Starting Again with Gratitude

Why I’m returning to writing and what I’m thankful for

As we start off the new year, I also wanted to resurrect this Substack that I started a little over two years ago. It was meant to be a supplement to dPod—a place to publish thoughts and reflections that don’t quite make it into Sunday sermons and aren’t always appropriate for dPod. As usual, though, things got busy, and this ended up taking a backseat for a while.

Lately, I’ve felt it would be good for more of the leaders in the Acts2 Network—especially the pastors—to have more of a footprint online, so that if people want to get to know us, they can find more than just our sermons. For many public figures, that usually happens through Instagram or other social media platforms. For personal reasons, though, I’m not very active on social media. I do have an Instagram account, but I rarely post and mainly use it to keep an eye on how our ministry’s account is doing.

Maintaining something like a Substack feels like a better fit for me. It gives me a space to publish some of my thoughts and, hopefully, offer a bit of an inside look into how we think about ministry at Voyage College Church and within the Acts2 Network. What I write here will likely reflect what I find timely, meaningful, or worth wrestling with.

For this first post back, I simply wanted to start with gratitude as we step into a new year.

Gratitude

FT Leads Meetings

One thing I’m grateful for is the roughly 10 days that all the FT Leads in the Acts2 Network gathered together in Elgin, first for meetings and then to run the Acts2 Winter Conference (AWC).

I’m always thankful for our time together. Even though much of the agenda is filled with meetings—discussing network-wide needs, the future of our churches, and trying to discern how God is leading us through lots of discussion and ideation—there’s also a good portion of that time dedicated to studying God’s Word, sharing Scripture together, and just hanging out.

One thing Pastor Ed shared with us this time around, which I think he’s shared before but really stood out to me, is that part of what all the FT Leads need throughout our network is collegiality. I definitely think our time together provides that.

Generally, twice a year we have extended meetings, and they give me a chance to reaffirm relationships and friendships with people who are doing similar things all over the nation. Some of the guys I serve with are former leaders I once looked up to. Others are college friends. Some are even younger brothers I tried to care for when I was an upperclassman in college.

Now we get to serve the kingdom of God together. I consider that a real privilege.

Acts2 Winter Conference (AWC)

I’m also thankful for the Acts2 Winter Conference, better known as AWC. It’s our second one ever in its current format and the first we’ve hosted in our new training center in Elgin.

Already, it’s become something of a reunion for students who meet at regional and network-wide events. It’s an annual touchpoint where people who haven’t seen each other in a while can spend time together again, reaffirm relationships, and renew their mutual commitment to God.

The speaker lineup this year was particularly awesome, with Cliffe Knechtle, Dhati Lewis, Trace Hamiter, and JD Greear. I was really grateful for each of their messages and how timely and appropriate they felt. I was especially moved by JD Greear’s call to surrender our lives to Jesus, and by seeing how many people came forward to consecrate their lives to God in response.

From the beginning, the vision for AWC has been to invite people outside of our network churches as well, and I think that happened in a more significant way this year. Just even from those who attended from Chicago, there were several students who came because of personal invitations, or who were part of local churches that simply heard about the event. We also had two students—shoutout to Julian and Seret—who were part of Voyage before but transferred last year to Wayne State University in Detroit. Because of that, they haven’t been able to be regular at Voyage College Church, but they came out to AWC, and it was great hanging out with them again.

Praise God for around 52 significant decisions made during AWC, including one from one of our own brothers from the IIT campus.

Video Team

Lastly, I had the chance to serve once again on the video team, making videos for the New Years Eve service and for AWC. I’ve been making videos for our church since 2009, and starting around 2013, I’ve been part of most of the teams that produced network-wide videos—whether recap videos for staff retreats, music videos capturing church planting efforts, or videos for Thanksgiving retreat, Easter, and Good Friday.

Each time, I’m grateful to be part of the iterative and collaborative process that aims to produce not just something entertaining, but something that actually captures what’s happening in our church—how people are feeling, and how they might think about the future.

That process is never linear. There’s a lot of back-and-forth, discussion, and refining about how best to tell the story. Occasionally, that includes late nights followed by getting sick after the event.

But it’s all worth it if that video helps inspire someone to be a little bolder and take one more step of faith in their personal walk with God.