Goals

My entire life, I have been encouraged to set goals. As an athlete, I always had coaches telling me I could gain, grow, and accomplish more if I set big goals.

My schoolwork and academic endeavors were the same way with teachers giving me ladders to climb and bars to reach.

The goal of goals is to avoid what happens when you do not set goals. Feel free to quote me on that. #royaltyfree

For right now, the goals we have are very simple. Not all of them are receiving the same amount of time and I have been criticized (questioned) about whether I have them in the right order of importance.

Here they are. I went with the goals most relevant to our Amazon church plant supporters.

1. Fall in love with Colorado. Now, you can't force yourself to love something but you can become so consumed with other things that you miss out on experiencing the beautiful people, places, and opportunities. What good would it be to start a new church in a place you do not love?

2. Deepen our family bonds. The Bell household is now between 6-10 years from being an empty nest. We just moved across the country (again), started at new schools (again), decorated another home, etc. You get the picture. We are unapologetically prioritizing the health of the humans in our household. We are taking time to read the extra book, give the extra hug, give some extra grace, ask the extra question, and make the effort to pray together. Not everything has gone smooth since the move. There have been some discouraging moments getting ready for school, going about our days, and more.

3. Build healthy relationships. We have loved getting to know our neighbors without any pressure to invite them to church or cast vision. We are getting to know people at my workplace, our neighborhood gym, the kids' school, and more. We are not tracking people like some sort of marketing plan, we are just making human friends. Its not easy but it is so good. Spoiler alert: Our kIds are the main reasons we know all of our neighbors. They are playing in the street everyday inviting every neighbor kid to join them. Riding bikes and playing neighborhood hide n seek are fairly common. They also had an incredibly successful lemonade stand, it may or may not have involved them knocking on neighbors doors soliciting business. #didnotlearnitfromme

4. Invest in a future church. While I (Jared) am working 40 hours per week in a non church job, I have 3 weekly time blocks set aside to write blogs, send emails, research, and pray for the future church. I love these times but it is never enough. My favorite is the time spent connecting with our launch team. A total of 7 households wanting to invest in this new church. We have a monthly video meeting and I am in communication bi-weekly with many of them. We also have periodic visits from launch team members wanting to get a feel for the area.

5. Fundraising for the future church. I need to put this one in here. Since I started working, I have thought much less about this goal. One of the main reasons church plants (statistically) fail is due to lack of funds after the first 2-3 years. We will be doing a major push for gifts before Christmas and I am needing to invest more time in those communications with the team and (potential) supporters. To see our current goals and how far we have to go, check out the updates here.

Thank you for supporting us.

You are part of this adventure and we could not do it alone.

- Jared (and Becky)