This morning I'll be driving north to Tulare, Ca. For the last month I've been working on a campaign to get 100 churches to support Anthem Church at a one time gift of $1000 each. That would give us $100,000 to get help get Anthem off the ground. It's been an interesting experience making phone calls to pastors and churches all over the western part of the US. Some of the pastors I know, some of them are straight up cold calls. There are two consistencies that I've seen in this process. The first is that money is a struggle for EVERYONE right now. There just isn't a lot of money out there. The second is that pastors are genuinely excited about seeing new churches get started. I've had some pastors stop what they were doing and pray for me on the spot. I've had other pastors talk to me for over an hour about what we're doing, how we're doing it, and what I've learned from spending time with the NewThing crew. I even had one pastor tell me that he was in on the spot for $500 and he would talk to his leadership team about the other $500. Those were the encouraging stories. On the other side of the coin is the struggle. Tons of pastors at the end of everything they can think of to keep churches alive, afloat, etc. There is a lot of struggle out there.Anyhow, I'm going to Tulare because one of the pastors I talked to, Rich Davis, is the lead pastor of Tulare Evangelical Free Church. He invited me to come up and share with their cluster (Tulare/Fresno area EvFree churches) about what we're doing and cast the vision for them to get involved. I'm pretty excited, I get to share for about 15 minutes about what we're doing and invite these churches to be a part of Anthem Church in Thousand Oaks!
So, if you think about it, pray for me. If you think about it, pray for the pastors of these churches. And if you're a church leader and I haven't called you yet... my cell number is 805.551.9965, maybe you should give me a call :) We are looking for partners to help share the load of getting this new church started.
Check out all of our info at:
www.jointheanthem.com
www.efca.org
www.efcawest.org
www.newthing.org
Thanks for reading!
