My Worship Revolution

One of the things I did before heading here was asked some people who had been through the Converge Church Planting Assessment Center what it all looked like.
I could only get so much of an overview.
So now that I am in it I will share with all of you who care about what we’re experiencing, and in addition it will now be online for some others to get an idea what to expect!

First a quick explanation cause we’ve been realizing that virtually no one understands what this part of the process it.
It isn’t an interview.
There isn’t one job opening for all 20 candidates to battle it out for.
It isn’t a reality show like The Apprentice.
It isn’t an application process.

For over 20 years Converge has run these assessments.  Churches from Converge as well as other churches in the country send people who are thinking about church planting, who they want to see church plant, who are wondering if they are supposed to start a church (definition of ‘church plant’ in case you’re really lost right now), or people who are maybe already in the process of planting a church even.
A bunch of people who have done church planting for years as well as people trained to understand personalities all watch you and interview for 3 days.
As a 3rd party, it is then their job to give the sending agencies their perspective on whether or not that candidates has the building blocks it will take to successfully be the lead person or couple for a new church.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, a brief overview of day 1.

Welcome/Orientation

In welcoming and explaining the process, they do a great job of reminding us that this isn’t about pass/fail.  Their heart in this process really is to help each person discover what it is that God has created them to do.

That being said, their job is to look at us all through the lens of whether or not we can be the lead people for a new church.  So on Friday we will receive 1 of 4 outcomes:
Not Recommended – this person would not make a good lead planter
Strong Conditions – slow down…some conditions that will take 18-2 months to resolve
Recommended Conditionally – conditions can be resolved in under 24 months
Recommended – this person is ready to go

Portrait Predictor

Rachel and I both took 3 personality tests online to prepare for this.
Today they presented the portrait predictor.  You may have heard of this one called DISC.
If you’ve ever done the Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, Beaver thang, it’s the same idea.
Four personality types – dominant, influencing, steady, cautious
My personality type?  Definitely an I.

Got a 6 page packet of what that means, but here it is in a nutshell:

Words that describe I: inspiring, persuasive, motivating, enthusiastic, optimistic, collaborative
Strength: Will get everyone on board, build a motivated team
Limitation: May tend to promise more than they can deliver
“Thirives on Opportunity”

My secondary is dominant.

My wife, of course, is pretty much my polar opposite.  She’s a C.

Philosophy of Ministry Presentation

There are 20 candidates taking part in the assessment.  17 couples and 3 single dudes.
We are broken up into 2 teams.
Among those teams we further broke down into 2 groups, so now you have basically 4 groups of 5 candidates each.
In preparation for this weekend, I had to put together some presentations.
One was a philosophy of ministry presentation.
I put together a 2 page document outlining our vision and strategy for the church we want to plant.  I tried to create something we could continue to use in the future.  Maybe I’ll get it up here to share with you sometime soon.
We took turns sharing our individual philosophies and then being asked questions as a couple by the assessors.

For ours we presented our ministries name, why the need for another church in Santa Cruz, our vision in a nutshell, our 4 guiding values, and the strategy of how we were going to get there.
While I was somewhat nervous for this time to come, I ended up actually having a really good time getting to present what we had and really sharing our hearts for ministry as they asked us questions from who we see as heroes of the faith to how we would use art to express God’s beauty in our community.  Good times.

We broke for dinner and afterward went into our second presentation which is a 10 minute mini-sermon along with a 5 minutes sharing of our call to church planting.
3 of the 5 went tonight.
Yup, we are first up tomorrow.  So no more on that now.

Bible Knowledge Evaluation

The night ended with a 50 question multiple choice quiz on the Bible.
The main candidate had to take it and it was optional for the spouses.
Rachel took it.  She’s the bomb.

OK, I feel pretty comfortable with my understanding of God’s story and the content of the scriptures.  But not gonna lie…this seemed like one of the more intimidating portions to me.
Questions from what is the third to last book in the Old Testament to what book would you find the following quote in…
It was good talking to some of the candidates after and knowing we weren’t the only ones to struggle on some of the questions.

So, that’s day 1 in a nutshell.
Overall had a good time getting to know a bunch of people from all over the country who are in the same boat we’re in.
Any questions you have I didn’t address?
Throw em out there in the comments and I’ll try to get to em.

Tomorrow we start with worship at 8am and roll through till 9pm I believe.
It’s definitely the long day.
So I’m off to join my wife in bed.
Hopefully more to share tomorrow night, if I’m not too wiped out!

Literally, I have like 3 minutes to post this.
So no edits.  Just off the top.
Here we go.

• Have 3 minutes cause we’re about to head out for the Converge Church Planters assessment center.  3 days of intensity.  Psychologists, pastors, assessors, coaches, all inspecting us to say whether not they think we’re capable.  Errr…called?  Anyway, BIG week for us.  Please be praying.
• Visiting Patience in Perris right now.  The amount of space you get in a house compared to costs in Santa Cruz is freaking insane!
• Went on the first run in months yesterday.  Felt good.  Well, it hurt so good.  Time to start training again for this years triathlon schedule!
• Speaking of triathlon, Friday, as soon as we’re done with the assessment center, we drive to Tuscon Arizona to lead worship at the ICTN Triathlon Camp.  looking forward to it.  A bit frightened though since I’m a bit out of shape and will be working out with really IN shape people.
• Gonna try to teach Rachel how to swim for reals this week while we have a pool to help get her ready for her first triathlon in June.
• Did I mention we are without kids for a whole week?  Kinda miss em, maybe more worry about em, but overall just stoked to experience what it’s like to just enjoy my wife without distractions for a week!  Even if it is the midst of a stressful week.
• Last week was my last full wee in the office at CLC.  Only 3 more opportunities to lead worship there.  Kinda bitter-sweet.
• Looking forward to leading worship at Rancho Vista Church in Chula Vista on March 7th and on Easter this year!

OK.  There’s a random mind dump for ya.
Now that my head is clear, I’m out of here!
If I can muster up the energy, I’ll get out a full report when I can as the assessment progresses.
And maybe a triathlon post in my head later in the week about triathlon and gateway drugs.

Thanks for the prayers!
See ya soon!

Or maybe I should say church websites.

As we get all prepared to leave CLC and get ready for this new adventure of starting a new church, I’ve come across a couple of websites for churches that I’m really digging.
We’re not wanting to do the typical church planting sort of model.
Recently I’ve stumbled across several churches that seem to be in the same realm of what’s resonating in our hearts.

Check out these sites (especially the first one) and it shouldn’t take you too long to find a common thread and get a glimpse of what we envision this movement of God in Santa Cruz looking a little bit like:

Apex Community
Zolder50
Adullam Denver

How about you?
Whether it’s a church, a random website, or something else related to your field of work…
What’s inspiring you lately?

For 7 or 8 months now, our life group has been heading out to San Lorenzo park about once a month for a barbeque.
We show up with the BBQ, 2 big jugs of water and lemonade, and about 50 burgers and 50 dogs.
Then we share the food with whoever’s around and just get to know the people, many of whom are living in the park or nearby streets.

We chose San Lorenzo specifically because of it’s reputation for being a place that many homeless hang out.
There is a dynamic that I’ve noticed as we’ve hung out there that fascinates me.
At the park, in addition to a market that happens during part of the year (and that has a story in and of itself, but we’ll save it for a different blog), there is a lawn bowling court.  (is it called a court?)

If I were to stereotype the typical users of the lawn bowling facility, it would be primarily well of older white people.
Between this crowd and the shady homeless crowd is noting but a chain link fence.
In essence, they are standing within feet of each other, but they really couldn’t be further apart.
One group hardly even acknowledges the existence of the other.
Here’s a few pictures I snapped trying to an image of the divide:

I wonder, how often do we walk through life, walk right by people in need or people just not like us, and even though our eyes are wide open we choose not to see the humanity around us.

We’ll be out at San Lorenzo again tomorrow at 11:30 (provided it doesn’t rain).
Feel free to come and hang with us!

I leave you with the lyrics of a song from the musical Big River.

Worlds Apart
I see the same stars through my window
That you see through yours
But we’re worlds apart
Worlds apart
And I see the same skies through brown eyes
That you see through blue
But we’re worlds apart, worlds apart

Just like the earth, just like the sun
Two worlds together are better than one
I see the sun rise in your eyes
That you see in mine
But we’re worlds apart, worlds apart

I see the friendship in you eyes
That you see in mine
But we’re worlds apart, worlds apart
Together, but worlds apart

For those who didn’t get one, or if it got lost in the mail (as I’m sure yours did), I figured I’d go ahead and post our Christmas letter as a way of quickly looking back on 2009…

Another year has passed and it’s time for the third annual Marchessault family Christmas letter.  We recognize that in this age of Twitter and Facebook statuses, it’s become difficult to read anything too long, so in order to help you out, we’re writing Twitter style.  A summary of the year in bite sized pieces of 140 characters or less.  Here we go:

• Started 2009 with 40 members of our church, building a house and serving the working poor in Mexico. Great way to bring in the New Year!
• 02/09/09 we had healthy baby boy #2 – Micah Robert Marchessault. He’s super cute and Caleb was stoked to be a big brother.
• Bobby continued his triathlons racing his first half Ironman at Wildflower in May. Took him 8 hours, but at least he finished, eh?
• Many city storytimes ended ($$$). Rachel & friend Kendra started SCcreative play.  Moms keep comin & great connection w/community.
  (santacruzcreativeplay.com)
• We raised over $3500  4 Hemophilia in Zachs name & Bobby rode his bike from San Fran 2 San Diego. Thanks 2 all who supported #coastalrace09!
• Caleb started preschool this year w/Santa Cruz city. He loves getting to go to school & Rachel loves the 1 on 1 time w/Micah.

Hopefully that kept your attention.  In all seriousness, as we look back on this year we have seen our family grow and have had some great adventures, both with ministry and family.  We sensed a time of transition coming and spent lots of time this year asking God what that meant.

As we look ahead to the coming year it is certain to be one of huge transitions.  We recently announced to our church that Feb. 21^st will be our final Sunday on staff at Christian Life Center and we will be starting a new church/movement here in Santa Cruz.  This is a dream that God planted in our hearts over 5 years ago and we are both nervous and excited to see what the coming year has in store.

We have been discussing partnership with an organization called Converge USA and they will be sending us to a 4-day Church Planters assessment at the end of January.  We ask for your prayers as we head into that final step before really starting this journey.  We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming months.  And maybe there are some of you who would want to prayerfully consider joining us here, as well!  Can’t find a better place to live.

We hope that this year has been great for you as well.  We’ll include our contact info and would love to hear from any and all of you.  Also, as usual, stop by our blogs and dialogue with us regularly.  We can’t wait to see what next years letter will look like!

God bless.  Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I don’t like to join in on the hype of a New Year.
But at the same time it truly does provide a great, natural opportunity to look back and reflect on the past year, and to consider what God has in store for the year ahead.

This year more than ever for me, the change over in year actually feels like a significant transition point.
I am incredibly excited, anxious, stoked, and nervous to see how God is going to pull things together in our lives over this next year.
So this year I’m thanking God for 2009, for the great stuff and the tough stuff.  And I’m saying goodbye to ’09.  It’s been nice knowin ya!

Now bring on 2010!!
Thanks for livin it with us.

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9

When it comes to kids ministries and stuff like that, Rachel and I have always believed pretty strongly that it is our job as parents to be the primary teachers of our children.
In other words, it is not the job of your church to be the one’s teaching your child about Jesus.
It is not the job of daycare or public schools to teach your kids right from wrong.
Sure, the church needs to come alongside you in supporting you as you disciple your kids.
But if the only time they are learning about Jesus and the narrative of scripture is Sunday School, it aint really gonna take.

I say all that to set up an opportunity to brag about my wife.

This past month, she set up an advent calendar with a special activity every day to prepare us for Christmas.
More importantly, it was a way to start teaching Caleb and Micah at our house what Christmas is really all about.
Every Sunday we lit an advent candle and had a Bible story sharing the events of Christ’s incarnation.
She did everything with them from making gifts for our Compassion sponsored kid, learning about St. Nick, and having a birthday party for Jesus to dancing to Christmas music, enjoying local holiday events, and making fun crafts.

Go to this post at her blog to see the calendar of events, and then continue through the month of posts to hear about each one.

It was an awesome month.
At 3 years old I can already see Caleb starting to “get it.”
And my wife is the raddest mom in America!

And I had a blast getting to play the part of Whiskers the puppet during our family devotionals!

We have time for snowball fights…since we only work one day a week anyway.

Merry Christmas.

Welcome to the new blog.

If you came straight to this post, click on home to see the front page look.

I mentioned in an earlier post that his blog tends to be somewhat a reflection of my life.
So I figured it was a good time to use a new theme as we enter into a new season of life and ministry.

Yesterday we announced at Christian Life Center that February 21st will be our last Sunday on staff there.
Why?

We’re planting a church.

Well over 5 years ago God placed a passion and call in mine and Rachel’s hearts to one day be church planters.
And this past year this passion has bubbled up within us in huge ways.

After lots of time talking with God, fasting, praying, looking at different options; we finally think we know what God is up to.
And we plan to start a new movement/faith community right here in Santa Cruz.

You will hear a whole lot about this church and our plans here at the blog.  It is going to pretty much consume us.
I’ve already got like 83 posts in  my head to share with you guys about where we’re headed and what God’s doing.

We are currently discussing partnership with a church planting organization/denomination called Converge USA (formerly Baptist General Conference).
As a final step in that process, they are sending us to a 4 day intense church planters assessment at the end of January.
Please pray right off the bat that all goes well there.

So that’s the BIG news coming out of our lives right now.
And for us, it really is big.
It means huge shifts for us including raising support, finding another job, and moving again at some point.

It feels like stepping out in faith in a big way.
There’s plenty to be nervous about.
And it means all we can do is hand it over to Jesus.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We are excited to see what God has for us.
Excited to live out passionate spirituality in the context of radical community.
Excited to rethink being the church in our community.
Excited about living out the values of transformation, dependence, justice, beauty.

So we are inviting you to see it happen from square 1.
We don’t have it all figured out yet.
I didn’t wait til we had a logo and a real cool website to unveil it all at once.
This is a work in progress.
And we’re stoked to have you on the journey with us.

The blog should start looking better in time also.

And so we head into another transition in our lives.
Thanks for coming with us!

Now…here we go!!

New blog theme.
New season.
Change.

Coming tomorrow.
See ya there.

Christmas is a time where we feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
It’s a time that we cherish our families and loved ones.
It’s a time that we reflect on our year.
It’s a time that we thank God for all He’s done and is doing.
It’s a time when we are supposed to be happy that all is right with life.

And for those reasons, it’s also a time that can be the most painful time of the year for many.
For those who have lost loved ones.
For those who had a tragic year.
For those who can’t see God’s hand right now.
For those who don’t feel very thankful.
And sometimes we forget or just gloss over that for the sake of keeping it happy.

I know people who read this blog who are more aware during this time of those who are no longer around to celebrate with.
I know people who read this blog who are in uncertain seasons of major transition.
I know people who read this blog who recently miscarried a baby they were looking forward to loving.
I know people who read this blog who are in the throes of dealing with cancer in the midst of a holiday season.
I know people who read this blog who are working through clinical depression.
I know people who read this blog who don’t feel like they have a lot to celebrate.
And the season magnifies that pain they feel.

Life is pretty good for me.  Most days I am enjoying the yuletide bliss and time with my family.
But every now and then, even I have that day where things seem a lot grayer and I am more focused on the struggles than the blessings.
I think we can all relate.
We’ve all been there.

Which is why this excerpt I read yesterday resonated.
It comes out of Meditations of a Hermit.
It has some great thoughts for those of us who follow Jesus.
Maybe if you are having a tough time this season, or you know someone who is, this is something you can reflect on.
See what you think:

Let us thank God a thousand times if in the sadness which invades us it seems to us as if we are rejected by the world.  The depression and suffering, the bitterness with which we seem sometimes to be soaked to be soaked, were the lot of Our Lord on earth.  Are we not fortunate to share them?  We should pity the happy people.  Pity those whose happiness, even though it be quite legitimate and innocent, keeps them attached to the world.  God is good that he has so despoiled us of everything, that we can draw breath only by turning our heads towards him. How great is his mercy, how divine his goodness, for he has torn everything from us in order that we may be more completely his.  So the suffererers are the happy ones through the goodness of God.  In suffering I give thanks.

May these days of Christmas festival bring you, in your suffering, I do not say consolation, but the blessing God intends for you. The child Jesus will perhaps not give you any sweetness, – he reserves that for the weak ones, – but his hand will none the less be spread to bless you in these days of Christmastide, and whether you feel it or no, he will pour abundant grace into your soul.

Not much for me to add at this point.
How about you?