Today I want to introduce to you the pastors of a brand-new church plant,
Riverstone Chapel, that's going to be launching next Sunday in downtown
Spokane. Would you please welcome Jared and Megan Lee. Come on up Jared and Megan.
And stand right up here in the light with me where everyone can see you. The
first thing I want you to notice is how we coordinated our matching house. Isn't that
terrific? I told people this morning that we just got up this morning all of us
dressed in the Spirit. What can you say? It's amazing. Alright so this is Jared
and Megan Lee and as I said they're planting a new church in downtown Spokane.
It opens next Sunday and we're gonna start by asking you to tell us a
little bit about you, about yourselves. What's your story? Yeah what's you there
you go? My name is Jared. I grew up here in Spokane. I graduated from Shadow Park
High School, Go Highlanders. Nobody really? Okay 11 o'clock was all over it.
Yeah yeah. I ended up at University of Idaho. I ran track down there for a
couple years and about three years in God just got a hold of my heart. From there
I ended up at Calvary Chapel Bible College and then went to a seminary
program at Bible College. I met the girl of my dreams. Outkicked my coverage you
could tell. I love a little football reference. That's good. You don't know
what that means. Yeah yeah it means he married way over his head. Yeah yeah very
nice. That's what's wrong. She doesn't understand my compliments. Just joking. So
anyway I ended up working at a Calvary Chapel in Montrose, Colorado for the
last nine years. It's actually Megan's dad's church and God put it on her heart
to plant a church. So just praying through that God opened the doors and here
we are. And here you are. So he's put a call on your lives to plant a church. Tell
us a little bit. Tell us a little bit about the vision for your church. What
do you want to do? First and foremost we're a Bible teaching church. We firmly
believe that God's word is all that we have to hold dear. It originated in the
throne room of the king. I mean it's it's what changes lives and transforms people
and the hope that the gospel offers is all we really have to offer this world
as Christians. And so we're going to teach through the scriptures. We'll start
John chapter one next Sunday in that process of you talking about making
disciples. Yep. And so we do that like I said with God's word and then heavy
emphasis on relationships and building community. Wonderful. Wonderful. So how
can we help you? First and foremost please pray for us. Yes. If anybody ever
helped ask you to start a church like don't do it. No. It's actually a huge
blessing but it's so difficult. Yeah. You know not everybody is kind and
generous as your guys is pastor here so you guys got a good one. Keep them. I'll
say that. Thank you. Yeah you're welcome. And I'll pay you later. Thank you.
Anyway pray for us. If like Joe said earlier if Jesus is ambushing your
heart and you know we have opportunities to serve and things like that if
maybe that's something you're interested in or if you know somebody who's
downtown we're right off the corner in Rowan first. God blesses us with an
unbelievable building. It was Ellis supper club old jazz club kind of a
theater style building that they remodeled. We got a parking lot. I mean
it's just unbelievably blessing. So if you know someone downtown and you want
to find tell bring but they wouldn't walk up here or something like that. Send
them our way. We'd love to teach you God's word and see the hope of the
gospel transferring their lives. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. You know he said
church planting is hard and it really is. I remember when Lane and I were
leaving Eugene and we did a little tour through the state of Washington to see
where God might want us to go and we stopped in Tacoma. We visited the
largest church in Tacoma. I walked in to meet the pastor and told him that we
were thinking about maybe planning a church in Tacoma and he took one look
at me and he said you don't need to come here. We've got it covered. And that
friends that is the typical attitude of most pastors and most churches in most
cities. And that's why I said this is a hard deal because church planners come
into a community and oftentimes they don't get a very warm welcome. They get
people to say we don't need you here. In fact when I teach our denomination on
church planting and I do that quite a bit. I discovered that pastors are all
for church planting if it's done somewhere else. Right. Don't do it in my
town. Do it somewhere else. And what that comes from is a very protective
territorial kind of mentality. And you heard me say earlier that 90% of the
people in our community work in any church today. Thank you for coming to
our city. We need you. Yeah. We need you here. Yeah. So I told Jared and Megan when
we met a couple weeks ago. I just said hey if you're for Jesus we're for you.
Right. There's room here in our city for a lot of great churches and so I want to
pray for them when you join me as we pray. Lord thank you so much for Jared and
Megan for the call that you've placed on their lives for their desire to make
disciples. I want to pray for them the same prayer that I pray for our church
almost every day. Lord make them effective. Make them effective at making
disciples. Use them and use their church to help people find and follow Jesus. I
pray that you'll send the core people they need to build a strong foundation so
that this church can take off and grow and reach so many people in our community
that are still unreached. We pray your blessing on them in Jesus name. Amen.
