I feel like paraphrasing Dickens. “It was the best of weeks; it was the worst of weeks.”

It was the best because of the continued growth in community spirit that we’re seeing at LifeSpring. Last weekend we had a pot luck, and our house was filled with laughter and converstion. A nice sound.

It was the best of weekends because we had visitors from Stadia. Our long distance from Rocklin, home of Stadia West, makes it difficult for such visits. It was good for LifeSpringers to meet the folks that have been praying for them and supplying resources for this plant.

It was the worst of weeks because we found out our support funds were gone. Actually they were gone back in April, but we were not aware of that. We lived off of the accumulated support we had been getting from outside sources, but time finally consumed that as well.

Stadia has resourced us again. The monies will be prorated over two years. We’re thankful for that, but again, best and worst. Best because of their generosity and care about this work. Worst because of the huge salary hit we’ve experienced.

It’s so hard to be full of faith at moments like this. The mind floods with “what ifs.” Experience so far has shown God’s influence and guidance in this church plant. I could write a book about that.

There are moments when I’m tempted to work out an internet scheme to raise money. Sorta like the guy that sold a $1 million worth of ads on his one page website.

But then, I’d be placing the trust in myself. “Lord, send us the resources we need to carry on with this. So that we can continue to do the things that we’ve been doing. Please don’t let this momentary crisis consume what we’ve worked hard to gain. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

In my pre-planter life, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to be involved in community life. At least not to a large degree.

Most of my time was spent in the church community, doing office time, going to church functions, etc. I’m not knocking that life, but it is a fact that most of my energy was spent on church folk.

By now that the tether is cut and I am “out here,” it doesn’t feel or look a lot different that at church. Interesting, huh?

Every group of people I belong to has the same dynamic problems as I saw at church: hurt feelings, politics, gossip, inertia, and pride. Though this is not always true, I find that help is more often appreciated “out here.”

Even though you have to deal with the same human condition “out here,” some of the veneers or facades that you see in church are missing. So you can actually see people processing what you say–if you don’t preach at them. And they don’t seem particularly interested in impressing you with how religious they are.

This week I told a business group I belong to that church folk sometime respond to our Playhouse Merced meeting place by saying, “When you grow up you can get a real church building.”

Actually, I think the advantages of our location far outweigh the disadvantages. The biggest is that we are “out here” and the minute we go into a traditional church setting we lose our credibility and our current audience.

We’ve hoped and prayed that the networking we’ve been doing here in Merced would eventually convert into self-perpetuating momentum. We envisioned LifeSpring becoming such a well known church that people talk about it, not because of marketing, but because of it’s good reputation.

This week we’ve had two encouraging things happen that make us think that is beginning to happen, at least in a small way.

Earlier this week one of our launch team people was talking to a new friend. Because of the newness of the relationship, they had never talked about LifeSpring. Without prompting, the friend mentioned LifeSpring and said she had heard good things.

Recently we got an e-mail inquiry that said, “We’re new to Merced, and we heard about you through the grapevine.” That’s where we want to be–on the grapevine.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great wrote about the flywheel. He said the flywheel is difficult to move in the early stages of motion, but as more and more movement occurs, the energy you have to expend to keep it moving becomes less and less.

We’re praying for that to happen at LifeSpring.