Graduation

I officially graduated today from the New Life School of Worship. It has been an amazing year and has truly helped to equip me for the next phase our our life and future ministry. The ceremony was really powerful and was a great close to the school year. (There are some pics in the Photo Album link) I'm going to miss many of my new friends from the school, but I'm also excited to move on to Flagstaff.

We found a house that we'll rent in Flagstaff. Our move-in date is July 1st. We'll spend the next month packing, vacationing, and hopefully relaxing a little between destinations. We're getting more and more excited about where we're heading, and there have been many confirmations this past week that have given us confidence that we're heading in the right direction. We're amazed at what God continues to provide for us through all of these transitions. He is so faithful!

Arizona, Here We Come!

So, after visiting Texas and Arizona, meeting the people of the prospective churches, and through much time in prayer, we feel that God is calling us to Flagstaff, Arizona. There was a lot of draws to the church in New Braunfels, TX, but we just couldn't find a peace in our spirit about heading there. We had some significant issues with the leadership style of the Senior Pastor and his wife and we just didn't feel 100% on board with their vision. That's kind of a big deal. The church in Arizona doesn't have all the nice facilities that the Texas church had, but the people are amazing and the Senior Pastor and his wife would be strong leaders and spiritual mentors for Sara and I. That aspect is way more important to us than nice buildings, large congregations, and state of the art equipment.

The momentum of the church in Flagstaff is exciting too. A few years ago, they were down to 25 members and were about to close their doors. In an effort to revive the church, they asked one of their remaining members to pastor the church. Ever since then the church has been growing strong with young families and a fairly large college age demographic. They have two packed out services now and will soon be outgrowing their fairly small facility. The passion of the people is very contagious and the heart of the leadership and elders are truly in the right place for leading people into a deeper relationship with Christ.

Pastor Paul's teaching style is more expository than most preachers I've been around lately. He doesn't put together long illustration series that we see a lot of today. He has a great gift of taking a segment of scripture and explaining the original context and then unpacking it in a way that makes it applicable today. More and more people (including us) are really just hungry for the Truth of Scripture and appreciate straight forward teaching.

We didn't take many pictures while we were there, so I found some online that will give our Minnesota friends an idea of what Flagstaff looks like. It's not desert and cactus like we typically picture Arizona to be. It actually reminds us of a more mountainous northern Minnesota kind of feel. The climate is different though. We'll still get four seasons, but it's a dry heat in the summer that rarely gets above 85 degrees; and we'll get snow but it will melt a few days after it drops. It sounds similar to what things are like where we are now in Colorado Springs. It sounds like many of the locals will travel to Sedona or Phoenix for the day if it's too cold and snowy in Flagstaff. Phoenix is almost always about 30 degrees warmer and doesn't get snow. It's about 2 1/2 hours south of Flagstaff.

Today is our 11th wedding anniversary. It's been an amazing journey together and I'm so excited to see what our joint future holds! We've got friends coming over this morning to watch our kids while we head to Manitou Springs (little town near the mountains) to get some breakfast and go hiking for a few hours. It's a perfect day today, it should be fun!

The Jury is Still Out... For Now

So, we made it back from our two weekend out of town. Two weekends ago we were in Flagstaff, AZ (pictured above), and this past weekend we were in New Braunfels, TX. They were fun trips, even though they end up sort of exhausting meeting tons of new people and going through the interview process. We were interviewing the people from the churches just as much as they were interviewing us.

I was a little paranoid about flying with my guitar, especially when they forced me to check it at the gate. I felt much safer when my baby can be strapped in nearby where I can see that she's alright :)


I think I know which direction we're heading at this point, but we're just taking a few days to soak it all in and seek God's will. The two churches are so different from each other, it's almost difficult to compare. The AZ church is smaller, about 300 people, but has been growing fast and seems to have a strong forward momentum. They were down to about 25 members a few years back and asked one of the remaining congregants to try to revive the church. It's been growing fast ever since and has a strong college age and young family demographic. The TX church is at around 1500 people, and has a newer pastor that is the son of the founding pastor. The overall vibe of these two churches and the areas they're in are so drastically different from each other too. They're both really pretty areas though. With both Texas and Arizona I typically picture desert and cactus in my head, but both of these locations are very green and filled with trees. We were so busy that we forgot to take many pictures, but here's one from the Austin airport... I'm always drawn to guitar art.

Both churches have offered me the positions, so it's really up to us at this point. I'll post something later this week to let everyone know where we're going. Stay tuned...