September 2008

I was sitting outside our little white house in Maryland on the back deck doing some planning for the upcoming summer when this amazing journey all began (at least my part of the journey; God began working on me long before that day). That afternoon I was checking out a website for a conference called Catalyst. As I scrolled through the guests that were going to be speaking, I came across a name that intrigued me – and until that day I had never heard of – the speaker’s name was Steven Furtick. I clicked on his name and was directed to his website.

Almost immediately, I noticed a link in the upper right-hand corner that was entitled “The Preacher’s Wife”; it was a link to his wife’s blog. As soon as I saw it, I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, “Your wife will have one of those.” It didn’t strike me at first and I continued perusing his blog, while trying to ignore the message the Holy Spirit had just dropped in my heart. After about ten minutes, I was captivated by this 20-something-year-old church planter in Charlotte, NC, who at that time had around 4,000 people coming to his 2-year-old church. After being thoroughly blown away, I went back to the home page. This time, however, when I saw the link entitled “The Preacher’s Wife,” I heard the Holy Spirit clearly say… “Your wife will have one of those, because I am calling you to go and plant a church… I have called you to pastor.” For the next 45 minutes or so, I was overwhelmed by the presence of God, and spent that time praying and crying, and crying some more.

Later that evening, when Jacqueline got home from work, I told her about my experience and expressed to her that I really felt like we were supposed to plant a church. I was afraid of the response I might get from her, but it was unnecessary… She simply smiled and said, “I know.” She said that God had placed that vision in her heart early on in our relationship, but knew she had to wait until God spoke to me. Jacqueline said she wanted me to lead. We began to pray for guidance and I entered into a season of fasting. Several times in the next couple of months, we would experience God’s confirmation in many different ways.

Brian