Make Disciples

In my last post I talked about the journey that God took me on. It began from salvation up to Him moving me and my family across the United States, from Washington state to North Carolina. I will pick up here from when we began life in North Carolina. I covered the miracles of Him getting me a job four days after arriving here and beginning the closure process on a house the following week. I left off there. We moved here to join a disciple making movement. We heard about what they felt God leading them to do and the idea of what it would look like. I was under the impression that it was farther along than it really was. It sounded like they had several house churches planted and were already beginning to plant more. After arriving here and visiting the one that met at my friends house, I learned that it was only that church and one other church on the south side of town. The network wasn’t as established as I thought, but I knew it was what God called us to do, He moved us here after all, so I was excited to see what it would become. I quickly began diving in and learning new things. I began following some of them around and helping out with deliverances pretty quickly. It was something I knew a little about, but had only fumbled my way through previously. I had a lot of fun beginning to see God work in that way and setting people free from things they had struggled with for years. I also began seeing people get healing of physical issues, through deliverance, but also just by praying for them to be healed. Everything was knew and exciting. I started helping out with playing worship at my friends house church. He and I had played worship back in the Seattle area for many years and it was easy to bring that over to a new format, as a house church. The worship was much deeper. The people loved to come together and praise God together. After a couple of months though, I began to struggle with the adjustment. I went from a corporate church environment, having a role each week(worship leader), to now just being a member in a house church. There were no roles, no duties necessarily each week. We all came together to worship, study the bible, pray for one another and practice learning to increase in the gifts of the Spirit. It was an amazing time, but I felt lost without a role to fall into. This went on for a probably six months before I finally got used to it and just enjoyed being there and participating in whatever way was helpful that week. In that time another family had moved from out of state and joined as well. There ended up being four of us that began organizing the meetings every week. Our friendship grew significantly in that time. We all began helping one another grow in different ways and met often to pray together. Over time the community began to grow. The man that originally felt called to start this movement was doing classes every couple of months, to introduce people to what we were doing and the depth of Christian living that was not taught in most churches. We started seeing the community grow and new house churches were emerging. After these eight week classes were done, those that wanted to continue on, would become a new house church. A few of us would begin meeting with them for several months to teach them how to facilitate one of their own. We ended up creating a curriculum to help them get started and began using that to help walk new churches through how to get going. In only a year God more than doubled the amount of churches we had. We went from two, up to five. Throughout this growth process God was walking me through of personal growth as well. I began shedding off old ways of thinking. Learning to trust God more. I was constantly helping out with deliverances. Seeing God set people free multiple times a week. I began learning how to hear God’s voice more clearly and more specifically for people, which was helping out greatly in deliverance, praying for healing and praying to encourage people through prophetic words and such. It took a lot more of surrendering to Him and learning to trust Him to lead every situation. Around the end of the first year I was asked to join the leadership team that was doing the planning and organization for the community as a whole. I didn’t feel qualified, I had always avoided leadership positions in my life, but I prayed and felt the Lord wanted me to do it. I had already been serving with these people for a year now and was humbled that they saw something in me that led them to ask me to step up to a new level. That came with new responsibilities and a new level of surrendering to God. It took me several months of praying, wrestling with God and repenting of old mindsets, before I was able to begin to trust God enough to see myself as a person capable of leading others. Several months after being asked to join leadership, myself and another guy who was also asked to join with me, were paired up and tasked with launching another new house church, alone, just the two of us. We were pretty nervous, but excited to see what God would do. The next several months were a great time of carpooling to this new house church. We would talk about what God was teaching us, how we were growing, what we were struggling with. It became a great time of us bonding and helping each other grow in leadership together. We had an amazing time watching God use us to develop the culture of this new group. Seeing them bond together through worship, prayer, communion, scripture discussions and ministering to one another. By the end we both had seen God grow us in ways we hadn’t imagined and use us in ways we didn’t think we were capable. That church is still fond in my heart and feels like a second family after the church I was part of when first moving here. Partway through that season of launching that house church, us as leaders felt like God was leading us to install formal elders. We prayed about it, got others from the community praying about it and came to a unanimous decision through the Spirit’s leading. We appointed two elders who have done and are still doing, an incredible job. Their love and care for the members of the community here have been amazing. The other three of us on the leadership team are humbled and honored to serve with them. The year continued to move forward with more churches being planted and started. Midway through that year I had the opportunity to go to Utah, take what we were doing and teach it to a community there who was desiring to start something similar. I almost didn’t go, but prayed and again felt like God was pushing me to step out even further. He had been pushing me to step out and teach, which I don’t feel very good at, but I was trying to obey Him and practice. I had the chance right before going to Utah, to preach a short fifteen minute sermon at an event for our community. It was so nerve wracking, but I stepped out in faith and God came through. It went pretty well for my first time and I was encouraged to see God use me in that way. The very next weekend I went to Utah with a friend from out of town who was connected with them. We did a mini seminar for the weekend about what being a disciple of Jesus looks like. We tag teamed teaching topics like, counting the cost, surrender, repentance and such. On the final day my friend asked me to just take the floor and teach about the community I was part of and what our system looks like. I wasn’t expecting to be teaching solo. I had no plan on what to say. I had some things I brought to hand out to everyone. I spent a while in prayer that night and just asked the Lord to give me whatever I need to be able to teach what He wanted me to teach. I went on the next morning and taught for several hours on how we model our system, how we launch new churches and what life is like following Jesus in this way. That flowed into probably another hour of Q&A. When it was all over, I felt so encouraged. I never in my life would have seen myself doing anything remotely like that, but I stepped out when God told me to and I saw Him come through in a big way. He showed me I was capable of far more than I thought, when I lean into Him for the things I needed and trusted Him to help me do what I didn’t know how to do. I came back from that trip very uplifted and saw a side of myself I didn’t know was there. Returning from that trip led right into another season of growth. The house church I had been a part of when first moving here had grown so much, we needed to split it up into more than one. We had all seen this coming, but were trying to push it off as long as we could because we all loved gathering together each week. We really had become a family. Seeing each other multiple times a week in different forms as well as gathering for our weekly church meeting. We began praying about how to split it up. Originally my friend was going to keep part of it at his house then the rest would become a new church with myself and the friend I had just finished launching the last church with. It would become two and he and I would start a new one together at his house. The size had gotten so big though, when combined with the current classes that were about to end and become a new church, the two groups were still going to be to big. We talked and prayed a bunch about what to do going forward. What we felt like the Lord wanted, was for us to actually become three instead of two, but that meant me taking on one by myself which I hadn’t expected. That terrified me, but after seeing what God had done in Utah and what He was continuing to teach me after returning, I agreed to take on one of the churches. I’m still in that season currently. It has been a big learning curve. Meeting each week, without the ability to lean on the other guys I was with in the previous church, was tough at first. It still is really. I’ve seen God begin to form a new family with the people He put into the church I’m leading. He’s blessed me with a couple of new guys to help me out. We have been learning to work together well and have seen God begin to unite the members together. God is taking us into a new season, with new changes, new challenges and new things to learn. I’m excited for the next season of what God has for me. This next year is only just beginning. It’s brought a new addition to my family with the birth of our third child. I’m looking forward to seeing where God takes me and my family this year. I know there will be new things that I will have to step into. Deeper levels of surrender, trust and faith. This brings it up to the present with my Journey with Jesus. I know I left out a lot of things and I may revisit some of them in later posts, but the last four years have been an incredible time. I’ve learned so much and seen God do so many things. Thank you for joining in and following along with what I’ve been walking out. There will be many more stories to come, no doubt.

• written by Eddie Chamberlain