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On Wednesday mornings, I (Jaclyn) watch Mary, the 2-year-old daughter of some friends from church. This morning, Nikki sent a baggie of cereal along with Mary since she hadn’t eaten breakfast. It was some round, brown, chocolatey type of cereal–it looked like brown Kix. I was feeding Riley when Mary got out the cereal and began eating and sharing it with Raya and Corban.
Raya got excited and came over to tell me, “This is good! It’s dog food, but it’s clean and yummy!”
You may not know this, but during a NASA shuttle launch, there is an initial stage of ignition. During this stage, everything can still be shut down, they can still turn back and abort the mission. NASA calls this stage being “involved”.
If everything looks good, the countdown continues and the rocket boosters on the side fire up. Once this happens, there’s no turning back. NASA calls this stage being “totally committed”.
There are times that we find ourselves in just an “involved” relationship with God. Maybe there are doubts… pain… bitterness. Or maybe you’ve simply missed out on the adrenaline rush of recklessly follow Jesus. Have you drunk the kool-aid that being a Christian is completed by going to church and being a “good boy”? I’m here to tell you that pew-sitting Christianity pales in comparison to complete abandonment to Christ. I dare you to cross over from being “involved” to being “totally committed”.
Today I find myself on a “totally committed” mission… A month ago, Jaclyn and I followed the leading of God to resign from KBM, and begin the process of planting a church. I knew this was God’s direction for me, so I tendered my resignation before getting approval from my current church board, getting the green light from Wesleyan headquarters, or even knowing if our supporters would give to this new ministry venture. Just a couple weeks ago we announced publicly that we are following God’s nudging to grow a church here in Colorado. On Wednesday, several of our close friends were praying for Reid and I as we went to the District Board to present our church plant project. I have to admit, I was sweating bullets… if we didn’t get the go ahead on this, I was out of a job in 10 days. But the Lord blessed us with a favorable, unanimous positive vote! All systems are go!
In just 7 days I will be on staff as the church planting pastor at Cherry Creek Wesleyan Church. We are no longer “involved” in this mission. We are “totally committed”.
(I got this illustration from an awesome KBM resource called Fuel. You’ve gotta hear this to understand why it’s such a cool resource. On the web & on iTunes)
Marty, Luis, Gustavo
For the past couple weeks, the Chic-Fil-A on Parker has been giving away free breakfast on Fridays, so I found a couple guys to do Bible & Breakfast. Luis, Gustavo and I have been discussing the basics of Jesus, the Bible, and what it means to love God and love people the way God wants us to.
A great man of God, Adrian Despres, once told me, “No Bible, no Breakfast.” which simply means, don’t eat each day until you’ve read your Bible. Now I’m not a huge proponent of rules guiding your relationship with God, but this simple “no Bible, no breakfast” concept helped me gain the daily discipline of Bible reading that I had always struggled to get. It’s amazing how badly you want to read your Bible by lunch time!
Try it and post a comment.
Trying out http://ping.fm to simplify my social networking.
I (Jaclyn) started a new job this week: I’m putting my stay-at-home-mom skills to the test by adding another kiddo to the mix. Riley is 3 months old, and his parents are both teachers. Mom would love to stay home with him, but they need her income. She’s thrilled that he is in a home rather than a day-care. And I am thrilled that he is a sweet, easygoing baby.
Watching my kids react to him has been a learning experience. To Corban, he is an unwelcome usurper who is stealing my attention. But Raya’s mothering instincts are fully revved. She coos at him and sings to him; earlier she took off his socks so she could tickle his feet. (He seems to love her, too, rather than just put up with her.) There is a positively maternal glow on her face when she smiles at him. As she has put it to me (at least half a dozen times today), “He’s the cutest baby in my life!”
Today at church, Pastor Reid and I shared the story of how God has brought us to this point of birthing a new church. Reid gave a brief history of Cherry Creek and the vision God has been growing in him. I shared how God has moved in my heart and guided us to step out in faith in this new venture.
Listen to the whole story here.
Please pray… on Wednesday Reid and I will be presenting this project for approval at the district board meeting. I’ll let you know how it goes.
(Click here for the prettier article with all the pictures.)
When God Moves…
Many of you have read “Plan A: and there’s no Plan B,” by Dwight Robertson, KBM’s founder and president. If you haven’t read it, I beg you to. Its message is that Christ calls each of us to be “every day, along the way Christians.” If we only live out the good news of God’s love and forgiveness on Sunday mornings, how can we consider ourselves salt and light to the world?
This message has sunk in deeply during our time here. Another message that has been seared on our hearts is the motto of our church: “Recklessly following Jesus.” After months of prodding and preparation by the Holy Spirit, we are now taking “reckless” steps toward planting a church here in our area.
The Denver metro population is only 7% Christian. There are over 221,000 unchurched people in our suburb alone. The culture here is dominated by a postmodern worldview, which sees the church as irrelevant at best. Many of these people will never walk through the doors of a church building, and have no one in their lives to show them that following Christ isn’t a political alignment or legislative agenda.
I don’t know precisely what this new church will look like, but my vision is to have a “church without walls.” I want to disciple and train likeminded believers to intentionally reach out to the spiritually disoriented people in their lives. We want to live up close to those who have never seen Christian faith lived out in the day-to-day mess of this world. We want to follow Christ’s example of being a friend to sinners.
Our local church and senior pastor have been instrumental in this process of discovering God’s call. The church will be “birthing” this new plant, and we are so grateful for their blessing and support. As of March 1st, I will be joining the staff at Cherry Creek Wesleyan Church, and will begin the process of planning and recruiting for this new venture.
Just as we could not have served at KBM without your faithful support, we cannot fulfill this new call without you. Eventually, this church plant should become self-supporting. But we know we will need your support during the early phases, especially since our target audience will know nothing about biblical principles of giving.
So, once more, we are asking you to prayerfully consider being our senders. We are confident of the leading of the Holy Spirit in this, and we are very excited (and nervous!) about embarking on this new adventure. As always, we are so humbled by your generosity and so grateful for your friendship. Please continue to pray for us.
Recklessly following Jesus,
Marty & Jaclyn
Join the Movement
PRAY – Our vision is to see a movement of God in Aurora. Pray with us to that end.
CONNECT – Join our email list. This will be our new communication hub.
NETWORK – You can also encourage others to join our email list. Especially anyone in Colorado that you might know.
GIVE – If you would like to begin or continue supporting us in this new ministry, great! Here’s how:
- If you would like to set up automatic giving by credit or debit, call 720-891-9000 and we’ll be happy to do that.
- If you would like to send checks, make them payable to CCWC with “Reiswig” on the memo line and mail checks to CCWC, 19401 E. Chenango Dr., Centennial, CO 80015.
- You can also give via our Facebook Cause
You never know what’s going to strike him as absolutely hilarious.
I’ve gotten so many facebook comments about this, I might just have to start trying other modes of transportation. We’ll see.
