Deb and I visited Juneau,
Alaska in September of 2011. This trip was predicated by our desire to
celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, albeit several months late.
Admittedly, we wanted to see if God was doing something Alaska-themed in us.
Within minutes of our
arrival we had a discernible Holy Spirit moment, (not always discernible to
former Baptists slash Presbyterians.) While waiting for our rental car Deb
looked at me and said, “This is it, isn’t it?!” I couldn’t disagree. We both
had a sense of home, new home to be, even as it was still within our first hour
on the ground. At the end of that week we both realized we 1) loved the city,
and 2) we had to bite the proverbial bullet and enter into transition. We flew
home, put our house on the market (which forced us to tell our neighbors) and
announced my resignation from our church in Everett, WA. After many tearful
good-byes and several pastoral colleagues telling me I was nuts, after loading
our possessions on a barge and ourselves on to a ferry we arrived as new
residents of Juneau on a snowy Monday morning, January 30, 2012. We had left an
urban setting for what seemed like the moon. We did not know a soul in town.
We lived in a hotel by the
airport for the first month. The room wasn’t nearly as large as the online
photos had made us to believe. We didn’t feel lonely as we had Jesus and each
other, but came quickly to see that we were the team. There was no one else.
There was no band of apostolic brothers and sisters to join us on the mission.
While we were commissioned and sent out by our church, it didn’t include anyone
else coming along. We were, in a very real sense a “parachute drop.” Our first
church plant started with a core of 80 people. Here we were starting with two.
I didn’t feel courageous.
Like you, I am not unaware
that parachute drop church planting is not without its inherent risks, with a
success rate not to be envied. Conventional church-planting wisdom says, “Plant
with a team.” How does one set out to model community when one has no
community? And I agree. Don’t set out to do what we did. Parachute church
planting is to be avoided; unless, and only unless that is the very
circumstance God has ordained for me or you to initiate a church plant.
In retrospect I see the
gold in our circumstance, for it caused us, forced us to hit the ground with
missional intentionality. We had to initiate relationships, all in a town where
people don’t engage with people unless they have first weathered an Alaskan
winter.
By God’s grace we
established our first beach head, our first gospel community. A second gospel
community has followed, with more on the horizon. It hasn’t gone at all like we
expected. Rather, God has surprised us. In this, the Holy Spirit graciously
reminds me: Jesus will build His Church, irrespective of conventional
church-planting wisdom; even if it requires the replanting of the planter.
