We Receive US Missions Approval!

8 comments | Sep 7, 01:58 PM | Berkeley-Church-Planting-Project | by Earl Creps

On July 10th Janet and I officially received our national appointment as church planters with US Missions, the Assemblies of God national homeland missions agency. We have also received approval for the Berkeley Church Planting Project from the Northern California-Nevada District, which will be our new home once we move west. (We are counting the days.)

However, because our travel schedule is so crazy, we have been unable to attend any of the official commissioning events. So Steve Pike, the USM Church Planting Director, surprised us during a coaching session at Big Momma’s coffee house on Commercial Street in Springfield.

He presented us there with a Certificate of Commissioning and with a small sculpture of Jesus washing Peter’s feet. The inscription reads, “Commissioned to Serve.” Amen to that.

In the photo below you’ll find here see Janet, me, Steve, and Lyle, the owner of Big Mommas’s. We have done enough officing at his place to feel that he deserved a piece of the action.

The advantages of USM appointment for us are several:

1. We want to plant a campus church (in partnership with Chi Alpha) that is heavily involved with students. Appointment means we raise a budget before we go, so we don’t have to depend on the people we serve, or starve because they don’t have jobs.

2. The appointment means we have been scrutinized in the form of interviews (several times), psychological screening (we took the MMPI + a bunch of other inventories), a credit check, and even a vetting by the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Hopefully, this process puts some kind of floor under our credibility.

3. We can raise support across the country wherever we are welcome to do so. Berkeley is a location of national significance, so this really makes sense to us. It’s also expensive on a Tokyo scale, so we will need all the help we can get. (BTW, the link for online contributions to the Project is on the left.)

4. At this point in our lives the AoG is our family. It’s not a perfect family, so we fit right in. A USM appointment gives us the best opportunity to reach out to the network of people we already know (mostly AoG) and ask them to dream this dream with us.

5. USM has Steve Pike, and we really like Steve.

Not every planter will go this route, because there is no one approach that’s right for everyone. Also, a country as diverse as ours needs a multitude of models launched in many ways. So the point here is not that this is the one, best path, only that it is the one we are on—and we are glad for it.

For Janet and me, being commissioned at Big Momma’s rather than in an auditorium or at a banquet was perfect. We want to do a church that feels more like a coffee house than a cathedral. Thanks, Steve.