Why I Am Passionate about the Local Church

I came to know Christ when I was 17 years old.  For the most part, I did not grow up going to church.  I grew up not knowing my dad until the end of my third grade year.  That was no fault of his, but something my mom guarded for years.  My mom was an alcoholic and had developed a pattern of getting drunk and into fights and we would run.  I moved around a bunch as a kid, mostly within the state of Colorado, but then in various places in Ohio.  I can remember only a handful of times that my mom ever took my siblings and I to church.  However, when I left to go live with my dad midway through my 4th grade year, I was in church most Sundays until the end of my 7th grade year.  Even though I attended on Sunday morning, we were not super involved on other days.  After my 7th grade year I went back to live with my mom and dropped back into this pattern of not going to church until my 10th grade year.  I went to youth group with a friend but it was more for the games and the girls.  I did not care so much about Jesus at the time.  It wasn't until halfway through my 11th grade year, when I went back to live with my dad, that I started to attend church again.  This time it was different.  There were peers who surrounded me and included me in the activities that they did.  The first Sunday I went, a few of the high school students invited me to a prayer meeting they were having on Sunday evening.  I thought that was strange, but I was hungry to have relationships, so I showed up.  That prayer meeting started a relationship that eventually led to my own understanding of the Gospel a few months later.  The church has been something that I have valued ever since.  There is just simply nothing like a community of believers living out what they say they believe with a heart for God and a heart for people.  I moved on from High School and went to Cedarville University, where I graduated with a bachelors in Christian Education with an emphasis on youth ministry.  I continued to engage in the local church in a variety of ways for the first couple of years until I was hired to be the part time youth director at a church in Dayton, OH.  It was at this church where I began to see a side of local church ministry that I have never seen before, and it was quite ugly.  Oddly enough, that didn't really taint my love for the church, but rather made me sad to see the way broken people interacted with each other.  The church seemed to be thriving in appearance.  It was a well taught church, but it had no heart for evangelism.  It had no vision, which is just a recipe for internal conflict over silly things that were perceived to be important.  After two years I moved on to my internship at a Christian camp to finish out my degree.  Two to three years after I left, the church imploded.  It went from over 500 people to a little over 100.  The church was stuck in survival mode for a few decades until it eventually closed its doors two years ago.  It is a sad story, but it also fuels my passion to help churches become healthy and thrive in the purposes God has laid out in His Word.  After serving in full time ministry for 16 years and then as a lead pastor for the past 11 years, my love for the church has only deepened.  It is through the church that God's plans for this world are carried out.  I have heard it said that the church is the hope of the world, but I really never jumped on board completely with that statement.  Jesus is the hope of the world, but the church is the manifestation of Jesus.  He is the head of the church and we are the body.  We are the expression of His love, grace, and truth to the world.  So having a healthy church matters significantly as the role of the church is more than representing Christ to the world, it is expressing of Christ to the world.  God has gifted me with the ability to think strategically and facilitate planning sessions.  I desire to use those gifts to serve the local church because the church is crucial in God's Kingdom economy.