Transparency and Prayer
Transparency So as I stated in my last blog I went to a church planter’s conference this week. One thing that can be weird about a conference like this is there seem to be no failures, I mean very few people will come out and say things are not going well. You have all these speakers and they all talk about how great it is. What if it’s not all great though? What if the first year of your church plant was the hardest year of your life, and you are wondering can I make it through another one. While at the conference I was getting ready to listen to Alan Hirsch, a man consider by many to be a modern day prophet to the church. He wrote the books The Shaping of Things to come, and The Forgotten Ways. This is really off the point though. There was a man there who I had met in Tucson at something called a Vision Tour. We just happened to sit down together and began to talk and realized that we had a past connection. As we talked he asked me how things where and something amazing happened. I decided I would do exactly what I do with the people of ECC, I was transparent. I told him of our struggles, and our victories. I told him how I was not sure if the finances were going to last before we got to the point of being able to sustain ourselves better. I told him how that would break my heart because I am so in love with people like Tawnee who has such a beautiful heart, Ray who is such a servant, the little elderly women Nancy who inspires me to love others and live life, Dan and all his wisdom, Jeff, who is an agnostic, but is a better servant than most Christians, etc… I told how we have talked very seriously about me going on as a manager at Starbucks and making some time sacrifices because we believe so much in what we are doing, because we love the people we have connected with so much!!! Then he did something, something that caught me off guard. He prayed, right then and there. Thank you God; for a Godly man who was willing to stop and pray, for this man who is still praying. Please bless him!