Ben fired me up with his post recently about asking several people he knew about relocating and being part of his church.
People quitting thier job and working for free or raising their own support is a HUGE part of the Ridge Stone story. We all did it in the early days and I have no doubt that is why God blessed. He knew our support was running out and we were going to starve. :)
So in last weeks I asked two people to do it. One was a dude I have known for years and we helped when I was in Iowa to plant a church in St. Louis. We are great friends and I have always wanted to work with him. He said yes and is already here. He is doing our youth (which we have NEVER done something for). He started a small group for them two weeks ago and has had over 20 both weeks. We are going to launch the youth group with a ski trip in Feb. and it looks like he is taking about 30-40 kids. The best part is he is raising his own support for the first year.
Last week I approached one of my best friends about coming on as a sort of discipleship, life journey, assimilation, type guy. He talked about doing it part-time, then yesterday he told me he is not renewing his contrat teaching next year and he is raising support to come help us for a year. After that year we will see if it is what we both want. I am sure it will be.
It is funny I often have planters who gripe about us and say that they could have also built a fast growing church if they would have started multi-staffed. The thing is they could have. We were 6 months old before ANY of us toke a dime from the church. Even now, no one makes what the should. I have friends pastoring plants who run 1/3 of our attendance that make $15,000-$20,000 more a year then I do. These guys were/are just afraid of the Big Ask.
DeAnna and I decided going in we would make a certain amount the first two years so we could hire staff. Sure I could make more but we figured long term we were better off not doing this thing on our own.
The Big Ask is hard for a lot of guys and I don't understand why.
I am convinced that if we truly believe our vision is from God that we would feel we are robbing these people of what God has for them by not asking them to be part of it.