December, 2004
I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I do vividly remember waking up one morning to what I can only describe as God’s whisper. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but I did wake up with the overwhelming sense that God wanted me to start a new congregation out of Joy. It came from out of the blue. At least it felt like that, as Jan and I had no desire to leave Joy.
I got up and headed into the kitchen where I told Jan what I was sensing. Without batting an eye, she said, “Yes! I think that’s right!”
And so it began.
Initially, my idea for starting the church borrowed from a model we saw in San Jose. That congregation planted a new church, but the new church used the same campus and buildings. It was its own congregation—separate staff, board, and budget, but sharing the same facilities. It made financial sense to me. (And seemed a lot easier than having to find a place to rent, then to buy land, then to build buildings!)
Walt was out of town at this point so I had to wait a few days to pitch the idea to him. When I did get to meet with him, he was very supportive of the idea. Jan and I were headed out of town for 10 days and we agreed to meet when I got back to make it official.
I don’t quite remember the exact timing of the initial roll-out, but it went something like this once we got back from our vacation:
Walt and I agreed that I would take a few staff with me to help ease the financial challenges at Joy. But more so to ensure a successful launch of Grace.
The first person I approached was Michelle Halonen. Michelle had been on the staff of Joy for many years in many different roles, and I knew she would make for an outstanding Admin person. She knew something was up. I kept telling her I couldn’t say anything until it was official. But once I had the word from Walt, I told Michelle of the vision for a new church start. I asked her and Joe to pray about joining the team. Her prayer lasted a second. “We’re in!”
On our annual Christmas trip to Disneyland, Jan and I took Jeff and Diane Wright (who had been working with me since 1984) and Terey Summers and her hubby Jimmy (Terey had been on the staff of Joy for many years as our drama director) out to lunch at the Blue Bayou. I told them I was leaving Joy to start a new church and asked if they wanted to be a part of it. After a few stunned minutes, we started talking about what it might look like.
On December 23, Walt and I met again. I updated him on my conversations with Michelle, Jeff, Diane, and Terey. We made it official. Grace was on.
Now it was time to strategically plant a congregation. In essentially three months. Our start date was March 27, 2005—Easter Sunday. That meant finding a worship site. Putting the staff together. Creating a board of directors. Writing a budget. Purchasing all the equipment needed for worship, communion, and Sunday school. Raising money. And be financially self-sufficient on day one.
Because it was the holidays (the day before our multi-Christmas Eve services), I wasn’t able to meet with the staff. Word starting getting out before we could let the staff know, which was an unfortunate part of doing all of this at Christmas time.
JOURNAL ENTRY
12/27/2004
Fighting the flu!
“Yesterday we had what might be described as the first gathering of Community of Grace Church. A group of about 20 of us gathered @ Jeff’s and Diane’s house to talk about the dream together. I was on Dayquil, fighting what later would be a fever, so my energy level, I felt, was low. But Jan said it was a great meeting. Most of the people have been @ Joy for years. They love Joy, and at the same time, are excited about this new adventure. These will no doubt be some of the core leaders of the new church.
On Christmas night we announced the change to my family. My mom had already heard. Word was already starting to spread . . .
. . . Here’s hoping the Bishop is OK with this.
It was an odd experience to think that this may well have been my last Christmas season @ Joy after 20 years.
January, 2005
January 13: Being a large congregation can be like running a small church Synod. Rather than overseeing several congregations as the Bishop of a Synod does, Pastors of large churches oversee various programs, staff, events, budgets, etc., in addition to preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. So, often Pastors of large congregations are not as connected to their Bishops and Synods.
We had a very good working relationship with our Bishop. But in all of the excitement about starting the church, and doing so at Christmas, we forgot to get the Bishop’s blessing. So Walt and I quickly set a meeting after Christmas. The Bishop was very enthused about the idea. He mentioned something about 10 acres of land in Northwest Peoria that might be a possible site for building a campus. That was the area we were targeting! The Bishop assured me that his Assistant would connect with me ASAP to see if and how they might support this new venture.
With January 16 set as the Sunday Walt and I would go public with the vision for planting a new church, I began meeting with staff and with 9:35 leaders (the 9:35 worship service), some of whom would join the new church and some of whom would continue to lead at Joy.
JOURNAL ENTRY
January 17, 2005
What an amazing, magical, grace-filled day it was yesterday. At the Saturday pm service (January 15) and the Sunday 8:15 am service, I, along with Walt, did a brief announcement of the new church start. I referred to my original call to Joy 20+ years ago: I had been called to serve at Joy for 4-5 years with the possibility of taking a group of Joy folks and starting a new church (in an area where Joy ended up moving—75th Ave and 101). That, of course, didn’t happen. But now was the time! The affirmation and response of our folks was very warm and encouraging.
At 9:35, Walt and I sat side by side during the message time. He began by sharing Joy’s mission of multiplication and how, in light of that, God was stirring something in my soul. I then shared the news of my new call and spent most of the message processing it. I did so by telling my “Joy” story—my first exposure to Joy, my internship, starting/overseeing worship services, launching the Leadership Center… This gave me the chance to reaffirm my love for Joy, for Walt, and our mission. I talked about the early call to plant a church but how the growth of Joy put that dream on the back burner. I talked (emotionally) about my love for and renewed passion for ministry because of the 935 Worshipping Community. And then shared the out-of-the-blue call of God to start a new church. Lots of laughter. A few tears. (I also hit head-on the rumors about a split between me and Walt.)
Walt shared some very affirming words and invited folks to pray about the possibility of being called to Grace.
We had prayer for the new Grace staff coming with me, and the congregation responded with a moving standing ovation. It could not have been a better move of God. As Jan said, it was typical Joy.
We held an “after 935” meeting to answer questions. About 200 people showed up. The spirit of the meeting was very encouraging.
I zipped out of the meeting for a few minutes to announce the new vision at the 11 am service. Once again, the news was warmly received.
At 4:00 we started to get to work with our first budget meeting. We figured, not even having started, we were already $300,000 over budget. So we were in great shape!
While my initial thought was to start a new church on the campus of Joy, Walt wisely expressed some discomfort with it. As we were about to head into a staff meeting to announce the news (which most of the staff already knew) in early January, Walt pulled me aside to say that we were going to have to find a place to worship off the campus of Joy. I quickly told a shocked Jeff, Diane, and Michelle before the meeting started. But it was the right decision.
So we started looking for places to rent. We figured it would be easy. But we soon realized that almost every school was already renting out to churches. We started looking at community halls and empty storefronts, but none of them were large enough, as we were tracking for at least 300 people joining us.
Our target school was Zuni Hills Elementary School on Williams Road, just west of 107th Ave. It was about a mile from the potential 10 acres of land. But a Methodist church was worshipping there.
Finally, we learned that Sunrise Mountain High School might be a possibility. A church was worshipping there on Sunday mornings, but they were in the process of building a new campus. They would be out of Sunrise by Easter. Perfect timing! So late January we signed the papers. With two months to spare, we had a worship site. We thought.
By late January, I had still not heard from the Assistant to the Bishop. We had already gone public so it was important to make sure she was on board. So I called her. It was obvious that the Bishop had not clued her in to what we were doing. She thought I was calling to put my name in for the next church the Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA would plant. The most likely site was in Anthem, but not for a few years.
It took a few minutes for her to realize that we were starting a new congregation out of Joy in Peoria. We had not followed protocol, so it’s not surprising that there was confusion.
JOURNAL ENTRY
January 2005
I asked about the area where we were targeting to plant the church. We thought the Synod owned that 10 acres of land. I was shaken to learn that two ELCA churches owned it and that they intended to start a church there. Suddenly, still wondering how we were going to finance this new mission, we had bumbled into someone else’s territory. I was sick!
The Bishop’s Assistant set up a meeting for me, her, and the two pastors of the churches that owned the land for one month from now. I was in a panic. I called Walt and then chatted with Pastor Paul to say we needed a repair strategy.
Later that day, I received a voice message from one of the pastors (Steve Talmage) whose church (Peace Lutheran, along with American Lutheran) owns the land. It was a very affirming call about my new call, but he did want to chat about the site.
I immediately called him and apologized for what seemed like us horning into his mission area. I explained that we were misinformed about the land and had no desire to butt into their area.
He said their strategy had changed. Rather than starting the church themselves, they were going to let the Synod do it. But they wanted to approve the new pastor. He said perhaps this was a Kairos (God) thing and that maybe God was in this somehow. He expressed an openness to praying about us being the church plant. It was a word of hope/grace in a day of setbacks. Who knows what it means but @ least the door opened again to that area.
We started a weekly Wednesday night Prayer Meeting with all those interested in being a part of the new church start. We averaged about 40 people each week.