Happy Birthday to our Church!

Today, our church is celebrating its 3rd year of existence! After two years of praying, worrying, asking God and other people if we were crazy,- oh, yeah, and a hurricane on our original launch date- our baby church opened its doors October 12, 2008. If you’re part of an established church (as we had always been before), this may not seem like a big deal- but for us- it is huge!

{Oh, and if you’re wondering why I am writing this at 10:19 am on the Sunday of the celebration, it is because my baby girl is sick. So instead of feeling sorry for myself for missing this very.important.day, I wanted to use this quiet time to reflect on what God has done in these last three years. Although I may have also thrown myself a small pity party. ahem. }

God first gave Ben and me the vision for this unique church plant about 5 1/2 years ago. We were in our house in our former {very small} town and Ben said, “What do you think about starting a church in Houston?” I immediately said, “Yes! Let’s do it!” Now, unless you get the wrong idea that I was looking for a way out the small town, or something exciting, I wasn’t. I loved living in a small town- where I had grown up, where we had a great church family to serve as the youth pastor, my parents lived across the street {this is where the crazy part came in!}, and almost my entire extended family lives there.

Ben, my hubby and our pastor. Read more about him here.

We had, up until this point, several other offers for Ben to pastor- including anywhere from Odessa, TX to somewhere in California. But each time, one or the other of us didn’t feel right about it. I bet Ben thought he’d never get me away from there! But it just had to be what God wanted, and I was immediately on board.

“So why Houston?” you may ask. You can read a bit of our firstborn’s story here. I won’t go into a lot of detail now, but we spent much of his first few months of life at Texas Children’s Hospital, which is part of the Texas Medical Center {TMC}. I think it is hard to comprehend, if you’ve never been here, what the TMC is. I know we had NO idea what it was before coming here for the first time six years ago.

Basically, it is a huge conglomeration of tons of hospitals including Texas Children’s, the world-renowned MD Anderson, Methodist Hospital, and a host of others, as well as two medical schools, a dental school, several nursing schools. So suffice it to say, there are a lot of medical personnel in a few square miles of acreage. It is the largest medical center of its kind in the world. {Can you tell I’m proud? :)}

Anyway, once Ben began to research the area, we fell more and more in love with it. There are around 80,000 employees just in this one segment of Houston! 80,000! That is four times the population of my hometown, to give a little perspective. {I am still in awe I went from small-town America to the now 3rd largest city in America!} It took us almost two years to get here after our initial conversation- I was already pregnant with our second baby and we didn’t want to move while I was pregnant or having a newborn if not necessary.

The last three years have been exciting, hard, fun, work-filled, and a huge blessing to us {and we’ve added another one to our family!}. God has given us great friends in this city, and we also have a few family members close by. We can’t wait to see what the next three years bring!

We have baptized many new believers- and the next baptism will be our son Landon this coming Sunday!

Happy Birthday, Church in the Center!

*All photos {except the one of Landon as a baby!} are courtesy of Stan Kwan Projects.
He does great wedding photography and videography,
and does an excellent job documenting the life of our church!

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