The Beginning of a New Journey

On October 31st, 2017, my life began to turn in a new direction, though it would take me years to realize that was what was happening.

It was a Tuesday morning, and as was not uncommon on a Tuesday morning, I would practice-preach to the team in Urbana. At the Vineyard Church of Central Illinois, every Tuesday we had a rhythm where the speaker for the weekend would give a practice version of the message to the preaching team and much of the staff with a feedback session afterwards. We all joked about how intense it could be at times, but it was a great rhythm to keep yourself growing and developing as a preacher. That morning I felt the nervous energy come over me that always did before I had to practice-preach, but as soon as I sat down to begin to engage with my quiet time in the morning, that attention was eclipsed by something else.

I was aware that morning was an interesting and unique morning: it was 500 years to the day since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. This wasn't intended as an act of revolution so much as one of scholarly discussion, but it prompted revolution nonetheless. Once replicated by rather new invention of the printing press, those theses would make their way all over Europe and act as the spark that ignited the flame of the Protestant Reformation. Over the next decades, that one document acted as a tipping point that changed the culture of the West forever.

That morning as I engaged with the Lord in the Scriptures, I felt a passion rising up in my bones. When would the Church lead the way in the culture again? When would we disciple nations as we did in the Reformation? When would the Church become a change-agent in the world again, representing the Kingdom of God in the way Jesus calls us to in the great commission, immersing the nations themselves in the presence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? From what I knew, the Church in the US was behind the culture, resistant to change, rather than leading the way into it. Passion and conviction stirred in my heart and I found myself caught up into prayer in a fresh and distinct way that I hadn't before.

This conviction churned in my heart all morning, until I came to my practice preaching. As stepped up to share, I felt the Spirit come on me and I set aside my notes and spoke extemporaneously out of the passion that was stirring inside of me. I was giving voice to a prophetic unction that was resting on me; a drive to see the Church reformed again, to the end of the church discipling the nations. I couldn't not speak what was on my heart. If you want to see it, here it is:

(Of note in this clip: note that at 8:55, I pray that the church rises like a phoenix from the ashes. I didn't connect this dot until September 2021 - thanks Jess Smuk for pointing this out.)

I didn't know it at the time, but this was a branch point for me. A new assignment had come for the next stretch of my life. I believe a splinter of the spirit of the Reformation came upon me and I found myself unable to be content with the status quo. God wanted to do more, and I had to be a part. In time, this conviction would begin to spring into a whole new framework of what God was doing in the world, and a picture of Church that may just be a slice of the future.