senior Pastor a church and 2. I will never move back. I case you haven't figured this out yet, never say things like that because God has a keen sense of humor. Neither me nor Faith really visited Cleveland more than a couple of times while we lived there. Although the Texas weather and culture is incredible (for the record there isn't any beach in Texas that can compare to the beaches you can find along Lake Erie) we are drawn back to Ohio. Our hearts are now completely there and i don't believe there is anything that could keep us away. It really feels like a final destination and that is a feeling that we haven't experienced in a while. No matter where we were, we would make friends and enjoy where we were, but we knew that we couldn't settle to much because we weren't staying forever. Now that we are going, I can't ever imagine leaving or living anywhere else.
For the other two questions, See Part II
Do you have family there? Yes, most of both my wife's and my family live in northeastern Ohio. They all live about an hour to two hours from where we will be. We have been away from family now for about 10 years. Our visits to family always turn into at least a 2K mile drive (with 4 kids and one on the way we don't fly!). So having that much family only a couple of hours away will be amazing.
Did you grow up there? We mostly grew up there. We both grew up in Military famillies. Faith's Dad was in the Army and my Dad was in the Airforce. We both moved to Ohio in our early elementary school years and lived there until we got married and moved away to go to bible school in 1998. When we left Ohio I said two things: 1. I will never Senior Pastor a church and 2. I will never move back. I case you haven't figured this out yet, never say things like that because God has a keen sense of humor. Neither me nor Faith really visited Cleveland more than a couple of times while we lived there. Although the Texas weather and culture is incredible (for the record there isn't any beach in Texas that can compare to the beaches you can find along Lake Erie) we are drawn back to Ohio. Our hearts are now completely there and i don't believe there is anything that could keep us away. It really feels like a final destination and that is a feeling that we haven't experienced in a while. No matter where we were, we would make friends and enjoy where we were, but we knew that we couldn't settle to much because we weren't staying forever. Now that we are going, I can't ever imagine leaving or living anywhere else.
For the other two questions, See Part II
Monday, May 12, 2008
CPR - Prayer
So this past Thursday and Friday was the ARC-CPR (Church Planting Roundtable) at Celebration Church in Georgetown, TX. It was great! We met some really great people. A group of about 40 church planters all getting together, sharing their vision and dreams. Pastor Joe Champion and Billy Hornsby led the meeting and covered a ton of awesome compacted material in the two day mini conference. The most refreshing part, beyond the content is the heart behind everything. It is an overwhelming feeling that we are all part of something much greater than we thought possible.
You can attend church conferences and church planting conferences and not hear much of an emphasis on prayer. In this conference, this was not only one of the first things covered, but it was labeled as a non-negotiable. All of the planning, procedures, programs, smoke and mirrors can only at best pale to the preparation time spent in prayer. Talent, gifts, money, procedures, buildings, production crews, etc, are all great, but those things won't last if the ministry isn't bathed in prayer. We have all seen ministries that had it all, fall over night because of a loss of focus on the Cross of Christ and his cause. Prayer keeps us, connects us, propels us, and moves us. It is impossible to have a relationship without talking to and listening to God ... the one who has had plans for us before we were even in the womb. It is all quite incredible.
You can attend church conferences and church planting conferences and not hear much of an emphasis on prayer. In this conference, this was not only one of the first things covered, but it was labeled as a non-negotiable. All of the planning, procedures, programs, smoke and mirrors can only at best pale to the preparation time spent in prayer. Talent, gifts, money, procedures, buildings, production crews, etc, are all great, but those things won't last if the ministry isn't bathed in prayer. We have all seen ministries that had it all, fall over night because of a loss of focus on the Cross of Christ and his cause. Prayer keeps us, connects us, propels us, and moves us. It is impossible to have a relationship without talking to and listening to God ... the one who has had plans for us before we were even in the womb. It is all quite incredible.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Background and part of the Story.
This Blog is just to give you a glimpse into our lives as we go through this church planting process. Right now we are just beginning the journey. As a full time job, I have been working for a church media, marketing, and web company for the last 7 years. It has been an incredible ride. It was after bible school and while working at faithHighway that the call of God to plant a church somewhere in the Cleveland, OH area was solidified. It was April of 2002 when we received this specific call to ministry. We were directed at that time that we would not receive the next step for 5 years and that I was to stay at faithHighway & serve faithfully in ministry. My job at faithHighway led us to Austin, TX where we gained much ministry experience and were eventually led to Celebration Church in Georgetown, TX. In April of 2007 Celebration Church hosted the ARC (Assoc. of Related Churches) annual conference. ARC is a revolutionary church planting organization that fits with the things that have been in our heart, but we did not know exactly how to express. This meeting along with several other things became our confirmation that our direction was changing and that we need to start moving toward the launching the church in OH. It was almost exactly 5 years, just like God had told us in 2002. Since then we have made several steps and were actually planning on leaving for Ohio this month, until about November of last year. We found out that we are having our 5th child (no we aren't Catholic and we do know what causes this) combined with knowing that we were supposed to stay connected to Celebration Church, caused us to rethink April. We were getting pretty excited about moving forward, but the next 6-9 months left in Texas are going to be invaluable. I got much more to say, but I am off to bed instead. Until next time ...
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