Hi Friends,

I hope your summer is going well. Pam and I are in St. John on vacation and I wanted to share an update with you.

Care Net:

Care Net’s pace has not let up this year and, on this side of the pandemic, I have been doing a lot of speaking and traveling. Most recently I have done pastors events in Kentucky and Alaska. To get a feel for what these are like, here is a talk I just did in Louisville hosted by my friend Monica Henderson, Executive Director of BesideU for Life.

Additionally, as you might suspect, now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe, there are those who do not understand the compassionate work that pregnancy centers do. Although it has been underreported, acts of vandalism and violence at many centers have increased over the past few weeks. This has made our work even more challenging and urgent. As life decisions need life support, churches need to be prepared to lead with love and practical help now more than ever. These two passages have focused my prayers and leadership of our Church Engagement team at this time:

• “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:1-4)
• “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” (2 Timothy 2: 24-26)

Church Plant:

17 of us are still meeting weekly in one of our homes and two weeks ago we had a visitor making our number 18. Having just finished a series of messages on the Apostle’s Creed, we are now going through the Beatitudes. It has felt a little like we’ve been in a holding pattern as we’re still waiting on a lawyer we contracted with to secure our corporate non-profit status. This is an important step so that we can become a legal entity, get a certificate of insurance, and rent space for weekly services to accommodate new friends. Despite feeling like we are a bit on pause, in truth, we are significantly ahead of our three-year plan which reflects meeting monthly in a physical location by the end of 2022 and weekly by the end of 2023. We had made some decisions at our retreat in March to speed things up; however, I now believe we need to slow things down slightly and readjust our expectations. Consistent with this, I just revised our goal to begin meeting weekly in a rented space from this summer to later October of this year. And the featured pic above—that we saw in a shop this week—came as an encouragement and felt like a sign from God.

Please pray that our core group would continue to grow in ownership and shared leadership of our mission, which is:

“Desiring to partner with Jesus in building His Church and acknowledging His call to make disciples, we are pioneering a digital community with physical expressions to enjoy the journey together, reconnect those who’ve been disillusioned or hurt by the church, and share the Good News with new friends.”

If you would like to make a tax-deductible gift to our work, you can do so at this secure link.

Book:

All 14 chapters of Irreplaceable: Recovering God’s Heart for Dad’s are now finished and in the hands of a friend who is an excellent editor and has a heart for this project. She is now through chapter six and it seems I am addressing her edits almost daily. Consistent with the “it is not your speed… forward is forward” theme above, I have revised the “ready to publish” date to 8.30. Also, I just got an endorsement on the book from a professor at Lancaster Bible College and am waiting on a few others as well.

That’s it for now– God bless you and please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you.