Launch!

Yesterday (Nov. 14) at 4 PM, Providence Church in Austin was officially launched – a day many people have prayed, planned, and prepared for for well over a year. As our pastor Will explained yesterday, we’ve come to think of our core phase as pregnancy—expectation, excitement, preparation, as well as some pain and discomfort. Well the core phase is over, and yesterday the baby was born. And if the metaphor holds its form, parenthood is the most rewarding but also the most difficult thing in which one can partake. There were many new faces, as many people who our core launch team have gotten to know over the semester were also waiting for Sunday as the day they were officially invited into Providence. We couldn’t be more excited for these new people, our existing core team, and the many whom God will bring, but this is where the real work will begin.

Will started a sermon series from Philippians yesterday and proposed that Paul’s main theme throughout the letter is that the Church exists for mission and not comfort. If this is true, then the people of Austin—including our family—will continue to need the Spirit of God to call us out of our selfishness, autonomy, and lives of comfort, and instead into His mission to reconcile sinners to Himself and to each other through the God-man Jesus Christ. We are encouraging our people to read Philippians 30 times before the end of the year that God might awaken in us the joy with which Paul wrote from prison as he partnered with the Philippians in the advance of the Gospel. If you don’t have a plan for reading Scripture through the end of the year, I would invite you to join with us.

At least for a couple of months, we will be gathering on Sundays at St. Luke United Methodist Church. They are a small congregation who do not use their building on Sunday afternoon/evening, and we hope that we will be able to bless their church as much as they are already blessing us. As for my personal responsibilities on Sunday, I have been put in charge of Children’s Ministry which was not a class that I took in Seminary, so needless to say that I am preparing and organizing somewhat on the fly but not without the counsel of many knowledgeable and expert leaders.

We hope that you will be in continual prayer for Providence as a whole, that is:

1. The lives and families of the church leadership.
2. Wisdom in building necessary church infrastructure (selecting elders and deacons, children’s ministry, etc.)
3. The hearts and minds of our people that they may be daily transformed by the Gospel and conformed into the image of Christ.

But also for our family personally:

1. That as Marcie and I approach our fourth anniversary, we might be more in love and united as one flesh by our fifth anniversary.
2. That Owen and Caleb might come to faith in Christ Jesus as their reconciliation and substitute because of their great rebellion against the High King.
3. That God would move toward people through the relationships that we are making with both Christians and non-Christians alike.

OUR CORE LAUNCH TEAM (click to enlarge)

Providence Church

We have a church name! Providence Church in Austin.

As we’ve told many of you, we didn’t want our people to think of church as name and a weekly meeting, but rather a people who do life together as we live out the gospel and then invite people into that gospel. For that reason, we weren’t hard-pressed about making a decision for our name before beginning the core-phase, but we were also aware that we need a name, and a name says a lot about a church, so we needed to not take that decision lightly. We liked Providence for a lot of different reasons, but mainly because we just feel a unique sense of calling that God has providentially called this group of people together. As Will talked about in our Commissioning Service, if we had planted this church a year ago or a year from now, most of us would not have been able to be a part of it—our family especially feels this as a year ago we would have still been in seminary and a year from now we would probably already be committed somewhere else at a different church. This sense of calling gives everything that we are doing a greater and deeper sense of purpose while simultaneously giving us humility—that despite our weaknesses and inabilities, God has nevertheless chosen to use us to advance His Kingdom.

We are a little over halfway through our core-phase as we are planning our official launch in early November. In our weekly meetings and small groups we have been talking about different lenses through which to think about and view the gospel. In each lens we are talking about the implications for Gospel (how God has moved toward us and redeemed us), Community (how the gospel affects our human relationships), and Mission (how the Gospel propels us out).

The first lens was Creation, Fall, Redemption, or the macro-level story of how God created all things and is now redeeming all things. As a church we want to be a part of God’s mission to renew all things including our individual hearts, our families, our leisure activities, our culture, and Austin.

The second lens we just finished talking about was this Cross Chart, which is a micro-level look at how God is redeeming us individually. As our knowledge of God’s holiness and our own sin grows, our need of and the worship of the work of Christ on the Cross grows. Because of this we need the gospel just as much today—if not more—than the day were brought to faith in Christ.


And now we are talking about Sonship, which is Paul’s language for describing us as adopted sons and daughters into God's family. Do we think of ourselves as truly being loved by our Father and thus rightful beneficiaries of his gifts and inheritance? Or do we revert into thinking functionally as orphans—ones who seek to be a part of a family and seek approval based upon our performance?

In short, we are learning so much about God, His gospel in Christ, our own sin, the Sherman family, and what it means to live as a Christian with gospel-centrality that we are fully convinced that this exactly where God wants us as we prepare for, not only a life of vocational ministry, but for worship as a family of our good and faithful King.

Please continue to pray for our family as we are still making the transition to two sons, a new city, and a new life in a new church. Also pray that God would continue to knit together this group of saints with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:2-3). Thank you all so much for your continued prayer, financial support, and just all-around encouragement.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Philippians 1:3-5

Commissioning Service

Last Sunday we gathered together as a core team for our Commissioning Service. 54 adults and 25 kids came together for the first time officially as the Seed Austin movement (and by the way, we’ve given ourselves a self-imposed August 15 deadline to finalize a church name). I could explain what we did in detail and tell you how excited we are about how God is moving this group of people, but I decided to just share an email sent to us by one of the wives in our church. We love you all dearly and thank God for your continual support.

“I'm still thinking about how amazing the first church meeting was last night! I can't imagine it going any better. I really did love the whole thing.... how perfect to tell the story of God's hand in bringing everyone there (Will, you got me teary at several places)... and I loved getting to hear all of you read scripture up front and lead on the affirmations. Y'all are each so strong up front and I could listen to you read the Word all day long! I also loved it because it was a reminder of how many great leaders the Lord has brought to this church. I think the reading of the scriptures and the corporate affirmations and vows were really powerful last night... kind of the culmination of everything God has been bringing together... and the very first worship together. Awesome.

And then to have the missional focus and brainstorming and prayer time.... just amazing to engage in that from the start as a body. I love how that is in our DNA. It moved me when some of the kids even joined in and then when my Mom prayed (in our family prayer time) how she already senses the Lord using the words spoken at the picnics and the focus last night to challenge and change the way she views her days and the people on her path.

And on a logistical note, I thought the room was perfect and had a really good feel to it and was the right size... greeters and nametags when people arrived was a smart move.... the child care was seamless... the big white boards were fantastic... water in the back of the room was a great call... Cindy documenting the meeting with photos made the nostalgic part of me really happy... and the Central Market time was great and people were unhurried and talkative with each other. Seriously, I thought it was all so good. The Lord answered so many prayers for last night and is going before us in many ways. I'm still not believing how many people are in the core phase. God is already building this church beyond our expectations.



You can only have a first church service once and I thought that was an unbelievable beginning.

To the Lord be all the glory!”

Seed Austin

We’re finally in Austin and getting settled into our new house, new community, new city and newest addition to the Sherman family (Caleb Van Sherman is now eight weeks). Right now the Seed Austin movement is still just a movement as we haven’t launched into a full-blown church yet. As we’ve told many of you, we plan to meet with a core team of 35-50 people—friends and acquaintances that we already had in Austin as well as about 15 others that have moved from Omaha—until mid-October or so until we launch. We will still gather together on Sunday evenings starting on August 1, but our weekly time will be more of a training time for the massive endeavor we are about to begin. Once we “go public” in the Fall, whatever internal DNA we have as a core group will only replicate itself to the rest of the church, so we want to make sure that we have like-minded mission, purpose, vocabulary, etc.

So until August 1, we are meeting with folks who are interested in being a part of the core team and/or church, preparing resources, building relationships in our new neighborhoods, and spending time with our families in the calm before the storm. This week I’ve (Nathan) been working on a recommended reading and resource list for our church that might be helpful for you if you’re looking for good books to read (many of them for free on Google Books). We should have that up on our website soon (www.seedaustin.net), and we’ll put a link to that on the blog as well. If you haven’t been to our website yet, please do. There is some really great content there as well as pictures and bio’s of the rest of our team, so you can put names to faces and faces to a movement.

Please continue to pray for us, especially in the coming few months. Pray that God might strengthen our marriage and family in greater knowledge of Him. Pray that the relationships that we are building now might be cultivated into life-altering Gospel ministry for many. Pray for humility and eagerness to serve from our church leadership. And ultimately pray that the name of Jesus Christ might be worshipped and glorified because of the work that is being done in Austin!

Here are a few pictures of our growing boys-