Exploratory Trip

Hey, Supporters!

Becky and I were in Denver, CO this past weekend (Dec 4-7th) and it was really wonderful.

We are thankful for the many people who sent us “praying for you” texts and the occasional request for updates. Instead of writing you a chapter book of updates, here are some bullet points.

• We really didn’t have a formal plan going in. We flew in Friday night and planned to explore.

• Things were shut down a bit and that limited our exposure to Covid and the culture.

• We talked to whoever we could. We stopped into two open houses to look around and talk to the realtors. One was pretty fancy and the other was a bit strange (the house, not the realtors).

• A friend of mine, from undergrad, lives in Fort Collins and her husband is a Denver native. They showed us everything with history, explanations, and more. It was great.

• Our prayer times were quality. Saturday night, after a really long day of exploring, a small group of us spent time giving God space to speak. There was much less “sharing” and more time to listen.

• We can confirm our call to plant in Colorado. We would even say it is the Northwest part of Denver where there is steady growth and some history. Arvada, CO and Westminster, CO have moved to the top of the list. This is really great to share because everything else seems so up in the air but this is something we will now be chasing.

• Yes, Denver is beautiful. It really is. It all lives up to the hype.

• Driving around, we noticed the lack of churches and presence of churches. No cars with church bumper stickers, no church event promotions, very few neighborhood churches.

• Denver needs opportunities for unity and community. One local said, “there is just no assumption of doing life together here.” He went on to explain that locals tend to be isolated from one another and they don’t really know anything different.

• Finally, there are so many dogs. Dogs everywhere, on leashes, wearing sweaters. There was even a dog/human restaurant in Westminster. https://lazydog-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/nuggets/5e1f9f19a1fa4a72a9275267/PP_DogMenu_0819.pdf

This became a bit of ramble. Thanks for hanging in there. This was one snapshot, from one weekend. Our commitment to start a new church IS a commitment to listen to the heartbeat of a community. To view the culture as our context, not as our enemy. We know God is putting together a team...a family

Please consider becoming a supporter.

Jared & Becky

PS- SO MANY DOGS IN OLDE TOWN ARVADA!