Commencing Countdown, Engines On...

Here is the May Update for City Church, which was my responsibility to write this month. For those of you who already receive the City Church Newsletter...well, you get a sneak peek! Lucky you.

"As I write this, I have just stared for a full minute at an e-mail sent to me that says, “Service Launch in 33 days”. Thirty-three days until June 6th, when everything changes for our fledgling church yet again.

For those of you unfamiliar with the what, when, and how of church planting (and I might only half-jokingly include myself in that category!), a service launch is fancy church-planter language for beginning our first Sunday worship gathering. This is a very big deal in the life of a church - its public birth, you might say. This is when we go around putting door-hangers in our target neighborhoods, start talking up City Church with a vengeance all around town, and praying like our lives depended on it. Because it does, really!

A “launch” is as important as it sounds because it establishes so much of our church’s DNA: where we’ll meet, how we’ll meet, how long will the service be, what kind of songs will we sing, will we be bi-lingual, will we offer childcare, will we feed people who come to us, what will we preach?

Of course, most of those things we are able to shift and change as we learn and grow as a church that offers a Sunday service. But that last one must not ever change. The answer to the question, “What will we preach?” is the most important question of all. Will we preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, or will we go about spouting buzzwords like “hope” and “change”? Will we boldly declare the Gospel, as we should? Or will we be so intimidated that we decide on something safe, like preaching tolerance for everything and everyone until we don’t know what we believe in anymore?

Of course, my prayer and yours for City Church should be that we are bold in the face of the Enemy. Since we crash-landed here eleven months ago, we have not ceased to claim the city of San Jose for Christ, knowing that not even the gates of hell can stand against the Kingdom that God is building; His Church, His Bride.

As the countdown continues, we beg you to be in prayer with us for the souls of this city. In the end, all those other questions are just noise. Be in prayer especially for Pastor Jason, who will be preaching on that Sunday. I leave you with a verse that I’ve heard him repeat over and over, and gives me faith in where our church is going:

“1Cr 9:16 Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”