My life as a Pastor’s wife…
So, I am kind of revamping my blog to be a journey of the next year or so and my journey with Chris as he is planting Resonate Atlanta. For about 3 years now (wow!!!) Chris and I have been attending Cumberland Community Church in Smyrna, GA – 2 ish of those years Chris has been on staff as the worship leader/programming director. We absolutely adore Cumberland…but we have always kind of wondered why God led us there. I left a church that I had been extremely involved in since middle school, serving 3 years on staff, and landed at a church that was not in our community…at all. Living in the city driving more than 10 minutes from our place feels like we are no longer in our neck of the woods. I know that sounds SO stupid, but it really is true…living in a city there is a feeling of a neighborhood, not just in the sense of a bunch of houses lining a street around cul-de-sacs, I mean you know your neighbors, store keepers, see the same people running, it’s kind of hard to explain…even though you are probably thinking, “what is she talking about? You can have that outside of the city!” (and you DEFINITELY can)…
Back to the point here. For the past 3 years Chris and I have both felt very strongly the Cumberland is where God wanted us to be, but we just wondered why. Our church does amazing Sundays called “Faith in Action” Sundays where we literally shut the doors of the church and go work in the community instead of dressing up and sitting in the chairs in the auditorium…we LOVE this about our church, but Chris and I have also never really connected with things on those Sundays. Smyrna is not our community, we weren’t serving OUR neighbors or the schools that impact our neighborhood. Yeah, it was an amazing day, but what would it feel like if we were working alongside our neighbors?
Enter the vision of our lead pastor, Alan. He has always said that he doesn’t want to add on services as Cumberland grows but to plant in neighborhoods around Atlanta…interesting. When Chris told me this I thought “Cool! Maybe they will plant something in the city and then we can go there and he can work there!” Little did I realize that Alan had Chris in mind to actually DO the planting. When the idea first came up I asked Chris what his thoughts were on this and he said “I’ve always wanted to plant a church, but I always thought it would be when I was older.” That kind of made me laugh because I think both he and I like to think we are younger than we are (yes, I know, we ARE very young), but also God pretty much understands what’s going on.
So, here we are. About 9 months down the road from the initial conversation of the church plant and Chris is in full planting mode. Asking people to join our core – these are conversations I absolutely DREAD. I KNOW it is totally not about me AT ALL, but I just fear the “rejection” of people not wanting to join our core…hello…STUPID! If they don’t feel like God is calling them to be a part of this movement, CLEARLY that is ok…can you tell this is a lesson I am learning daily? 
We are less than a year away from the official launch and I am learning what it feels like to be a Pastor’s wife…more on that later…lots more on that later.
So, what is God teaching me right now? Get ready for the bullet point list….(which are not showing up as bullets in my published post…please standby while I contact my designer…ahem…)
- He is TOTALLY in control of this church plant – Chris and I are simply the lucky ones who He has chosen to be a part of this amazing vision
- I need to get a grip, relax, and trust that He is working in the hearts of the people who will be part of our core team
- PRAY. I have been using my runs to pray for our neighborhood. I’ve lived here for 2 years and have not prayed for a transformation…what an idiot. Now when I walk or drive down the streets I can see the amazing things that God has planned for this neighborhood and am giddy with excitement at what He is going to do.
- there’s a lot more but I really need to get back to work…
Thanks for reading…let’s hope I can keep this up consistently! As part of my job I tell people that consistency is the key in blogging and social media…can I execute these tactics for myself? We shall see.
No related posts.
