What's Next for {Our} Family?

Yesterday we made our announcement "blog official".
And I didn't realize I would leave so many people hanging about our future plans.
Sorry about that. :-)
It was just a lot to get through that blog alone.

But here we are.
Switching gears.
Again, the bitter/sweet.

For a year or so now we have felt God tugging at our hearts to possibly plant a new church.
We prayed, prayed, and prayed some more because this is something way beyond anything we ever thought we would do.
Jason was pretty clear that he didn't feel like God was asking us to move to another state.
But maybe another town.

We literally started praying over town after town.
It was a pretty awesome process actually.
There were towns I felt okay about.
And towns that J felt okay about.
But there were only two that we both felt good about.
So, we prayed some more.
Then some things happened this summer and we thought everything was going to be put on hold for longer than what we expected.
But a couple of months back God really started pressing on our hearts again.
And eventually it became clear that this was a leap of faith that we needed to take.

So, we were down between the two different towns.
One is only about 10 minutes away from our home.
(Closer than the church we go to now, which is 30 minutes away.)
The other would be about an hour and would require us to move.
We were okay with either.

Finally, God faithfully gave us the exact confirmation that we needed to know this was the right decision.
But, here was our big plan...

We feel like God is calling us to plant a church.
And we have it narrowed down between two towns.

Yeah, that's all we had.
But we knew we had to be obedient to this.
God has already got us through so much.
We knew he would get us through this as well.

So, we took the leap of faith and J turned in his resignation.
That was a Tuesday.
Our prayer - close the doors that we aren't supposed to go through and open the one that we are.
Pretty simple right. ;-)

Two days later he received a call from a pastor.
He actually lives in one of the towns that we were considering.
And it was the town that we only live 10 minutes away from so we wouldn't have to move.

So, after J's conversation with this pastor over the phone it was left that if we wanted to start a church in this particular town he would consider letting us use his church on Saturday evenings to do so.
(Keep in mind, we had never met this pastor before.)

Wow.
A building.

So, we met with him and J laid out his ministry vision.
And he loved it.
The funny thing is that we were really freaked out because everything was going so fast.
We just honestly did not expect everything to fall into place like it was.
And that is when the pastor told us...
He had been praying for 9 years for God to bring him the right people to start this church.

Wow.
The answer to our own prayer was also the answer to someone else's prayer.
And he had been praying for a lot longer then we had.

So, we went and prayed some more.
J went on his shoot and it was so amazing because he planned this shoot like 7 or 8 months ago and it could not have come at a more perfect time.

He was able to have fun, get away, relax, and unwind.
Just what he needed.
When he came home he felt like taking this new church offer was indeed what God wanted him to do.

We have spent a great deal of time praying about what our ministry would look like if we were to ever get there.
So, J shared all of our own ideas that we have been praying about even before we realized that this call on our lives was going to be sooner than later.
And the pastor loved them - all.

Wow.
So much support.
So much encouragement.
We are in awe and overwhelmed by what God has done.

The craziest part -
My hubby is going to start as the senior pastor at this new church in 11 days.
That's right - November 17th at 6pm.

And we are just having so much fun with this.
We really are.

We will be at Grace until the end of the year.
So, J will do his normal duties at Grace and then just the Saturday night service until we are finished up there.

Then we will be off and running at the new church. :-)
And once the congregation is big enough we will branch out and find our own building and be able to offer a Sunday service.

So, that is the plan right now.
We would love your prayers as we go through this transition.
Both our roles will be changing significantly but we know God will work it all out.
Look at how much he has already done in 3 weeks!

Blessings to you all.
Thank you for your sweet words of encouragement and just the tremendous amount of love and support you have provided our family throughout it all.
We couldn't have done it without you.

Now, back to the election.