Church Planting Update

Hi All, it's been a crazy past few months. Here is a quick update on our church plant, Imago Dei.

1. Imago Dei has found a new weekly Sunday location in Des Moines. This location has truly been a God directed journey for us, we would have never guessed this location, but God is good! Right now, it's a temporary location but we are so thankful to have a regular Sunday gathering time. We are looking for a future central location that will give our unchurched friends and neighbors the opportunity to join us for worship.

2. Imago Dei's core group has grown! We are so thankful for a new group of families that have joined our team to helping us accomplish our vision to reach the unchurched here in Seattle. Incredible relationships are growing and I am thankful for the friendships with my new brothers and sisters in Christ.

3. Imago Dei's vision has grown from just being a northend church to reaching a broader regional area of Seattle. When we first started our journey we started with our home, our cul-de-sac we lived in, our neighborhood, our community, and now God has opened the doors for us to reaching Seattle. Nothing we have experienced could have told us this is where we would be, that's why it's been amazing for all of us. It's a God-thing.

Failure a Good Thing?

i heard a recent statistic that 1 out of every 10 church plants succeed. when i heard that i thought, wow, that sucks, my chances doesn't look that good. my first thought was that doesn't make any sense, why would a sovereign God allow so much failure for people who are trying to accomplish the great commission? okay, that stream of thought is for another day, another blog entry on open theism, please theogian sam won, answer this for me.

if that stat is true, then for most church planters, failure is common and pretty much a tag placed on the resume for accomplishments&experiences. for all you who never had that tag, that's awesome, you never had to experience the failure that many have gone before you. may your tribe endure!

Recently I have been spending time with a good friend, pastor, restaurant entrepreneur, social justice advocate, and visionary. He came up to Seattle, one of two cities (Portland), that he and a group of partners are looking at to start a new restaurant. They have had success in a different market and the possibility of coming to Seattle and joining our church plant has given us an exciting vibe. So for a week, I shadowed him as he did his research and potential outlook for a new venture here in Seattle. A lot of the time was spent trying new restaurants, their food, i mean lots of food, my low carb diet went out the door for that week. we had hours and hours of time talking about life, business, and our journey with Christ. i found our conversations extremely interesting. for example, i came to know that restaurant entrepreneurs are very much like church planters. that both enterprises involve very similar operations, fundraising, services, and promotion. the best part of our talks centered around failures and successes.

He shared the story of Forever21, a hip, clothing store, in practically every mall in the country. Forver21 is considered a 'game changer.' stats show that if a mall opens a Forever21 store, more peeps, more sales, more traffic happens. another 'game changer' you would recog is apple. so, Forever21 was started by a Korean couple and early on the company tanked, almost lost everything. typically if a business tanks and a person owes creditors $, that person is gone, by, by. but instead of taking off, Forever21 stayed in the game asking for more time. but investors wanted his head, and F21 asked every investor to hold on, keep believing in the business. the response was a complete negative, so they took his house, his car, pretty much liquidated everything they could from him. they even gave back their worthless shares. so at the worst moment in his life, he could have given up, could have said game over. but he didn't and what's amazing is that after his lowest moment, the company took off and hasn't slowed ever since. since all the investors threw back their shares the founder became a 100% owner, which is unheard of these days. from my understanding the founder&wife are followers of Christ, amazing.

my friend, also shared his own business mentor's story. his business mentor when he first started went to his friends and raised the capital to start new new company. raised the capital, started the new business, some time later, the business failed. again, we went to his friends&supporters, saying, i've learned from my mistakes and now my new idea is going to work, believe in me. so his friends and supporters gave him more capital to start a new venture. that business soon after tanked and went under. the third time, what is it they say, the third time's the charm, he goes back to his friends&supporters and says, i've learned even more this time, i now have it, please support me in this new venture. well, the third time want's the charm, most of his friends&supoprters said no, and just a few said okay we'll support you. after failing two times, the third time, his business took off and now he's having the opportunity to bring his business to malls across the country. he was recently given entrepreneur of the year award in vegas. amazing.

now, of course failure happens and will continue to happen. but if there is one thing i am learning from the business sector, it is, 'only through failures, success happens'. going back to the church plant failure rate, one out of every ten church plants succeed. the verdict is still out on our church plant, but i have friends who have recently experienced being on the short end of the stick. i'm learning that failure in this line of work is not only a good possibility almost a sure thing, so when you do fail, what do you do? do you give up, throw in the towel. for some maybe, but if you have it in your genes, don't give up, don't give up, don't give up. this is something i need to hear, over and over again. i like paul's words, 2Th. 1:4, 'therefore, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure.' good stuff.

pain, hurt, loss...

for the past several months sol and i have been in mourning. as a christian, i have had numerous opportunities to share my faith in jesus. opportunities like being in a foreign country sharing my faith through a translator, at a homeless shelter for men, at a lake near minneapolis, on a college campus, in high school, or on the drag in austin. after having these opportunities to share my faith and now adding another experience i have come to realize how difficult/costly/painful it is to reach people for Jesus. please note again that this blog is purely an existential dilemma between the earlobes and heart.

i am not sure about you but i have had my share of rejections, that is, people rejecting jesus, and in my face. and initially those experiences were at that time - difficult. i remember going out to the campus one day with a group of students and we took off in pairs to meet students to share our faith and at the end of the day we would return and share about our experiences. one of the girls in our group came back in tears sharing how a group of students laughed at her as she was sharing her faith. i never experienced that raw emotion like she did, but did experience rejection. but for the most part, over time i have had numerous friends, co-workers and neighbors whom i have had rich opportunities to share my faith.

but, in all that time, i never crossed the line. have you ever crossed the line? now this line is an imaginary line, drawn out, indicating the line between friendship and jesus. i think for the most part christians have not had a difficult time developing friends that do not believe in jesus. in fact most christians have many friends that are not christian and maintain those relationships well. in my own example, what happens when you attempt to start a church with unchurched people and after building friendships (2 plus years) with their families, and they decide not to want to hear more about jesus? what do you do? especially since you have been spending so much time developing the friendships. can you continue the close friendships? for most of us, we live in two worlds, the christian world of friendships and the unchurched world of friendships. we know how to operate in both worlds keeping both relationships and friendships intact while adhering to our faith in jesus. i lived that. enjoying both, feeling good about my life as a christian and having relationships with unchurched friends. patting myself on my back saying 'john way to go!' it's funny because the more and more i realize that being a church planter has been more about me than about church planting (a repeating theme in my life). when i started out building friendships with my neighbors everything was great. our families grew closer, our kids grew closer, and seemingly i thought sure doesn't everybody want to know God. when our friends politely said they were not interested, we realized that something was not right. you see when you cross the line between friendship and jesus, when jesus is out of the picture, something changes in the relationship. sol and i put everything we had into these relationships hoping that jesus would become more real in all of our lives. and when things went southward, our friendships suffered. questions arose like, how come we are not spending time like we did, how come we're not hanging out like we did before, why are we pulling back, all these issues came out. in all that time, sol and i were quietly mourning. mourning because we felt rejected, feeling loss over all the time and energy we put into the relationships. it crushed us. and on the other side our friends were upset at us. and even in this aftermath, our friendships have changed. not irrevocable but changed. and we're trying to rebuild it as we move forward.

you know i always had this image that when you share jesus when they said no, they said no to jesus not you. but when you cross the line and put both into the same path and if/when they say no, it feels more like they reject you. it hurts, i feel pain, loss, and rejection. and as i come to terms with how God is changing my life through this, i realize that how rare it is that i truly put everything in one basket so to speak and put it on the line. it was easy in the past, when i had not crossed the line, but now i'm learning that it costs when you cross the line. jesus crossed the line, he didnt have the other life to fall back on. when he built friendships and shared his life it was his life and when people rejected him they rejected himself. i can't imagine how much it must have hurt jesus to be rejected by the people he loved and created. for us it's easy to say well i can always fall back and separate my life, know that he/she rejects God, and not to take it personally. but jesus couldnt do that. when he was rejected it was personal.

i am learning that too many of us including myself rarely cross the line between friendships and jesus. it's natural, we fear rejection, we fear a change in our relationships, we crave normality and stability in our workplace and with our friends. we keep christian friends separate from our unchurched friends. but consider jesus' life. he didn't have that option. and if apostle paul is correct, that we too should share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. that our life is identical to jesus' life. that the richness of our relationship to God is in crossing the line, just like jesus did. jesus did it right. yes, it will bring pain, hurt, and loss but it will also bring redemption, restoration, and identity with our savior.

imago dei goes public

this past sunday, june 28th, imago dei held its first ever public gathering. we met at the lyons den coffee shoppe in bothell, wa.

wohoo!!!

okay, with that out of the way, a few days passing, and now my heart rate and emotions have returned to normal. in reflection, i cannot express my thanks enough to God for this one opportunity to share about my faith in Jesus and to share about His life to friends and neighbors in our community. as a church planter you realize the uncertainty of time (whether you will be even around the next week or so) and you learn to appreciate being in the moment and forego the extant pressures that can plague the mind. so all in all, i can truly say i had a blast at our first public gathering for imago dei. if i could choose the most important thing about it, it would be my friends and neighbors that have journeyed together with me from my house and now to a coffee shop. when i first imagined what a community would look like i had a crazy notion that it would begin from my own neighborhood. and yes while that crashed and burned, would you believe that other neighbors and friends came alongside of us to journey with us as imago dei. i dont know what the future holds for us, but i want to hold on to this moment in time and be grateful.

so, in gratitude i want to thank the triune God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, my neighbors, friends, prayer partners and supporters, without you i wouldn't be here. May your tribes increase!

'skydiving with or without a parachute'

sometimes i feel like a skydiver jumping out into a new adventure and not knowing if i am wearing a parachute. :-p if you have ever read any of my posts, i just want to say thanks for entertaining my own neurosis. :-) church planting has been a incredibly challenging personal journey i have ever been on and so far i have kept some sort of sanity. i want to thank my friends both followers of Jesus and those who are not, for the ride of a lifetime.

imago dei updates:

1. imago dei is hosting its first ever public worship gathering on sunday, june 28th at the Lyon's Den coffee shop in bothell, wa. we are very excited to see where God takes us. It is a huge step of faith for us and our hope is that we can connect more people to God in a personal and existential way.

2. i hear this from church planters all the time about turnaround and people who originally start off as a core and then leave. i wasn't sure what to make of it. well, i have my first experience of people leaving. some families sol and i have had a wonderful relationship and still have, left imago dei. they were not followers of Jesus and when we became more committed to jesus, and about studying the bible they weren't comfortable with us. we still love them and we will never give up on them and sad to see them not come out. after they left, sol and i were pretty depressed, we wanted so much to see jesus become real in their lives and it took some time to get back to normal. the amazing thing is that while we lost some people a new group of friends came along and have shown interest in jesus and wanting to know more about his life. it's pretty amazing when we felt the worst God brought encouragement.

3. i just want to personally thank Hyemi Kim and Michelle Yi, our imago dei children's directors. they are both amazing people who love kids and love God. they joined us knowing that we were walking into unknown paths and still remained joyful and supportive. they are the best of people and i hope God will bless their life and their future.

4. a reflection, i realize i love having a community, where we have people who are exploring jesus, reconnecting to jesus, and those who plainly don't care about jesus. more and more, i sense that i really don't want to create a 'consumerist capitalistic' church model. if it means being small, so be it. it if means i need to support my efforts by other means, so be it. if it means, i struggle and give my life to people who hate jesus, so be it. i need to grow and learn to be more life jesus, who gave his life up for people. if you can, please pray for me, i need it.

it's been some time since my last post. quickly, imago dei has been meeting monthly at our home. we are looking for a public space to host our gatherings, in June and July. we have seen some turnaround in our group, where few unchurched families we were hoping to join us, left bc we were too into Jesus, but the amazing thing is that others came along to join us. our children's ministry is taking off and we are excited about our two new children's staff. it's hard to see all your hard work in prayer and love and people not responding to Jesus but amazed that God works in mysterious ways and meeting others who join us along the way. this summer is a summer of movement and we hope to see people follow Christ more and more. if you can please pray for us we need it. thx.

Bruce Lee vs Iron Man

Iron Man vs Bruce Lee
Uploaded by PatrickBoivin

another great Bruce Lee video, enjoy!!!