We're Baaaaaaaack

Hey everyone,

Exactly one year ago yesterday, Molly and I arrived in Ireland for the very first time. We smelled like a smorgasbord of airport food, stale airplane air, stress, and the American dream. We made it to Enniscorthy and promptly collapsed in a heap on the floor of our apartment. And thus, this Irish season of our lives began.

Looking back now, I really cannot help but feel humbled. As many of you know, this past year was not a cake walk by any stretch of the imagination (what is a cake walk anyway?). Pride, bitterness, loneliness, confusion, impatience, and fear all became our daily enemies, along with a heavy dose of cultural acclimation. YET, God gave us the Church, the warmest community/family of believers that we could have asked for here in Alive Church. He provided continually through prayers and finances sent to us from across the Atlantic Ocean. He has abundantly refreshed us when we feel exhausted, and has begun to show us what we were put on this world to do. What more could we ask for? Thank you so much for your continued support, lets see what God does this next year!

Also, I apologize for the lack of blogging this past month. August was a crazy month for us. Early in the month we went to a Children's Ministry conference put on by Gateway Church and then a week later we flew away to Croatia for our Sabbatical. Both of those were so refreshing in so many ways, and we can't wait to share more about the Sabbatical. But sadly, we will probably wait till it is cold and rainy here in Ireland to reminisce about the sunny beaches in Croatia (so you'll only have to be patient for a few more weeks, mom).

Now that we are all rested up from our Sabbatical, we have jumped straight into the swing of things with new vision for this next year. So in celebration of our 1 year Irish anniversary (year-iversary?), I'm going to share with y'all one of my favorite things to happen in Alive Church since we returned to Enniscorthy.

The 1st Worship Night

Back in February I felt like God wanted to break out in a new way. My desire for Alive Church has always been to build and grow a worshiping community, but in February a more specific idea came to mind. What if we gathered people in the church to meet in someone's home, and we took a few hours just to meet with God together, the only agenda being to each connect personally with Him and submit our lives, families, jobs, and church to Him? What if we started to take worship out of the church building on a regular basis? What if we took worship out of our "Sunday service" schedule and dedicated an evening to seek Jesus for as long as it takes to encounter Him? What if we worshiped Jesus, not to get us in the mood for the message, but just because He is worth everything we have?

Our head pastors loved the idea so we got to work planning the event. So many months later, on the last weekend of August we had our first Alive Church Worship Night, and it was incredible. About 30-40 people from our church squeezed into a living room to break bread, pray, and worship Jesus together. The Holy Spirit came in power, prayers were answered, laughter filled the room, tears were shed, and a new season began in Alive Church.

Let me explain why this was such a pivotal moment for our church. Only a year ago Alive Church started having organized live worship for the Sunday service. No one in our church has ever received any training/teaching on worship outside of how they see it modeled by other Christians in the church, and most were raised in the Catholic church. So while a worship pastor providing exhortation/shepherding during worship is quite commonplace in American churches, they had never seen anything like that before. Can you imagine that? A church, redeemed and in love with Jesus, with limited understanding/access to connect with Him through worship. It's like a 10 year-old child who was never taught how to read or write struggling to pen a letter to their father to tell him how much they love him. Heart-breaking.

All of that to say, one of my biggest burdens and delights this past year has been to shepherd this church into deeper worship with their Father. Week after week we read scripture, explained why we worship, the character of God, and so much more. How did the church respond? They grew exponentially, falling head over heels in love with God! Why? Because we were created to worship, it is the most natural thing on earth for us to do. So after a year of shepherding, we put on the church's first ever worship night. Can you imagine how excited everyone was? Can you imagine the sweetness of the worship that night? Can you imagine how my mind was blown by the faithfulness of God? It was incredible!

And the most exciting thing? Our church loved it so much we will be doing another worship night in about a month.

Praise God. Get excited for this next year everybody.