Genesis Collective - the Dream

I have loved my life. There is such a sense of deep rooted gratitude for the Father giving me a life beyond my dreams. When I think back now over the past dreams, they are embarrassing. They were both too small as well as ideas of grandeur. Honestly, I am so relieved that the Father did not let me live out my dreams. His are so much more empowering, lasting and satisfying.

Since coming to faith at the end of the Jesus People Movement, I was part of a church planting movement that seeded this great and noble dream in my heart but also showed me the consequences of poor, non-bible planting. At best it will last a decade.

From 1983, I spent the next 25 years, again planting churches with friends. I am so grateful to God for putting a spiritual father in my life, who not only fashioned me but gave me a hill to die on - the raw gutsy naive notion that we could change the world through church planting in all nations. I believed him then. I believe him now.

But the Father turned the page, a third chapter of church planting was starting to happen for M and me. Stepping out of the known into the unknown was once again Abrahamic in heart and Pauline in passion. Getting out of the boat is never easy. Moving from the known, formed, shaped and predictable into the unformed and uncertain is loaded with both faith and vulnerability. I knew there would be a period of detoxing needed. Not because the last chapter was bad. I loved those 25 years - warts and all. It is just that everything had to come under the anvil of divine scrutiny. All that was not biblical or of only one season's value had to be removed. That is never easy.

However the dream lives on in me. I live to disciple the nations. I live to train up leaders to impact these nations both in the marketplace with missional mindedness as well as through church planting. But I want to discover the new story, the new adventure of what that looks like in the 21st century. That is the birth point of the Genesis Collective.