Matt Chandler - The Beginning of the Church

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Acts chapter 1 is where we will start. While you’re turning there, let me just set up our new series. In the fall of 2002, to be precise, I was interviewing with the search committee and the Deacon body of Highland Village First Baptist Church to become the senior pastor of Highland Village First Baptist Church, now known as The Village. I was 28 years old, had no real pastoral ministry experience, and no seminary degree, so it was really crazy for us to be in this dialogue. Yet, it became clear as we moved throughout the process that the Lord was in it. I was having dinner with the then Deacon body right across the street here at the Village Grill when one of the deacons peppered me with questions. Then they asked me this question: what’s your vision for The Village Church? If I’m fully honest, my vision was to preach the Bible and hope good things happened. That was kind of my vision. I hadn’t had the experience to have this full-blown, 30-years-from-now, here’s-what-we’re-going-to-look-like kind of vision. So, I just thought I would preach through books of the Bible since that’s what I knew how to do, and let’s hope the Holy Spirit does big things around us. I wasn’t planning on coming into an existing church and becoming its pastor; my hope was to plant a church. I had actively begun to recruit guys and read everything I could about what it was like to plant a church and how to go about planting that church. With that idea in my mind and heart, I took a crayon out of the cup there and on butcher paper, I drew a circle and wrote inside it, «TVC.» Then, I drew lines out from that circle and created other little circles. I said what I would want us to be about, if the Lord would bless us and God would move profoundly and powerfully among us: I would like for us to be a place that leverages the blessings of God not just to terminate those blessings on ourselves, but to be a church that is serious about growing the kingdom of God in and around the Metroplex and to the ends of the earth. My preference is that we would always be a fairly simple church and a very generous church, leveraging our days to plant churches, serve other churches, and send out our best and brightest to gospel works all over the Metroplex and to the ends of the Earth. So, that’s what I drew at the Village Grill. My first day in the office, Barry Kelly, who was the youth pastor at that time, walked into my office and said, «Hey, man, I know when new pastors come in, they like to bring their own team. I know you didn’t hire me and you don’t know me well, so I’ve got another job offer I can take in Arlington. If you want me to resign so you can bring your own team in, I’m more than willing to do that.» That intrigued me; I loved that brother the second he said that. I said, «Well, first, sit down.» Barry sat down, and I asked, «What do you want to do? Do you see yourself doing student ministry for the next 30 years?» He said, «No, man. I want to plant a church. I feel called by God to plant a church. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to plant that church, but I want to do that.» I don’t know if it’s in the Metroplex or over in North Carolina, which was one place he was thinking of at the time, but I said, «How about this? How about you stay with me for the next two to three years? I’ll give you complete access to how we’re building our teams and how we’re going to approach ministry. Then, why don’t you become our first church plant? I’ll put you up on the stage, let you preach, and actively recruit from among our members those who’d be willing to move to Raleigh, North Carolina, with you or just be part of your plant somewhere in the Metroplex, if that’s what you want to do.» A couple of years passed, and we planted Providence Church in Frisco with Barry Kelly. A ton of our people went with him, as well as many of our resources. Then, we also planted City View Church with Rick White. Again, we let him speak, and we had these meetings where we said, «Hey, if you live out in Keller, I want you to come to these meetings. I want you to hear Rick White’s heart for the Keller area and then consider no longer coming to the Village but actually joining this church plant.» In that same period of time, I was actively. I’m interested to see how many of you are still…