On Sunday May 6th, we completed a series of informative and inspirational presentations about Sanctuary’s Church Planting efforts. During the second service, when the map of all the churches we have helped start came up on the screen a woman several seats to my left gave a gasp, “ahhhhh!” and then just nodded and smiled in affirmation of what you have been doing as a church. It turns out her late husband was an apostolic church planter in Canada for the CRCNA. I hope it was an “ahhhh!” time for many of us as we took time to get under the hood of church planting and see how the thing works.
I was also delighted with our brief Town Meeting at the Razzi’s brunch. The questions and affirmations and requests for new churches in highly diverse neighborhoods totally stoked my soul. What I saw on Sunday was a congregation who understands church planting and the need to prioritize planting. Our Church Planting Team has done a great job in assembling materials, presentations, videos and live visits with planters and members of church plants so that we have gotten a great look and feel for the whole church planting movement in our Seattle Cluster of churches. I look forward to sharing the journey broadly together and with more urgency and impact than ever before. One church in Seattle started about 60 churches in the early 1900’s. What if we were to be a part of that many or more in the early 2000’s? I’m game!
Randy Rowland