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Louisville, How’d We Get Here?

We’ve moved to Louisville, KY to plant a church. If that’s news to you, it might be a good idea to start with reading a couple of blog entries back.

So why did we decide to start a church in Louisville?

The Lord pretty much threw church planting in our faces until we got what He was trying to tell us. He wasn’t quite as forthright about location, but one thing He did make clear to our hearts was that our next season of ministry needed to be birthed out of relationship.

One relationship specifically seemed to have a lot of grace on it and that was with a church called Covenant Community Fellowship in Indiana, just outside of Louisville. CCF was planted a little over two years ago by a friend of ours from Bible college and they have a vision to assist with planting more churches in their region.

The Lord also spoke to our hearts via another church planting pastor, who told us to plant somewhere we would be culturally comfortable. Chris was raised in Arkansas (about as South as you can get) and I was raised in WI (about as North as you can get), so what was culturally comfortable for us was a little vague. We figured our best bet would be somewhere right between the two.

When we looked Louisville up in Wikipedia, it said this:

Louisville is influenced by both Southern and Midwestern culture. It is sometimes referred to as either the northernmost Southern city or the southernmost Northern city in the United States.

We saw relationship and region coming together and the more we looked into Louisville, the more life we felt on it as the location we were being called to.

As our hearts grew toward Louisville, I researched specific neighborhoods to see if anything jumped out. One in particular caught my eye, called the Highlands. It embodied elements that had always held a lot of attraction for Chris and I and seemed like it had the kind of vibe we were looking for.

First chance we got, we took a trip down to Louisville to see the city for ourselves. When we arrived, we immediately stopped at a coffee shop downtown to take advantage of wi-fi an get our bearings.

When we ordered, the barista asked us what we were doing in Louisville. We replied that we were just checking out the city and he immediately said, “You need to go to the Highlands.” He proceeded to tell us more about the Highlands, but offered no other suggestions for exploring Louisville. Just the Highlands.

When we drove into the neighborhood we instantly fell in love. There was a kind of chaotic excitement in the air. Not completely a good excitement, but it was compelling and gripped our hearts more than any other area of the city.

And now we’re here, right in the heart of the Highlands. We are discovering that the way we felt when we first visited the neighborhood was more accurate than we realized. There is an excitement in the air that isn’t necessarily all good. And we can’t help but love it here.

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Why Church Planting?

A few days ago, I blogged about how our family is moving to Louisville, KY to start a church. (Read about that here) So I wanted to share how the Lord brought us to the decision to become church planters.

Probably a year before “everything began,” Chris commented that he thought starting a church from scratch was cool, because you were able to establish the vision that God was giving you from the very foundation. My retort was that it wasn’t that cool because church planters don’t get paid. There’s some faith for you!

You know that feeling when you go downstairs to do something, but when you get there you can’t remember what you were going to do? Or when you’re taking a test and you KNOW you know the answer, but it’s just at the tip of your brain and you can’t quite grab it? A little over a year ago, Chris and I started to get that kind of feeling. An “I know something is up, but I don’t know what it is,” kind of feeling.

Pretty much the only way to get to the bottom of a feeling like that is to seek the Lord. So that’s what we did. We prayed a lot, talked with mentors, fasted and all that good stuff. We came to a couple conclusions. The Lord was preparing us to move and it needed to come through relationship.

And we talked about starting a church. A lot.

We tried to look at options other than church planting, but when we did it felt like walking through Jello. It felt like death. But when Chris and I dreamed together about starting a church, it felt like our hearts came alive. Suddenly I didn’t care about getting paid (who really needs to eat, anyway?). All I wanted to do was church plant. I wanted it so bad it surprised even me!

Even though we really WANTED to be church planters, we didn’t just go on that. We kept praying, kept trying other options, kept asking the Lord for clear direction. The Lord spoke to us through a lot of different means: in our hearts, through the Word, through other people. But church planting is big step, so we kept weighing things and seeking clearer direction.

One day Chris just laid it out before the Lord and said, “Jesus, I need to know TODAY if you’re wanting us to plant a church or do something else.” That day he got a text before breakfast, had a conversation over lunch, and got an email after dinner: 3 different people, who had no idea what we were weighing, suggested that we plant a church.

You’d think that would have been enough evidence, but a few weeks went by and it didn’t seem like any details were coming together, so we kind of laid the church planting idea aside. One night Chris was gone and I was really discouraged, wanting an answer from the Lord. I basically spent the whole evening saying, “Holy Spirit, please show us what you want us to do.” That same night, one of our teachers from Bible School messaged Chris, saying, “If I were you, I’d plant a church.”

When we read that message, all our hopes and dream for church planting flooded back into our hearts! For us, that was the clincher, where we could say, “OK, Jesus. You don’t need to tell us again. We’ve got it and we’re going for it!”

Once we were set on starting a church, we needed to discover where and how. And that’s another blog for another day.

In the mean time, check out our site about our church planting plans: http://launchdestiny.com

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This is an official announcement…

So we’re moving to Louisville, Kentucky. To plant a church.

OH MY GOODNESS!

In a couple of weeks all the stuff belonging to the Davis family will be on a U-Haul headed to Louisville. This is something the Lord has been filling our hearts with for over a year, and suddenly it’s actually happening! And we couldn’t be more excited.

There is a neighborhood in Louisville that we’ve absolutely fallen in love with. It’s called the Highlands and we like it so much, we’re moving right into the heart of it. It’s full of ethnic restaurants, skate shops, boutiques, coffee shops, tattoo parlors, old homes, and lots of arty goodness.

And eventually the Highlands will be full of Destiny Church!

While we’re living in the Highlands, building relationships and growing our core group, we’ll also be hanging out at a great church just outside the city, Covenant Community Fellowship. They’re a two-year-old church plant, so we’re super blessed to have them showing us the ropes.

Chris and I are so thrilled that Jesus has let us be a part of this amazing adventure!  He’s been guiding our steps every inch of this journey so far and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Want to find out more about what we’re doing and how you can help? Check out http://launchdestiny.com.

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