Worn out tools

This will be the Venue's last Sunday.

I watched so many miracles take place in are pre-launch phase of this that I'm sure we were blessed by God. From nowhere we gathered an impossible amount of money to make this work, the core team came together with no effort, and are location just fell into our laps. Every need we had was met, except one.

We never managed to get a healthy number of people signed on to our vision. We gathered a handful of really awesome people, but it stayed at just a handful. We didn't have enough people to offer any kid's church to ages above 5, yet we were trying to reach young families. We never had the volunteers to take over the labor intensive tasks of set up and break down or neighborhood advertising, leaving our pastoral staff overwhelmed with all the tasks to be done in one week see how we all pull 40+ hours a week in our regular jobs. Our weekly offerings were way more than I could believe, but still it just met our obligations with nothing left forcing us to dive into savings for any outreach or advertising.

All of that wouldn't have matter though if we were doing what we set out to do, reach the last with the gospel. The purpose of this church was to reach the lost and provide them a place to connect that would feel like family, but in order to do that we needed more than just our pastoral team. We weren't doing this, so the question was why are we doing this? We decided to give God time to work and wait to see while we continued with outreach and advertising, but after the better part of a year nothing has changed.

I don't feel like I've really heard from God on this for ages. If He wants this saved we'll listening. The truth is, I've known a lot better pastors than me who have had failed church plants. I think sometimes God sends us through things just to train us for things He's going to do later on down the road. I think that sucks, but I'm open to it.

It's strange to put down something that's been the center of your life for the last 6 years, but it is also freeing. For the first time since I became a follower of Jesus I have no idea what I'm suppose to do, oddly it feels freeing. So, now what? I'm going to take a three to six month break from ministry, maybe a little longer. I'm going to go to church with my friends and just spend my time listening. When God is ready to call me back up I'll answer, but for now it's time to live again.

I guess I'm going to change the title of the blog soon. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep writing or not, I guess we'll see how it goes.

"Is it you now, to watch the things you've gave your life to broken, stoop and build them up with with worn out tools?" - Kipling (sort of)