Well, it's been quite a while since the last "Maturo Messenger". For those that don't know, that was our newsletter from our IV Staff days. It's hard to believe it's been almost two years since we left IV. In some ways, it's gone by quickly, and in others, it's been excutiatingly slow.
So we think it's time to update everyone on what we've been up to. Admittedly, we have been exceptionally poor in keeping people up to date with our lives, so this is an attempt to catch people up and let folks know what we're doing now.
To pick up where we left off, Dave left IV staff at the end of the '07 school year. It was an amazing 10+ years on staff with IV and we saw God do great things over those years. We really enjoyed our time on staff and all the great students that allowed us to be a part of their lives. We keep up with many still (thank you, facebook) and see some from time to time. It was not easy leaving staff but we felt it was time.
Around the same time we were finishing up with IV, we were doing some reading on the missional church and were getting very excited about what was going on. Through some friends of ours that moved to Seattle, Dave got in touch with a pastor there that was looking for someone to start a college church across the street from the University of Washington. It was a dream job in every way. A three-story former frat house with two floors of dorm-type rooms, two basement apartments and a main floor that could be used for meeting space and a coffee shop. It couldn't have been more perfect.
After a few months of talking with the pastor, Dave took a trip to Seattle and spoke at the church that wanted to start this college church. Everything went very well and we were looking at moving as soon as possible. Then everything started to go wrong. It gets very, very complicated, but after eight more months of nothing working out, we finally had to let go of the dream job. Needless to say, Dave was crushed and went into a bit of a tail spin. He left the one job he loved with the belief that God had something better in store only to see that disappear as well. As you might imagine, this was not a good time. (don't worry, it gets better).
The next step was to try and find a job. So what does a guy that did college ministry for 10 years do? College ministry, of course. After a few months, many resumes, a few interviews and even a trip to Missouri, nothing had come through.
During this time Brook started her own medical billing company and then shortly after started managing a credentialing company as well. Dave watched the kids and worked part-time at a golf course. It paid the bills (sort of) but it wasn't what either of us wanted to do.
That brings us to a few months ago. For some reason, one day Dave decided to contact a church planter that he met during his trip to Seattle. A few emails back and forth ended with Dave getting the name of Linda Bergquist. Linda is a church plant strategist in San Francisco and was intersted in talking with us.
A quick aside....during these past couple of years, Dave has been very influenced by the book "The Shaping of Things to Come". If you haven't read it, please do. I'll get into it another time, but it had a major impact on how Dave did ministry his last year on staff with IV and continues to impact him daily.
Anyway, during the first phone conversation with Linda, Dave brought up "Shaping" and a specific idea in the book. Turns out Linda came up with the concept that was talked about in the book! It was at this point that Dave started to believe something was up. Up until this point, we were having a tough time figuring out what God was doing.
After quite a few more conversations, we planned a visit to SF. For those that don't know, SF has always been Dave's favorite city and is less than an hour from where he grew up. Our hope was to figure out if SF might be where God wanted us to be. At worst, at least we'd get a few days away in the greatest city on earth.
After a few days in the city, we were very much enjoying ourselves but not necessarily seeing where we were going to fit. We had spent the day with a former student of ours and afterward the two of us were sitting in Ikea eating dinner (who knew they had a food court?) trying to figure out what we were going to do. Brook had multiple job offers in the Bay Area, but neither of us wanted Brook to work full-time. We loved the city and the church planters we had met, but we didn't see how it could work out.
An hour or so later we are sitting at Linda's kitchen table when she brings up the idea of creating a mission program in San Francisco that would host teams from all over the country with the idea of growing and supporting local church plants in the Bay Area.
It clicked. For the first time in a very long time, we both saw something that could work. Something that would allow us to do ministry together, continue to homeschool the kids, use what we've learned in our years on campus and taking teams overseas, fit both of our gifts and satisfy our desire for a missional communtiy. We were so excited we couldn't sleep and spent the next couple of hours jotting down ideas of what the program might look like.
These last few months have been both exciting and difficult for us. The prospect of finding what we've been looking for has encouraged us, but we've also been through this before and are trying to be cautious as well and not get too excited. But we believe we are to the point of letting people know what is going on and asking our friends to join us in prayer.
There are still quite a few things that need to be worked out, logistical and otherwise. Our desire is to be in SF by the beginning of summer which isn't very far away. We've begun the groundwork of putting together the mission program and believe we've done just about all we can do from here. Now we need to get on the ground in SF and put it all together.
There will be time for specifics on these things, but we think we've written more than enough for now. We will use this blog to update what is going on and a little more about the project. On top of all of this, there are 16,000 Russians living in the area of SF that we want to move to and very few, if any, missional churches reaching out.
So there you have it and now you're all caught up. This entry is quite long, but hopefully it makes up somewhat for our silence over the past couple of years. Thank you for your patience both in reading this blog and with us in general. More to follow...sooner than later.
