Have you ever said those words before? I have. I said those words when I started playing high school football and I was introduced to hell week. I also said those words when I got my first job working at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I remember clearly saying those words on my first day of Marine Corps bootcamp. In a different way, I have said those words when the sanctifying work of marriage began to take place ( no, I did not question why I wanted to get married, or whether I married the right one, it was more like...this thing called marriage is definitely more than sex and food...it is HARD WORK. More on this topic later).
I have recently spoken those words in the current phase of life that I find myself in...Church planting.
Before I decided ( or accepted the call ) to plant, I was a college pastor for Rancho Community Church( RCC ). It was an awesome job! According to the lead pastor, I could stay there as long as I wanted...I never had to leave if I did not want to. Everything I needed was at my disposal: amazing facility, tech stuff, advertising, etc. People naturally just came to our college gathering.
So what happened? The Gospel. During my time at RCC I began to understand how amazing the good news was from God. God had acted in history by sending his Son to earth to bear the sin of creation, and reconcile and redeem the world ( 1 Peter 3:18 ). This historical news stirred my heart and soul to the point where I could no longer be in what I considered to be a " safe place". I wanted to spread this news, and I knew that the best way to do this, to take new ground, was to plant a church in places that are in need. So here I am now, three years later, on the verge of launching a new church in September of 2011.
The journey so far has been an interesting one. I have grown in ways that I would have never imagined. There have been some real deep pains, and real exciting times. Through it all, God's hand has been evident. I will be taking some time to share with you where I am really at with all of this, and in the process I hope that God will encourage you. I will leave with the first lesson I have learned so far in planting:
To see the power of God, you need to be in a place where it is needed.
I will pick this up in part two of this blog.
On journey,
Sabo Cortez.
