Where are you going?

Disclaimer: This is a personal post for me letting people I love know about my family’s upcoming move.

A couple of months ago I was contacted by a church staffing search firm agent. He made me aware of a church in Wentzville, Missouri that was looking for a kid’s pastor. I was quite familiar with the church, Element Church. I had been following them since Pastor Erik Lawson planted the church eight years ago.

You may or may not know that I am originally from the St. Louis, Missouri area. Both Rachel’s and my parents live in the St. Louis metro. The idea of moving closer to family was appealing but we weren’t sure. We have a really great church that we serve at now, River Valley Church in Apple Valley Minnesota. The church is growing and healthy. I’ve been able to do things here that I’ve only dreamed of doing.

Rachel and I had a vacation planned for the end of March. We were going to be dropping off the girls at her parents so we decided that the Saturday following we could at least stop by the church to check it out and talk with them informally. We liked what we saw and heard and had a tug in our hearts. We decided we would continue the interview process and pray. We prayed and were close to a decision but we wanted to make it different for our family this time. I had an idea.

We asked our three daughters to weigh in on the decision. In fact we made a chart with two columns. On one side we wrote “stay at RVC” and the other we wrote “go to Element”. We then divided each of those columns into two more with a “+” and “-” on each side. We as a family listed every pro and con we could think of for both decisions. Nothing was off the table. Even “Mall of America” made it on the pros of staying here. Then we assigned “importance” point values based on a scale of 1-10. We added the pros and subtracted the cons (I’m looking at you Minnesota winter).

After the final tabulation, Element won out hands down. I accepted the offer to come and be their next kid’s pastor. We have a peace about it. We will be close to family and lifelong friends. We get to cheer the teams we love. It is bittersweet because I have lived out the dream here at River Valley Church. It truly is a life-giving place to serve God’s kingdom. Whoever fills my role will be blessed here and I know that God will continue to bless the vision here. I love the staff, volunteers and families. Many of you will be life long friends.

I am closing out the chapter here strong. We have record numbers of kids going to camp. GO Kids gave ten times more to missions last year than in the previous year. We are in the middle of a big giving contest and my last week I’ll wind up having green or purple hair. We are in a series on how we are “Better Together” with the Holy Spirit. On my last weekend we will see dozens of kids filled with the Holy Spirit. I’m excited to close out this chapter well because the way you close one chapter is the way you start the next.