from Pastor Jim Miller
I am a pastor of a church that started five years ago, in a park, by accident. If you had asked me back then to guess where I would be today, I would have been pretty far off the mark. My predictions would have been a depressed, faithless shadow of what Jesus actually had in mind.
We started without a plan, a staff, a budget, or a place to meet. There was a whirlwind of providence and chaos that landed us in a middle school three weeks later, with a host of volunteers, a band, and a staff following soon thereafter. Everything we owned fit in a school closet. A rental office became our home base. We really didn’t know what the future would look like, but we had a vision for being a church that was more wed to the Bible and its picture of Christian community than to the dead traditions that often haunt churches.
We immediately started giving things away freely. We built houses and churches in Mexico, sponsored children in developing nations, and volunteered with food pantries. We stocked the middle school with new stage curtains and hundreds of chairs for free. We worked with Habitat for Humanity, Compassion International, and World Vision. We ran marathons to raise money to fight human trafficking and to feed the hungry. We started hosting free lunches for pastors in the area. We hosted Alpha and fed anyone who would walk in the door. When we discovered a church that didn’t have a pastor and needed help with hospital visits, worship services, and memorial services, we stepped in to help.
We baptized dozens of people. We baptized people who had never regularly attended church before. We baptized children in elementary school and seniors in their eighties.
I’ve never experienced the work of the Holy Spirit or the power of prayer like I have in the last five years. I’ve seen people healed of injuries and illnesses. I’ve watched God arrange divine appointments between people that led to someone coming to faith. We’ve launched into an entirely new prayer ministry and a series of prayer classes that are opening people’s hearts to God’s voice. I am more overwhelmed by Jesus than I have ever been.
In less than three years we moved into a rental property that was built to be a church, one that we found while literally just driving around. I discovered that a very close friend and mentor, someone who has been watching over us from heaven, had pastored at the church where we now worship. Even then I couldn’t have predicted what would come next.
In the middle of 2020, mid-pandemic, a church that we had helped a few year ago called us out of the blue. “If we give you the building, will you keep the preschool alive?” We are now the owners of a new church campus in Glendora, California with a fully-functioning preschool, walking distance from the park where we first met. It was simply and unexpectedly given to us.
In response, what we have, we share. Freely you have received, freely give, Jesus said to his disciples as he sent them out to do ministry. We now host a Japanese-speaking congregation rent-free, and we are about to take in an Anglican congregation. We are planning our next build in Mexico. We welcome first-time guests every Sunday into our community in the hopes that we live up to the sign in our lobby, which reads, “We love everyone, and you’re next!” We are going to baptize people until the Pacific runs dry.
There are bigger miracles to come. I just wanted to pause today, take a deep breath, and give thanks, here in the summer of our church’s 5th birthday. Jesus, I am amazed.