The story behind the launch

Tuesday night, March 26, 2012 I broke down crying in the parking lot of El Porton to my friend Wade. I felt like the Young Adult Community, the ministry that I started and invested my life in was dying. People were leaving, leaders were leaving, people were burnt out, and I felt like it was near dead and time to give up on it.

The next morning Wade gave me the passage Luke 13:6-9. It's about a man who didn't find any fruit on this one fig tree. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard to cut down the tree. The man said back basically, give me another year with it, I will dig around and it and fertilize it. If it bears no fruit then next year cut it down.

This was kinda my prayer for the ministry, God give me another year to work on it. I spent the next few months really praying and wrestling with a new vision and ministry model. I had a hundred million ideas of what to do...

But God wanted me to get to the heart of ministry first. He showed first to stop focusing on a ministry model, but on people. Then he showed me how our vision was out of order. Our vision at the time was centered on being a community and our hope was that spiritual growth would be a by-product. But God showed me how Jesus said, "Go into all the earth and make disciples." He didn't say, "Go into all the earth and make community."  I sensed him saying, if I would first focus on making disciples then fruit and discipleship would be the product, and community would become more of a by-product.

Once I got the new vision, "To reach young adults and develop disciples" then I began to look at and research what God was doing with young adults around the country. I found that God was moving in big ways in other cities. If he was doing such great things there, could he do it here?

This is when he gave me the vision to create Tuesday Nights at Hope for young adults all around the city to gather, worship, and hear God's word in a passionate way that would ignite and re-ignite their faith. To really reach out to the city and our generation and then from there create discipleship opportunities.

I spent 6 months with my girls Bible study, preparing them to lead and disciple others. I told them our group wasn't going to just end, it was going to multiply. And that is what we are about to do!

In September, Hope got behind the vision and put so much support, resource and money into it. I got a core team of 16 people together to help plan, pray, invest and run it. And tomorrow we launch this new endeavor to reach our city and our generation and make disciples who will bear fruit for God's glory (John 15:8). TEN months of praying, wrestling, planning, and praying for this. And tomorrow is the day! So much anticipation right now :)

God brought me to a low place, he let the ministry get to a low place last year in order to bring us to this new place and new season. And I just really believe we've spent this past year "digging around it and fertilizing it" so that God could bring new fruit and new life from a once dying tree.