Ten Years of God's Plan and Provision
10 years. It’s a timeframe I have a hard time keeping in perspective. If you asked me about what was happening 10 years ago in my life, I must admit that my instant thought would be about memories in college. That’s where my mind goes. But time is undefeated, and I am getting older than I would like to admit. No, 10 years ago, I was not a college kid getting up to getting up to funny hijinks or traveling around working camp in the summer. I was 26, a year and a half into Kacy and my marriage, two years into a seminary degree that took us both to Raleigh, NC, and the Summit Church, but somehow back in my hometown of Orlando as part of a team looking to plant a new church called City Awakening.
That wasn’t the original plan when Kacy and I initially moved to North Carolina. The plan was to get married, focus on going to class, get the degree, and follow God’s leading as a pastor in the church. How did we end up back here with a degree unfinished and no guarantee of a church job, or a job at all in the short term? Why would we leave the friends we had made so quickly and deeply and the church that we loved and had become rooted in for this total unknown? How could we leave our cheap student apartment for one we were pretty certain we couldn’t afford? I can only explain with something that Kacy and I have learned and experienced countless times over these past 10 years: God’s Plan and His Provision.
God's Call
God’s plan in calling Louis to join a church-planting residency at a church in a different state and even denomination than he had ever worked in. The plan for Louis and I to meet “by chance” while putting together a toddler bed for another church planter’s family in the apartment that just so happened to be downstairs from mine at the time. “Hey, I’m Louis. I’m leading the church plant to Orlando.” “Oh cool, I was born and raised in Orlando.” A meet-cute that you’d roll your eyes at in a movie because of the sheer coincidence of it all. God’s plan to work the seed of helping plant a church in Orlando in Kacy and my hearts and minds separately so that when I flippantly brought up the fact that I had been thinking about it on a drive home one night, her immediate answer was “Oh, you too?” Looks like it’s Orlando for us.
God's Provision
Then God’s provision. We packed up our apartment to head down with no job landed yet. Kacy got here a day before I did, and all our stuff did too, to go to a school hiring event. The hope was that she would land a job as a teacher with the teaching degree that she graduated with four years before and had yet to use beyond being an occasional sub until then. Friends and family members were all praying that it would happen. And then the call before I even got to the interstate with our moving truck that morning. “The first table I walked up to offered me a fourth-grade teacher spot, and I accepted!” God provide. This was not the first or last time that he would do so.
Kacy and I have been part of City Awakening at every level. Starting as regular members trying to serve in any way that we could be of use. Serving on pretty much every team at some point. I was called as one of our elders and eventually got to come on to staff as a pastor. That’s a story of God’s provision in and of itself. The only way I could be on staff initially was if I raised my own support. That meant reaching out to and meeting with people from all parts of Kacy and my life to sell them the vision of City Awakening as a church and how I could help it as a pastor. God provided again through the generosity of others, many of whom have no affiliation with the church, just trusted that God was at work and decided to support it.
I’ve worn a lot of hats, as has everyone else who’s led anything at City Awakening, and I am beyond blown away by what I’ve gotten to be a part of. I fondly remember leading multiple iterations of Growth Track/Membership. Getting to see people go from first-time guests to committed members because they followed God’s prompting for them to be part of the church. Some visited a couple times and took the plunge quickly. Others required years of us praying for them and inviting them to get plugged in before they did so. Thank God for both kinds.
I also got to lead our baptism process. I got to celebrate with many people exploring their new faith in Jesus and desire to obey his call to be baptized. For a while, Kacy and I were the go-to people to talk to kids who had expressed a desire to follow Jesus and be baptized, including multiple kids from fellow pastors and elders (no pressure, right). But we got to partner with parents to encourage them that their kids truly seemed to have saving faith, something many of them had been praying for them since birth.
But when I think of God’s plan and provision, two areas stand out above them all.
Student Ministry
On the ministry side, it’s the City Awakening Student Ministry. Late in 2019, our staff recognized that we finally had enough middle and high school students, along with a huge crop of older elementary boys (more on them later), from involved families to support our own student ministry. So now my primary focus would shift to being our student pastor. Louis and I began casting the vision to families and recruiting volunteer leaders. And in January 2020, we launched City Awakening Students at the Williams’ house. If you’re paying attention to that date, then you can guess what happened next. COVID shut down the schools and our fledgling ministry shifted to Zoom, not how we would have drawn it up. As soon as we could start meeting again, we began multiple years of trying to do student ministry (made up almost exclusively of middle school boys) with no consistent place to meet. But God provided again. Multiple people opened up their homes for rowdy nights, volunteers sacrificed their time to study the Bible through jokes and distractions, events were held where kids got to build a community, friends were invited and started coming, and we established a culture of looking forward to serving and living on mission at camp each summer. We faced numerous challenges, but I am glad to say that the student ministry is still going strong. And remember that crop of elementary boys we were worried about? They are about to be seniors this year and serve and lead in all sorts of areas around City Awakening. God had a plan, and he provided for it.
Our Family
No area has taught Kacy and me about God’s plan and provision more than our parenting journey. At the same time that I finished school and came on staff, we decided it was time to start having kids. Surely this was all part of God’s plan? Cut to years of infertility and numerous invasive and expensive rounds of fertility treatments. Month after month of focusing on every aspect of fertility and orienting our lives around a strict schedule of medicines, procedures, and practices, only to learn that it hadn’t worked that time and being asked when we could start over again. Time, hopes, stress, and money seemingly down the drain.
But then one month, it happened! Positive pregnancy tests, the big congratulations call from the fertility doctor. But then heartbreak: miscarriage followed. From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows over the course of a few weeks. Not a pendulum you ever want to be on. In that season, every aspect of life seemed to be engineered to exacerbate the pain we were feeling. Family members were passing away, closest friends were moving, multiple people seemed to be able to have kids whether they were planning to or not. God’s plan didn’t always feel like comfort in those days. More like a series of questions or a kick to the gut, to be honest. Why is God doing this? What are we supposed to be learning from this? What is so lacking in us that this is what we have to go through? Does He even care? During these days, we were really tested. Could we truly praise God even in the darkest valley, even in the heaviest days?
Hindsight certainly helps here. But the provision still came even when the plan couldn’t be seen. An envelope of cash from our small group after we prayed about the cost of treatments. Being pulled aside after church to be prayed over in a classroom. Louis and Andrea waiting in a huge line to bring us the viral Popeyes chicken sandwich so that we could do a side-by-side taste test while we grieved, cried, and vented to them after our first miscarriage. Invitations to dinner and people’s houses with the open invite to either talk about it or not, whatever we needed. We learned the beauty of the church even in the ugliness of loss and grief. Since then we’ve walked with multiple couples experiencing the same pain of infertility and miscarriage. We have a perspective that could only be experienced, and the painful parts of our story have been an opportunity for us to comfort those walking the same roads. Turns out God did have a plan after all.
During our infertility journey, we had two heartbreaking miscarriages, but we also experienced two miracles. We were on the adoption list for two months when we were told to expect two years. A fateful Monday afternoon call: “A baby boy was born on Saturday, the pregnancy was traumatic, but he’s doing ok, do you want to come meet him?” We had a crib in an empty room, that’s all. We told everyone and headed to Gainesville for two and a half weeks in the NICU. God provided through the church again. When we brought Reid home, it looked like an Amazon distribution center in our house: clothes, books, diapers, everything we could need. The Caseys and others had even put together the things we would need right away. We had been loved so well, and now he could experience it too.
Then, as we had resolved that God’s plan for growing our family would be solely through adoption and we were on the wait list again, Miracle! A home test was positive, the office blood test was positive. We waited for history to repeat itself as it had twice. But not this time. 7 years of infertility brought another miraculous baby boy. Now Grey has experienced the love of the church like Reid has his whole life. They have no idea how blessed they and their mommy and daddy have been.
Looking Ahead
These stories are specific to Kacy and me. But these kinds of stories aren’t unique to us. Ask anyone who’s been around a while at City Awakening, and I assure you they’ll have experienced this too. God’s plan hasn’t always been clear and easy these last 10 years. In fact, it has often been either head-scratching or heartbreaking. But in the midst of those times, the Gospel has been proclaimed, love has been lavished, needs have been met, laughter has broken through pain and darkness, and family has been made. If you are new to what City Awakening is doing, jump in, and you can feel and extend that love as well.
As Kacy and I move on to what we believe is God’s next step in his plan for our ministry, we know that we have been equipped and shaped by this church family more than we can presently comprehend. We go shedding many tears, not because of the difficulties and hard times (of which there were many) we experienced along the way. But because of the immense joy and love that we felt even in the midst of those times. You can ask anyone who’s been around CA for 8-10 years, and they will tell you that this is not what we expected it to be like at year 10. We may have thought we’d be bigger, have our own building, or be a household name in the city. But the impact that God has made on and through the people of City Awakening during those years is incalculable. If every person in the church is loved even half as much as my family has been, City Awakening will continue to have that impact. We may no longer be part of the membership and staff of City Awakening, but it will always be in our prayers and our most grateful and joyous memories.