Sending leaders

Sending leaders

I was sitting in my classroom in Oxford on a cold Friday morning in January when two gentlemen, unfamiliar to me and the rest of the 19 students at the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics, walked into the room. There was an empty seat next to me and one of them sat in it. I introduced myself to him, and he, in turn, told me he was a pastor from the Seattle area named Mark (but he clearly wasn’t Mark Driscoll, who was the only Seattle-area pastor I knew). Professor John Lennox proceeded with his lecture on the New Atheism for the next two hours, but little did I know that that morning was going to change the course of my life forever.

The last two weekends we have been reflecting and celebrating the first of our two Beyond These Walls Initiatives. Two weeks ago, as we talked about Loving our Neighbor, we heard from Ron and Jan Coen of FISH Food Bank and the exciting news that we will be making a $100,000 lead matching gift to their new building campaign. Last weekend, as we talked about Making Disciples, we heard from Pastors Megan and Larry Hackman as they talked about our new church plant in Port Orchard, launching around Easter 2020.

This weekend we are going to celebrate the third of our Beyond These Walls initiatives: Sending Leaders. Over the course of our service you are going to hear from a variety of our leaders, and then, in the message, I will share my own story of how I went from a classroom in the basement of an Oxford building to a church 5,000 miles away in Gig Harbor, Washington. It’s been quite the rollercoaster ride!

I hope you will come and join us, and invite a friend! I am sure they will enjoy their time and meet with God in a profound way through the music, prayers and message.

See you this weekend!

Pastor Ellis