Why We Love and Left Acts 29
That’s me, my staff members/friends—Fred Mok and Ben Moore, Eddie Williams, and some dude I can’t place on the front page of the Acts 29 website (as of 1/19/2023). More on this photo later.
My beloved Acts 29. Our beloved Acts 29. So many of us across the world have loved her.
Once in a while there are reasons to leave what you love.
THE BACKSTORY
“…proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.” -Acts 28:31
That’s how the book of Acts ends, chapter 28, with a pioneering church planter continuing to boldly advance the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The name “Acts 29” is meant to communicate that, today, God continues to raise up leaders to plant churches and expand the kingdom of God. I think it’s a great name.
In my very early 30s (I’m 44 years old now), I was a pastor at Central Peninsula Church wrestling with God’s growing call on my life to plant a church. A big part of that wrestle was who to partner with. I didn’t want to do this alone. I wanted to belong to something bigger that “fit” my theology and my philosophy of church life. I spent countless hours praying about this, feeling anxious about this, researching, and thinking things through with friends and mentors.
Church planting was trending at the time, so there were many options: Acts 29, Sovereign Grace Ministries (through the wisdom of my wife, some friends, and the Central Peninsula Church elder board I really feel the Lord protected me from joining them), City to City, The Evangelical Covenant Church, Evangelical Free Church of America, Bethlehem Baptist’s church planting arm, etc. I approached various church planting organizations, and various church planting organizations approached me. I explored.
Ultimately it became very clear that Acts 29 was the best fit for me for 6 reasons:
1) I already had a number of good friends in Acts 29, so that relational connection/endorsement/trust was a big deal.
2) My theology aligned with with Acts 29’s theology (at least where Acts 29 stood at the time): robust doctrine (instead of lowest common denominator Christianity/statements of faith), Reformed (emphasis on God’s sovereignty in salvation and all things), winsomely complementarian, missional, culturally engaged, grounded continuationist, open-handed on some secondary issues, etc.
3) I appreciated the freedom within the network for churches that hold to the same theological convictions to express diverse philosophies of ministry: simple church models, program-based church models, etc.
4) The brotherhood. A network of church planters who share my theological convictions, are in the same line of work, and can care for and sharpen one another.
5) There were no Acts 29 church plants in the entire 8 million person Bay Area. We would be the first plant, and I liked the idea of being the pioneering first plant and helping to start many more Acts 29 churches here.
6) An emphasis on a robust church planter assessment process.
THE BEGINNING
As you see above, in early 2011 my wife and I were assessed by four Acts 29 pastors and we officially joined the network. I remember that assessment vividly. It was rigorous and good. Rick and Steve knew us from living here in the Bay Area, we met Eric and Harvey (if memory serves) for the first time at this assessment in Steve Fuller’s San Jose living room. Steve Fuller is a stud—he generously cared for me as we started our church, then in his mid 50s he moved halfway around the world to plant a church in Abu Dhabi. And Eric has eight kids! How did he have time to drive from out of town to assess me and care about me? For the next few years every time Eric saw me he’d give me a huge hug and speak layers of encouragement into my life. And Harvey was driving from Reno, Nevada to me and all over the West helping with assessments like this. And Rick, years later, would spend three days putting a new kitchen floor in my house for free. These guys were excited to help new church planters.
At the time, Scott Thomas was President of Acts 29. Scott was always very kind to me and gave me a particularly good idea as I was penciling together my first ever church budget. I think there was only one other Acts 29 staff member at the time, Tyler Powell, a great guy who worked joyfully to help guys along in the church planting process.
In June 2011, a few months before launching our church plant, my wife and I (and Gus, our infant 3rd son), attended the annual Acts 29 Lead Pastor and Wife Retreat in Vail, Colorado. It was great. There I enjoyed many old friends and met many new friends, including Brian Howard—the current President of Acts 29 (a year or so earlier Brian called me a couple times as he asked me to consider taking over the Lead Pastor role at his Acts 29 church as he was transitioning to a new role, but we had not yet met in person). The conference was well thought through. So many of us young planter families were pumping out babies at the time, the system they set up for bringing your infant and dropping him/her off for childcare during sessions was huge for my wife and me. I remember meeting Jonathan Dodson in the hallway of the hotel, his warm welcome to the Acts 29 brotherhood, and how he helped us make a smooth first childcare handoff.
For a couple of the sessions we split up, guys and gals. All of us pastors fit in a fairly small room (I’m guessing 80ish of us guys). In that little room the camaraderie was strong, the Bible was taught, big prayers were prayed, wisdom was gained, new connections were made. Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler got into a brief heated exchange, but it was just healthy argument and quickly resolved. Scott Thomas led us as President with vision for planting and leading our churches. I was one of the new guys there, taking everything in. It was exciting. It felt right. I’d found my network. It was a great retreat…until the very end.
Immediately after the closing session of the conference I had a conversation with Mark Driscoll that shocked me and knocked the wind out of me. A few weeks earlier I spent a day with Mark in San Jose—I picked him up from the San Francisco airport, drove him down to the conference we were holding in San Jose that he spoke at, showed him the way around at the conference, he met and talked to my wife for a while, I drove him to the site of where our church would soon launch, and I drove him all the way back to the San Francisco airport. During the drive Mark asked me to pull over at a restaurant I told him my wife liked. I didn’t know what he was doing. He walked into the restaurant, then got back into the car and handed me a $200 gift card to use for taking my wife out to dinner. Though much of the conversation with Mark was more cerebral and focused on his church data/thoughts/expertise than I anticipated, our time together was good—he was very warm to me, and showed this surprising generosity.
So, chatting with Mark at the end of my first Acts 29 retreat I was expecting the same warm presence. But he was incredibly aggressive, rude, and abrupt. It made no sense to me and came out of nowhere. It was so bad my wife walked away. Then and there I tried nailing down what the heck was going on in this harsh conversation. I couldn’t. Hours later, before boarding our plane home at the Denver airport, I wrote an email to Mark to seek to resolve this tension—this is the last way I wanted things to start in my new Acts 29 family. A couple days later Mark wrote back a reply that, while it wasn’t an apology, it at least cleared things up a little bit and it clearly stated we were all good/he had no beef with me/he was very excited to have me in the network. I felt relieved but still confused—my two sharply contrasting experiences with Mark left a bad taste in my mouth—it felt bipolar, and I would stay at a safer distance from now on.
I just now went back and re-read my email to Mark, and his reply. One thing I see in the emails/exchange is an intent to humble me as a new, strong, gifted, and partially arrogant young church planter. Some of that is healthy, and was surely needed. I think part of him was sincerely trying to care for me. But he handled himself poorly and said/acted on things that weren’t true. Then I was bewildered by what caused these two different experiences of Mark. Now I’m less bewildered. Perhaps there wasn’t a cause, perhaps it was Mark being Mark. Here’s the conclusion of Mark’s email to me:
“I’m glad you are in A29. I’m glad you are in your city/region. And, when we started I was a far more abrasive pushy pastor than you so I am the chief of bully Alpha Males. My intent was to not discourage, but rather direct.
Blessings and we are sincerely fine
Pastor Mark
Fine. I was fine with being fine, and moved forward with planting a church as part of the Acts 29 Network. During that day in San Jose I had talked with Mark about possibly writing the Foreword to my forthcoming book, Date Your Wife. In God’s providence, this conflict prevented that from happening, for which I was and remain grateful.
Two months later, in August, I received a phone call from John Bryson inviting me to take part in a church planter residency cohort program called Fellowship Associates. I had never heard of them. It would involve me flying to Little Rock, Arkansas for three days, twice a month, for six-nine months. We were one month away from launching our church. This sounded crazy to me—there was no way I could plant a church, care for my wife and family of sons (aged 4, 2, and 0), and fly all the way to Arkansas every other week. Their interest in me and pitch for forming self-aware, healthy, long-haul, team-oriented church planters grabbed me. I said yes. Little did I know that this would turn out to be one of the best decisions of my life.
On September 18th, 2011 (4 days after my 33rd birthday), we launched Garden City Church. We launched in partnership with both Acts 29 and Fellowship Associates. True to my original desire, we didn’t do this alone. Our new church had our arms linked with Acts 29 and Fellowship Associates. Soon I started having the leaders of Fellowship Associates out to Silicon Valley to preach and help train our leaders. Over the years we’ve benefitted from multiple visits from Bill Wellons, Steve Snider, and John Bryson. Those guys (and Mike Boschetti) have always been just a phone call or text away, and for 11 years now Bill and I have long phone conversations multiple times a year—each time his coaching, care, and love for me fills me up when I’m feeling exhausted and weary as a pastor. For reasons I don’t understand, whenever Bill tells me he loves me I start to tear up. The care here is obviously a contrast to story above.
Four of the six of us guys in my Fellowship Associates cohort got really close. We were spending three full days together every other week for over half a year, in the trenches together figuring out our lives as church planters. The four of us remain close: James Roberson, Nick Bogardus (who was in Acts 29 at the time, was actually leading a Mars Hill campus and we got to watch all that craziness), and Jerome Gay (who remains in Acts 29, as do many of my good friends and guys I admire). If you know Jerome, please remind him to go to full extension when bench pressing and doing pull ups, eleven years later he still doesn’t use a full range of motion.
So, from the beginning we were partnered with Acts 29 and Fellowship Associates, and those worlds intertwined. And the years started to fly by: Acts 29 gatherings, events, conferences, retreats, friendships, growth, growing pains, developments, celebrations, new opportunities, changes, restructuring, etc. It was mostly fantastic. I had many of my friends in Acts 29 out to our church to preach and lead trainings. And, all this time, I had many local Bay Area friends (who weren’t part of Acts 29 or Fellowship Associates) in to influence our church. This local support and care has been strong. To honor him and keep ties strong, I intentionally brought in my former boss, Mark Mitchell, as our first guest preacher (he’s a favorite to have around Garden City, and I’m currently in a cohort he’s leading with six other Bay Area Lead Pastors). In 2011, with barely knowing me, Steve Clifford had me in to preach four services at Westgate Church, highlight our church plant, and give financial support to our church. During our first few months, Ryan Ingram came to one of our Sunday services just to attend and show me that he was in my corner. He’s the only pastor in the area who thought to do something like this, and I’ve never forgotten it. Tonight Ryan, Steve, Kenny, Tim, and I will gather in my backyard to enjoy friendship and to plan our upcoming gathering of the South Bay Pastors Network, a growing network we lead of any/all Bible-believing pastors in the 2 million person South Bay. We’re not all on the exact same page theologically (with my Acts 29 brothers I really enjoy, for example, being on the same page about complementarianism), but we’re all on team Jesus and God is moving here. Here in the Bay there’s an unusually strong connection among gospel-proclaiming pastors/churches of many different stripes. Transforming the Bay with Christ is doing some great work in this regard.
We’re 11 years into our church plant now, and it has been a rich journey alongside Acts 29, Fellowship Associates, and many churches/pastors here in the Bay Area.
WHY WE LOVE/LOVED ACTS 29
I love what Acts 29 is about. I have loved so much of what I’ve seen and experienced during my 11 years in the network. Our church has benefitted. Here are 5 reasons we’ve loved Acts 29:
1) Soul Care. Five or six years ago Acts 29 put on a two-year Soul Care experience for 40 of us Lead Pastors and wives. Over the course of two years we gathered, once a quarter, for three days at Matt Kyser’s church in Irvine, CA to be taught by Rich Plass and Jim Cofield. This content and experience was pure gold. This was Fellowship Associates’ self aware/healthy leadership content on steroids. My wife and I grew so much from this two-year journey, it made a transformational, forever mark on who I am and how I minister. And we loved the friendship. Most of the time we’d fly down to Orange County with our friends, Ryan and Jenny Kwon, and down there we also enjoyed our friends Toby and Rebecca Kurth, Nick and Kim Bogardus, Rob and Lisa Mayer, Brian and Chandra Howard, and others. If I joined Acts 29 only to receive this Soul Care experience, it was 1,000% worth it. This was one of the most educational, transformative experiences of my life. To this day I still regularly re-read and reflect on my Soul Care notes. And I receive coaching from Rich Plass several times a year. Brian Howard is the one who had this idea and made it happen, and I’m so thankful for that leadership.
2) The Theological, Missional, Relational Brotherhood. Above I mentioned originally joining Acts 29 for these reasons. I have loved being part of a network where I’ve been on the same theological page with other planters/Lead Pastors as we’ve together pioneered what our theologically driven churches look like in our diverse cities and contexts. I’ve enjoyed and made so many friends in Acts 29, and whether the friendship was super close or a see-each-other-once-or-twice-a-year-at-Acts 29-events, there’s just been so much common ground to connect on and sharpen each other on.
3) Expansion. Acts 29 has never sat still. Acts 29 has always lived true to it’s name—keeping the story going, charging new hills for the Kingdom of God. I’m a mover. I don’t like the status quo. Acts 29 has always been moving.
4) Church Planting/Assessment Process. Over two years ago, in the thick of the pandemic, we planted our first church. We sent out our Associate Pastor (Fred Mok), 49 people (including some of our best leaders and givers), and a chunk of money. This process included Fred’s training from four years on my staff, and going through both the Fellowship Associates Residency I went through and the rigorous Acts 29 church planter assessment process. Fred and I used to sit at Acts 29 conferences and talk about how we didn’t see any Asian planters in Acts 29, and how he could change that reality. We were thrilled to see Fred pass his Acts 29 assessment and plant a church under the Garden City and Acts 29 banner. Fred and his church remain in Acts 29 and have had a good experience.
5) Eagerness to Gather. As Acts 29 has grown and expanded, it gets logistically more difficult to gather all the pastors together. Throughout the years I’ve watched Acts 29 innovate and try different things to gather all of its pastors from around the world into one large gathering, or mid-sized regional gatherings, or smaller cohorts. Acts 29 has wanted to stay true to the type of thing I experienced back in 2011 (80ish pastors in a room, connecting, worshiping, praying, learning, growing, being part of a movement of God together), and they’ve done a good job getting pastors together. Through the years I’ve been/brought my staff to many conferences, events, retreats, trainings, and cohorts. I was part of the first two trial cohorts, led by Brian Howard, which would form the foundation for a strategy emphasis on gathering pastors together for connection and training in smaller (6-12 guys) cohorts. That first cohort I was part of was really Life-giving.
There are other reasons I love Acts 29, but I’ll move on to the next point.
WHY WE LEFT ACTS 29
The past year or two I have been wrestling, and our elder board has been wrestling, about whether it still made good sense for our church to be in formal partnership with Acts 29. In December, as we were receiving communication about Acts 29 to sign their annual covenant to re-up our membership and financial contribution for 2023, our elder board met and we debated and decided that it was best for us to leave Acts 29.
The next morning I first called Brian Howard and left him a short voice mail sharing the news, and sharing the short version of why we left. A few days later Brian wrote me a short and honoring email, thanking me for my long time and service in the network. I replied with a thank you, and told Brian to let me know if he wanted to touch base on the issues we wrestled with in coming to this decision. He didn’t write back to that email, and it’s fine, he didn’t have to. After calling Brian, I next called my friend (who I met on my very first day of my Fellowship Associates Residency, and whose teaching during that trip about Jesus caused me to completely re-work my first Garden City sermon series, which later became my book, The Big Story)/current Acts 29 board member, Hunter Beaumont. I shared the journey to this decision with Hunter, and the main issues we’d wrestled with. Hunter listened well, expressed his sadness to see us go, expressed that he’s heard similar concerns from others, and expressed wanting Acts 29 to grow from such feedback. Then, I called my friend/former Acts 29 board member, Ryan Kwon, and shared our decision and reasons. Ryan listened well and understood our thinking, but I had to leave the conversation pretty quick and head into a lunch meeting.
Before I list reasons, the shortest summary of why we left is found in our elder board minutes from December 13, 2022:
“We’ve been talking about this for a while and Justin’s been having lots of conversations and prayer and thought about this, today we discussed further and then decided: We’ve left the Acts 29 Network. We have a long list of reasons (which Justin will likely type up in a letter for our members in the new year), but the main reason is that Acts 29 used to exist to serve the planter/pastor/church, but it’s now morphed into an organization where we exist to serve it…the relational care is not there and we want to better steward our time and financial resources by doubling down on our partnership with Fellowship Associates.”
Now, let me unpack this further in hopefully both an honoring and helpful way. Here are the 10 reasons we left Acts 29:
1) Reversed Serving. Acts 29 used to have the culture of existing to serve its planters/pastors/churches. In my experience (I write this realizing a good number of you reading this from within Acts 29 have a different experience and perspective, which actually makes me happy and hopeful), Acts 29 has lost this. The culture and tone and communication of Acts 29 has become one where it feels like you, the pastor, exist only to serve the organization called Acts 29. Some years the only communication you receive from Acts 29 are form emails with your church ID number to triple check your church is giving the $ amount you pledged. There are better examples that this, but here’s a small one. In December I got a text from Dave Bruskas (who I don’t think I have ever met, and who I’ve never received any communication from):
That text by itself isn’t a big deal, I’ll assume it’s well intentioned, and I don’t know Dave or even know what is role is in Acts 29, but when you’ve already been experiencing the lack of a culture of care and when you go through a whole year and don’t hear anything from Acts 29 leadership besides this communication wanting your financial commitment a few days before Christmas (and we’d already left the network, but I understand that, it takes a while for that communication to happen), it leaves you feeling…not thrilled.
2) To Double Down on a Long Standing Partnership We Think Provides Better Care for Planters/Pastors. You see this in our elder minutes above. For 11 years now I have received non-stop care, concern, closeness, partnership, prayer, accountability, and love from Fellowship Associates. So has my wife. Our church has benefitted greatly from various ways Fellowship Associates has served us. Many years ago we had it written into our Elder Team document that if we ever get into an elder board situation/conflict where we need outside help, we need to call in Bill Wellons and the Fellowship Associates team to help us. When I first joined Acts 29 they didn’t require a financial contribution. Eventually they required a contribution of 1% of your budget. Then that crept up to 3%. Fellowship Associates has never asked us for money, but we have voluntarily given them money and we’ve just increased the amount we give them. We’ve done a lot with Fellowship Associates through the years, and we’re in conversations exploring how we will deepen this partnership in 2023 and beyond. We wanted to put our focus with an organization that has our trust.
3) Better Stewardship of God’s Money/Acts 29’s Enormous Staff/Lack of Clarity About How Much of our Giving is Actually Going to Church Planting. Over the years Garden City Church has given over $200,000 to Acts 29. Much of that has been given gladly and we trust was stewarded well (and, note: we’ve never received a dollar from Acts 29). Like I said above, when we first joined the network it was fairly organic and had only one or two paid employees. I understand that as an organization grows, things change and staff need to be added. Today the staff seems to be 50 or more people. It’s been unclear to me and many other churches how much of our 3% is going to actual church plants vs. central staff salaries/benefits and to other things (gifts Acts 29 sends you in the mail, etc.). There hasn’t been clarity of a big picture budget to see where the money is going. Pastors/churches have asked to see budgets, and bylaws/structure of how financial and strategic decision are made, but that clarity hasn’t come. Full disclosure: I have not personally asked/been met with a refusal or silence from Acts 29 staff, but I know many have.
4) Freedom to Focus on Our Church’s Local Mission, Including Ways We Want to Broaden How We Give Away Money and Do Partnerships. Acts 29 requires churches to give 10% of their budget to church planting. We’ve done that for 11 years. This first got challenging for me a number of years ago when Acts 29 restructured, increased the required amount of that 10% that was to go to Acts 29, and starting taking $ that we would’ve given to Bay Area church plants and our international partners, and starting putting it towards church plants in various areas we simply didn’t care about (Kansas City, for example. No shade on Kansas City, that’s just not within the local and international focus of our church’s mission). Since leaving Acts 29, our church now continues to give away 10% of our budget to advance God’s Kingdom, but not all of that goes to church planting. Our breakdown now is as follows:
2.5% Bay Area Church Planting: Various church planters/plants we support here in the 8 million person Bay Area, which is so unchurched and desperately needs Jesus. We just sponsored a new church plant this past week, a partnership that’s deeply relational and financial.
2.5% Fellowship Associates
2.5% International Partner: After supporting Redeemer Dubai (now an Acts 29 church) for a decade, we’re praying and looking for a new international partner.
2.5% Grace Village: A residential and recovery program in San Jose for women, kids, and families coming out of addiction, abuse, and homelessness. Grace Village provides housing, biblical training, recovery, and job skills training.
5) Constant Re-organization and Poor Communication Which is Mostly Top Down. Acts 29 has reorganized more times than I can count. Some of that is to be expected with a growing organization. But it’s been too much. It’s been dizzying. The re-orgs have been geographic (new ways of organizing regions), personnel-oriented (new Acts 29 Presidents and changes in staffing), and financial (changing how much giving the organization requires from a church, and how that money is to be utilized). Most of the communication is top down. Some of that makes sense, and is healthy. There’s no way Acts 29 could or should get the opinion of every pastor before making big decisions or strategy shifts, but they can do better than they’re currently doing. A couple times my roles within Acts 29 were impacted by seemingly sudden shifts and poor communication, and that didn’t feel good. Acts 29 used to communicate better than it does now. Communication is central to how you love, care, earn trust, and form culture.
6) The Pandemic/Some of This is on Me. The pandemic probably affected some of this decision. The last “national” Acts 29 event I attended was in February 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to worry us. About 50 or so of us pastors had been urged, last minute, to fly to an emergency meeting near Dallas, at The Village Church, about the sudden dismissal of then President/CEO, Steve Timmis, and where the organization was going from here. I’m not sure what that meeting was, others who were there probably have a clearer take on it than me…I was just confused on what exactly happened and what was happening. The day after that meeting I was supposed to meet with my Acts 29 cohort in Las Vegas, but my schedule didn’t allow for both events with this emergency meeting being suddenly tacked on. At that hotel in Dallas the news reports of this thing called Covid-19 started to escalate. We all thought we should probably hurry home. Then, shortly after getting home the lockdowns came. And, to be honest, with how intense the lockdowns were here and how intense it was to lead my church through Covid, and with how strong/caring other communities have been for me, I really haven’t done much with Acts 29 since that strange February meeting. Shaun Garman came and visited me once, took me out lunch, and spoke some powerful words of apology and honor to me. That meant a lot to me. Other than that nobody from Acts 29 has checked in on me. And, I haven’t done much of any checking in on my side. That’s on me. And, maybe, if I’d been more involved the last year or two some of my grievances would look different. I don’t know. The pandemic is a factor, it changed patterns of connection/involvement/communication. However, the healthiest organizations/churches saw opportunity in the pandemic to grow communication and trust in their organizations. My perspective is that that didn’t happen in Acts 29.
7) Seeming Drift from Former Complementarian Convictions. For Garden City, our understanding and practice of complementarianism has meant that men and women are equal, called to be strong leaders, and that that is expressed through different roles in the home (the husband being the head, servant spiritual leader) and church (the role of elder/pastor and preaching in the Sunday pulpit reserved for qualified, called men). That’s also where Acts 29 was when I joined. Some things have grown fuzzy and murky, it’s not clear that Acts 29 still lands there. It’s also not clear that Acts 29 has officially changed any positions here. Maybe we’re still on the same page.
8) Shaun Garman’s firing (scroll down). What happened was strange. The communication/lack of communication about it was strange. Shaun and I had a tussle up a few years back, and we worked through it. From then on I felt like Shaun was the one dude on the Acts 29 staff that cared about who I am and how my church was doing. He checked in some and asked some questions. That’s basic care, and that’s important. So, when that guy gets let go it’s a bummer. As a boss, I’ve been on the other end of these things and I know they can be complicated and there’s things you can say, but more than the nothing that was said should’ve been said.
9) Not the Example I Want to Follow. This connects to most of my points above. The past few years I’ve felt that various aspects of the leadership I’ve seen from Acts 29 have been teaching me exactly what NOT to do as a leader/pastor. I’ve often chosen to, in my church, do the opposite of what was being said/done/not done within Acts 29. When I’ve been treated like a mere number/robotic guy whose church gives X amount of dollars to Acts 29, I’ve been reminded to make sure people feel cared for by me. When I’ve experienced poor communication, I’ve been reminded to communicate better across different levels in our church. When I’ve seen Acts 29’s staff and costs swell with lack of clarity about where the $ is going, my elders and I have worked hard to make sure we’re stewarding our church’s funds well and communicating clearly about that. When I’ve become aware of things like the President of the organization’s wife (who I’ve hung out with and think is a really great person) being the Director of Human Resources for Acts 29, I conclude that that is a bad look and a conflict of interest, and we’ve continued with our policy of not having an elder or staff member’s spouse also be on our staff to avoid conflicts of interest. When I’ve watched the organization grow and seen leaders you used to be able to easily get a hold of become inaccessible, I’ve understood a growing organization increases limits and expectations, yet I’ve wanted to make sure I’m still reasonably accessible to anyone in my church who wants to talk to me. When it’s been unclear how someone is appointed to the board of Acts 29 and held accountable as a board member, I’ve worked with our elders to make sure our processes and systems are clear and able to be shared with our church. When decisions have been made that I didn’t understand or thought were unhealthy, I’ve asked questions and offered feedback. When that’s been shut down, I’ve doubled down on wanting to grow as a listener so people feel heard by me and so I can grow from other people’s questions, perspectives, and feedback.
10) My Conscience. A few months ago I was hanging out with a local church planter who is looking to partner up with a church planting organization. I was struck in my heart that I could not, in good conscience/with integrity recommend he join Acts 29 right now. That moment crystallized things for me. I knew then that we should not keep kicking the can of discussion down the road as an elder board, that it was time for us to probably decide and depart.
CONCLUSION
So, that’s why we love and why we left Acts 29. I love Acts 29. I want it to succeed. I think we have some valid reasons for leaving, valid concerns that I hope Acts 29 addresses. I think many others have left/will leave over similar (and other) concerns, and I think many others have stayed/will join because they don’t have these concerns (or because they want to work on these concerns from the inside). At age 44 and with a full plate of ministry and relationships here in the Bay Area, my/our sense of call is to, for now, not put energy into trying to reform my concerns about the network. I view this article as parting words of sorts, meant in love, for the good of Acts 29. I believe all of these concerns can be addressed and corrected. I’m still happy to do what I can to help Acts 29 be successful here in the Bay Area, and we could always jump back in to the network down the road if we saw things developing differently.
Also, most of why I joined Acts 29 and enjoyed about Acts 29 doesn’t change for me: I still enjoy my friendships in the network, could still bring my team to an Acts 29 conference, I can still learn from good things Acts 29 is doing, etc. Also, I could be wrong about some of our reasons for leaving. Maybe my experience is unique and more of it is on me, or maybe I’ve perceived things wrong. I hope I’m wrong about some of what I’ve written—God has used Acts 29 to do some amazing things and I really want that to continue. We’re all sinners here, leading churches and leading large organizations is very difficult, so we all need all the grace and help we can get.
So, back to that photo at the top of this article that’s on the front page of the Acts 29 website. I don’t know who took that photo and how it ended up on the website. It’s been there for a few years. The caption somebody put on that photo reads: “What Success Looks Like.” Maybe that’s a fitting caption. Let’s give glory to God for that. The photo shows me. Somehow God saved me, put a fire in my heart to reach people with the love of Jesus, and developed and surrounded me with care and used me to plant a church. I could not have done what I’ve done without Acts 29. The photo shows Fred (well, it shows his back), who we brought on our staff for four years and then sent out to plant a church. The photo shows our beloved Worship Pastor, Ben, who is on sabbatical right now enjoying hard earned rest as a pastor. The photo shows Eddie Williams, whose church plant in San Francisco our church supported (he now pastors in Washington). And the photo shows the dude I don’t remember being there (maybe he’s an angel?). Though I have left something I love, I leave in love. I leave believing that success looks like leaving with a love that speaks honor, honest concern, and hope.
Jesus Christ, I thank you for Acts 29. Take care of her.