Pray nine3eight Challenge

I realize it has been awhile since I have updated everyone on church planting stuff. I mean, things have been just a little crazy ;)

And so... {insert update here}

Mike started the church planting residency with Christ Fellowship back in September, and he has been focusing on some of the leadership development assignments that are part of the residency. He has had an opportunity to preach, head up the Scare Away Hunger canned food drive for the church, and talk more in depth with the networking team about our heart and vision for reaching the city of McKinney with the gospel. We have also been in full support-raising mode, hosting a few vision/support desserts with friends and family and launching our ministry website.

In the coming weeks, Mike will have another opportunity to preach (watch him live here on December 30th!), and we will be meeting with varying leadership for some marriage and individual ministry development. With so much going on, his responsibilities have naturally increased with the residency, especially since we have still been focused on our home church ministry. Because of this, he recently stepped away from his job at Starbucks. He is still going to try to "office" out of his store as much as possible, in order to maintain the relationships he has made, but he will focus his time and energy exclusively on ministry now.

We have a lot of exciting things on the horizon, so we will {hopefully} have more frequent updates in the coming months! The first of the coming changes has to do with our home church. With the start of the church planting residency, we have been in a "digging deeper" phase with our group. All that really means is that we have focused our efforts on building intentionality within the group so that we have more of a community group feel: asking deeper questions, sharing our life stories, taking care of each other like a family.

We will continue doing that, but starting in January, we will add a "growing broader" phase. We are challenging the group to begin praying and inviting people within our natural, God-given circles to join what we are doing in the church plant. We will also add a monthly Celebration Gathering, which really, will look more like a traditional church service for our group. This is such an exciting step for the next phase of a church plant! We have our core little group, and we are going to begin praying to see how God expands that group, to hopefully grow into a larger body of faith. We are excited to actively engage in the process and see how the Lord moves!

Part of the intentional prayer will include our family and friends. Beginning January 1, we will launch what we are calling the Pray nine3eight challenge. We are asking people to join us in committing to pray for 100 days. We want to go before the Lord and pray the words of Matthew 9:38...

If you are interested in joining with us in praying for God to spread the gospel to the city of McKinney through our church plant, you can go to the Pray nine3eight Facebook page and "like" the page. Each day for 100 days, the page will post a reminder to pray, which will show up in your news feed. If you would like to receive a daily email reminder to pray, please send me a message or email me, and I will add you to the daily email distribution for your reminder.

Will you commit to pray for 100 days? That God will bring people to connect with us in reaching the city of McKinney for Christ? Imagine what could happen in 100 days when God's people go before His throne on behalf of an entire city...