June Update

Hey everyone,

For the past two months, our house has been quite busy. For starters, we’ve been doing some construction projects, so the house itself has been in a bit of disarray. Not too bad normally, but with three little kids, it’s been crazy. We spruced up my office space a bit, transformed our sun room into a semi-guest bedroom with a new bathroom, and remodeled our own master bedroom and bathroom down in the basement. Still some painting and other house projects to go, but feels good to be done with the big stuff.

We’ve also had lots of time with extended family recently. In April, we traveled to a conference in Austin, Texas. Norton attended the conference and Janis and the kids stayed with Janis’ family in Georgetown (just outside of Austin). It was great for the grandparents to spend some quality time with the grandkids. Then, a few weeks ago, Norton’s sister and her family stayed with us for a few days. Five kids under three in one house (see pic)! They were traveling through town from their one-year sabbatical in Michigan back to Colorado Springs.  It will be good to have them closer now. And then this past week, Norton’s parents flew out to spend some time with us in Colorado.

As far as church goes, one interesting thing we’ve been doing over the past six months is visiting different churches in the area. Since New Denver Church isn’t meeting regularly on Sunday mornings yet, we visit a different church almost every week; we’ve taken a few Sundays off . Things we’ve learned:

1. Not many churches have outsiders in mind. Little things like good signs and helpful greeters can go a long way toward making a new person feel welcome.

2. Most churches just do babysitting with the kids. We definitely appreciate the lessons our children were learning (even at a really young age) at our previous church.

3. There does seem to be more connections between churches in Denver. I think some of this is because of the way many people are connected through the seminary here in Denver. And maybe it’s because most churches are just a lot smaller here and so they don’t have as much of an isolationist mindset as in Atlanta/the Bible Belt. Of course, there is still a hint of a “competition” mentality (which is still crazy given that over a two million people in the Denver metro area couldn’t care less about church). But it’s refreshing to reconnect with some church leaders we knew from our time in Denver before, make some new friends with other pastors, and feel like we’re working together for the good of the city. (For example, we’ve partnered with about eight other churches to work together on the biggest Habitat for Humanity project in the state of Colorado–about a mile from our house–very exciting!)

One more thing: people often ask what I (Norton) do every day. Great question. What exactly does a pastor or church planter do all week when not preparing for Sunday? Right now, I do four main things:

1. Administration: paying bills, depositing checks, overseeing the budget, developing our database, etc. Lots of tedious work that simply needs to get done behind the scenes.

2. Meeting, brainstorming, and making decisions with Stephen and Jason. At this early stage, there so many decisions we need to make regarding what we will value as a church, how we should spend our money wisely, and what events and programs are essential to start or maintain or enhance or even stop doing. The decisions we make today are so important because they set precedent and trajectory for years to come. That’s not to say that we won’t make adjustments as we go, but it’s still really important to lay a solid foundation now.

3. Meeting with people: those who are already involved in our church, those who have expressed interest, and other pastors and church leaders.

4. Preparing for our monthly community gatherings. This is part of my role specifically: preparing a message (not each time), working with the worship leader, getting the technical stuff in order, printing bulletins, setting up and tearing down, etc.

Between those four things, my week gets full pretty quickly.

In a few days, we’ll be leaving the kids in the good hands of Janis’ sister and one of her friends, and traveling to Portland, Oregon for six days to celebrate our ten year anniversary. Hard to believe it’s been ten years. We haven’t been on any kind of extended vacation since bringing Townsend home more than two years ago.  It will be a much needed getaway. Hope you are doing well.  Don’t hesitate to drop us a line…

Norton and Janis