Secret Covenant

   My wife loves children’s literature. Even though she is a trained educator with a couple of degrees, her love for it grew out of her exposure as a child. She is able to cite author and title from the obscure. I, on the other hand, can’t even recognize the most famous! My taste and interest in literature couldn’t be more different, yet we have managed a happy marriage for 35 years. While she loves the sense of security that reading children’s literature gives her, I thrive on the adventurous, hazardous, dangerous. Strangely enough, these patterns emerged in our church planting experience.
   While the contemporary church planting strategy includes healthy financial backing, such was not the case for us. When we embarked on our adventure in 1993, we did so with a handful of people and a lot of faith. While our motley group was abuzz with the excitement of escaped convicts, freed from the fetters of traditional church politics and trappings, I was living the reality of reality. I wasn’t looking for a leisurely and secure walk in the park. I wanted to climb mountains, but I was not delusional enough to assume that I was doing what God wanted. I embraced the risk of potential failure by entering into a secret covenant with God that went something like: “Lord, if we do not exceed 100 in regular attendance the first year, I’ll pack it in because I will know that You are not in it.” God wasn’t out on a limb, but I was prepared to be.
   Five locations, eighteen years, 600+ baptisms and two campuses later I think I got my answer. Yet, what it turned into was never what I expected. While my previous church experience had been more akin to children’s literature meets Freddy Krueger, it had nonetheless been lived out within the framework of the familiar, the common, the traditional, the secure. How God answered that secret covenant was not unlike His taking an overqualified Pharisee named Saul and making him an eminently qualified ambassador to Gentiles. Talk about adventure!