On a less serious note:

I have a love/hate relationship with flying. I love airports and how fast I can get places by plane. (For the most part I hate long road trips). However, takeoffs and landings make give me headaches that are horrid.

I also think that sometimes planes mess with our sense of distance. Pittsburgh should seem far away, not just a 6 hour trip.

However – How awesome is it that I can just go there for a week from California with having to spend four days driving each way? God has enabled us to do ministry that would have been impossible one hundred years ago! Crazy.

This will make more sense if your read part one first!

As the reality of moving to Pittsburgh becomes more alive to me I can’t deny that there are going to be things that I will miss about California and Lompoc.

There are a lot of things here that are nice. The weather, beaches, and not knowing what 20 degrees (the current high in Pittsburgh) feels like. However losing those things when I move isn’t really what hits me. What really is hard is the people that I will leave in California.

First, leaving my family will be hard. Even when I lived in Dallas and went to Bible college I got to come home for the big holidays. Lead pastors don’t get Christmas off.

Leaving some old friends that are still local is just as hard. We don’t see each other every day, but knowing that I can’t just drive 30 minutes or throw a LAN party and have everyone over is a rough reality for me.

Then, I also have to leave my church. But, again, lets just tell it like it is. I have to leave family. There are to many people that I see all the time who love Airen and I that I will miss.

I will miss the ministry that God has allowed me to do here. I don’t know of any other Young Adult ministry in Lompoc that has ever had a team like mine and seen 18 people(!) come to Christ in less than two years. Certainly none with a group of students that will come to a 6am Bible study with their crazy pastor. I’m really blessed.

Following my calling is hard. It has been before, it will be again. But, I have a hope and a future.

I’m totally excited to get to head back to Pittsburgh this month! There’s something about getting the reminder email from Southwest that makes the trip real in my head.

In many ways I feel like this about the whole church planting experience so far. I know I’m doing it, I’m excited about it, but I know that the reality of doing it won’t set in until I’m moving. I think God does that sort of thing on purpose.

Look at the nations and watch– and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. Habakkuk 1v5

In the case of Habakkuk what God was going to do was a Bad Thing. However I think that even when God is doing a Good Thing through us He can’t always give the whole vision to us at once. We just wouldn’t even believe what God would tell us about what He is up to. I’m expecting to be utterly amazed about what God is going to do in Pittsburgh.

In the beginning God created… Gen. 1v1

I thought that it was appropriate to begin this blog at the beginning. Just like the Bible starts by explaining that God created it all, I have to admit that God created the desire inside of me to plant a church.

I started to know this in 2000 when I had to write my first bible college paper about my dreams for the future. The paper is awful and I don’t agree with most of what I thought was a good idea at the time about methodology. However it is powerful to see some of the concepts that God was preparing in my heart about reaching the lost.

So from that moment of understanding lead to ten years of education and preparation. Now it results in a vision: Making the unknown known.

Let’s go to Pittsburgh.