Cedarhome and Churchplanting – The Maltby Project – TheHighPointChurch.org

It is my firm belief that the only hope any of us fallen humans have is Jesus Christ and the primary method He is choosing to bless and that is working as far as reaching people with the good news about Jesus in the US right now is churchplanting.  Once upon a time He used Sunday Schools, bus outreaches, VBS’s, Crusade Event Evangelism, … and he still does, but new times call for some new radical methods with the same ancient life giving truth: the person of Jesus Christ.  We need more churches.  We need fresh new churches with new ideas and new ways of looking at things.  We need local communities that people will give a chance.  In the studying I have done, it used to be that people would have a conversation or two or be given a presentation and become rationally convinced that Jesus was their Savior, choose to believe and then look for a church to belong to.   In today’s age it works backward. People don’t want to just consider a philosophy on paper or in a presentation.  They want to see it up close and join in over time.  Now people BELONG and THEN BELIEVE.  People come to a churchplant to help out, to investigate this new spiritual center in town, not on guard because a new churchplant is not seen as threatening institution, but a breath of fresh air the in community.  People who are seeking God go and listen and participate in things we can all agree are good, regardless of our faith: helping the poor, creating positive works of art, nurturing our children, …  They start to belong, while investigating whether or not they believe…. And eventually they do!

A great article on Churchplanting by Tim Keller is available here:

http://www.siyete.com/attachments/082_Philippine%20Church%20Plant.pdf

The Leaders of our denomination, our family of churches, Converge World Wide, are also convinced of the need for multiplying churches, churches that plant churches that plant churches. They are working and praying hard that the Lord would do this work among us.  Our church has sent me as a delegate to be a part of a network of churches that are working together to plant churches and we have been meeting once a month to pray and learn and do churchplanting together.

The closest churchplant to Cedarhome right now is www.thehighpointchurch.org in Maltby, WA.  John Czech, the churchplanter there is an amazing man of faith.  He has been a part of our family of churches for a long time. I met him a few years ago when he was the outreach pastor at Northshore Christian Church in Bothell and he had some great things to share and is really on fire to see God save souls. Cascade Community Church, our sister church in Monroe, hired him as a churchplanter and sent him out earlier this year and they just started.  I was eager to meet John and was glad to spend a little time with him at the “Ignite” churchplanting conference that Cedarhome sent me to attend a few months ago.  As a young, baby church, they are still working on getting all sorts of things ready and recruiting for the various ministries in the church.  God has blessed them with a great team of people for children’s ministry, but have been a little more slim on the volunteers for music and worship.  They have had a fantastic husband and wife team doing music, but have had a hard time recruiting more players than them.

I really felt like God was putting it on my heart to beg them to let us be involved with their churchplant.  I know you don’t have to have a full team on every instrument on Sundays, but I was eager for our church to be able to participate in the churchplanting mission and right now we are blessed.  I have more people available to me every week than I can put on the platform at the same time.  Praise the Lord!  So I begged John to let me send some troops down just to get to experience part of the churchplanting work and he and their fantastic worship leading team (Tracy and Les Laas) agreed.

Our crews have gone down now for a few weeks and when they came back, they all seemed to say the same thing: it was fun, but they didn’t really need us. Tracy and Les are wonderful.  They have tons of experience and we’re sure they will be fine over time recruiting more players.

And now, we have just found out that God is calling Tracy and Les on to a new ministry where they will be able to serve together presenting World Vision to a variety of churches.  I believe this is why God was stirring so hard in my heart for us to participate and send people all the way to Maltby.  This is God’s hand, bringing resources from one place to another for the building of His Kingdom!

So… that is the story so far. Will you pray with me for God’s work at The High Point Church and Cedarhome?  Would you pray that God’s name would be lifted high and that new souls would be saved?  Would you pray that God would continue to lead people to step up and be willing to serve at the High Point Church?

Thank you so much for your partnership, all of you and for allowing us to serve alongside John Czech and our brand new baby sister church!

Your Servant,

-Jason Chollar