I stand amazed at God's power to answer prayer. My passion and life prayer is to plant churches across the US in the major, growing urban centers. (More about this here). The challenges the church faces today are Herculean, and nothing but a naked gospel proclaimed and lived by a people ready to shed legalism and every other superficial form of Christianity, and to bend over backward to be all things to all men, reaching the business man and the bum, the student and the stripper, will be ready to face this new surge of atheism, post-Christianism, and syncretism of world religions. See USA's article "Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds" to get a taste.

But I bring to you the first step of what I believe will be a long, hard, joyous, and faith-stretching journey of US church planting. It began with the seed of God's Word, "Go and make disciples." Through the last ten years of pastoral ministry, writing, evangelism, and ministry training, I feel that God has been preparing me to plant churches. This burden has grown slow and true, and my first step was a few months ago when I typed in "city demographics" in google.

Through the federal census, Forbes magazine, veterans corp, and sites specializing in city data, I started to map out the type of city we believe God is calling us to plant our first church in. 

After laying out criteria such as population density, racial breakdown, industry types, and education levels, I researched some more and found 25 cities that loosely fit this criteria. But that was the farthest I could take it. That's when a friend introduced me to a religious organization that does demographic work for large denominations.

I called them up and explained my scenario.

"Do you represent a large denomination?" Susan asked. 

"No." 

"Do you represent a mega church?" 

"Not really." 

"Then I'm not sure we can help you," she said. 

"Is what you're really concerned about is that you guys normally serve huge ministries that can pay the fee?" 

"Yes."

"How much does it cost?"

"We start our one year contracts at $5,000." 

I gulped. "That would be a slight challenge." 

"I don't mean to be price picky at all," said Susan, "but what kind of price range where you hoping for?" 

"The most I could pay is $500. Look, if I could have access to your data base for just three weeks and then I'd pay for each demographic survey following that, that'd be incredibly helpful." 

"Let me see what I can do," said Susan. Later that night, Kimberly's ears twitched at the number $500. "Seth, we really don't have that kind of money."

"You're right," I said. "We should be praying that God will provide." Like one of those historic moments that you'll forever treasure in your marriage, we got on our knees and asked the God who owns the cattle on ten billion hills to provide the way. 

Around one o'clock today my phone rang. It was Susan. "Seth, I spent all yesterday evening thinking about this, and I just couldn't justify letting you log into a data base that technically belongs to another denomination." Oh no, here comes the dream crusher, I thought. "So here's what I did. I did the research for you." I asked her to repeat that. "I did the research for you." Not only did Susan find the 20 fastest growing communities with population projections in the US, she offered to do the first few demographic researches scott free. 

"Susan, you are an answer to prayer," I said in amazement. In less than 24 hours, God handed me $7,000 worth of demographic research...and I didn't pay a penny.

The Christian life is an adventure. May this story encourage you to trust that God will provide a way when your motives are totally surrendered to His direction. 

But I also have a request. Will you pray for me and Kimberly? Will you pray for Divide the Word Ministries? Will you pray for the people considering being part of this church plant?

Many giants stand betwen us and the launch date of our first church plant. Training at boot camps (Sovereign Grace Ministries, Acts 29 Network, Tim Keller's church to name a few), financial threats, Satan's tempting demons, logistical roadblocks that bean counters always spot (and rightly so!) will make the path more of a mountain climb than a coast. 

But that's the joy of it. We get to trust His Word and step out in faith, believing in Him who is unseen. And if you think God may be leading you to participate in this venture, I ask you to go to your knees today and ask Him.

May God provide the way. May His will be done. May He shake our country at its core with the gospel of Jesus Christ.