For years I have been somewhat mysteriously guided toward the Northeastern United States, a region of rich history, dense population, and global cultural influence, the seat of our federal government and the nerve center of our economy.
ONE SUMMER IN BUFFALO
in 1991 I was assigned my mandatory undergraduate summer internship at a mid-size church in a small town in southeastern Indiana. However, the church went through a staff transition and decided it was not a good time to host a summer intern. I was left without an assignment. I still remember my professor saying that there were not many last-minute internship options left, but I could still could accept a summer assignment with an interesting albeit often overlooked church near Buffalo, New York. I accepted. The summer was a life-changing and eye-opening experience for someone who had never lived outside of the Midwest.
ONE WEEK IN NEW YORK CITY
A couple of years after my summer in New York, I registered for a grad school class entitled "Urban and Cross-Cultural Evangelism" which involved a one-week trip to New York City to learn first-hand from people ministering on the front lines in various urban environments. Once again, I was blown away by the new worlds that were before me and the urgent need for new churches in a region with a population many times what I was used to, yet less churched that any place I had ever visited.
ONE SEASON OF MINISTRY IN NJ & NY
All of this led me to devote several years in the 1990s to this region. I served on a staff team of a new church plant in New Jersey. I also worked with Orchard Group part time assisting with the start-up of several new church plants while also working part-time for a church on Long Island.
ONE WHO WON MY HEART ALONG THE WAY
Rebekah has also experienced a mysterious guidance to this region. Before I met her, Rebekah grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan but ended up in the exact same part of New Jersey where I lived in the 1990s. She moved there to be a live-in nanny with a family of New York City commuters. She showed up at the church where I was serving one Sunday morning. I was greeting people at the front door that day. I liked what I saw! Within a year we were married.
ONE WEEKEND & ONE WEEK IN 2010
Fast forward to 2010. In the spring, I was invited to return to Long Island, New York for the weekend to speak at a church's anniversary banquet. It was a great and memorable occassion. A few months later Rebekah, the kids and I spent our summer vacation at the New Jersey shore. We were able to stay at a house there that belonged to someone we met during our days living in New Jersey. What we intended as merely a vacation ended up, we realized a few months later, stirring our hearts for that region again.
ONE FULL-CIRCLE KIND OF STORY
Once again we realized God was mysteriously guiding us toward the Northeastern United States. When I was recently presented with an opportunity to use my specific gifts to work with Orchard Group to help plant new churches throughout this region and beyond, it really was not difficult to discern that it was part of that guiding.
New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and the places between are a vitally important part of our country and world. In many ways, culture flows from the population centers of the Northeast. What happens there effects what happens throughout our country. Yet in many of these places, you will not find a church on every corner like you will in other parts of the country.
We are committed to seeing churches of all forms, from the simple gathering of people in a living room of an urban neighborhood to the large congregation in the suburbs, taking the gospel to the post-Christian culture of this region.
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