The Bridge

I met a couple new neighbors today.  I’m learning that this is always a bit tricky.  Don’t get me wrong I love meeting new people and am looking forward to sharing life with them but the starting point can really make it or break it.  Inevitably they will ask why we are moving or what I do to make the dollars and I let them know I plan on starting a church.  I love what my family and I are called to do but my experience has been one in which I’ve seen the church hurt people and any conversation closely related to such a subject causes them to hit the eject button and put up the walls.  All that to say that this wasn’t my experience today.  In fact quite the opposite.

I first saw Gail and her daughter two houses down backing up the pick up truck.  Further observation allowed me to discover them unloading land scaping bricks.  I walked on over and began helping as the conversation took off. 

Gail is new to Ottumwa - lived there the past year and a half.  She took a job at a church in town as the music and evanglism director.  Her daughter just recently moved up from Texas and was applying at Applebee’s later in the day.  The question came then and I said, “Well, my wife and I are looking to start a church in the fall.”  She responded by asking if I was from the group in Pella.  “Yes”  She then goes on to talk to her daughter about Third Church while I continue to unload some bricks.  Realizing there was a lot of comfort in the conversation and I asked how much she new about the church start and what she or others thought about it.  She shared that the people from her church were a bit sad.  It wasn’t that they felt threatened or discouraged about another church in town but rather that Ottumwa was seen as mission field.  She said that we would most definetly appeal to different people in Ottumwa and one member from their church has already said they would be attending The Bridge when it started.  We talked a little bit more and I look forward to moving in two weeks when we can invite them over for some burgers.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Church Planting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.