A year and one month ago, I had the pleasure of announcing our church start-up's new partnership with Converge Worldwide. Converge is one of the leading and innovative networks in the church-planting movement sweeping across North America. Dr. Ed Stetzer calls Converge “one of the leading church planting organizations in the United States.” Converge is a movement of about 1,200 churches with a strong reproducing church-planting focus. Over the past 20 years, Converge has doubled the size of their network solely through church start-ups!
I can't say enough good things about Converge. They completed a very careful and complete 360 assessment of Amber and I, walked alongside us with great care and grace, and even went the extra mile in meeting with our previous church's board to thoroughly ensure we were launching Life Church above-board with complete honor and integrity. Converge believes in Life Church.
And they didn't stop there. Putting their money where their mouth is, Converge generously offered us a matching grant: every dollar raised for Life Church would be doubled by Converge. Unbelievable! They gave us two years to raise the funds... and this past week, we did it.
Actually, you did it. If you've given anything to Life Church over the past year, whether it was five bucks or five thousand bucks, Converge matched it. This enabled us to launch strong this past March with fantastic rental facilities, bring one of the top worship pastors in the nation on staff full-time at Life, and see 30 people respond to the gospel and 13 go public via baptismin our first 100 Days (FYI - we have another seven people already signed up for baptisms this Fall!).
All of this is because of the robust generosity of you and our friends at Converge. Thank you for believing in our church start-up, for trusting that God is a God of second chances, and for being passionate about engaging people far from God with new life in Christ!
What we are seeing at Life Church is rare and special. We don't take this for granted and can't believe we get to be part of this new movement. Because of this solid foundation from Converge, I believe that the best is yet to come and we continue to appreciate your faithful generosity and support toward Life Church Michigan.
