1. What was your first reaction when Todd told you that he felt called to plant a church in Lincoln? What thoughts or emotions went through your head?

Todd had just returned home from a business trip to Portland when he dropped the news that he thought maybe God was calling him to plant a church. This was threeish years ago, but I remember we were sitting on the living room floor surrounded by his luggage, one year old Iris running around crazy with excitement because her daddy was home, and I think, initially, my first reaction was surprise…and a little bit of shock because of the unexpected nature of his announcement.

At the time, in my mind, the only types of men who planted churches were ones who’d always been Christians, whose families were all Christians, who’d grown up in the church and been heavily involved in some aspect of ministry their whole lives. Their wives were also life-long Christians, also super gung-ho about ministry, and also extremely musically talented with a natural inclination for leading worship.

Todd, well, he’d been a Christian for barely three years. He wasn’t really that involved at our church. He was working his dream job. He was in the middle of pursuing a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. Neither one of us, actually, fit the image flashing through my mind of what a church planter should look like. I certainly was not gung-ho about ministry or musically talented! And besides, we were pretty settled right where we were. Church, job, house, neighborhood, baby – things seemed to be going well, pretty white picket fency.

I don’t know. I’d like to say that once the shock wore off a bit, I was completely excited and supportive and loving and that we prayed together and things were peachy keen, but honestly, I just blew him off. I think in my mind I decided that the idea was too crazy to even contemplate, I was happy with our life as is, and I had other things to worry about at the moment like getting pregnant with our second child. Besides, he didn’t even seem particularly sure of this calling himself. And just as an aside – I had prayed long and hard at church camp as a little girl for God to please not make me marry a missionary. I had married an engineer. As far as I was concerned, the matter was settled.

And that’s kind of where it stayed in my mind for the next year or so until it started becoming more and more clear that the calling God had placed on Todd’s life wasn’t going away. Despite the fact that this is what I had been praying for, it merely strengthened and grew and became unignorable. And eventually, even though there was lots of kicking and screaming along the way, I came to feel a little bit called too, which is how we ended up where we are now. Strange how God works, isn’t it?