Journey to Houston

Last week Becky and I spent four wonderful days working with churches and future church planters in Houston. We feel God moving in this great city. We are amazed at its size, growth, and potential for kingdom growth.

I suspect that we will look back at Thursday, June 9, as an epic day. We first met in the home of Bob Odle, preaching minister of the Woodland Oaks church, with Steve Austin and Sixto Rivera. Bob is the facilitator of Mission Alive’s Strategy Team in Houston; Steve is the Director of the Texas Gulf Coast Bible Institute that equips Hispanic leaders in Houston, and Sixto Rivera is a Hispanic minister with the Highland Oaks church in Dallas and developing co-worker with us in Mission Alive. We met together to make plans and pray for Hispanic church planting in North America. That evening we met with the board of the Gulf Coast Bible Institute, where I made a presentation and we discussed the role of Mission Alive in equipping learners in the institute as church planters. We were impressed with the dreams for practical training in the Texas Gulf Coast Bible Institute. Students will study in the mornings and do practical ministry the rest of the day.

On Friday, we had a good meeting with a group of church leaders of the Bering Drive church in Houston. I made a presentation about Mission Alive followed by good discussion of the needs and directions of the Bering church. I appreciate the vision of Sean Palmer, the Associate Minister of Bering Drive, for arranging the meeting and being sensitive to the need for church planting in Houston.

On Friday evening, Becky and I met with a group from the Clear Lake church in South Houston. God worked powerfully through our group as we dreamed the dreams of God and talked and prayed about spiritual renewal and His direction. On Saturday morning Becky and I conducted one of our Becoming Redemptive Seminars with the Clear Lake church. About 25 attended including almost all of the missions leaders of the Clear Lake church; three of their elders; Byron and Liz Fike, the preaching minister of Clear Lake and his wife; members interested in missions, and three or four visitors from area churches. We were blessed and encouraged by the fellowship and the participants’ growth in understanding and vision for the God’s mission. On Sunday, I made a simple presentation on church renewal, which I call “Hope for the Flowers” or “Metamorphosis: From Caterpillar to Butterfly,” and following a potluck spent a couple of hours of fellowship and encouragement with Byron and Liz Fike.

It was one of those wonderful trips, full of relationships, a period of seed-sowing. We pray that out of these relationships God will work through us in Mission Alive to launch a church planting movement in Houston. Many from Houston will come to the Dallas-Fort Worth Church Planting Workshop on August 26-27 at the South MacArthur Church of Christ in Irving. Then on March 3-4, 2006, Mission Alive will conduct its first church planting workshop in Houston.

We noticed one perturbing yet typical trend in Houston. Churches of Christ are moving from the city to the suburbs leaving entire sections of the city without testimony to the gospel. It demonstrates the inability of the church to adapt to changing demographics. Churches of Christ must learn to both evangelize cross-culturally and church plant where members are moving thus maintaining our presence in the cities of North America.