our first informational meeting will be Sunday, January 29 @ noon. reserve a spot below.
About two years ago, I had a very strong sense that our leadership here at the Vineyard needed to be praying about what the Father was calling our church to in the area of missions & church planting. I had just come back from a meeting of churches in a missions partnership our church was involved in, and felt that He had something else He wanted us to be investing our time and resources in. The rest of the church council agreed.
The following summer, my family spent 5 weeks in Ireland, and when I returned, I asked them to get behind the idea of our church using its resources to help plant churches in Ireland (Northern & the Republic). In fact last January, as we were sharing the vision of our church for 2011, one of the things we talk about was having our church get involved in missions in Ireland. Sending finances…taking trips etc. [link…start at 40:20].
At that point, although our family had wrestled with the idea of moving to Ireland to church plant, that idea had been shelved. Elizabeth and I thought if that were to happen, it would be years down the road, once our kids (at least the older 3 had graduated). Well, if you’ve been following this blog, you know how that worked out.
And as Elizabeth & I discussed this church plant with our church council, one of the things we were all on the same page with was the idea that, Liz & I were not leaving the Ithaca Vineyard, to go do this new thing…instead, we see this church plant as being sent out by the Ithaca Vineyard. In fact send out people to plant churches has been one of our priorities since we started our church (Just wasn’t expecting we’d be sending out us:-)
With the pastoral search going full steam ahead, I wanted to wait until that got further along before talking about how we saw the Ithaca Vineyard being involved with the church we’re planting in Dublin. However, with the Pastoral Search Team working very well together, and our time in Ithaca rapidly coming to an end, now seemed like the time for me to change my focus.
On Sunday, January 29th, shortly after our worship service (from about noon to 1:30 pm), we are going to host our first Dublin Church Plant General Interest Meeting. During this time, we’ll share what the next two years will look like for our family, and answer any questions people have about the transition. We’ll also talk about how the Ithaca Vineyard will be able to be involved, from keeping people informed about how to be praying for us and the church, to organizing missions trips to Ireland, and other projects as well.
If you would like to be part of this process moving forward, or simply have questions you’ve been wanting to ask, we’d love to have you join us on the 29th. Please drop me a note & I’ll make sure to save you a space.