Introduction

I mentioned in my initial email invitation that the “what” was the news that God is calling us to launch a church called Kamm’s Community Church right here in our own West Cleveland neighborhood.  So now let me share with you the “why.”

I fully confess that telling you the “why” has been much more difficult and time-consuming to do than I thought it would be.  Where do I start?  Where do I stop?  How much do I write?  How do I say it?  How do I keep it clear?  Aaargh!

Probably the best thing to do is think chronologically.  Let me highlight some of the major events, conversations, and lessons that have brought us to this “crazy” notion of starting a new church.  I apologize for the length of this post but in some ways, I’m doing this more for me than I am for anybody else.  This is a great way for me to see in one place the journey that God has had us on.

Senior Pastor Only

I truly am amazed at God’s leading in this whole thing because it simply is not what I expected to ever be doing.  I knew my senior year of high school that God was calling me to be a pastor.  I did consider becoming a foreign missionary but after doing a six-week Missionary Apprenticeship Program in South America right after high school, I decided that missions wasn’t for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I was all for evangelism (and still am) but I wasn’t feeling led to do it cross-culturally.  So, off I went to Bible College.  I chose the pastoral ministries program because that’s what a future pastor was supposed to do.  I always had a respect for what God was calling others to do in missions, education, counseling, or other ministries but I just knew that God wanted me to preach and lead as a senior pastor.

Youth Culture Shock

After college graduation in ‘95, Amanda and I got married, stayed in the area for a couple of years, and started seminary, but then a couple years later moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan to finish seminary.  As a new student, my name was given to area churches as a potential intern (a.k.a. cheap labor).  I was called by one and offered the job of senior high youth leader.  At first, I said, “no” but God changed my mind.  That job quickly turned into a full time ministry position that lasted five years.  Great, great memories of ministry and personal growth!

How this relates to church planting is that God used those youth to begin broadening my perspective on culture, people, church, and ministry.  This greatly stretched me because I had grown up in a very conservative home, church, and Christian school.  Then I went to a pretty conservative Bible College.  I thank God that those kids asked me hard questions that ultimately were preparing me for what I’m about to do.

Intense Learning

I think that working with the “kids” opened the door for me to be able to learn in a new way.  As I look back, ‘00-’03 were some very intense years of personal growth and worldview formation.  I was exposed to men like James Grier, Michael Wittmer, Ray VanderLaan, Rick Warren, Dallas Willard, Brian McClaren, Rob Bell, and others.  Some of this was in a classroom but most of it came through through books, seminars, and personal interaction.  God was opening my mind to have a clearer and broader perspective on the kingdom, church, leadership, discipleship, and culture.  Ironically, all of this learning is what allowed me to venture out beyond my “Baptist Bubble.”  After graduating from seminary in May ‘02, I began sensing that God wanted me to work with all ages in a church and not just with youth but I still didn’t feel ready to be a lead pastor.  In spring of ‘03, I became the Pastor of Christian Education (which was quickly changed to Discipleship Ministries) at North Olmsted Evangelical Friends Church located just west of Cleveland, Ohio.

The House

This may initially seem insignificant to some of you but I’m convinced that the purchase of our home in Cleveland has played a huge role in preparing us for launching a new church.  For several reasons.  The first is that it got us into Cleveland proper, one of the poorest, neediest large cities in America.  I confess that we weren’t thinking any lofty, spiritual thoughts when we bought it.  We simply said to our realtor, “We need the biggest house you can find for under 100k.”  And you couldn’t find that in the suburbs where we wanted to be and what we were used to living in beautiful, affluent Grandville, Michigan.  The only place to find a house big enough for the price was inside the Cleveland city limits, in the “mistake by the lake.”

Another way I think our 1926 home has prepared us for a church plant is by how much work the house needed.  Don’t get me wrong, we love our house.  It wasn’t a dump when we bought it; it just needed some upgrading.  So, for the last five years, that’s what we’ve done (paint, carpet, 2 new bathrooms, a new kitchen, new electrical, landscaping, etc.).  I thank God that my dad taught me how to work hard and to try new things.  I’ve learned a ton about building, repair, and planning which has all kinds of practical connections with launching a church, the biggest of which is that I’m just like all the other people in my neighborhood whose homes need lots of work.  More on this in other posts.

More Intense Learning

It seems like there is an ebb and flow to learning and spiritual growth.  God shows me some really cool things and then I need time to process them before another wave hits, which is what happened in ‘04-’06.  This time my influencers were John Ortberg, Richard Foster, Phil and Sandy Hovatter, and especially Randy Frazee.  This time I grew in my understanding of and growth in areas such as the Holy Spirit, the gifts, spiritual disciplines, spiritual formation, small groups, geographical ministry, and more.

One of the biggest changes in my thinking that relates to church planting is what I learned from Randy Frazee about doing neighborhood ministry.  While it’s not original with him, in his book The Connecting Church, Frazee challenges the church to do intentional spiritual formation within community and to think geographically.  He argues that the proximity breeds spontanaity.  People who live near each other should grow, learn, and serve together — in their neighborhoods!  People have a huge problem with individualism, isolation, and consumerism and the church needs to adapt its ministries to address these problems.  This was huge for me.   I’m just giving you the very short version of how much this impacted me.  In Frazee’s material, which was highly touted by people like Barna and Willard, I had found a model of ministry that fit best with my values and perspective.  My confidence to lead a church grew immensely!

However, my efforts to implement this kind of thinking and this model at my current church has only caused frustration for me and at times my senior pastor.  It’s actually been kind of small “burr under the saddle” that God has been using to move me on to something else.  At first, I didn’t know where or what but now I do.

A Vision

Due to my Baptist background, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of people when they claim that they heard from God or that he gave them a vision.  While I still think there is a lot of abuse in the area of the gifts, I am now much more open to God leading us as individual in special ways.  A couple of years ago (I wish that I had written down the date), as I was driving home from my neighborhood Giant Eagle, God gave me a vision.  Basically, it was a picture of me pastoring a church right in my neighborhood.  At that time, I thought it was to pastor the small (and even dying) Friends Church only a couple blocks from my house but now the vision is much clearer to me.

From that time on, I have seen my community and my neighbors differently.  God used that vision to grow compassion and love in me for the people of my city.  I am no longer embarrassed to live in the “216″ area code.  I am no longer concerned about minorities moving in and bringing down house values.  I am no longer planning to move to the ‘burbs as soon as we get the money.  I’m now trying to see my neighbors as Jesus sees them — in need of his love.  That is also why I named my other blog tentliving.  You can visit there to read what that name is all about.

Getting Started

The biggest catalysts (pun intented) for this decision have taken place in the last 12 months or so.  In late September of last year, I attended the Group Life Conference at Willow Creek in Chicago.  I had gone there hoping to gain information and motivation that would re-energize the small groups in my church.  Interestingly, my biggest take home was the need for neighborhood ministry.  A friend of mine (Nate Ledbetter) from college led a workshop in which he described how he and his wife and two little girls (one only a week old) were moving to a poor neighborhood in Atlanta to do life and ministry among the people there.  I was quite impressed; however I still couldn’t see myself or my family doing that.  There were also a number of other workshops and speakers who talked about neighborhood ministry.

Willow Creek itself has moved this direction.  It was at this conference that I was challenged to wrestle with the concepts of missional and attractional.  For too long, the Church has been asking the world to come to them instead of obeying the great command of going.  I came back so unsettled.  I left feeling a sense of hopelessness.  I simply didn’t know how this applied to my current position in my current church.  At times, this confusion about intentionality and vision has caused me to border on having a bad attitude.  I’ve known for awhile now that I needed to move on to lead my own ministry but I haven’t been confident of when or where.

Let me go back for a moment and fill you in with aa piece of information that you will need for the rest of the story.  It was during the spring of 2006 that I was using Frazee’s principles to propose a new strategy for Friends Church.  At the exact time all this was going on, God had moved my friend and colleague, Alex Ennes (our youth pastor at the time) to leave our church and start a church right downtown Cleveland.  It was one of the 18 churches that the Southern Baptists were starting in a two year strategic focus.  The more Alex told me about his plan, I thought he was both brave and nuts at the same time.  I honestly didn’t fully understand what he was thinking.  Alex and I have stayed connected the last couple of years and he is now my coach for my church launch.

Here’s where things began to move a bit more quickly.  My senior pastor and the elders do see some of the same issues at our church as I do.  They can sense the lack of vision and are genuinely asking God what he has next for us.  So, my senior pastor decided to have Alex meet informally with our elders in May of this year to talk about the possibility of us planting a church.  Alex brought along Guy Stephens, the director of NEO360, a church planting agency in northeast Ohio.  I didn’t realize it at the time but that night was to be life-changing for me.  I remember telling Guy that I was from West Cleveland and asking him if he or his organization were planting any churches there.  He said, ”No” but that they WERE planting one in Parma, which has a very similar blue-collar culture as West Cleveland does.  That was about all I remember about that night.  Since then, I don’t believe there has been any further discussion about Friends Church planting a daughter church.

I’ll consider it!

So, a couple of months later in July, Alex calls me up and asks me how things are going at Friends.  He then outright asked me if I was interested in considering taking over the church plant that NEO360 was just beginning in Parma, which is the biggest suburb of Cleveland and is about 15-20 minutes from my house.  He said they were looking for someone somewhat indigenious to the area.  I admit that I was in a bit of shock but I told him that I’d be willing to consider it.  However, I had a ton of questions.

The next week Alex arranged for him and I to meet with Guy just to talk.  In the meantime, I picked up and read Bob Robert’s book called Multiplying Church which I had been told is a foundational book for the approach that NEO360 takes in church planting.  It blew my mind.  I could tell it was the next step in my understanding of what it means to be missional.

So, that next Friday on my day off, Alex and I met Guy in Parma at a historical sight that Guy was prepping for a missions team to come paint as a community service project.  Let me just tell you that Guy is one of the most intense people I know.  We talked for about an hour and a half standing at the back of his SUV.  He gave me just enough information that I was intrigued but he certainly didn’t pursue me like I was kind of expecting.  He simply said, “Let’s work the process and see what God does.”

That process meant doing a bunch of online church planter assessments (personality, strengths, spiritual gifts, etc.  I completed those over the next week and my impressions were that I was a good candidate for church planting.  Based on that, I was invited to participate in Launch, a nine-month church planting school which began in September.

I went to the Launch orientation on Monday, September 8 at Cuyahoga Valley Church.  As Guy describe the whole Launch school process, I kept thinking, “I would love to do this but I don’t see how.”  I had so many questions, concerns, and even fears.  The classes were on Wednesdays and I still had responsibilities at my church.  I couldn’t just resign and start working in Parma.  What about funding?  What about Amanda and the kids?  Should I just go find another church to lead?  Why Parma?  My head was swimming.

That night, I waited for everyone to leave and I had another long conversation with Guy.  Again, very intense but yet encouraging.  He said that my assessments looked good but we still needed to do the verbal assessment.  He answered enough of my questions to keep going but I still had lots more.

I figured that I needed to wait until the verbal assessment the end of September before I really jumped into owning the plant in Parma (vision, strategy, team, timeline, etc.)  That’s when the doubts began.  That very week, I got reconnected through Facebook with an old seminary friend who had some connections with SBC and with the SBC churches in the area.  He knew that several of these churches were without a pastor and that I should look into those.  I couldn’t get that out of my head.  I tried.  I kept telling myself that I should do the church planting thing but I didn’t have the confidence I needed to get excited about it.

Then, in the Launch classes (which they recorded and posted online for me) and in the first book we were to read (also called Launch, written by the guys at Church Leader Insights) we started thinking through our individual calling from God as well as the vision he had given us for our churches.  I was really getting uncomfortable and openly admitted that I felt neither the calling nor a vision for church planting.  I was certainly open to it and but something was still missing.

Okay, God, Let’s Do It!

Upon encouragement by a friend, I decided to call up Kevin Litchfield, the northeast ohio SBC home missionary, whose job it is to be a resource for the area SBC churches and who also works side-by-side with Guy at Cleveland Hope.   We got together on Friday, October 3 to talk about the various SBC pastoral openings.  Our conversation started off fine but after an hour or so, I noticed that there was a map behind me in their conference room.  It had all of the area SBC churches noted on it, including the various church plants in progress.  That prompted me to ask, “Why Parma?”  As he was explaining, I just couldn’t take my eyes off the map.  I was probably being rude but I just kept staring.  I was enamored with this huge hole with no churches in it.  You guessed it.  It was my neighborhood of West Cleveland.

Again, at the risk of sounding overdramatic, God was doing something special in my heart and mind right there in that meeting.  He was giving me a vision, a bigger heart for those people.  My mind became flooded with a lot of the stuff that I’ve been sharing with you in this post.  I just knew right then and there that I was supposed to start a church at Kamm’s Corners.  Why?  Because I live right here for heaven’s sake.  Because of my earlier vision.  Because of my growing concern and love for my neighbors.  Because of my desire for geographical ministry.  Because my son’s school is right there.  Because I already know some people who will help me.  Because it’s an easy location for people to get to.  Because there are virtually no Evangelical churches in West Cleveland.  Because the city will be supportive because it would really like to see the area improved.  But most of all, because these people need some spiritual good news.

These thoughts and emotions were overwhelming me.  I think I did a fairly good job hiding it but I could tell that Kevin could see what was happening.  He told me to go home and think and pray and write down my thoughts for my meeting with Guy on Monday.

So, that’s what I did.  Even though we had three birthday parties that weekend (two of our own as well as a friend’s), I still found the time to begin working on plans for Kamm’s Community Church.  I took off that Monday in order to use the morning to get ready for my meeting with Guy.  I walked around Kamm’s Corners.  I prayed.  I began developing a mission statement.  I started writing down some core values.  It was coming much easier now that I knew this is where God wanted us to be.

I was nervous meeting with Guy.  I wondered how much Kevin had told him.  I wondered what his reaction would be when I told him that I wanted to start a church in West Cleveland instead of Parma.  I wish I could just post a video recording right here of the meeting.  It would be a lot easier.  Long story short, he knew.  He knew all along that God wanted me to do something in my neighborhood.  He said that Parma was just a way to hook me!  Guy totally affirmed me yet challenged me (and even corrected me) in a number of areas.  He got on my case (in a loving way) about my faith.  He could see that I had some doubts in some areas that I didn’t need to and that I really needed to just move forward and trust God.

Since that meeting, I’ve been praying, working on this blog, reading more of the Launch book, listening to podcasts about church planting, dreaming, thinking, planning.  I believe it’s going to happen.  Yes, I’m scared but I’m saying, “Okay, God, let’s do it!”

So, What’s Next?

From here on out I’m going to blog almost anything that has to do with my church launch.  I’ll probably bore you to death.  I’m probably off to a great start doing that with this long post, which is almost 3,800 words just in case you were wondering.  So, thank you very much for reading both now and in the future.

But what I want most of all are your prayers.  Let me give you two specific prayer requests for now.  They are two biggies.

One is that this calling and vision would not just be mine but that it would be both mine AND Amanda’s.  I am very thankful for her response to all of this.  To a small degree, she is surprised by what has happened but she is rarely caught off off guard like I often am.  She sees the excitement in me and I can see it slowly growing in her.  Even though she has some fears and concerns, she has been very supportive.  I need to do a better job leading her in seeing God’s vision together.  That means praying more together and setting aside the time to talk through all of this.  I love her very much, am very thankful for her, and look forward to doing this launch together.

The other prayer request is that our official verbal assessment scheduled for next Friday afternoon would go well.  NEO360 is very thorough in determining the viability of a church planter.  They want to make sure that we know what we are getting into and that we have the skills and personality to do it.  This four hour session is their way of making sure they can recommend us without reservations.  Yes, I’m nervous but I’m confident that this is what God wants us to do.  This is just a chance for them to see exactly who we are both good and bad.  I’m sure they will encourage the good and help us improve the bad.

Thank You!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading and for praying.  I look forward to keeping you informed of what God is doing!  God bless you!