TJ is 8 months old today.  He cut his first two teeth (the two bottom ones up front) the week we moved to Pittsburgh.  Today I have just about lost count.  There are at least 7 visible and another that will break through in the next couple of days.  Amazing.

I spent a couple of hours out at North Park this evening with Amber, TJ and the dogs.  It is a huge park — something like 3,200 acres or something.  We walked around a bit and just talked and hung out.  I grow to love this area more and more as time goes by.  More than that I love my family more than ever. 

 I realize more and more how messed up I have let my priorities get in the past.  Iron City Church will not ever become more important to me than my family.  How screwed up is it that we pastors tend to have the biggest messiah complexes?  What is that all about?

One of my main reasons for starting this blog is to remind myself of God’s faithfulness through this stage of my life and beyond. Since I just started, I need to bulk mail a few of the ways that God has done His thing so far. Pardon the unusually long post while I brag on God a little and record some things:

• He used uncomfortable circumstances and closed doors to motivate us to move on from our last church to answer the call to plant a church. This was huge because of our attachment there. This was the church that:
  • excited my amazing wife to move to Georgia from North Dakota (long before she was my wife)
  • moved me beyond half-hearted marginal Christianity and gave me a passion for church planting (11 years ago — long before I ever dreamed I’d get to do this)
  • married us
  • gave me a youth pastor job, ordained me, and suffered through letting me learn to preach (with my highly spiritual business admin/computer science degree and zero pastoral experience)
  • saw our first child born
  • experienced some awesome things happening in the youth group I got to lead
  • where some of our dearest friends still remain
• We moved to Pittsburgh on December 1, where Continue reading Faithful

Amber, TJ and I are in Ligonier, PA today for Basic Training for church planters.  Its a 3 day deal.  The training is not anything revolutionary, but the networking is pretty good.  The church planting landscape changes so fast that a lot of the training is in flux (which makes it fun for us young piss and vinegar guys to challenge everything).

 I love being a church planter and I love being around church planters.  As my boy Gary says, “church planting is the extreme sport of ministry.” The energy and excitement levels are high with this group.  A year ago I would have laughed at you if you’d told me I would be planting a church in Pittsburgh.  Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else. 

 I believe God is moving in a big way in this region (western PA, northern WV, eastern OH).  Just in this room there are 3 new, innovative churches launching within the next year — Shane Suiter and his gang are launching in Morgantown, WV, THIS SUNDAY.  Pray that God will show up so big that only HE can get the credit!

 How do you end one of these things?  Peace out.

I think I have finally overcome my blogophobia and I’m really giving it a shot this time.  After debating this for months something Mark Batterson said today helped to solidify this decision.

He was in Pittsburgh today and I was privileged to spend a good bit of time with him.  Despite the fact that tens of thousands of unique visitors have already read his blog in 2007, Mark claimed this evening that he blogs “mainly for himself”.

The idea of the blog as a form of a journal is the most compelling aspect for me right now as we’re early in the journey of planting Iron City Church in Pittsburgh, PA. 

There are volumes to be written about what I don’t know about church planting, but I do know enough to understand that there WILL BE times when everything seems bleak and it feels like God has forgotten my zip code (15237 for those who were wondering). 

At those times, I want to be able to look back through my posts here and celebrate how God has been at work all along and He isn’t finished yet (Philippians 1:6).