Providence Road | Norman, OK

• Jeremy Hager
• Oct 25, 2012
• Series: Church Profiles
• Categories: Church Planting Articles, Latest News

Briefly describe your story of your call to plant a church

God began calling me to plant a church while I was living overseas in East Asia.  I fell in love with idea of seeing cities as a tapestry of people groups who all needed different expressions of the gospel to be transformed.  While overseas as well as after coming home, God put some men in my life that challenged my character and theology, causeing me to see the gospel and His Word like I've never seen them before.  I believe the intersection of my experience in foreign missions and a love of the gospel resulted in my calling to plant churches.  

We began the process while I was serving as a missions pastor at Trinity Bible Church, just west of Fort Worth. After that, God solidified our calling while I was serving a two year stint as a church planting resident at The Austin Stone in Austin. 

How did you build up your core? What advice would you give to guys in the core-stage?

We moved to Norman having six adults committed to vision of Providence Road.  We prayed and asked God to lead us into what He wanted Providence Road to look like in the future.  We then looked at our gospel identities and values that God wanted Providence Road to have in one year, five years, and ten years, and started implementing this DNA and training to see this vision to become a reality.

We slowly went from 6 to 25 in our core/first missional community over the course of a year while hammering out our DNA among those who were committed to our vision.  God then multiplied our one missional community into two and then four.  We now have four healthy, fully functioning missional communities, who are living out the original vision for Providence Road.  

Advice:

I would tell men to have a clear and very detailed vision for what they feel God is calling the church to look like at different points in time in the future, and then work backwards to know what to do in the early stages.  I've seen many guys rush into planting a service, so planting a church actually becomes merely putting on a once a week 1 1/2 hour event.  I think if you move to soon in this direction all of your resources will be given to this, and things like Discipleship, Gospel Application, Community, and Mission can get left behind, or at least not given the time they need.  

I would help guys see that God calls us primarily to make disciples, and the way we do that is to first plant the gospel in a group of people and allow the Holy Spirit to move. Then structure, such as a weekly worship gathering and other ministries can develop out of that. 

The things you deem important in the early days are the things that will be valued by the people who come over time, so make sure you are taking the time to set healthy DNA in the beginning.  Along these lines I would strongly urge men not to get caught up in how quickly other churches in their area are growing, realizing that our role is to be faithful to plant the church God has called us to plant, and then trust and pray that Jesus will build his church as He has promised.    

Finally, surround yourselves with other trustworthy pastors in your area who can encourage, challenge, and pray for you.

What advice do you have for men who are wrestling with the decision to plant? 

Do a ton of the following:

- Pray individually and with your wife a lot.
- Communicate clearly with your wife early on in the calling process.
- Meet with guys who have planted (especially those who've done it in the past five years).
- Go through as many assessments/interviews as possible.  I highly recommend A29's assessment!  That's not a shameless plug for the network, even if you ask guys outside of the network most would agree that A29 has a very strong assessment process.
- Be a learner in the area of church planting (and more specifically in missiology and entrepreneurship).

How do you pastor your family in the midst of starting a church?

We don't have kids yet, so it is just the two of us.  Here are a few things we've done (I would recommend reading some of the killer talks A29 pastors have done at boot camps on this question.  It is where I have received many of my ideas):

- Have a weekly date night from the beginning and talk about it publicly (it is easier to say "no" to things if they know how important it is to you, and it sets a good example for the other men to do the same)
- Set aside some quality time every day for family, even if it is only 15 minutes.
- Stop everything and ask your wife, "how are you doing?" often.
- Pray together daily, even if it's just a few minutes before bed.

Outside of the Bible, what is the most helpful book you have read for church planting?

Total Church - Steve Timmis and Tim Chester
Church Planter - Darrin Patrick
For the City - Matt Carter and Darrin Patrick

Church Profile: Providence Road
Location: Norman, OK

Mission, Vision, Values of Church 

We exist to make disciples by being a community who is passionate about Jesus, and strives to demonstrate and declare Him to the world.

What are some examples of God's grace that you have seen in your life and/or the life of your church?

- Nearly all of the growth we've had thus far have been through new people moving to town or Jesus transforming their hearts
- We have close to over 100 people who don't know Jesus within our church's relational network (people who we would call "friends")
- God has developed a deep sense of family amongst our people we have right now
- There seems to be a genuine sense of partnership in our city among several churches
- God has sent and developed an unusually high number of solid men in our body who love Jesus

How can we pray for you?

- Pray for my wife and I that God would continue to increase our love for Him in this season of our lives.
- Pray for continued spiritual, emotional, and physical health of our marriage
- Pray that God would give our whole church a boldness in proclaiming the Gospel in everyday life
- Pray for a deeper dependency on the Holy Spirit and His power in our body
- My wife and I have been trying to have children for over five years, and our only pregnancy ended in miscarriage, so we would love prayer for everything that goes along with that. We are also in the process of adopting a baby boy from Uganda, so we would love prayer that God would work out all the countless details as time goes on with our adoption.