Along with church planting is dealing with shattered dreams and ideals. Whether they are dreams of a few days or dreams of a few years, they all don’t, if any go as planned. Since we have started thinking about planting theStory we have tossed around the idea of having a storefront in downtown Sarnia as a safe place/gathering place/office place/hang out place for the community to express itself. There is lots of available space downtown Sarnia and we looked at it all. This one place that we looked at was two, one floor storefronts, about 4500 square feet total. One of them was recently renovated and looked great; the other was a trash hole with not much hope for renewal. It was in a great location and fit the bill physically wise. However it was $250,000 to purchase and $2100 a month to rent. It was a little steep for our liking.

Around 7 months ago now Joe, Darryl and I walked downtown and we went into a well-known Sarnia furniture store. It’s been in its spot for 70+ years and is a Sarnia landmark. We walked around the first floor a bit in awe about how sweet the building looked and the possibilities of it. We left and didn’t really think much more of it. Two weeks ago, we found ourselves downtown again and we found ourselves back in this building, and this time I was asking questions. I was asking the lady about the history of the building and we were looking at the disaster pictures of when a tornado went through the area 50 years ago. Then I made some off-hand comment about how much I love the building and I wish I could buy it. Then she said words that I think sent my mind racing so hard that I didn’t really listen to anything else she had to say: “Well, it’s for sale, so you could buy it.”

Let me give you some details of it. It is 21,000 sqaure feet. Three floors, second floor is a balcony around the first and the third floor is one massive space probably about the size of two-three medium sized gyms. There is tons of office space, unlimited storage space and even more space that you will find when you least expect it. There is a basement also, the same size as the rest of the floors that about half of it is being used right now. Also included, of course there is more good news, is the property next door which is a corner store front on the busiest street downtown that used to be an old bank and is now converted into an office for some land surveyors. The roof was redone about five years ago and the physical nature of the inside of the building is absolute mint. The building was beautiful.

Guess how much this property was? 17, 000 square feet more than the first one I mentioned, and thirty thousands dollars cheaper. This whole piece of property was only $220,000. Now you all are wishing you lived in Sarnia aren’t you? You’ll never find anything like that so beautiful and large for such a price. They are pretty much giving it away.

So we talked to the real estate guy, went on tours of the building and brought along people who could inspect the place. Everything was perfect, it was a once in a lifetime deal. The only problem is that we don’t have $220, 000. We don’t have a deposit to get a mortgage. We thought about asking rich people that we knew. We thought about buying it and keep renting it to the people that are in there now to keep some sort of income. We prayed about it. We dreamed like we’ve never dreamed before.

As it stands now, we aren’t going to go for it. A building that size, for a community as small as us with as budget as small as ours would be committing suicide to jump into something like that right now. The last thing we want to do is start a church only to throw everyone in a building and that building be the point of our existence. We need time to grow together, learn together and dream together. We need time to build community before we give a place for community to thrive. So even though in my eyes this building is perfect beyond comparison to everything we would need to be a strong support to our city, there is a good chance that its probably best for us to just wait. I hate waiting.

Of course, if you know anyone who wants to give us some money to buy it and maintain it for a little while, my guess is we’d probably be all for it. I just don’t want to be that church that has to have the pastor stand in front of the congregation week after week rallying for more money for the building project. Our goal at theStory is not to raise money for a building project so we have a building. Instead its our goal to use everything that God gives us, which is everything we have, whether it be time, money or a building to be put to use for kingdom causes.

It is odd, encouraging and a bit scary to me that more people all over the world that read occasionally on the internet have a better idea of what’s going on with our church plant (theStory) than my neighbour does. In fact, I don’t think my neighbour knows that I’ve started a church. There are people in Sarnia who are interested in the church plant but know less than most people on the internet because they aren’t avid internet users.

This is odd because this is a church plant for God for Sarnia. So if people from all over the world can be encouraged and inspired by what we are doing in Sarnia then praise God. We are trying desperately to put on our true face on the web, but I think it’s easy for us all to say that we want to look better than we really are (whatever better really means). It’s odd because I’m worried that I’m more concerned about what we look like on the internet than I am in real life. I am a internet junkie. This is my age group. All my friends are obsessed with community building websites like MySpace. This is part of who I am. However, I can’t allow an internet identity to interfere with my real identity here in Sarnia. So yes we are a new church plant. Some may call us emerging. We are tied with all kinds of web-based organizations like Resonate, Epiphaneia, The Daily Scribe, Thinker Labs and other great ideas and organizations. So with that comes some sort of weird fame in these circles. It’s a fame that is strictly within the circle. But its there. All of sudden you start seeing your church or your name linked on big blogs and you get a bit happier. You check your web stats more and you want to be successful in this little internet world.

This is encouraging because it means that we have support coming from all over the world. This is support that we never would have had a few years ago. Connecting with Resonate and the Free Methodists put us in contact with church planters all over North America that have been encouraging us and walking us through the initial steps. These relationships are essential to moving forward as a church plant. We are one of many that God is using to spread his kingdom.

This is a bit scary because I’ve always used the internet to promote things that I’m doing. We advertised The Evolving Church with Epiphaneia 90% through the internet and sold out our tickets a month before it started. We advertised Cultivate on the internet and hit our target. My blog is something I’ve been keeping up for two years now on the internet and its becoming something I’m comfortable with and can use as a tool to get he word out about something new. theStory though is an entire different world. I can’t and don’t want to advertise theStory on the internet. I don’t want to use all my graphic design and web design techniques to make the biggest impact. It’s just not the way you start a church.

So here I am on my first project in 4 years where the internet really isn’t that useful. In fact my graphic/web design skills have sort of just been pushed to the side. Honestly, who really cares if our calendars look good or not? We aren’t drawing people in with them; we are sending people that show up home with them. We kept our website as simple as possible and we are hoping to make it a useful tool to bring the community together by having the user-updated calendar, a book library and a blog. We are trying to be transparent. After all, as of now we are just twenty people that sit in a living room and talk about what it means to be a community that follows Jesus. Hopefully we can use the web as a tool for our community not a tool to highlight or put us on a pedestal

“I don’t want you to organize some amazing thing on Sunday for me to experience this as church.” These are the words that poured out of a girl at our second meeting as a new church plant. These are the words that as a team that has been planning this church plant for almost two years and been dreaming about it for four could have written down at the beginning. These are also the words that we sort of pushed to the side of ideals that would shape the look of theStory.

As Joe, Darryl and I begun the planning process of this new endeavour, it was essential to us that we didn’t make this all about Sunday. We didn’t want Sunday to be a performance or the entire focus and we didn’t want Sunday to encapsulate the totality of everyone’s spiritual lives in those few hours. Within two weeks, we had already begun to stray from this discipline. Our time was going to organizing Sunday (even though it looked much different than a traditional service). We spent the week doing paperwork, websites, meetings and most things that were non-relational and then got ourselves up for the ‘next service’ and planned ourselves for it. That only took two weeks. That was until of course this girl, Steph, said she didn’t care for it.

Then we were all reminded that Sunday wasn’t our sacred cow anymore. We were reminded that we’re going to be doing things a lot differently than what we are used to and that taking an attendance on Sunday no longer holds much value. We were reminded how easy it is to get caught back up in the old ways of doing church. We were reminded about how easy it is to simply do a Sunday remix than completely re-work the way church is done. It could be because we are only two weeks in and there is all kinds of start-up things that none of us really prepared for that is taking up all our time. However, we are looking at it as a warning. A warning that says may as well stop now before you start throwing on amazing events that draw the crowds that give us false impressions of success and then there goes any sort of church plant.

We sat in the Coffee Lodge and wrote a list of fifteen things that we wanted theStory to look like and be. Beside each thing/characteristic we wrote in columns ‘Church’ and ‘Outside of Church’ and we began to rate. How much of our community building would be done on Sunday; how much would be done on the other six days? Down the list we went. We realized that this church plant is going to look so drastically different than anything we were used to and its going to take some major discipline to keep it that way. Most things were either 50/50 or 80/20, with the emphasis being on the other six days. It’s a little nerve racking because I don’t really know how to be a pastor seven days a week, I’m used to only a few hours a week.

So two weeks in isn’t that bad to realize this. I’m glad it is two weeks and not twenty years. So here we go again, starting from scratch, two weeks in and praying that God leads us towards him and not towards ourselves.

After it was all over, Joe, Darryl and I were sitting there and I looked at them and I said “well, we did it, we just planted a church.” (theStory) I don’t have a clue what that means. I don’t know how to plant a church. I don’t even know if that’s what we are doing. All I know was that today, for the first time, 23 of us adults and a handful of kids crammed in a living room and talked about our spiritual journeys thus far. And we plan on doing it again. Then again. Weekly on Sunday, we are going to be coming together with these same people and talking about Jesus, church, justice, community and then the other six days we are going to desperately try and live it out together. If that’s what a church is, then yup, it looks like we started a church today.

Part of me is a little scared. Sitting in that room today, I realized that this is going to take longer than I originally intended. When I first thought about planning a church I was very event oriented. I know how to plan an event, and I don’t mean to boast, but I can do a pretty good job. So my idea of planting a church was running killer Sunday services that cool people would want to come to and would actually be relevant to their every day lives etc. Over the last four years, from when I first wanted to plant the church to now, I’ve changed an awful lot. It’s funny that my desire to plant a church never left. Now though, I don’t want to run big events that will attract more people to the event. I want to plant a church, and that means to me a community and that can’t be done by running great events (but let me assure you, will not be without them).

I’m scared because planting a church means that I don’t get to use all those skills that I learned in youth ministry class and the skills I know I have. Now it means long, time consuming, energy consuming relationships. It means inviting people over to my house constantly. It means putting people’s needs before my own. It means a lot of things that for some reason, before I never attributed to planting a church. I’m scared now because these things that I know now builds community are different from the easy to plan, quick results events that I’m used to. Building community doesn’t produce quick results. That scares me. That means that success isn’t noticed quickly. That means I’ll probably be viewed as a failure for a long time.

Jesus, help me remember that your kingdom was advanced by failures. Help me hold to kingdom principles and not worldly ones. Help me remember that a failed messiah saved the world. A crucified saviour made no sense, and neither does what we are doing. We aren’t doing it to make sense. So even if we are viewed as failures, let us keep focusing on what we are doing, and not whether we are viewed as successful or not.