Church Planting Update
Posted By Aaron Marcelli on September 25, 2010
So….. it has been a LONG time since I last wrote an update regarding our church plant. I am so thankful for each of you who are showing interest in our story and some who are praying for us along the way. Thank you!!
As I mentioned in this post, Katy and I attended a church planting conference where I felt God leading me to take 40 days off from church planting work and just pray. It was hard to stop doing all the activity and just pray. But I did. I prayed. I journaled. And I let God be responsible for working things out.
Since then, we graduated from a church planting school we had been taking classes with for six months. A situation I was not sure would work out all of the sudden did, as the church we are now members of approved me for ministry licensing – this is a huge step! It allows us to set ourselves up as a government recognized legal non profit organization. Our next step is now to become incorporated which will make us an official church and allow us to set up a tax deductible banking account. Having that account will allow us to receive financial gifts and support from others so that we may work full time in becoming involved in the community of Chattanooga. Our plan is to begin raising funds in a couple months so that next year we will be able to move to Chattanooga and begin ministry.
Katy and I are both very excited about moving to Chattanooga and have already begun to casually look at houses in that area. Another result of spending forty days in prayer was a clear direction that we are supposed to plant our church in downtown Chattanooga – before we had been considering another location. We also feel peace about naming the church Freedom Church so that even our name will point people to the freedom and acceptance that can be found in Jesus Christ.
Finally, just this week we sent out another round of emails and letter asking for more people to commit to partnering with us in prayer. We realize that accepting this call to move and begin a ministry from scratch will bring times of weakness, temptation, and strain on our marriage, finances, and faith. Though we will need individuals in the future to step up and be financial partners of ours, at this stage we think it just as important that we have friends and family committed to remembering us when before the throne of God.
I am very excited about all these things. It means we are busy. Between us, Katy and I work 120 hours a week and are making time to do all of these church planting items on top of our work load. But it is our calling! I already have a vision of lives being changed and our church becoming a place of hope and acceptance for those who need it most.
I praise God for putting such a call on our lives and cannot wait to see where this journey will take us!
Stay tuned…..
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