At the worship service on September 23rd, Mary and I announced to the Montgomery County church that we’re planning to move to Virginia Beach and become part of the Hampton Roads church. The announcement is below, and the next few posts will talk about the process we followed to make our major decision.
Proverbs 16:3 (NIV)Commit to the Lord whatever you do,and he will establish your plans.Good morning.
Mary and I have been thinking about our plans for the future. As many of you know, Mary retired from the Montgomery County Public Schools and I have been working on a plan to scale down my career gradually so we can eventually serve as unpaid full time ministry workers.
We’ve spent some time since last year talking with the Bookers and others, including other elder couples and leaders like the Walkers, Evans and the Antons. We’ve prayed and put our plans before the Lord and made a decision to move to Virginia Beach to be part of the Hampton Roads church.
Since my appointment as an elder in 2011, Mary and I have had a dream of helping the smaller churches, and we’ve led marriage and parenting workshops in Frederick, Roanoke, Charlottesville and other places. The Walkers, an elder couple in Hampton Roads, have also had this dream and are in the process of organizing the “Caleb Corps”, which will be a program that includes training and sending out mature disciple couples to help small churches. Our move to Virginia Beach will allow us to get further training as an elder couple and to work with the Walkers to make the dream of a Caleb Corp a reality for God. We hope many of you will support this work and that some of you will eventually participate in Caleb Corps projects.
We have a lot of details to work out before we can make the physical move – that will happen next February or March – so we’ll continue to serve in the Youth and Family ministry and in other ways. Please pray for us as we prepare for our new life adventure.
We want to end by expressing how grateful we are for the Montgomery County church. We’re thankful for all of you that we’ve served and have served us, and for the many ways the church has blessed us and our family.
(Mary shared her thanks for the church and other thoughts)
(Phil shared about the prayer and discussion we’ve had about the decision and other thoughts)
Since the announcement, some of our friends have asked us about how we made our decision: What thought process did we use? How did we know that this was God’s will for our lives? This led to me putting together a lesson for the East Region Men’s midweek on October 3. The next few posts are based on that lesson.