A Letter From Dustin

Dear Midtown Family & Friends, It is with a heavy but peaceful heart that I announce to you that I will be transitioning out of my current ministry role in Columbia and moving this March with my family to Atlanta, GA where I will begin serving as a National Church Planting Strategist with the North American Mission Board.

This was by far the hardest decision that Renie and I have ever faced. We did not take this decision lightly as we prayed, fasted, read the Scriptures, and sought wise counsel throughout the process. As I have even taught, we want Columbia to be the default home for people in our church family unless God calls us elsewhere. There have been many tears shed and I am sure there will be more to come, but it seems as though this is the new mission field that God is sending us to. It has been extremely encouraging to have the affirmation of the leaders and pastors of Midtown as Renie and I truly feel that we are being sent into this gospel-centered mission to help plant more churches.

Moving with Renie and a small group of friends to Columbia six and half years ago to start Midtown began an extraordinary journey that has continually been marked by the grace of God. Seeing hundreds of people baptized, homeless people moved off the streets, Homes of Hope started in India, addictions broken, the gospel understood, and overall life transformation take place has been nothing short of amazing. Serving as a Lead Pastor at Midtown over the years has been a blessing from God, as I have personally grown deeper in my understanding of the gospel through my relationships with you, my church family. To see a group of people who center their lives on the work of Jesus, love one another deeply as family, and join God in his mission to the world has been incredible. The great blessing of my new role in Atlanta is that I am essentially being sent out to take the DNA and vision of Midtown and help infuse that into new churches all across North America.

The plan moving forward is that we will be in Columbia into the month of March and then will begin our transition towards Atlanta. In the interim I will teach at the gatherings as well as work closely with staff and volunteers on the upfit and transition to the new Midtown Devine Campus.

This next season for Midtown is going to be incredible as Sunday morning gatherings are added, as well as the move to Midtown’s first permanent facility (Devine St.). I look forward to watching some of the godliest men I know, my best friends, lead Midtown forward as a Jesus-centered family on mission. With some of the facility changes on the horizon along with the great vision to focus more on being missionaries in neighborhoods, I have no doubt that Midtown is getting ready to go through a period of healthy growth. Prepare yourself for the continuation of the incredible mission God has given us in this city. I look forward to visiting soon and seeing the amazing work that God is going to do through you, His church. I will potentially have the privilege of coming back from time to time to help train some of the future church planters that will be sent out in the years to come as we all seek to live out the mission of the gospel.

Thanks to each of you who are a part of this incredible mission in Columbia. Continue pressing forward with the gospel, as there are 100,000 who do not have Christ in our city. Thank you for all of the love, grace, and encouragement that you have given to Renie, Jack, Piper, and me over the years. We love you guys more than you know and we look forward to spending time with you during this season of transition.

By His Grace, Dustin

A Video From Dustin

http://vimeo.com/35232968

Why Did We Start a Blog?

So you may have noticed, but in mid-December, we launched this blog you’re looking at. We thought it’d be good to share just a little about the vision for the blog and why we started it. So here’s some reasons we did it:

• Vision. We are consistently trying to make sure our whole church understands the vision we have for the church God wants us to be. Before the blog, the best place for us to do that was Sunday night announcements (which is limited to a few minutes), and Twitter/Facebook (limited to 140-ish characters). So we wanted another medium through which we can communicate who we want to be as a church and how we’re getting there.
• Transparency. We are big fans of open communication at Midtown. We try to be as open as possible with our communication and decision-making as a church, because 1) we don’t have anything to hide, and 2) because we think being transparent is a big part of being trusted. From Family Meetings (where we let members in on what’s coming, let them ask questions, and give feedback), to posting our budgets online for anyone and everyone to see, we want to err on the side of over-communication. This blog is one more attempt to do that.
• Question Answering. Often we have people ask us things like “why do we do this?” or “how does this work?”, or “why didn’t we do this?” Before the blog, there wasn’t really a great avenue for having those questions answered. We think the blog will be a great way to do that. While we can’t answer every question that everyone ever asks, we hope to answer some of the more prevalent questions here on the blog. If you have a particular question about how Midtown works or why we do certain things, you can submit it here or by using the Contact link at the top left of the page. If there’s enough requests for it or we think it's a question that a lot of people would benefit from hearing the answer to, we’ll write something up and post it.
• Resourcing. As we grow larger as a church, we sometimes have other church leaders and church planters ask us how we go about things and how we make decisions. We hope this blog can be an easily-accessible resource for people outside of our church to find out about how we do things. We’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but by God’s grace we’ve gotten some things right and would love to serve others with that information in any way we can.

How can you help with the blog? Since one of the goals with the blog is to get everybody on the same page about why we do what we do, the more people that see it, the better. Every time we publish a post here, we’ll tweet about it or post it to Facebook. Feel free to re-tweet, re-post, or link to the post yourself to help us spread the word. The blog is RSS-enabled so feel free to subscribe to it as well. We are currently working at incorporating the blog into www.midtowncolumbia.com, so that it can be a one-stop shop for all things concerning our church.

Why Do We Take Two Weeks Off Around Christmas?

For two weeks around Christmas our office is closed and we do not have any gatherings. We do this for a few reasons:

1. To give the leaders in our church family a break. It takes a huge group of people to pull off two campuses and 5 gatherings each and every Sunday. From Host teams to production teams to Kidtown workers, there are hundreds of man hours involved on a weekly basis.  We want these volunteers to continue to see their service as a blessing and not a burden, and sometimes a break is very helpful in that regard.
2. To allow pastors and staff to rest. Dropout rates amongst pastors are startlingly high due to the weight and constant pressure they experience.  A pastor’s job is never done because people are never done, and there are always more people who need Jesus.  Being a pastor is as much a way of life as it is a job, and there are always things to be thinking about, people to be praying for, things to study, and opportunities to research.  Having a couple of weeks off gives our pastors time to attempt to only think about enjoying time with their families and friends as they celebrate the incarnation of Jesus. We hope to see our current pastors continue being pastors for the next 30 years, and if a short break is helpful then we are delighted to do so.
3. To remind us all that church is not a once a week gathering, but rather a community of people unified around Christ and his mission. One of the great failures of the church in America is that we have reduced our idea of  ‘church’ to an event we attend.  In our experience oriented culture there is no shortage of consumer Christians who are simply looking for the best ‘worship experience’ to call their church.  We hope to consistently push against this, and this is one particular way that has proven helpful.  Even when we do not gather, we are the covenant people of God committed to the mission of God.  Our gatherings do not define us or make us, Jesus does.  We hope you enjoy Christmas by taking some time to meditate on Jesus’  holy, missional, and sacrificial birth which lead to His holy, missional, and sacrificial death on the cross to atone for our sins. Please use these weeks to drink some eggnog, worship Jesus, and leverage time with your friends and family to be the church and push back darkness in Columbia (or wherever your travels take you).