An Unexpected Gift

Have you heard the phrase, “God is never early, but always on time”? A nice little cliche that Christians like to use. Not sure how theologically grounded it is, but it came to my mind recently.

A little history: Five years ago, Granger was meeting in one location and things were flying. We’d experienced 20 straight years of growth, the recession wasn’t even being predicted yet, and we were beginning to contemplate becoming a multi-site church. By contemplate, I mean that we were having serious talks and debates on our senior team.

Around the same time, Tony Morgan and I were contacted by a group of leaders from St. Johns United Church of Christ in Elkhart, Indiana. Elkhart is a nearby community where we had considered starting a church site. St. Johns was diminishing in attendance and wondered about partnering with us to have a thriving church once again at their location. Ultimately they couldn’t make anything happen at that time. The majority of their leaders were not in favor of joining up with us.

And honestly, we weren’t ready yet either. We didn’t know that at the time, but we had not yet embraced a multi-site philosophy, we didn’t have a point leader, and we hadn’t identified a core of Granger families committed to that area.

By 2008, we had finally launched the Elkhart site meeting at a movie theater in the downtown area. Six months later we moved to the RV Hall of Fame on the east side of Elkhart where the congregation has grown to around 300 attending each week. Early this year we started hearing of financial troubles at the RV Hall of Fame–which obviously concerned us. The possibility of them closing their doors was a topic on the nightly news for a few weeks. Prior to that we had not been looking for another location. But this news caused us to begin praying.

About 7 weeks ago, we were again approached by St. Johns United Church of Christ. After 122 years of ministry in Elkhart, they had made the decision to cease their weekly services and find another church that could use their building. As we talked to Richard Leib from St. Johns, we heard an amazing heart of generosity. They did not want to see the property sold and used for retail. They wanted to see a thriving local church having an impact in the community.

We asked, “Why Granger?” Few of them had ever attended a service. Many of them weren’t excited about our style of ministry. But they had heard, over and over, of our good work in the community. They heard of our work in downtown South Bend and our efforts to feed the hungry and help the poor in Elkhart. They had seen hundreds of cars in the parking lot at our Granger campus as well as the Elkhart site–and they longed to see the same thing once again at St. Johns.

Last Tuesday the building and land of St. Johns was officially transferred to Granger Community Church. In essence, this is a donation worth $1.2 million that will enable us to build a 24/7/365 ministry outpost on the northeast side of Elkhart. On August 1st, we will begin transitioning the building for the Elkhart congregation that will begin meeting in their new home late this fall. You can read more here about the transition from Mark Waltz (pastor of the Elkhart congregation).

There is much work to be done–but we are sitting with our mouths open in amazement at the goodness of God which came at a time, and in a way, when we least expected it.

My Daughter is a Rebel

Both my girls started blogging before high school. It is fun to get a glimpse into their minds and hearts through the words they write. Yesterday it was enjoyable to find this blog post by Megan (16-years old)…

If I could choose one word to describe myself it’d be ‘rebel.’ I don’t like people to tell me who i’m supposed to be or how i’m supposed to act. I don’t like to follow the crowd or conform to be like everyone else. I am not one to choose one style and swear by it. I don’t like just one type of music or one crowd of ppl. I see the stereotypes, and i live to prove them wrong.I don’t want people to be able to look at me and figure me out, but at the same time I don’t want to hide behind a mask. I don’t want to be the center of attention, but neither do I want to blend in with the crowd. I live somewhere in the middle.

I don’t like labels. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s the idea of being normal. Maybe it’s not so much the ‘normal’ as it is ‘average’ or ‘mediocre.’ I don’t want to live that kind of life. I don’t want to be just average. I don’t want to judge everyone who is different than me. I don’t want to be so close-minded that anyone would be foolish to argue. I don’t want to be so self-righteous and degrading that I turn away people who are looking for answers. I don’t want to be that girl.

What do I want? I want want to be unique, to have my life mean something, to change lives. I want to dream big and achieve goals that seem impossible. I want to be on fire for God every day of my life, to be a catalyst in my environment. I want to change the world. I want to feed the homeless and clothe the naked, love the unloved and touch the untouchable. I want to question everything and wrestle with the mysteries of life. I want to poke and prod every area of my life, to test the very ground I stand on and see what holds firm and true. I want to be so full of God’s love that it overflows into everything i do. I want each day to be filled with awestruck wonder and the God I serve and his creation, and to hunger for truth and justice, and to grow each and every day and little closer and a little more like Jesus.

Too big of dreams? Not at all: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” ~Phillipians 4:13

The Christian Gene

I’ll admit…I laughed out loud at this.

Regardless of your beliefs about homosexuality, I wonder if this is how the world sometimes perceives the Church?

I Ain’t Leaving

Several months ago I wrote about how excited I was about a LifePlan process I would be doing in June. I spent last week in southern California, and several of those days were spent with Doug Slaybaugh who is a trained LifePlan consultant with the Paterson Center. I truly think the time was crucial for me–I believe I’ll look back on the week many years from now as pivotal in my life.

Many have asked what the week looked like. Well, let me tell you what a LifePlan is NOT:

• It’s not someone telling you what you should do with your life.
• It’s not someone telling you everything that is wrong with your life.
• It’s not counseling or therapy.
• It’s not easy (several asked me how my “vacation” was in California. Uh, this was no vacation).

For someone like me, who is not used to being introspective, it was a lot of work. We took a lot of time to reflect back on 44-years of life, to trace the hand of God through the ups and the downs of life. All of that history gave perspective and framework for what God is up to in my life today…and what that means for my future.

I was able to walk away with a very clear picture of my purpose. It’s kind of funny, because I spend so much time in my professional life helping Granger and other churches figure out purpose, vision, mission and values. But I’ve spent very little time doing the same in my own life.

I know that I’ll be sharing much more about my learnings in the coming months–but for now, let me just answer one question that I’ve heard many times since returning: I’m not leaving Granger. I know it’s the “normal” path to get to a certain level and then to leave the local church, become a consultant or author or whatever. But I am more committed than ever to Granger Community Church, Mark Beeson, the New Normal, and the 2016 Vision. I see myself serving and strengthening this church for many more years…and I couldn’t be more excited about our future.