New Life
These last few months have certainly been a time of growth and change both in our lives professionally and personally. And even though it has at times been scary, we could not be happier and more excited about what God is doing in our lives. This Summer has been marked by the theme of New Life! So let me introduce you to two new lives that we are really excited about.
Lennon Jae Talley
We never planned on growing our family but clearly God had other plans. On July 6th we welcomed Lennon Jae Talley to our family. We are so excited to add her to our crew of amazing kids! God has truly blessed us.
Quincey, Ace and Bowen are thrilled to have a baby sister, even though I can’t convince them that if they really loved her they would change her diaper…I’ll keep trying.
Dale is doing well as she recovers from the surgery and she has proven once again that she is the most amazing women I have ever met.
Thank you all for your prayers for a good delivery and we appreciate your ongoing prayers in the weeks to come.
Church 8025
Over the past couple months as Dale and I and many others have been praying about what God is doing in our lives, we have all felt God continuing to call us to plant a church here in Thornton. So we started asking God what should this church look like, what should we be about and what should we even call it.
As God always does, he placed a name on my heart I could just not shake. But let me give you a little background first. Our desire as we plant this church is to really examine the New Testament to learn and see what our church should look like. I realize much of the church in the New Testament is descriptive and not a command for all churches for all times to look that way, but I also think along the way we have lost sight of some the key principles we see in the New Testament. I don’t think this has happened intentionally, nevertheless, it often does happen.
So we are asking ourselves this simple question, If we didn’t know anything about church, and If we only had the New Testament to go by to start this church, what would it look like? While we don’t have all the answers to that question, we do believe the answer is somewhere in between a total home church model and a model that is focused around the Sunday morning “Church” hour where people mostly come and see.
We believe in looking at Acts 2, we simply can’t ignore the fact that believers met together to grow in their relationship and love for Jesus, while living out that love within their circle of influence, and God built the church. So that is what we are going to focus on, not the Sunday gathering, although we will have a Sunday gathering, but the discipleship of every believer who is called to then go and make disciples. Our prayer is that more people will come to know Jesus outside of the walls of the church building than within, because of people living out their faith.
This is where our name comes in, Church 8025. I know that is not a normal name but we chose it to serve as a North Star for our church. The number above our garage is 8025, and every person in our church has a number on their house as well. And while we are excited to meet together corporately we just don’t see an hour a week as what the church is really all about. That hour should be a celebration of what is happening in our communities because of followers of Jesus living out their faith. The church really happens in my house and your house and every follower of Jesus’ house, so, Church 8025 was born and we couldn’t be more excited. God is already bringing people to our team who are passionate about and committed to living out their faith in Jesus and making disciples.
