This whole blog is an attempt to describe the vision that God has given us for starting a church in Miami and a homeless outreach, but, here is a brief explaination-
When Wendy and I first got married, I was sleeping and had a dream. It was of an old motel with palm trees that Wendy and I were operating as a ministry to help people. I didn't understand the dream totally, but, it was very vivid and impressed me quite a bit, as I don't usually remember my dreams.
The next day we were driving along and I started explaining it to Wendy. She was in shock! I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I had that same vision a couple years ago! I know where that is! It's in Miami!" Well we reveled in that for quite a while. At the time we were living/traveling with a ministry group and the dream came up in our conversation quite a bit and we felt like we needed to act on it. However the leader of the ministry felt it was a bit of a distraction for us and told us we needed to just forget the vision at that time and that God would bring it about in his timing. So, that's what we did, we totally buried the vision.
In the 90's Wendy and I had become a little anti- "organized religion" and refused to go to church because all we saw were these great big buildings with awesome new parking lots that seemed to be very self absorbed, cold and inward focused. While down the street, a little closer to the "bad side of town" people were hungry, homeless and suffering. Now, I'm not saying this was the actual case, it was just how we saw things at the time. Little did I know it, but, we would soon be given the vision that would change our lives.
In 1999 we went to El Paso, Tx to visit my sister Tami and her family. They were going to a Vineyard church and had recently left that church to start working at this "coffee house" with one of the pastors from that same Vineyard church. It was all a little confusing to me at the time, all I knew is it sounded kinda churchy. Tami had a hard time explaining to me what it was they were doing, I just couldn't grasp it. So, after a few disclaimers from Tami, we went to visit around 7pm that night. They drove us to an average grocery store strip mall and I became a little curious as we drove to the back of the building and parked. We got out and started walking down the back alley towards a group of street kids standing around smoking, I was then a little concerned as Wendy grabbed my hand and held one of the kids a little tighter. Thumping from some muffled music was coming through the walls of the grocery store as we came up to a back door in the alley.
A few glaring gang members stammered out of the path of the door as my brother-in-law, Tommy, started reaching for the handle. It was at that point, I started feeling a little strange. I couldn't speak clearly, I couldn't hear clearly, I just felt the thumping pulse of music and saw in sepia tones as if it were an old movie. What I saw will stay with me for the rest of my life. We walked in and there was a stage and there was a band playing and there were small groups of people milling around and mingling. There were couches, a pool table, a foosball table, a coffee bar all in a night club type atmosphere and there were people, strange people, normal people, worshiping people, sitting people and crying people. There were gang members being prayed for by a couple homeless guys. There were hugs and high fives and a guy talking on the stage, I don't know what he was saying, but, the words were like the searing of a hot branding iron put into a bucket of water.
Then the vision came, I saw a pit of fire and there were people in it and they were desperately trying to get out, but, were stuck and these other people were reaching down into the flames and pulling one person out at a time.
I sat back and thought "now this is church". They were planting a church. A church that was in the heart of gang land. A church that was a lot more like a fire dept. then a church.
Fast forward to 2011, I had the dream about Miami again. So we started praying about it and all signs point to Miami. The difference this time is we're a bit more equipped. For the past 3 to 4 years we have known God was going to have us start a church, we just didn't know when and we didn't know where.
Of course we've been asking God to tell us he wanted us to move to Florida in different kinds of ways. I specifically asked him to have other people bring Florida up every day in conversations within our ear shot. The most dramatic was within a week, Wendy was loading groceries into the mini van at Walmart and a car stopped right behind her and a lady jumped out and ran up to her and said "I thought you were going to Florida today!" Wendy turned around and looked at her and said, "do we know each other?" The lady, a little embarrassed said, "Ooops, I thought you were someone else" and got back into her car and left.
On another occasion, I was helping a customer at work and he asked when I would have the job completed, I replied that I could do it pretty quickly, but, there were other jobs in front of his. His response was, "well I hope so, otherwise you might as well pack up and move to Florida".
These happened within the same week and there many many other instances. Needless to say, we are convinced that we are supposed to move to Florida.
So our vision for this project is this - serve the poor and build a church from scratch out of the culture of Miami. A church for the unchurched, dechurched and unbelievers in Miami. A church for people that don't like church. Our Mission - to reach the ones furthest from Christ and introduce them to a loving God.
