I’ve spent the last 18 years either studying to be a wildlife biologist, or working as a wildlife biologist. Today I gave notice to my employer that as of May 16, I am no longer a wildlife biologist. I have to say that it is harder than I thought it would be. I would never want to give up the fact that I’m a church planter now, but I REALLY enjoy studying wildlife and spending time trying to unravel the mysteries of God’s creation. And I think it’s okay to enjoy your career. Actually, I think you should enjoy your career. Sometimes, however, I think we place too much emphasis on our careers. We somehow try to find our identity in our career. I know I’ve struggled with this off and on over the years. One way to deal with this is to just QUIT your career and see how you feel. Hmm, I feel a little more vulnerable today. No more paycheck on the 15th and 31st. No more benefits and 401K. Wow, have I lost my mind? I think so. Today I’m stepping out in faith to do something that God called me to do 11 years ago. I’m planting a church. The first of many. Woo hoo!

I stole this straight from another blogger, Perry Noble.  He wrote this on how to know if the vision you’ve been given is from God or not:

• If you feel confident that you can accomplish what is in front of you with no problem at all…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If no one is angry at you…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If you don’t have to ask anyone to sacrifice to make the vision come true…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If religious people are not steaming at you, blogging about you and/or leaving your church…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If you have the money in the bank to do what God has asked you church to do…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If every step is perfectly designed and nothing happens to totally throw you off along the way…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If someone doesn’t try to talk you out of what you are about to attempt…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If you don’t stay up at night thinking about the vision…then you didn’t hear from God.
• If your vision is in contradiction to God’s Word…then you didn’t hear from God.  (And no, you didn’t get a “special revelation” that gave you permission to trump His Word!)
• If you know all of the answers…then you didn’t hear from God.

After reading this, I’m 100% certain that church planting is straight from God!!!

I have to say that I’m totally blown away by the generosity that people have shown us. We developed an optimistic budget last summer for this church plant and began asking people to help support us during 2008. Without previous experience, it was hard to know if we could really pull this budget off or not. Our parent church, River City Church in Lewiston, ID really stepped up to the plate and gave way more than they could afford. Guess what happened? Within 2 weeks an anonymous donor gave them the exact amount that they pledged to us, totally out of the blue. It really is impossible to outgive God. We have had so many friends and family contact us in the last month and tell us that they want to help out financially. It means so much to us to know that there are people out there who really care. The donations are great, but what is even better is to know that there are people out there supporting us. Thank you all for your faithfulness and generosity! I guarantee you will be blessed for your generosity.

We’ve been looking for a Sunday meeting location for a couple of months now. We were hoping to meet at Hellgate Elementary, but that didn’t work out. We basically need a place that seats 300-400 adults, and has classrooms for the nursery and kid’s ministry. We would also like a place with a kitchen/cafeteria so that we can all eat together after the service.

We met with a realtor  last week and looked at some property that was for sale, but we’re not in a place to buy right now. We offered to lease it and fix it up a bit for them, but the owner wasn’t overly excited. However, we may have gotten a new lead. The Youth For Christ is building a new community center and hope to have it finished by the fall. They will have a gym, meeting rooms, indoor paintball room, offices, and more in this new facility. It would be so cool to be able to partner with YFC. We want to partner with as many parachurch and nonprofits as possible in the city, and this will be a great partnership, whether or not we are able to meet there. There appear to be a few obstacles to us using the facility. However, if this is where God wants us, this is where we will be! I have to make some more contacts in the next couple of weeks regarding the use of the building. I’ll let you know what comes of this.

Andrea and I met Eric and Jamie in Coeur d’Alene last Sunday and spent the whole day catching up and doing some planning for outreach and marketing. It was awesome! We prayed that God would give us creativity and wisdom and He totally came through. We’ve got some great things planned for this summer, like the Grocery Give, where we are going to partner with a major grocery store in Missoula and give away food gift cards to the 1st 200-400 customers. Even better, we’re going to partner with the Food Bank so that people can either keep the gift cards if they need them or donate the cards/food to the Food Bank. I can’t wait to serve our community in this way!

We also worked on the details of our teaching series for our September launch, Man vs Wild. We’ll have a bunch of teaching topics such as Surviving Marriage, Surviving Finances, etc. This is going to be so cool! We brainstormed and planned for about 7 hrs, so I can’t tell you everything. But I will say that we came up with some great ideas for our preview services, marketing, outreach, and our launch services.