Next month the first CWR church plant in the Aliante community (North Las Vegas) becomes its own “particular” church, and will be planting a 3rd (yikes!) church 10 miles west of there in May. As a result we’ve shifted our pastoral responsibilities. For me that means a lot more work planning, preaching and doing training for the church in the southern half of the city, all to help us better become who we need to be to reach our part of the city with our unique group of people (where it’s quite common for an engineer to pass the communion tray to a homeless man, who in turn passes it to a young mom).
As our core group has changed and we’ve gotten to know our community better, we’ve noticed a few things. First, the urban poor we longed to reach are coming to us more through our homeless outreach (folks we give rides to) than our worship site location. Meanwhile, our partnering with another church in Paradise that better fits that neighborhood has enabled us both to reach our different groups more effectively. Most of the folks that we see coming, and who we feel best equipped to reach, actually live south of our current worship site. At the same time we’re seeing Sundays where we’re afraid we’ll run out of seating if everyone shows up the same day. All that, coupled with a place further south that’s literally been waiting 3 years for a church like ours to move in, means we’re likely moving our worship site later this spring. The new location would make us more accessible to the quarter-of-a-million people living in Henderson (second largest city in Nevada, where most of our church’s contacts live), and would serve as a beachhead for further church planting in the southern half of the metro area, just as our Aliante church has for North Las Vegas.
As we’ve been preaching through the book of Acts we’ve seen how the first church planter (Paul) was told “No” when he wanted to go somewhere other than where God wanted him, then was redirected to the people God was preparing for him to reach. I can now see how God has been redirecting us as well the past few months. To better prepare for this new phase of the church plant I'm scaling back DJing to once per month (which also means more fundraising to replace that income). Please pray for wisdom and courage during this time of transition. Pray for endurance as I take on more weekly responsibilities. Pray for protection from the schemes of the enemy. Finally, pray that God brings us a church planting apprentice to assist in the current work and to help plant more churches in the years to come. Thank you.
