DEFINING MOMENTS IN MY LIFE AS A CHURCH PLANTER

I recently read this post by my friend Ben Arment. He always inspires me so I decided to copycat his post with a little twist. There have been some defining moments in my life that have stair stepped me toward church planting and looking back I can see God using each one in different small ways. I think this is important because recently I realized how important it is that we have moments and people who green light our dreams of what God is putting on our heart and tell us we aren’t crazy. If you are reading this, let it encourage your dream.

• When I was 11, the student pastor I looked up to at my church announced he was going to plant a church. I still remember sitting in the room as he told what the process and timeline would look like. I remember the concept resonating with my heart even at that early age.
• Also when I as young I remember the Boehm family coming through my church on a Sunday night and talking about their desire to plant Western Reserve Grace Church. Not just that night but I got to watch them and their family, church, and ministry as it grew in our district.
• I remember Mike Jentes (who I thought invented sliced bread because he introduced me to DC Talk) coming back to our home church and talking about his church planting effort (The Quest) in Columbus, Ohio.
• I remember going on Operation Barnabas and our team having time with Jim Brown as he explained what was essentially a re-launch of Grace Community Church in Goshen, Indiana.
• That same summer I remember being captivated by what God was doing in and through Dan Gregory at Community of Hope in Columbia City, Indiana. Dan shared how when he came on the church was 15 people and was meeting in a double-wide trailer.
• As I committed to full-time Christian ministry and was leaving for college and also formulating my life I remember processing to Kristin that I saw myself in student ministry and than planting a church someday. We actually had the conversation that if she wasn’t on board we weren’t for each other….God made her a perfect fit.
• I remember when Ron Boehm started working in church planting and having he and Chery take Kristin and I out for ice cream the week of the missions conference at Grace College and explain the process and nuts and bolts of really planting a church. I told him that I wanted him to keep bothering me about church planting. I told him I could say not to him but no to God.
• I remember interning at Wooster Grace and being sent on a ministry trip to help Clancy Cruise launch Marysville Grace and seeing first hand what it looked like in the early stages from ground level. I would stay in touch with Clancy through seminary.
• I remember coming to Grace Church knowing they had planted Marysville Grace and meeting pastor Ed Jackson and for the first time knowing his heart, his story, and his passion for planting…wow!
• Kristin tells me I came home from Catalyst in 2008 and said beyond a shadow of a doubt God wants us to 1) adopt and 2) plant a church.
• I remember many long talks with Sean Spoelstra about planting and the call I felt on my life. When he left in 2008 to plant a church, he always joked with me that he was living my dream.
• I remember Sean taking me to a church planters gathering in 2011 in Kansas City where I felt amongst peers.
• I remember sharing my heart with Terry Hofecker, Tony Webb, and Ron Boehm again all at my house, testing the water and seeing if God wanted us to act in the spring of 2011.
• August of 2011 we were assessed as church planters at the urging of Tony, Terry, Ron and Vision Ohio, and if nothing else it was a time for Kristin and I to realize that God was doing this in our hearts and our life timeline and we just needed to get on board.
• In September of 2011 Encounter Church’s elders asked us to consider planting a church and it was a formality because looking back god had been preparing me since 1994. But they were the ones that gave us the blessing to dream and drive stake in the ground.
• Since September in these last few months, we have had friends, families, and churches who have also said we don’t think you are crazy, in fact we believe in you enough to give you money to see this happen.

What are the defining moments of your dream?

LAST HSM WEDNESDAY NIGHT MIND DUMP

• Tonight was my last normal HSM Wednesday night during a school year.
• We will have some bonfire Bible studies this summer but those aren’t the same and you never know who will be at what.
• The whole night was surreal since I am not leaving tomorrow, but in many ways it was the end of programming.
• I did some math and I think I have done somewhere close to 196 Wednesday nights over 7 years.
• I’ve never wanted our ministry to be about me and I hoped tonight was no different. I tried to go about things normal and I think it went well.
• There some welcomed interruptions though and Josh, Sarah, Kristin and I felt honored.
• Our students made photo books behind our backs and they are awesome and really a perfect gift that I can always look back on.
• Sam Moore also wrote a celebratory verse for me to kick the night off. I told him that was the moment I knew we had lived out II Timothy 2:2 and my hip hop work here was done.
• I thought about my final lesson for a long time and settled on II Corinthians 5. We talked about the fact that Christ’s love should compel us and we should reproduce ourselves (people, as leaders, and churches).
• I ended the night with some stuff that I think every outgoing person needs to say to honor the person coming in.  I had a different situation since Kary Oberbrunner wasn’t going anywhere when I came, but nonetheless he was nothing but gracious and set me up for success. I want the same thing for Seth and hopefully I began setting the table these last few weeks.
• Like I said I didn’t want to night to be focused on me transitioning because I am not the body of Christ and ministry or the church doesn’t revolve around me. I do want to thank many great people who deserve it, so Delores, Jim, Kelly, Heather, and many student leaders will be getting some incredibly sappy handwritten cards in the next few months.
• Tomorrow my day to day stuff switches up in many ways. I now go into summer trip/conference/camp mode and begin setting the table for transitions in t-minus 75 days.

ARTRIP WORLD TOUR MIND DUMP

• We are not actually on tour, but it feels like it. In the last week we dropped our kids off in Mansfield (met the rents halfway), went to the Exponential church planting conference in Orlando, Florida, went to a fundraising thing in Cleveland, Ohio, DJed a wedding in Cincinnati, and tomorrow I will preach in Rittman Ohio at my home church.
• Exponential was great. I have never been to a conference that just seemed to scratch the itch of where I was in that season of life. I have been to leadership conferences, creativity conferences, and student ministry conferences, but this one was just great.
• It had great sessions, great breakouts, great networking and pretty much everything I want when I get away.
• Our whole team (Encounter Church and Movement Church people) got to stay at my friends place, so that was a huge blessing to save money, and also have access to some common living space, and a pool and hot tub.
• Right now Movement Church feels like a parked car at times, because we are building toward something but not in day to day mode, but regardless it was great to get away with our team and just be inspired, encouraged, and share a common experience and have tons of offline conversations.
• I always like to take Kristin to conferences if I can because it almost seems counterproductive to not have her there, but taking the whole team was huge.  Thanks to Grace Church, Encounter Church, and Vision Ohio for providing that.
• The main sessions were great for many reasons but one I didn’t expect was that they would feature some guys as emcees and steering team that I have respected from a distance for a long time. I knew Dave Ferguson would be involved, but I didn’t know Shawn Lovejoy and Brian Bloye would be there.
• I can’t say I know all those guys well, but I respect the heck out of the way they have modeled reproduction in their churches and netoworks.
• Another thing I didn’t expect were the great creative elements from the sessions. I got some great stuff to steal for Momentum this summer, so if you are there and impressed, lets pretend I thought of some of it on my own.
• Breakout session wise, I followed the launching with momentum one. There were like 5 in every timeslot that I wanted to go to, but I thought this would give me some continuity. It was great and I have tons of pages of notes that I need to re-visit and digest.
• That seemed to be a theme that everyone on our team was super blessed in their sessions and wanting to share the stuff they heard. Sarah especially went to one that I hope will shape what we do discipleship wise in the future.
• Get to teach at Rittman GBC tomorrow. I haven’t done that since I was a nervous senior in high school sharing on youth Sunday.  I haven’t been there on a Sunday since we got married, so it will be great to be home.
• The Artrip family band is even making a cameo in a brief reunion spot…we will see how that goes.
• This is a weird season to be in as I already mentioned the parked car syndrome. I am not having trouble staying engaged in student ministry because there is enough to keep me busy, my bigger problem is not knowing when and where to fit Movement stuff.
• Parked cars have to be prepped and gassed up when they know they are getting ready to take off so I am trying to to be wise and do the things I need to do as we prepare for takeoff.

MOVEMENT CHURCH/ARTRIP LIFE UPDATE

A couple months ago the Artrip’s announced we were transitioning from staff at Grace Church this summer and moving to Hilliard to plant a church. Since January lots of stuff has happened and some details are coming together. I thought I would give a little Movement Church/Artrip family update for those who care…

• People always ask me what is going on with Movement Church. In time there will be plenty, but for now day to day there isn’t much…and that is for a reason. I am still on staff on Grace Church and staying fully engaged there. In the past months since the announcement I actually jumped back in the worship rotation, had a middle school and high school outreach event and even hosted a candidate who may be my replacement. I am trying to be very strategic about everything I do in these last months from teaching, to leadership development and recruiting people for next year.
• On Friday February 24th we sold our house at 2, bought our new one at 4, and began moving with many friends at 6. We officially slept at our new home Saturday the 25th.
• The boys love our new place and we are settling in slowlyI have been hanging curtain rods like life depends on it.
• The things I am doing for Movement Church are mostly networking and fundraising now.
• I am also chipping away at operational stuff at night and on days off like a hobby or part time job. So far we have our EIN number, opened a checking account, sent in our state paperwork to incorporate, and are wading into the facility rental game.
• We also got our launch team together for the first time and hung out.
• April 22-26 we will be traveling to the Exponential Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Now….you are officially up to date.

HSM STORYTELLERS OUTREACH AFTER-THOUGHTS

This will be a weird post in that I want to share an idea that we recently did for an outreach, but I will also share how it didn’t go off as I hoped. The reason I am sharing it is because the moment this idea was shared with me I loved the concept and I still love the idea and believe in the heart of it. I didn’t think of it so I will just go ahead and say it is my favorite student ministry outreach idea out right now…hands down.

I have a friend Alyssa Corrova, who grew up in our ministry and is now on staff with Cru at Miami (Ohio) University. She is a top-level leader and Kristin and I respect the heck out of her and are on her support team. She is younger and cooler than me so last summer I asked her if she could do any one outreach event (because I wanted to add a new high school event) what would it be? She said she had long dreamed of an event that wasn’t about a time, or place, but was about the gospel infiltrating people’s paths via facebook. She described to me a campaign where students would film there story’s (testimony) and put them up on the same day with the same look/feel/branding so it would be obvious they were connected, but they wouldn’t say you need to come hear this speaker at this conference or anything like that, but they would simply said this is me, this is my story, and I want you to know about it, you can even talk to me if this stirs your heart.

I loved the idea. I called it an outreach 2.0 event. It was simply about the gospel and people sharing their stories that obviously glorify God…and nothing else.

We decided to name the event storytellers, because it captured the heart of the event and because Elevation church had a logo, bumper and some other great stuff available on their resources page for free.

What I love about the event is that a great outreach (dodgeball in our world) will have 60% of the people in the room who don’t know Jesus, but this event can have 80-90% easily. We have all read a friends Facebook status update, or checked out a picture or video that they posted. It is easy to get your captive network to watch your stuff because they love you and want to support you. I told our students that if only 10 people did this event and they each got their testimony to be viewed 20 times we have shard the gospel 200 times. Having a youtube video that you promote and link to viewed 20 times is very conservative, so the exponential potential of the event is through the roof.  That coupled with the fact that in this day and age people might argue the existence of God or the validity of God in their mind, but they will rarely argue with someone’s story.

You have now heard what I think is the genius of the event and why it really can’t fail.  I will not tell you how it was executed, the successes, the failures, and what my expectations were going in and coming out of the event.

The Wednesday night before the event, we themed the whole night around Storytellers. I taught on the gospel and the importance of sharing our faith and than bridged this being a simple opportunity. We than guided students through how to write/frame their story and than I showed them a video I created that would be similar to the one they would film.

The sheet said things like 1) tell us about yourself (family, background, who you were before Christ), 2) what was going wrong in your life or what woke you up to the fact there is more in life 3) How did God find you? 4) How is your life different with Christ? 5) We than had students explain the gospel and possibly share a favorite verse.

We have four values as a church and a ministry. I have always said that when we are healthy, we want 100% of our people worshipping, 75 percent in groups, 50% serving, and 25% sharing their faith. I think I thought this outreach was accessible and somehow took the maturity that it takes to share your faith. I thought that more students would engage in this, but the reality is in most groups only 25% are ready to share their faith.

Here are some things I would do to try and make the event something that more students took part in.

• I thought if we did it on a Sunday during church and after 9am-4pm we would have everyone able to do it and already at church, not at sports/work, and able to sign up for a spot. That wasn’t the case, we still had people avoid it. There is no time you can get that makes people want to share their faith better.
• I wish I would have built Wednesday so the first part would be the explanation and promotion and the second part would be filming videos. That would take a lot of cameras but I think it would have given a few more the encouragement.

Having said those things, the event is a guaranteed success because we define success as people sharing Jesus. We had around 20 students do videos and they shared their faith. They didn’t just share their faith, but the videos on average were viewed over 100 times, so they shared their faith to a whole lot of friends and family.

HERE ARE THE VIDEOS ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL IF YOU WANT TO CHECK THEM OUT.

I hope to see some other ministry get to morph this idea and watch it spread.

MOVEMENT CHURCH PRAYER PARTNERS WANTED

Movement Church is looking for prayer partners as we ramp up in the next year. We want people who will commit to consistently pray for our team, our people, our town, and everything else that is going on. If that is you follow this link to be added to the prayer list… http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0C44ABAA28A75-movement

ADOPTION UPDATE: WHERE IS THIS BABY?

Well this has been an exciting year so far for the Artrip family. We announced a few weeks ago that we are transitioning this summer to plant a church in Hilliard,Ohio. Hilliard is a west side suburb of Columbus. We are looking forward to all that this year will bring on the ministry front!

Last fall we did a “Facebook Fundraiser” for our adoption, and God answered our prayers and our goal was met! We are so thankful to all our friends and family from all around the world would gave in support. So now people are asking “Where’s the baby”? Or “Do you know when it will happen”? Those are great questions and we wanted to update you with our status on the adoption front. We had many leads in the fall and winter and pursued all of them. In every case the birthmothers choose the raise the babies themselves. We have not given up and continue to have patience for the right situation to come along and we will continue to pursue every lead we get.

We are aiming to do an Independent Adoption. This means that we are not going through a public agency to be paired up with a child. We simply rely on people who may know of a situation where a baby or child may be placed for adoption. We have a private lawyer who will handle all the legal aspects of the adoption. So here is where WE NEED YOU.

 

If you know of someone who is considering placing an infant or young child (two or under) with an adoptive family please give us a call, email or facebook us! If you talk to someone who knows someone, who knows someone…please help us network get in touch with us. We would welcome the chance to talk or give our family profile if there is interest. It just takes one person to make the connection!

 

Thank you all again for your support and continue to pray as we look to make lots of changes this year as a family and I hope one day soon we will have adoption news.

 

THANK YOU with much love,

 

Mark, Kristin, Malachi and Canaan

Markartrip(at)gmail.com kristinartrip(at)hotmail.com