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Friends, Family, and Grace Church,

I recently notified the Pastors, Staff, elders, and adult volunteers that this will be my last school year on staff at Grace Church.  This summer Kristin and I are transitioning to plant a church in Hilliard, Ohio.  This is not a rushed decision or one that we take lightly, but rather the public announcement of something God has been doing in our hearts for years.

We moved to Powell seven years ago and have been blessed to minister among a truly great church family and staff.  We have made wonderful friends and a home that existed only in our dreams.  Grace Church has treated our family with the utmost honor and we will always view on our time here with fondness. You have cared for us as individuals, a couple, and a family more than we deserved and you are to be commended for it. Professionally, personally, and financially we could have made this our home forever, were it not for the Holy Discontent God has stirred in our hearts.

Since I was in middle school I have felt a strong draw to church planting.  Before I started dating Kristin at age 17 I told her that I intended to be in full time ministry first as a student pastor and then as a church planter to make sure we were passionate about the same direction.  We first met with Grace Brethren church planting coaches when we were in our second year of college to educate ourselves on the process.

It has been a blessing to be in an environment where church planting was always talked about.  We haven’t had to hide it. As I interviewed at Grace Church I shared with Pastor Rick and the staff that I was excited about ministering with them and also expected to someday plant a church. It has been exciting to be in a context where other churches have been planted and to watch that process give birth.  Over the years we have talked through this with the staff and Pastor Rick has even mentioned it to the elders.

Those closest to us know that this has always been on our hearts, and we now see God’s confirmation to take action.  It wasn’t one specific event, but just the culmination of prayer, time in the Word, blogs, books, conferences, and conversations.  Everywhere we have looked we have seen God calling us to plant a church.

The first question people will ask is where this leaves our student ministry, so I want you to know a few things from me personally. We are not a student ministry of one person. We have multiple programs and ministries that happen consistently without me every week and they will not skip a beat with faithful servant leaders involved. Our church has always had a strong youth ministry before me and will continue to have one after me because it is the heart and vision of our pastor and leadership.  I also want you to know that I care very much about our student ministry and I intend to work alongside the group that has been named to find my replacement and give input into the process.  I am very confident in the direction that our student ministries are headed and know that with the right hire, things are positioned for growth and breakthrough

I will remain on staff until August 1^st or earlier in the summer if the elders find my replacement, but in the coming months we will be moving and transitioning to Hilliard so that we can begin to build relationships.  We want to selfishly ask for your prayers. This is an exciting, joyful time one minute and a terrifying faith walk the next.  We need the support and encouragement of our church body to do this.  We know this will come as a surprise or letdown to some, but we want our lives to be about what God has called us to, so we hope people will see that and celebrate it with us.

Many will ask what the next steps in this process are, so let me outline the months ahead.  I will remain fully engaged in ministry at Grace Church until the transition date this summer.  We will not start meeting with our launch team until next fall and hope to publically launch as a church on Easter in 2013.

We are in the process of putting together the foundation of our new church.  Our mother church and accountability through this process will be Encounter Church and its elders. We will gather a launch team of people who are passionate about reaching Hilliard with the gospel and seeing a church birthed. This will be done by living in and building relationships in the community.  We are also raising one time startup funds and monthly commitments from organizations, partner churches (one of which is Grace Church) and individuals.  Those things along with administration (documents, tax free status, websites, PO Box) and continuing in student ministry here will fill my days and weeks.

If you want to talk more and/or stay connected with us, we would love to sit down and share what God is doing in our hearts.  As always, you can do that through my blog markartrip.com, facebook, and twitter (@markartrip).  I could never begin to tell or show you this side of heaven what Grace Church has meant to the Artrip family, so I hope you know the love and sincerity behind my THANK YOU. We love you.

God Bless,

Mark, Kristin, Malachi, and Canaan Artrip

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FAQ’s

1) How did you pick Hilliard?

I will elaborate on this more later and will publish our proposal we will be presenting to people, but the short story is that we see great need there and have research showing that Hilliard is spiritually hungry and ripe for the church we intend to be.

2) Who will take my job? Where does that leave Grace Church’s student ministry (THE ZONE and HSM)?

I answered that above but the short version is that I have spoken into that process with a very capable search committee and they are already contacting, meeting with, and looking for the next person. The job description is posted here if you or someone you know might be a fit.

3) What has God been up to in the last couple months?

I can’t even tell you how we have seen God affirm this since we finally stepped out on faith.

August – We were assessed as church planters in but didn’t know the when or where. We just prayed that God would open doors and make it obvious.

September – We were approached by Encounter Church with a timeline that was the ideal one Kristin and I had privately dreamed of. That was the first sign that God was waiting on our obedience.

Two days after deciding to do this we were given a substantial financial gift toward our new church.

January – We put our house on the market knowing that we wanted to move and it would take a while in this economy to sell a home. We sold our house in 8 days and it only took that long because the couple was traveling and wanted to walk through a few times. The couple who bought it walked through the first day and told us they would buy it.

We have found another great home in Hilliard which will make a great house to plant a church out of and we can see God’s fingerprints guiding both transactions. We will sell/buy on February 17^th.

4) Who is overseeing this and sending you?

Encounter Church is a church that Grace Church planted in 2008.  That have a hyper Canadian-American pastor named Sean Spoelstra. Encounter has had a goal to plant another church since they started. We will be that church that they have wanted to reproduce themselves in and invest their DNA into. Grace Church will be involved relationally, prayerfully, and financially as well as other churches and organizations and individuals.

5) What is the name of your church? The name will be Movement Church.  Our vision is to be a movement of people finding their way back to God. I love the word movement and the double meaning of a person taking steps toward God and also a group of people acting out contagious, intentional action.  I will put much more up later in the proposal I already alluded to and will link to our website and all the social media stuff, but today is just about the transition….more to come.

Please pray for our family, Grace Church, and the many pieces of our new church still coming together.

He has a blog and recently wrote some posts (post 1, post 2) that were (kind of) about design but also about life.  I think anyone who is living in the years of 25-35 (or any age for that matter) can relate to them and learn from them.

Here was my favorite quote of all….

“I must maintain a certain amount of reckless abandon when it comes to pursuing my ideas. I must be ready to learn from failures. I must not take myself too seriously. I must allow myself regular time to do the things I love. I must not be afraid to pursue an idea that pops into my head. I must stay a little crazy. I must stay a little foolish. I must not turn my career in design into a corporate rat race job – I am an artist, and it’s okay to act like one every now and then. Finally, I must be okay with doing less freelance client work if it means that I can fulfill other passions.”

Many of you knew that we were contacted about three months ago to consider a baby boy who was due on Thanksgiving Day. We were one of three families that matched with Erica. It has been a very interesting three months waiting to hear since her due date is so close. Today, we found out that Erica chose another family that has no children of their own yet. That’s ok! God is going to place the right baby into our family and we can move on with that peace of mind.

In that same conversation we were asked to consider another birth mother that will be due sometime in 2012. We don’t know any details except that this little baby will be African American. We will not know anything else till sometime in January.

We will be sure to keep you all updated! Thank you for praying for us!

Lots of love,

Mark Kristin Malachi and Canaan

• This fall has been a learning curve taking over middle school and doing high school too. I went through the predictable phases – digging in, overwhelmed, and as of two weeks ago I found normal and settled in. Not saying I have it all figured out but I know the new normal.
• I know some people are reading this and thinking “I do 6-12 he’s a whiner”. I might be but all I know is the scope and size of our ministry had afforded me the chance to specialize for a while and it is amazing the differences.
• I get 10 times amount of questions and contact from middle school staff and parents, it is just a different fascinating beast. Luckily I have had Dustin next door to dump on and ask questions. He did it for 8 years and didn’t get fired or burn the church down.
• I am finally settled in enough I might lead worship again soon. I haven’t done that since June and I have missed it. So tempted to break out spoken word for the offertory on whatever day that is.
• We have new websites up at hsmpowell.com and thezone68.com if you haven’t seen them yet I love them. Kudos to Gabe Taviano.
• Kalahari is coming up Feb 3-5. I am really excited about this year because we have some great new churches on board. More churches means more people which means we can do some of the things we haven’t been able to do in the past.
• Speaking of things coming up Momentum is far off but I am really excited about the lineup of speakers that is coming together. Erin Cooper and the team are working hard and it shows with Francis Chan and Greg Stier on the schedule. I am pumped.
• My grandma came down for the weekend and just hung out for 4 days. It was great to slow life down and just enjoy being with her.
• Slowing life down is so tough. I have been thinking about it as our church is preaching through Philippians and Rick is talking about our schedules. I am looking at my schedule and my hours that are busy but don’t produce fruit. I think people would consider me a people person but I am really convicted about the way I share my faith inside of my schedule.
• Speaking of bearing fruit, you know I am a sucker for hip hop clothes. I want this shirt for Christmas. Get it? Bear Fruit!
• I’m out.

• It is so great to be at a church that values me getting away and trying to get better at my job.
• It was also great to be able to have time away with my wife. I love when she get to see and experience the same things I do so we are on the same page and can maintain the same vision.  We also had a couple of nights in Chicago without kids…very nice.
• How could we both go to this conference you ask? We were hooked up with volunteer positions by our good friend and Grace College’s own Gail (Smith) Mayes and also stayed at her house and finally got to meet her awesome husband Jason. They took great care of us and wouldn’t even let us pay for most of our meals, so all we had was 3 tanks of gas, some tolls and a few other things. HUGE BLESSING.
• It was great to see the behind the scenes of another conference and I hope it can make me better at the others I am involved in.
• Part of our job was playing host to speakers and making airport runs.  That was great to meet people and have some selfish time with them.
• Kristin got to play host to Lauren Chandler (wife of Matt) and really had a good time.  I think we were both impressed by how engaging and gracious she was to us. She made us talk about ourselves the whole ride.
• As far as the conference, it was great. Its hard to explain why because it is not a typical pastor’s conference. I didn’t come back with a list of 7 things that I am going to tweak in our systems.  Instead I feel like my creativity tank is full again.  I rubbed shoulders with people who are outside of my normal lane but still in the church and Christian non-profit world who are way more creative and doing things much different than me. Got to see music, screen printing, storytelling, worship leading, speaking, filmmaking, lights, stage sets, and so many things that just inspired me.
• I also came home with a bunch of non-cotton great t-shirts so in a shallow way that is a success for me right there!
• Great week, great conference, great people, great friends, thanks God.

It all starts in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit comes moves and Peter stands up and explains it and shares the gospel.

Acts 2:41 – Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

The next verses are the famous ones that people always use to talk about small groups and what the church should look like day to day…

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Other great things were happening too.

Peter and John were boldly proclaiming the gospel and people were astonished with the way they talked. They could tell they were talking about something bigger than themselves and their own strength, they could tell they had been with Jesus.

Verse  31 – After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

The believers being the church wasn’t just a one time occurrence in the previous mentioned verses, it gets says again..

32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

36 Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), 37 sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Here are the questions that Rick asked that started to mess with me and have had my mind swirling about “church”.

• Was this an anomaly? Was it a one-time occurrence that God made happen to jump start the spread of the gospel?
• Could God do this sort of thing today?
• Do I believe, act, and lead as if I believe God could do this sort of thing today?
• It is plain to see the Spirit was moving through people, in people, and in their town. Is it possible that the Spirit was moving because people acted boldly in faith with an expectation that God would surround their very literal obedience?
• Is it possible that the Spirit moves in relation to the level of sacrifice, commitment, and faith that a church shows?

Two weeks later and I am still chewing on this. Some simple questions and I am sure the application doesn’t take much reading between the lines for any believer in their context. Happy thinking…

• Dear Lady Gaga-you are lucky you have built up some credibility with huge singles and a gigantic tour because your opening performance of an already underwhelming single was not just weird, but spent many credibility chips.
• There was no host this year. I read that MTV was turned down by a few people they asked and just decided to go without rather than stretch for someone not great. Not sure what that says when people don’t want to do it because last years ratings were a record…but it says something.
• Jay-Z and Kanye-You know I loved them and this, but I am a sucker for radio hits and I find this album underwhelming. I know they wanted it to be natural and all-I read the reviews.  Anyway, it was a well designed performance with the flames, smoke, flag and great camera angles as they came the whole way out from backstage, to stage, to runway.
• I find it interesting that Nicki Minaj is now beating Lil Wayne for hip video awards. I wonder if his ego (or hers for that matter) can keep their label together.
• People thought Kanye was crazy when he did the whole Taylor Swift thing and said Beyonce had the video of the year, but I found it interesting that even when he won, he admitted that Chris Brown, Busta Rhymes, and Lil Wayne were the best in that category and better than his.
• I didn’t know if Pitbull would have the guts to keep his verse that says “I got it locked it up by Lindsay Lohan” since she is currently suing him for that line….but he did.
• I already mentioned that there wasn’t a host, but Kevin Hart did the work of one with the opening monologue and videos but didn’t get paid I am sure
• It was also interesting to see Cali Swag District in the one video because I haven’t heard or seen them since their fourth member was shot and killed.
• Because of twitter, I was expecting a lot from a few moments (Gaga, Beyonce’s pregnancy, and Adele). Adele is great and I am not saying she isn’t, but this performance was nothing special. I think people just appreciate that she has a natural hair color that isn’t in a Crayola box and doesn’t use autotune.
• Justin Bieber could win any award he was up for. I bet his fans would stay up all night and vote 1,000,000 times if he tweeted once to his fans and told them to.
• They say that people who are taller have more earning potential, but I have to think that if you could dance like Chris Brown your life would be better too. I love that he isn’t happy dancing anymore and wanted to be Peter Pan on cables.
• Its funny to me that people like Beyonce and Britney are getting lifetime achievement type awards on the last couple award shows I watched. It makes me feel old, but they started so young they both already have two greatest hits albums full of singles.
• Its also so easy to see why Britney still makes money because she has mastered getting 12 year olds and their mom’s to buy her music which is double the income and easier concert sales.
• Ok, Lady Gaga stop with the playing a dude thing. You aren’t even good at it. Its like me doing impersonations, it almost seems like something I should laugh at as terrible. You had an hour to change our of your outfit to intro Britney.
• Its amazing to me that Beyonce was able to keep her pregnancy a secret.  I guess she is good at everything so I shouldn’t be.
• Dear Tyler the Creator, you were not the Best New Artist. I would say that conservatively you were the 3^rd best nominee so cherish that trophy.
• The last part of this show was boring and included people who aren’t good enough to make a good awards show. It also included Lady Gaga still playing a dude.
• Lil Wayne closed the show….and you all know how I feel about him. Please DON’T buy his album as it was released this morning at 12am.
• Adios.

THE STORY

From the moment Kristin and I met and started dating we have always talked about our future.  We always knew someday we would get married (2004), be in ministry together (2006), own a home (2007), start a family (2008), and expand that family through adoption (?).

Adoption may come as a surprise to some, but it has been on our hearts both separate and as a couple. We feel the next step for our family is to pursue the adoption process.

THE PROCESS

This year as Malachi and Canaan grew older we started taking steps to work toward adoption.  We saved money and completed an Ohio home study, which includes background checks, a home profile, and a fire inspection among other things. We have worked with an adoption lawyer from our church to begin the process and become eligible through the court system as well.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The next phases are ones that we want to involve our friends, family and support network of people in. We are pursuing a private adoption, so that means we need to connect with an expecting mother who believes that adoption is the best route for her and her baby.

We have always wanted to have a family that reflects God’s creation and diversity and so we are pursuing adopting a black or bi-racial baby. If you or someone you know has a connection to potential birth mother we would love to have her speak with our attorney, see a more expanded family profile, and answer any questions about the process.

John M. Shady

Adoption Lawyer – Columbus, Ohio

(614) 436-5424

The other major way our friends and family can be involved is in the fundraising process. Even after the thousands of dollars we have already invested this year, the remaining costs are estimated around $13,000.

We thought it would be neat to leverage our personal network in the most common way it exists: Facebook.  Our idea is to ask all of our Facebook friends to personally donate $5 to our adoption fund. We are also continuing to save our own money and put into this account every month. You may be reading this and not have Facebook, or you may want to give more than $5 and that’s ok too. We just think it will be great to see God use our friends and family who want to invest in a very practical, tangible way.

Donations can be sent to:

Mark and Kristin Artrip

Adoption Fund

1961 Dina Ct.

Powell, OH 43065

*Donations are a private gift and are not tax deductible.

THANKS

Above everything we want to ask for your prayers. We have been warned extensively about the faith walk adoption can be and how easy it is to become overwhelmed or have your hearts broken. We are trusting that God has a child for us in this and are acting in faith on that promise.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and hear our dream. If you have any other questions, or want to contact us personally, we would love to talk more and share our hearts.

Blessings,

Mark, Kristin, Malachi and Canaan Artrip

markartrip(at)gmail.com

These videos may not show it but it was a great week of God speaking to the 1600 people in attendance about reaching and impacting their “one” person.

• I promised myself I wouldn’t act like a proud mom and I did a good job hiding it but in my mind I was proud.
• I didn’t actually teach them anything or contribute to where they are, but give me this moment.
• It was weird because no one there had ever heard of them before so I got to sit back and watch them try to win the crowd over…..they did it.
• I look for two things in bands to distinguish them-an entertaining front man and songs that are catchy enough to play on radio and they have them both.
• John is an entertaining front man won them over in a Mick Jagger sort of way.
• Paul was always a great guitar player but he was what set them apart, I heard multiple people in the crowd comment on him and cheer as he soloed.
• They just made a list of the 50 best dressed male musicians and they do make me want to shop at high end vintage boutiques.
• Hoping to see them again soon and maybe get to take some friends if they make it to Columbus.
• Not sure how to sound like the gushing friend who says his friends are good, but I was thoroughly impressed and expect big things…

Check out this latest video