It
is our desire to start a church, which continues to multiply itself, for people
who don’t go to church. A church that consists of people in process; a place
where the curious, the unconvinced, the used-to-believe and the broken, as well
as the committed come together to discover how to live life with God.
How does Austin,
Texas fit into the plan?
Like
so many other things that God does in our lives, Austin appears to be an
unexpected answer to prayer. An answer to prayer because we have known for the
past couple of months that God was asking us to church plant again. During this
time, as we have been praying for him to lead us to the location where he would
have us to plant, we have had several possibilities knocked off the potential locations
list. It felt like every week, we were saying, “we’ll know more next week”. And
every week we did know more, but not much. Mostly, where we would not be going.
It felt like there was a little bit shaved off a brick of clay every week. We
could tell there was an identifiable sculpture somewhere under there, but the
shavings that had come off still hadn’t revealed anything definite. We were
pretty close to saying that we were going to plant in North King County and we
were ok with that, but didn’t feel settled on that as a reality. Now comes the
unexpected part…out of the blue, we received a call from our Northwest District
Supervisor and subsequently, a call from the MidSouth District Supervisor,
asking us if we would consider planting a church in Austin Texas. We had never
considered planting in Texas, lots of other places, but never Texas. Long story
short, we took a trip to check out Austin and pray about it, and we have our
answer to prayer. Austin is the place where we feel God is asking us to plant.
It is a great fit for our family, the kind of church we want to plant fits
there, and to reach the area, the multiplication of many churches is necessary.
It all lines up, so here we go, cowboy boots and all.
Actually
the Austin area is a lot less cowboy boots and more a thriving metropolitan
city. It is known for being nothing like the rest of Texas. Here are some stats
on Austin.
· Austin at/near top of fastest growing cities for 4 decades
· Austin is 14th largest city in US
· 1/2 million have moved into the Austin area in the past decade
· Austin’s projected economic growth rate from 2011-2016 is 6.1 percent, more than double the nation as a whole
· Its projected population growth rate of 2.8 percent, 40,000 per
year, was triple the national rate
· Austin’s University of Texas has over 50,000 student.
· Austin was selected as the No. 2 Best Big City in "Best Places to Live" by Money magazine in 2006, and No. 3 in 2009
· Austin's official slogan is “The Live Music Capital of the World”, the city has a vibrant live music scene with more music venues per capita than any other U.S. city
· Austin hosts the annual Austin Film Festival, which draws films of many different types from all over the world In 2004 the city was first in MovieMaker Magazine's annual top ten cities to live and make movies
· Approx. 50% of people living in Austin note that they are affiliated with a religious organization
Stories from our
recent trip to Austin
While
we were at a Starbucks in Austin, a young woman overheard us talking about
church planting with another couple and she made a point to ask us to tell her
more about what we were talking about. She said she had recently moved into the
area and really wanted to connect to a church but hadn’t found one.
Another
night we were at Baker St. Grill in Austin watching a playoff game, where
because of the atmosphere, we were able to have great conversations and make
connections with 3 different groups of people. One of these was a table with
some recent imports to Austin, a young Country band, The Bad Intentions, who
moved there to try to make it in the music scene. We connected on Facebook
afterwards; we’ll look them up when we get to town and go catch one of their
shows.
We
had a conversation with a waitress, Michelle, at Gordough’s Public House (where
everything is served on or in between two donuts, burgers and all…crazy, I
know, but so good). Michelle was telling us that she had just moved to Austin
in the last year and she loves it. She said she has never lived anywhere else
where people are so accepting and open to friendships; she has made a ton of
friends since she moved to Austin.
The Plan
We
are currently raising 18 months of personal support as well as upstart funds
for the church. We are also giving people the opportunity to go on the
adventure to Austin with us. We are gathering prayer support and praying
constantly as we are continually reminded of how much we are dependent on Jesus
in this venture.
In
July we will move our family, and anyone else who said they wanted to join us,
to Austin. At that point, because this is a “zero based” church plant, we will
begin to immerse ourselves into the city. In order to do this we will move into
our new neighborhood and get to know our neighbors, we will both work part
time, we will get involved in our kid’s schools and sports teams, we will get
out in the city – the restaurants and events, we will place ads on craigslist,
we will facebook, we will twitter, we will explore and put into effect other
promotion and marketing ideas, we will make contact with leaders in other
churches in the area, we will continue to brainstorm and make course
adjustments in our plan as needed, we will tell everyone, why we have moved to
Austin and ask them if they would interested in joining us. And we will pray, because
this is crazy if he is not with us.
All
the while, we will work on all the necessary items that we need to have in
place before can launch public services. We will begin to meet regularly with
those who have said “yes” to joining the team to give them the time to marinate
in the concepts and culture and plan for the church. When we have gathered a
core team of approximately 100 people and have all the necessary things in
place we will launch – we estimate this to be 12-18 months after we arrive in
Austin.
Culture
The
church will have a decidedly “unchurchy” feel. It will be communicated in
everything we do that this church is here to give people who aren’t churchgoers
an opportunity to be in process; a place where they can come if they are
curious or unconvinced, we will welcome the used-to-believe and the broken, as
well as the committed and we will all come together to discover how to live
life with God. Austin doesn’t need another church for Christians, there are
plenty of those. It needs a church, no, many churches, whose entire reason for existence
is to remove any barriers to the gospel for those who don’t yet know Jesus.
