Slowly the Core Team grew from a few to 20, to 30, and then 50. It was all word of mouth. We could see a launch off in the distance, maybe six or so months away.
Someone recommended we consider doing a “Preview Gathering,” an opportunity to invite people into our community, even though the church wasn’t ready to launch. So, we beat the proverbial drums. We leveraged Instagram and Facebook for the first time. We installed a speaker system we barely knew how to use. We painted some walls and removed the maroon carpet from the stage. I invited friends, and team members invited their families. We put a sign out front. I knocked on doors and offered invitations—thankfully only eliciting one death threat.
And when that particular Sunday morning came, a few hundred people showed up. Some were just there to pat us on the back, but others seemed genuinely interested.
I invited everyone to come the following week to the next Core Team gathering, and around 10 additional people did. Months passed and we moved toward launching. But then some of the earliest Core Team members began to slip away. Some moved because of jobs in other cities. Others felt that there wasn’t the same energy or purpose as in the beginning. With others, I never knew what led them away; they simply stopped coming. The cracks in our carefully crafted vision were starting to show, and the strain of all the striving was beginning to take a toll.
Hitting a Breaking Point
Kandice and I are, let’s just say, different. On road trips I’d pack three belts, forget my deodorant, and neglect to bring a single pair of socks. Kandice would have a list with a bullet point for everything she’d need if the apocalypse happened to break out somewhere along the freeway.
She had told me early on that she could imagine us planting a church only if we had some type of stability built into our week. “We’ll need a date night. You’ll need to start actually taking a Sabbath. And an actual family night,” she said.
She would repeat this multiple times, confirming that I understood. And, honest to God, I did, but in the abstract way I understand how gravity works.
So, when an influential person in the city invited me to an event on a Friday night, I said yes without hesitation. It didn’t matter much that this night had been reserved for family.
When I got home, I realized that in accruing favor with acquaintances, I had earned resentment from my loved ones. Looking back, it is, of course, painfully obvious. But experience teaches its best lessons firsthand. Leaving the family that night made sense to me because I was afraid that this whole venture would get sucked into a black hole if I didn’t keep after it at all times. I expected my family to run with me, all of us trying our hardest to make sure people liked us so this church could happen. Didn’t they know that if we didn’t, I wouldn’t have a job?
My marriage began existing in a state of simmering frustration. Kandice wondered if I saw her needs. She had expected to be a partner in this journey, not a casualty. Add that to the perpetual feeling that she ranked second to the church plant but was still expected to smile.
One night, after the kids were down and I was busy with something of relative unimportance, Kandice told me straight, “I’m not happy in our marriage.”