Wellspring for KC

Long post…

It was last September when Christy and I finished all the interview processes the Southern Baptist Convention asked of us to be considered as church planters except one. We had been meeting as an organic/house church for several months at this time and were working to refine our strategy. NAMB (North American Mission Board) flew us to their headquarters in GA where we were put up in a hotel, given an itinerary of the upcoming events, and allowed to take the rest of the afternoon and evening off to relax.

The next day we started our interview process. We met with several different people who grilled us on all sorts of stuff.

We also met with the national director of the Nehemiah Program, of which we would be serving under. We shared our hearts and strategy with him as well. He specifically mentioned some Chinese leaders for me look into reading and gave me some names to Google for research into the organic/house church movement in the East. He was very excited that we were working toward this type of church planting in Kansas City and offered any help we may need to us.

Everything else went great. Our assessment from NAMB couldn’t have been better. We received a letter from them stating that we were approved and we could proceed with working with a state convention in which to become a missionary and be employed through them. I began working with the Convention of Missouri for this since we live on the MO side of Kansas City. This proved to be very difficult. We signed and sent in everything we were asked of for MO in early January and that was the last we’d heard from any denominational entity for several months.

We began to worry that our approval from NAMB would run up before anybody got in touch with us about our appointment status in early summer. This is when we began calling the Missouri Convention Church Planting office asking about our status. They told us they did everything they needed to do, they were just waiting on NAMB for approval. We called NAMB and the secretary would say they were waiting on approval from Missouri. It turned out neither could find the paperwork on us. We had to turn in everything all over again. Once again after some time we didn’t hear from anyone. We began calling the church planting office at NAMB. After a couple weeks of waiting, our original phone call was returned by a secretary who had no idea how to answer our questions.

At this time our frustrations were very high. We hadn’t heard from anyone at NAMB, besides a secretary, in almost a year. Missouri didn’t have a clue as to what was going on with our status and the Nehemiah professor couldn’t get any answers from anyone. Now not only were we pressing NAMB, but the Nehemiah professor was hunting answers, as was the church planting director of Missouri. With still no word from NAMB and our time running out we began to wonder if every Nehemiah church planter in the convention was treated like this. Was it the state we are a part of? Did someone not like our assessment? Can we not work with the convention to try to plant a group of multiplying organic churches?

After talking with the state director the week before and getting encouragement from him, I received a call from him on a Monday. He asked if I’d heard from NAMB, which of course I hadn’t. He said that they were denying us due to our strategy…

This not only upset us, but really made me angry. Anger which I’m now trying to work out toward forgiveness, but in the process I am looking back at what happened to try to figure it all out.

I now look back can see rightfully why we are so aggravated.

1. We received not one phone call returning our calls from NAMB by anyone other than a department secretary. And this was only after several messages were left.
2. Our strategy was never hidden. We were doing organic church when we were approved by NAMB for missionary status working with a state convention, talked to the Director of Nehemiah about it, and NO ONE told us that they didn’t support this strategy. The state knew we were doing it, the Nehemiah professor did, and so did NAMB. Almost a year of everyone knowing what we were doing and no one threw us a bone saying that this strategy is not approvable??!!
3. I talked to the professor of church planting and he says he heard from someone at NAMB that not only did they not approve our strategy, but I had said I didn’t want their support. When did they talk to me to know I had said this? I never said I did not want support from them. Had they talked to me they would have known.
4. NAMB didn’t even call me to tell me I wasn’t approved! We tried and tried to talk to someone for 10 months and nothing!!

We are working through the aggravation, but in the meantime I’m praying that our situation was an isolated one. Right now I just want to be left alone by everyone denominationally. Which is pretty probable since we couldn’t talk to them when we needed to. We need time to heal and get over the rough time of last year. If anyone has had a good experience with Nehemiah church planting, let me know. I want to rejoice in what the Lord is doing in your life.