The Name Game, Plus an Exciting Week Ahead

ANNOUNCING OUR CHURCH PLANT NAME!

Except not. Today I planned to reveal the name of the church plant. However, due to an unbelievably odd (I mean really odd) series of events, that will not be happening. In fact, we have to ditch that name altogether and pray about a new name. While this is certainly frustrating since we did put a lot of time and prayer into picking out this name, the Lord was very gracious in keeping us from using that name. Had we gone forward with this name, it would have caused us a significant headache down the road. This is life in the church planting world - lots of excitement and plenty of interesting turns.

This past week I preached at Christ Community Church (PCA), one of our two supporting churches in Gainesville. It was a wonderful time of fellowship, and some families from that church have already expressed interest in supporting us or even joining us. It is so encouraging to have supporting churches from different denominations.

On Thursday Kristen and I will leave for California to spend six days support raising in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. I will also be preaching on Sunday at the Evangelical Free Church of Huntington Beach (CA), a church I attended for almost eight years. This church is now supporting the Gainesville church plant, an amazing development since this church is about 3,000 miles away from Gainesville!

Please Pray:
- That Ryan Harding (the associate church planter working with me) and I would prayerfully settle on a different name for the church plant in the next week or so. We have some other awesome choices, and we're thankful for that.
- That the Lord would raise up several families from Christ Community Church to join the church plant launch team. Pray that my time there this past weekend would help people think more clearly about their involvement.
- That the Lord would speak through me in powerful ways on this coming Sunday morning as I preach at the Evangelical Free Church of Huntington Beach for the first time.