I love you too, just don't hug me.

Yesterday I griped a lot about those who chose not to support us financially in our ministry in TN. I wish I could say that for everyone who chose not to there was one who did, but that isn’t true. What is true is that each person who felt God calling them to partner with us in ministry was a blessing that far outweighed those who didn’t. As much as I was surprised at the creativity exhibited by those who said no, I was blown away by the generosity of those who wanted to share with us. There were some individuals we never considered approaching because we knew their financial situations well enough to know that asking them to absorb another expense in their monthly budget would be too much of a stretch. Those individuals were some of the first to come alongside and support us. We received some incredible blessings at the hands of God’s people.

Once we reached a sufficient level of support I resigned from my job and we put all of our effort into support raising. We drove back to my childhood home area in Texas and spent over a month there meeting with people and spreading the word about the ministry. We attended church fairs with a booth, did presentations before entire congregations and met with families I knew from childhood. At the time we were driving a minivan that had been given to us by some very generous family members (before that we had been stuffing three car seats into the back of our little bitty Saturn). Another very generous family member put tires on our van that lasted us 5 years and 86,000 miles.

So what about the weird people? Well, there are lots of them in the world. Hannah and I knew that we had such a small circle of influence at the time that we needed to look outside of our group in order to build enough of a support base to provide for our family. We knew that the only way to do that was to get out and get involved. We started volunteering at every event and concert that we could manage. We talked to everyone we met about our ministry. We talked about my job and how we were looking to build experience. We talked about raising support and asked if they’d be interested in hearing more. Some were and some weren’t. Some committed and some didn’t. Some invited us to their church and then surrounded us and pushed us to the floor while everyone in the room tried to lay a hand on us and pray (sometimes scream and cry) for us. If you know me very well you know that I have personal space issues and an aversion to touch; a great combination for that particular scenario.

I grew up in a very conservative denomination and moved as a teenager to another very conservative denomination. We had to look outside of our very conservative denomination to find enough support to live on and it really challenged me. I had always said that I wasn’t opposed to working outside denominational lines and that stage in my life forced to me decide whether that was an actual core value, or just an expressed one. It was sometimes a challenge to bear witness to beliefs and practices I do not agree with. I struggled with an internal battle of whether we were there to truly embrace Jesus’ words in Mark 9:38-41 (anyone not against us is for us) or we were just looking for enough money to live on. It forced me to spend lots of time in self reflection and question my every motive and action. I am very grateful for the challenge and the experience today because it brought me to a place where I am able to separate personal conviction from Biblical instruction and work much more freely within the Body of Christ.

I’ve learned never to say ‘never’. It rarely fails that when I make a definitive statement like, ‘never’ or ‘always’ I am proven wrong shortly thereafter. With that in mind, I will likely never work again in a position that requires us to raise our own support. I am not opposed to the practice and we do in fact support several families and ministries who operate the same way today, but it was not for me. I’ve learned that God just did not wire me that way. I’m happy to provide my own support for ministry as we’ve done for the past few years here in TX. Shortly after I graduated high school I interviewed for a position as a youth intern for a local ministry. During the interview the youth pastor said to me, “If I feel God calling me to work here, I’m going to work here. If you feel God calling you to pay me that would be awesome since it would free me up to work more with the ministry, but I am here regardless.” I remember thinking, ‘Man, I would love to have that approach to ministry.’ 10 years later and completely by the grace of God I find myself in that very place. We do not get paid for most of what we do and most of the time we don’t even notice. There is a glorious freedom in knowing that God has given me the skills necessary to provide for my family while still serving Him in ministry. It’s beautiful to see His providence when none of it makes sense. I mean really, I remodel houses, make pens, solder stuff, talk, and play guitar for a living. We have something like 8 or 10 sources of income. None of them make us wealthy, but they all give us what we need.

Back to 6 years ago: We had reached a standstill with our support raising. We had reached a level that wasn’t really sufficient to provide for us, but we had exhausted all of our contacts. After consulting the veterans at the ministry we decided that it was time for us to go ahead and make the move and get started with the ministry on a part-time basis. On June 6^th, 2005 we headed out of the town our family had made a life in and headed south to Tennessee. It was going to be a pretty short stay.