How You can Pray!

For this post, I thought I'd just share some specific ways you can pray for us along the way. We're grateful for your friendship and glad you're tracking with our story. We're so glad we aren't walking the road alone, but that God has been so incredibly kind and gracious to give us friends like you all! We know that you're praying for us, so we thought giving you specific ways to pray might help you!

1. Pray for Encounter Life Church during the transition. We love ELC way more than anyone will probably know. It has been the greatest joy to share our lives with those who call ELC home. We're incredibly sad to move away, but we couldn't be more excited about the future for ELC. We know the church is God's church and they're God's people. 
2. Pray for our family spiritually, emotionally, physically as we prepare to move. Pray that we hold fast to Jesus in all of the busyness. Pray for energy as we get ready to welcome a new baby, while trying to sell our house and everything else that goes into moving.
3. Pray that our house sells. 
4. Pray that God would provide as we raise support. We're praying for and aiming to raise $75,000 in the first year. We know that God owns all of the money on the planet and that he desires for people to be reached, so we're excited to see how he moves. Perhaps God might use you to help us raise support! We're praying for churches and individuals to commit to partner with us for 3-5 years as we work hard to start a work in Oxford. You might want to give a one-time gift or perhaps you'd commit to give a set amount per month toward the new work. You can give online by clicking here (put PA in the memo) or you can mail a check to Encounter Life Church P.O Box 375, Manchester, TN 37349.
5. Pray for the people of Oxford, PA and surrounding areas. We're exciting about building relationships and sharing the gospel. Only about 6% of the people in the area are likely Christians. 
6. Pray for us to be able to find a place to live in Oxford. The realtor we've been working with says the rental market is very lean and he's asked us to think about looking outside of Oxford. We're praying God provides a place that will work for us in Oxford.

We're grateful for your prayers. We'll keep you updated as God answers prayers so you know how to specifically pray. God is faithful and we trust him. We're so glad that Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life, died the death we deserve and was resurrected to defeat sin and death so that would have an advocate! Where we're tempted to doubt or worry (which I'm sure we'll struggle with some more along the way) we have a high priest who understands. I'll close with Hebrews 4:14-16 (ESV) as an encouragement to all of us!

[14] Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. [15] For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. [16] Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16 ESV)

Why Oxford?

Hopefully so far along the way you're beginning to see and understand our heart and why we would decide to move. Oxford, Pennsylvania is about 11 hours from Manchester or about 729 miles. Why move our family? Why go there? 

When visiting the Philadelphia area in November of 2015 we visited several different suburbs. Culturally speaking we come from Manchester, which you know is a rural setting. We never believed God was calling us into the heart of Philly, but still had a drawing to the area. We are small town people. Oxford has a population in the zipcode of 17,847, which is a 35% increase since the year 2000. The population is expected to grow another 3.5% percent between 2016 and 2021. The size of town is very similar to Manchester. As a matter of fact there are several similarities between Oxford and Manchester. Both have an emphasis on a healthy downtown areas. Both have a farmers market. Both are about an hour from two major cities. Oxford is one hour from Philadelphia and about one hour from Baltimore. We believe we have an opportunity to influence both major metropolitan cities as people who live in Oxford work and play in these two cities. However, 57.5% of households are described as “Established Country Families”. There’s still very much a rural flavor to the community, as best we can tell, at this point. With the population growth people who are not from Oxford have relocated there. I believe this is because they want a more rural lifestyle, even if they have to work closer to Philadelphia. With this growth comes a great time for a church planter to move in, build relationships, share the Gospel and start a new church.

Oxford is located in the wealthiest county in Pennsylvania, but it’s the second poorest town in the county according to the Chamber of Commerce in Oxford. The average income in Oxford is about $87,000/year. We believe the more rural context and income demographics seem to indicate our family will fit in well as we make the transition.

The family structure in Oxford seems to be very traditional with an above average number of married people or two parent homes. While that seems like great news, some of the issues that most concern people in Oxford deal with day-to-day financial worries, better quality health care, adequate food, health insurance, parenting skills, and dealing with stress. We believe the Gospel offers hope to families and individuals who are facing these issues. We also believe, that given my background in Biblical Counseling, we’re more prepared to help people deal with these issues as we build relationships and establish trust with the people of Oxford.

We've seen God's faithfulness in Manchester and we're grateful for our family and friends that are here. God has been so kind to allow us so much time in this town. We thank God for the opportunities we enjoy and for the people we know. It's your kindness in loving our family that gives us confidence that God's with us and he's preparing a people for us to meet and share our lives with. As usual, we're grateful for your prayers, support and encouragement along the way!

Calling or Bad Burrito? How did we Discern the Will of God (Part 2)

Thanks for reading! We're picking up our discussion of how we figured out God was calling us to move to Oxford, PA. Click here for the first post. Here's a recap of the steps we used to make the decision:

1. Prayer
2. Scripture
3. Seeking wise counsel from godly friends
4. We visited the Philadelphia area
5. We participated in the full assessment process with the North American Mission Board
6. We prayed more!

We're ready to cover step # 4. The fourth step involved an airplane ride to Philadelphia. Just before Thanksgiving last year Jodi, Matthew and I flew to Philadelphia. Over the course of a few days we visited several different suburbs and boroughs outside of Philly. We found that we liked Downingtown and Oxford. Still we weren't totally sure God was calling us. We were still willing and open-handed but didn't have a strong sense of calling.

The next step in the process was going through the full assessment process with NAMB. Jodi and I flew back to Pennsylvania. This time we went to Pittsburgh. Overall, we found Pittsburgh to be a dreary and lonely place to be and we thanked God he wasn't calling us there. The assessment process evaluated various areas of our lives including our ability to plant a church, the strength of our marriage, and our willingness to exercise faith. The biggest concern for the assessment team was the issue of calling. Other than that, after some clarifying statements, everything seemed to be a go, if we could answer the issue of calling. We committed to pray until Dec. 2016 for clarity from God about staying or going.

This brings us to the final step. Again, we prayed. This time specifically about the issue of calling. In early June, our friend David sent us a list of 8 indicators of a call to plant a church. Here they are:

1. A pattern of multiplication
2. Entrepreneurial personality
3. Confirmation from others
4. Pull you can't resist
5. Passion
6. Buy in from spouse
7. A Sending church
8. A sense you can't do it

We felt like 7 of the 8 were done deals. #4 was the hang-up. Did we have that? That's what we began praying. If you want us to go, God, you're going to have to confirm this. As we prayed we consistently ran headlong into the reality that statistically speaking, as best we understood from everything we'd been told, only about 6% of the state of PA were probably believers. If that was true, then 4700 of the 5000 people who live in the city limits of Oxford are destined for an eternity separated from Christ, with the appearance of no strong evangelical, gospel-oriented church in sight. How could we stay, if we knew this and keep being drawn back it? In Manchester, we figure there are about 45 Southern Baptist churches within 30 miles and there are a number of other gospel-oriented churches also. Our estimate is that about 25-30% of people across TN probably are Christians. If both of those things are true, that means there's a greater saturation of churches and Christians in Tennessee than there is in Pennsylvania. We believe in our leaving, that God's raising up people in Manchester and surrounding areas to continue that work. Encounter Life will continue to Love God, Live His Mission, Love People and Lead them to Follow. Our leaving is multiply our gospel efforts. 

For us, the call to make disciples and get the gospel to as many people as possible means we're willing to give up our preferences and desires for the sake of carrying the gospel. We can't escape this reality and it's compelling us to go and tell! Throughout this process we'll talk more about that! The next post will talk about why we chose Oxford! In future posts I'll also talk about how we plan to start the church, how you can pray for us, how churches and individuals can partner with us and lots of other topics! Got a question? Leave a comment and perhaps I'll try to write a post about that too!

We'd welcome your prayers, thoughts, questions and support. We're grateful for an incredibly supportive church, family and friends! Thanks for your partnership along the way!

Calling or Bad Burrito? How did we Discern the will of God? (Part 1)

Since we shared that we were moving to Oxford, PA, we've had many people ask us, "How did we KNOW God was calling us to do that? Wouldn't it make more sense to be in Manchester since we're comfortably connected in the community? Why would we want to leave Encounter Life? Is moving away from our family the right thing to do? Why would God possibly want us to leave this community? What's wrong with Manchester that we don't want to live here anymore? What's wrong with the church that we wouldn't want to continue to serve there? Don't you like your job? Is your family enough to keep you here? The list of questions goes on and on, but the basic question remains the same? How did we know God was calling us and we can trust that we've actually heard from God.

In the next couple of posts, I thought I might try to give you a glimpse into how we made this decision. I think you'll find that we're not running from God and that we don't hate Manchester! As I shared with some people early on in the process, when I looked at the Bible, I believed God was calling us to go. When I looked at circumstances, I thought he was calling us to stay. So, given that, how did we decide to move?

We began the process by being, "open-handed". We prayed to God, individually and as a family, communicating to him that we were willing to do whatever he would want us to do. I'll confess though, I did pray "God I want to be in Manchester, but more than that, I want to be where you're calling us." We used a pretty thorough process to try to determine, as best we could understand, God's will for us. Here the list of the series of things we used:

1. Prayer
2. Scripture
3. Seeking Wise Counsel from godly friends
4. We visited the Philadelphia area
5. We participated in the full assessment process with the North American Mission Board
6. We prayed more!

We'll look at the first three areas in this post! Like I mentioned in the prior paragraph, we began with prayer. We tried to communicate to God that we were his people and we would submit ourselves to his Lordship. That meant we had and have to be open-handed in the way we live. We're trying to do that now in the way we live. Whether we decided to stay or go, we wanted and continue to want God to use us where we're at. 

Second, we tried to consider the Scripture. What does the Bible say about the issue of calling. We felt like we most related to Abraham. It seemed to us that we were either in a season like Abraham experienced in Genesis 12 where God called him to leave his home and go to place that he would reveal to him or we were more like the story of Abraham and Issac and God was calling us to put our total trust in him, but he was going to give clear evidence that though we were willing to go anywhere, he really wanted us to remain in Manchester.

The third thing we did was invite a few of our friends and family members to speak into our lives. We asked them if they believed God would call us to plant a church somewhere else. In other words, did they see that giftedness in Jodi and me. Did they believe God could use us in the Northeast? I hear the people are different there. They don't even drink sweet tea. Crazy, I know! We were also asked a lot of questions about our current situation. Were we running from something? Was there some reason we wanted to get out of Manchester? All of these questions and conversations helped us think through the situation. Our friends' prayers, thoughts and feedback helped us evaluate our situation and think honestly about our motivation to consider moving from Manchester.

In an effort to keep the post shorter, I'll finish sharing the process in the next post! Thanks for taking time to read!

Sad to Leave, but not Sad to Go...

Jodi and I announced our plans to move from Manchester a few weeks ago. We shared with our family and our church (Encounter Life Church) that we believe God is calling our family to move to Oxford, Pennsylvania to plant a new church in that community. We're excited to follow God's leading, as best we know how. I wanted to share with you the letter that I shared with our church a few weeks ago. Jodi and I appreciate your prayers and support as we continue to take steps toward moving. As best we understand God's timing and plan, we're aiming to arrive in Oxford on December 1, 2016. At that point, we'll have already had our fourth child and should be in a decent position to move without causing Jodi too much stress with a brand new baby.

Below you'll find a link to the letter that I shared with our church. I hope you'll take a little bit of time to read it, so you'll know what we're thinking. Along the way, I'll share more about exactly what we believe God is calling us to do, other ways you can pray for us, possible ways you could walk alongside us in support (I'll post a link to our church website below so you could give if you're already familiar with our plan and might want to support the work), and other thoughts as we run through a wide range of emotions and experiences before we move. I'm sure Jodi will even jump in and share some posts from her point of view. We'll also plan to use this blog to keep people updated about how life in Oxford is once we arrive there! 

Thanks for taking the time to check on us and find out what God is doing in our lives!

Click here to read the letter I shared with our church on July 10th.

Interested in supporting our efforts financially? You can give a one-time gift or a recurring gift through Encounter Life Church's website, by clicking here and following the steps. On the review page, you can leave special instructions, simply say "Oxford Church Plant". You could also mail a check to:
Encounter Life Church
PO Box 375
Manchester, TN 37349

Greater Things Yet to Come!

We've spent the month of January and first couple of weeks in February talking about "Life Together" at Encounter Life. I've spend time talking about our 5 membership covenant commitments that we make to God and to each other. These commitments are grace, growth, gifts, giving and going. To hear any of the talks click here and click on the sermon you'd like to hear. Week one is Grace and following to week 5 covering Going.

Yesterday, Feb. 9, I finished the series by talking about why covenant membership matters and what I believe God is capable of doing when we commit to do life together for the glory of God to accomplish the mission of God. In summary, seriously, I mean it, I know you don't think I know what that actually means, but I can do this. The same covenant commitments we make to each other in our local church are the commitments the 1st Century Christians made to each
other. We have not invented something new and trendy. This is not a magic potion. We've just clearly seen how they did things in the beginning of the church and we've asked ourselves how do we apply that to our lives as individuals and corporately as we gather. I hope if you call ELC home that you've been to most of the series. If you haven't, would you go back and listen to the messages you've missed? If you're a covenant member, we're counting on you to live for the glory of God as we pursue these commitments together. Together, we believe God is doing something in us and through us. Together, we believe God desires to transform our lives and to use us to reach people where we live, work and play. Together, we believe God desires for people around us to cross over from death to life. Together, we believe God is able to do more!

At the end of our worship time together yesterday I aimed to close with a verse that I hoped would encourage us to run hard after what God's calling us to do...together. John 14:12 was the verse. The ESV says it this way, "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." You might wonder, how could you ever do anything greater than Jesus? How is this possible? Friends, by God's grace, Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He came to preach the good news. He came to extend an invitation to a new life and home in the Kingdom to anyone who would respond in repentance and faith, trusting in Him alone. He's gone to the Father and given believers the gift of the Holy Spirit. As Christians, the Spirit of God lives in us. 2 Cor. 5, tells us we are God's ambassadors. We're his representatives for His Kingdom. Again, you might ask, greater? How? Jesus lived in a point in history, in a place, and knew certain people while in flesh. I understand God was fully God, but in his full humanity, he was limited by the distance he walked and relationships he built. But, he's given us the Spirit. We represent him everywhere we go. God's using us to make his appeal. God is using us to invite others. There is a gathering of people who are Encounter Life Church that he's sending out. There's a gathering of people he desires to use to do greater things. He'll use me to Live His Mission and Love People where I live work and play. He'll use you to Live His Mission and Love People where you live work and play. When we all realize this truth and begin running after it so that we can Lead Them to Follow, then we'll see God doing greater things. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people we're connected to. You have family members that aren't in my family. I have friends that you don't know. You have people that you work with that I've never heard of or met. You have hobbies that don't interest me one bit, but you have people that you're acquainted with through them. Your kids play sports that my kids aren't old enough for. The list goes on and on. I just refuse to believe for a second that we're connected to all of these people and God's not at work among them somehow or some way. God's desire is to make his appeal through us and then, day by day he'll add to the church those who are being saved, those who are crossing over from death to life as they trust Christ.

The mission of Encounter Life Church
is to reach people with the life-giving
 message of Jesus Christ and help them
become fully devoted followers of Jesus.
This diagram help demonstrate how we
believe God is calling us to accomplish this.

Would you begin living as though this is true? What keeps you from believing it? What causes you to think God can't use you? What causes you to live in a way that says "God's probably not doing anything around me?" What can you do this week to engage those around you to see where God might be working? Who can you serve and share with this week to see where God's working? Who can you embrace and invite that God's brought into your life? By God's grace and for his glory, my prayer is that we recognize the truth of John 14:12 in our lives, as God does greater things as we share the good news and invite others into the Kingdom of God.

For His glory and the Fame of His Name,

Transformation Series Post #3

My beautiful wife, Jodi, on our wedding day!

 This week we're talking about our union with Christ! I'm constantly blown away by the reality of this relationship. I can kind of think in terms of a marriage relationship because I am married. When Jodi and I dated, I recognized certain strengths in her and I knew I had certain strengths I was going to bring to the marriage. For instance, when we married, we agreed I would handle keeping up with the finances. I obviously thought she was cute, had a great personality, and a thousand other things that certainly told me I was marrying up! We each brought a certain amount of strengths (assets) and weaknesses (liabilities) to the marriage.

Our union with Christ has many similarities. We bring a lot of things to the relationship. However, if we're honest, none of them are assets. We bring sin, death, struggle, and a lot of things that we think make us good people. All of these are liabilities to coming to faith in Christ. The good news is that Christ brings everything we need into our relationship. He brings forgiveness, hope, life, wisdom, power and more! We have hope and life because Jesus has given them to us, not because we had something awesome to offer.

There's one more thing I want to mention before I end this post. Marriage is more than a ceremony! Marriage is without a doubt the most crucial relationship, between two human beings, on the planet in my mind. It is not a time and place where people gather to hear two people profess their love and make a lifelong commitment to each other. The marriage is the relationship that follows the ceremony. It doesn't end with a ceremony! It really just begins at that point. So is a relationship with Christ. Many people today when asked if they're a Christian, say yes and share about how they "asked Jesus into their heart" or had some other religious experience at an earlier point in their life. However, their is no practical outworking of their faith at all. They have no love for the Lord, no desire for obedience toward Christ, and no willingness to be in community with God's people. Salvation is not a date on a calendar 25 years ago, but it works itself out in a practical daily walk with Christ now. Imagine getting married and them moving out, never calling, never spending any time with your spouse, hooking up with all kinds of other people and then telling people you were married so everything was fine. That's crazy! Please don't be persuaded that just because you prayed a prayer or raised your hand when a preacher talked that you've trusted Christ. The reality is that many have had an experience, but have no concern for Christ and think they'll be in Heaven because "they're good people." If you've been around me for any amount of time, you already know what I think about that! In the paragraph above this one I dealt with what we bring to our marriage with Christ and what he brings. Our stuff is nothing...it's all baggage! It's all liabilities and frustrations! Christ brings everything we need for a relationship with him. If you're hope is in a prayer and your own self assurance that you're a "good person" I encourage you to repent and turn in faith to Christ today! The bridegroom is waiting! Trust Jesus today!

I'm praying for you as you rest in Christ, knowing that transformation is possible through your relationship with him! Email, Facebook, text, or call if there's anyway I can help you this week.

Billy