Family

You are here: Home / LIFE / Archive by Category "Family"

Category: Family

Standard

We Made It!

We hope you’ve had an awesome summer! We are so excited to tell you that we’ve made it to Phoenix! The girls are all registered for school and Steph and I have been making new friends like crazy! We are finally getting settled in to our new place with a few random boxes here and there… oh and… I finally found all my clothes! 🙂

Below are 3 quick things we want to update you on:

1.   We’ve scheduled our first launch team meeting for August 14th. We are on track to seeing 15-20 people at this meeting! We’ve partnered with some awesome families and are honored to do life with such a great group of people.

2.   We have secured our location at Camelback High School in their 1300 seat theater! We’ve also discovered our worship pastor and she is awesome!

3.   Last but definitely not least; the Association of Related Churches has increased their matching funds to $50,000! This is amazing! Never before has a church planting organization offered such support in helping churches launch this strong.

If you’ve thought about supporting us financially, I encourage you to take a step of faith with us. Please partner with us for 6 or 12 months and help us launch strong. Your gift will be doubled up to $50,000. That means if you give $500 dollars it’s like your giving $1,000 because of the matching funds we will be receiving!

Our goal is to raise $250,000 for our launch and post-launch budget. That may seem like a lot to one person but if you can partner with us for next 6 months and give your best gift then I believe we will have more than enough.

We don’t want to just raise a bunch of money, we want to invest this money into launching a life-giving church! I can’t tell you the amount of people in Phoenix who are hungry for real, authentic community and an experience with the Holy Spirit.

 

As I get to know people here in Phoenix, I keep hearing the same thing, “I love God but just had a bad experience in church.”

 

Our goal is to create an environment at Victorious Church so that we can reach this “de”-churched population of people and help them re-activate their God-given purpose and destiny.

Won’t you partner with us to do the same?

 

VC_giving_button

Transition in Light of Tragedy

Transition means to move from one position to another. Transition can be good or bad. In my life, I’ve transitioned down and I’ve transitioned up, which is what this post is about.

I’ve had the great privilege of working at Oasis Church for 6 years under Pastors Danny & Jillian Chambers serving as Youth Pastor, Twenty-somethings Pastor, and Creative Pastor. To say the least, I learned a ton about life, leadership, and my faith at the Oasis. I can’t express how much I appreciate what Pastors Danny & Jill, and the Oasis have done for my family & I. It was Pastor Danny who saw the creative gift in me and helped to pull it out and ultimately, it was that God-given gift that opened the door to more favor & opportunity than I could’ve imagined. Over 12 years ago, it was also Pastor Danny who (through the “Best of Danny Chambers” double TAPE!) taught me what it meant to be an unashamed worshiper no matter what is going on in my life. These lessons are priceless and I am forever grateful. So we transition WITH the blessing of our Pastors (take note Christian when leaving your church! Leave blessed.) knowing this next season is going to bring more to us than ever before.

One thing I have definitely learned is life is seasonal. You learn to change and adapt to the seasons of life or you get left behind in the company of those who never thrive, grow, or succeed. For our family, a new season has begun and we are embracing change and progressing towards the call of God in Christ Jesus.

More recently, I was offered an amazing position as the Graphic Designer at Victory World Church in Atlanta under the leadership of Pastors Dennis & Colleen Rouse. It is a GREAT church doing phenomenal things, and it’s surreal I actually get to work there! side note… my office is sweet 😉 lol… I feel very blessed and humbled. I’ve been working for a couple of weeks now, driving back to Nashville on the weekends to visit the family and get the house ready to lease. (If you need a place to lease in Nashville, hit me up and let’s talk!) So we need to pack up, find a place to live, get the girls into school, and basically do a lot of work to make this a successful move. Overall, the family and I are completely stoked but also a bit overwhelmed about moving.

In recap… Moving to Atlanta. Great position at a great church. Incredible opportunity.

THEN HAITI HAPPENED.

This transition was a huge deal to my family and I… until the earthquake in Haiti happened. All of a sudden, the move seems small, the stress of renting the house dissipates, and my focus is now on the island of Haiti. My hope is now expanded from my little world to the world of helping Haiti. It’s amazing how we can see just the thing in front of us instead of realizing there is an entire world out there that we can help. Moving is a big deal, it’s possibly life-changing but in light of the horrible tragedy in Haiti, it’s nothing, not even a blip on the radar.

“The greatest discoveries of science have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it.”  ~Robert L. Park, The New York Times, 7 December 1999

I know it’s a ‘science quote’ but I’d add not only in science but… “the greatest discoveries of ourselves and our faith have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it.” We need to continue to be forced to rethink our beliefs and expand our knowledge… but that’s another subject for another time. This quote reminded me that this universe is a big place and I am a very small part of it. It’s discouraging how I can make things so huge in my own perception but in reality… it’s nothing, not a blip on the radar.

1 Corinthians 16:13
Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.

I have to continually remind myself that my eyes need to stay open and focused on loving without stopping. For me, this is the best way to navigate transition in light of tragedy.

Marco!

Another observation from life…I’m out here catching some rays on a beautiful Saturday and my wife and I bought this little kiddie pool for our girls. We aren’t rolling in dough yet so our version of a ‘pool day’ looks kinda like the trailer edition of Cribs… lawn chairs and kiddies pools… our poor neighbors. As I am feeling my skin bake and enjoying the sound of family, I hear a loud, very pronounced, “MARCO!” followed by an equally enthusiastic “POLO!” I look over at my kids and they are playing Marco Polo in a pool only about 6ft wide in diameter. Catch the picture… playing Marco Polo in a kiddie pool.

At first I laughed, but then I thought about how many of us as Christians don’t see the big picture… we just don’t get it. We don’t get how big God is, we don’t get how important the Great Commission is, and we just continue to play Marco Polo in a kiddie pool. This picture represented to me that we can be so spiritually inept that we miss the greatness all around us. We continue to be spiritually blind and stay in our 6 foot round pool of life, never venturing into the “BIG” pool to really reach out and to really stretch our faith. Who knows?… maybe I am the only one that needs to hear this but I think we could all look in our backyard and see ourselves playing Marco Polo in our own little, tiny, small kiddie pool in our own little way.

Anybody ready to jump in the “BIG” pool?