The reality is that I have fallen & am fortunate to say that I was able to get up.

I fell victim to not trusting God, I fell victim to the idea that my dreams & vision was contingent on “where” I was planting His church, I allowed the fear & excuses of others to become my own & lastly I believed that “the city” was larger than my God.

Today is a new day! I have decided that God can… It’s as simple as that & God will!! As large as my faith, He will deliver, as much trust as I put in Him He will provide!

Peculiarplace church WILL NOT be bound by the perceptions, fear or history of church planting in “the city”, nor will I make another excuse for me not trusting Him to be bigger than any city, community, any circumstance, situation or problem!

God IS! He is alive and well! He is the king of kings & the lord of lords! Period!!!

He called us to be fishers of men, not make excuses about why men weren’t accepting of the bait or why the lake was not producing a “catch”. We cannot drop our nets if we won’t even get in the boat!!!!!

September 12th of 2010 is the date set aside & asigned to the launch of peculiarplace church!! PERIOD!!

Love ya!!

I am sorry first of all for not providing updates more regularly, but I wanted to take this time to update you on my family, peculiarplace and all that God is doing and how you can be praying with us.

The last two and half months have been a major adjustment. A good one at times, and well a difficult one at others. The boys are back and in school. Enjoying, so that is something to get up and do a praise dance for…lol Esther and I are in an amazing place as far as our relationship is concerned. Still growing, but enjoying the time and growth as opposed to fighting it. Did I mention my little man, Zion, is now 9 months old!!! Whew! He will be 1 in less than 3 months, where does time go?

At this point, she (Esther) is a full time mom, and I have found myself being a pastor, freelance graphic designer and a potential business owner. With that said, things are tight, or are getting tight. We are needing God to show up in a MAJOR way in our sources of finances whether that is support, or a job for me. My desire is to raise enough support, 2500.00, to pay our bills- rent utilities and car insurance, and get a PT job in our community to pay for the rest of our daily lives. I include numbers because I believe in being specific when going to the Father. A PT job would give me the freedom to BE in the community working versus OUT of the community with a job. I believe God has called us to this community and therefore want every stitch of our efforts, work, toil, frustration & joy to come out of this community.

We have an amazing project coming up next month. God has shown us a possible way to touch the lives of 10,000 people with a simple flier. We are going door to door with a flier we are designing that will ask our community “How can we serve YOU?” on one side and on the other will ask how we can help making this a better community. We will then direct them to a website where they can submit their ideas. We will also provide a phone number for those who do not have computers or cant get to a computer. We will take those ideas and create a list of serving opportunities that will run every month until our public launch. We will also be asking for those who share ideas to get involved and help, a way to get some face time and build relationships with people in our community. To top it all off, i must brag on God, we have a possible army of 200-400 college students who will provide 3 hours of their time to help us pass out these fliers next month!

We had a meeting this past weekend where two important things came out of that meeting. One, we will begin sometime next month, all of us, serving at least 10 hours in the Old Fourth Ward community. Whether that is at John Hope Elementary, the school we partner with, or at a homeless shelter, or at a community clean up… this is going to be somewhat STRONGLY encouraged behavior for the peculiarplace launch team and then the church when we go public. Imagine a community where 80% of your church membership spent 10 hours somewhere, someway affecting the lives of others by giving up a small amount of one of the most precious commodities, time. That’s what we are striving for!! Serving Groups!!! We want to BE the church Monday through Saturday, giving us a REAL reason to come together and celebrate on Sunday!!

Also out of that meeting we discussed finding a person or couple to begin mentoring/discipling. We are all praying right now for God to openly make plain and share with us who in our lives or what “perfect” stranger He would have us invest in!! God is going to do something BIG here I know He is. Again, this is something we are starting today, that will continue long after we launch.

How can you pray for us & peculiarplace:

1.)Finances, we all could use more right now, but this is a prerequisite to us being able to live in the community God has called us to serve. Pray that He open doors for support, that He opens doors to freelance design gigs, pray that He multiply seed sown!

2.) A successful flier, “survey project” next month. We possibly have the man power, but we need funds to purchase fliers(270.00), tshirts 500, water for army of volunteers, & snacks(150.00). Pray that God through this simple flier awaken His sleeping spirit in this community. Pray that lives will be invested in, hearts will be changed, minds renewed, hope restored & that peculiarplace will be in the position to Shepard those who heed the call to be a part of what God is doing in O4W. Pray that the lives of those college students will never be the same after this project!

3.) Pray that our volunteer hours spent in this community are not in vain. Pray that Lives our touched, relationships are built, God is Glorified in our efforts to serve this community through a number of venues. Pray that doors are opened to new and innovative ideas in which we can serve this community in the future. Pray for our safety as we venture into realms outside of our safety zone in our volunteering efforts.

4.) Pray that Esther and I will come up with the finances to make two very important trips next month. One is to Houston, TX for an assessment. The other is to Tenn. for an amazing opportunity to be in the presence of people who can teach us and build relationships that may lead to partnership.

5.) Continue to pray that our marriage, our ability to parent, our ability to be sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, as well as friends continues to look like the image God has created these relationships to look like. We must first be an example of His Grace, Mercy & Redemptive Power before we can ever honestly share Him. The evidence MUST BE evident in our lives!!!!

Thank you and let me know how we can pray for you, because I BELIEVE HE IS A GOD WHO ALWAYS, and I MEAN ALWAYS, ANSWERS PRAYERS!

Love you!

GIVING BIG… GIVING BACK… GIVING BEYOND OURSELVES!

What are you waiting on? Why do you assume that hoarding  and heaping material, physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual benefits, blessing in a safety deposit box, saving account or your heart are whats going to satisfy you in the long run? People are hurting, dying, and losing everything right around us and yet we do nothing. OK, well we do Christmas, Thanksgiving and if they are lucky we do Easter. We go out and “give” to the “needy”. I am generalizing, and understand there are those who actually get it and GIVERS are who they are and GIVING is what they do!

peculiarplace, GIVING is a MUST! It is not some line in the Bylaws or some slogan that sounds great on marketing material, but it is who WE are! He is and has required it of us, so make no mistake, it is a principle that will be a building block for our celebration/gatherings as well as our daily lives. Give what? Give of your time, we have adopted John Hope Elementary School and will continue to pursue that relationship with a ferocious fervor. Give of your monies, we blessed Old Fourth Ward last Christmas by randomly giving away 2000.00 worth of Visa gift cards to the community. Give of yourself, your dreams, ambitions, love, heart, strengths, business, network, and and and… the list goes on forever JUST BE PREPARED TO GIVE AND GIVE BIG at peculiarplace.

Imagine a community in the heart of the city, who was not only proud of the community itself and its history, but proud of each and every individual in that community who COMMITED to play a part in making Him famous, bringing the community together, the schools better, the neighborhoods safer and bringing a nonnegotiable peace to the  life of its residents!!!

That is peculiarplace….

We ordered these last night and they have shipped today. I am so excited, even after i said a million times I would not do fliers, well I guess i have to take that back dont i. You will be seeing the “making Him famous” a lot more in the very near future as you ride through downtown Atlanta and the Old Fourth Ward. So be on the look out.

I designed this flier to simply spread the love about our soon to be released peculiarlove website. A website we decided to create to share with you and others the work in the community we plan to engage in. Our first effort came during election, and this weekend we are doing our GiveBack, where we will place $2000.00 worth of gift cards in the mailboxes and hands of the residents of Old Fourth Ward. Shhhh! They don’t know yet, so don’t tell them!

Looking forward to your thoughts on the flier and the website as it launches – really hope you add your stories to the peculiarlove website!!