We Have a HUGE dream !
If you let Him, God will place the things in your heart that you once thought unthinkable. My wife and I left Ohio in 1998 with our 3 month old baby boy to go to bible school in Oklahoma (of all places) and determined to never return. 4 years later (now 3 kids) after bible school I was sitting at work (April of 2002) and heard the voice of God. “You are going to plant and pastor a church in the Cleveland, Ohio area.” People would ask me about pastoring and I would always laugh and tell them they got the wrong guy, because I was never going to pastor. Well, God does seem to play this card with many people that I know. The call was unmistakable so it did not make much sense to argue with it. The very next thing that I heard was that I was to stay with the church marketing firm that I was with for another 5 years before I would get my next instruction. In April of 2007 that happened. There were many things that happened all at once, but our home church (Celebration Church) hosted a church for a church planting organization (ARC). That is when everything really started.
We really believe that every part of our lives so far has been training for this next step. Every trial, hardship, financial struggle, physical difficulty, Spiritual growth. We have been stretched, forced to confront personal issues, grown in leadership skills, learned what not to do in ministry, strengthened our spiritual core, learned of our own DNA, and have grown in our love for each other and our incredible kids. Our vision of what God wants us to do has only increased.
We are currently in a volunteer Internship at Celebration Church, which has been a huge blessing so far. This is the final stage of training before we actually move to Cleveland. There is still so much work to do before our first service. We have been married since June of 1995 and now have 5 incredible kids: Christian (10), Grace (8), Elise (6), Ian (2), and Ezra (the baby)