Radiant

Deb and I relocated to Juneau, Alaska just over a year ago. Juneau has become home...and a vacation cruise destination for several of our continental friends. There are days when it all still seems so new, and other days when it feels like it's always been. We love being here.

I came to "plant" (start) a new church in Juneau. We have a small but growing band of people who now identify with us as a community on mission. One obstacle, I've been planting the Church with No Name. For what ever the reason (see below) I've wanted to be slow, cautious, thoughtful and prayerful about what to call this new thing. But a year is a bit of a while to go without a name, without an identity.

I have history with naming churches. I did so in 2005. What I really did was give a church a name that was difficult to pronounce, challenging to explain, and made us sound like a Latino fellowship. (Problem was, I only speak Taco Bell Spanish.) Admittedly I regretted our (my) name for this church within the first year. To their credit, and after Deb and I left town they changed the church's name. For the better, I might add. All this to say, I don't necessarily have the highest confidence in my ability to name a church. Naming our own children had the safeguard of being a group decision.

Planting a church is challenging enough. It has been statistically quoted that 80% of church plants fail within the first year; and 80% of those remaining fail within the second year. Not high odds. To attempt to plant a church isolated from relational connections and accountability and outside wisdom is playing recklessly with those already high odds. I came to realize we needed to be connected, associated with someone or something more established, but someone or something that loves and is invested in gospel mission to Alaska and the circumpolar north.

As Jesus-followers we revel in the knowledge we have been graciously adopted as children of the King. And now we've been adopted by another church. Radiant Church in Fairbanks is a church of gospel communities on intentional mission. In many ways they are what we want to be when we grow up. We want to share in their collective identity. Radiant is freely offering their resources, their intellectual capital, their friendship, their sacrifice and their hearts to us. We are not Radiant Church's first church plant, but we are Radiant Church's first church plant to take their name.

We now have an identity here in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. We are Radiant Church Juneau. And like Psalm 34:5 says, Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. 

We are Radiant. With no Spanish language skills required.