Journey Church

October 11, 2010

This week our special guest speakers were Steve and Don. Steve was raised as a preacher's kid. He was baptized when he was 18. He attended a south western church in OK. The biggest change before he left was the agreement that men no longer had to wear ties. They were always fighting over tithes, music, clothing, etc. Steve left the church and decided he was not going to follow in his father's steps and become a pastor. He held a lot of resentment toward his father because he felt his father gave more time to the church than he did him and his family. He had a lot struggles and one day his dad called and said there was a Mennonite church in OK that could use him as pastor. About 10 people stayed during the split. Steve believes very strongly the reason the church has grown to approximately 250 people in attendance is because they are doing exactly what Luke 9 says: lifting up Jesus and preaching to the brokenhearted. He explains the difficulty in reaching "churched" people and that they "exist for those not here."
Don serves along side Steve. However, Don came from and entirely different background. Don came from a road of destruction. He was an alcoholic, drunkard, substance abuse, and addicted to pornography, and unlike Steve's parents, Don's parents were divorced. He would always appear to have it together but in reality he was a train wreck behind the scenes. He had major anger problems and was kicked out of all the bars in town--everyone in town knew him because of his bar fight reputation. Don had reached a desperate point in his life and one day while driving down the highway He called out to God and challenged God to show Himself real and God made His presence known right then to Don! One of the sources Don used and while he found it beneficial it wasn't the best of all that God used to help him out of the pit He was trying to recover from. One of the greatest things Don realized about his church, Journey Church, is that Journey Church saved his life and Jesus saved his soul! I found this, personally, to be a powerful realization and statement. During his time in the world he had left his wife and been unfaithful, however when he found Christ, he contacted his wife and discovered she had never sent in their divorce papers. He immediately left the woman he was with and went back to his wife who later also came to the Lord. They now have a five year old daughter. Journey church has lots (close to 20) small groups. They have no set requirements for starting a small group other than loving Jesus. They're desire is for everyone to get plugged into a small group and for each of those groups to grow and multiply and to continue branching off into more small groups. Steve made a great point that churches should be giving NOT always taking donations. He said God's Will is God's Bill!