Earlier this month I began my church planting residency program at Lifepointe Church. As many of you know, in order to do this Christina and I had to raise my salary. The following are 6 things I have taken away from having to raise a full salary.

1. You have no idea how God will provide

In the beginning, the idea of raising support was dreadful. I had a lot of internal objections to having to do it. And I always genuinely wondered how in the world we were going to go about it. I had never had to raise anywhere near this amount of money before.

I knew this would be the case going in, and yet I’m still blown away by it. Several people came out of nowhere to support us, and others have committed to give a large amount. This has been such a testament to how God truly provides; it wasn’t because of Christina or I’s effort.

2. Most people giving don’t quite understand how thankful you are

To many people, they give to things they believe in or causes they support. Most of the time, we give to organizations and not necessarily individual people. But when you support someone personally, it really impacts them. Having worked at a church before and received an income through the church (which was supported by people’s giving), the idea is the same, but the feeling is not.

I cannot emphasize enough how thankful I am for everyone supporting us no matter what the amount is. 

3. Asking for money was not as difficult as I imagined

I am someone who likes to be prepared. So Christina and I really did work hard on support letters and documents and setting up meetings with people. But when it came to asking for support, it wasn’t as nerve-racking as I thought.

I think a big reason for this is that I really believe in what we are doing. I am confident that God led me to this residency and that He wants us to plant a church in the Raleigh area.

4. I am not as faithful as I would like to think

Certainly I had my doubts that we would be able to raise very much money. But even now as we still have a little bit more to raise, I’m already wondering what we are going to do if it doesn’t all come in. In reality, God has proven nothing but faithful, and I’m still prone to worry that he won’t be.

5. Trusting God means you have to actually trust; you don’t get to know what he will do before he does it.

So often in life we think that as long as we knew what the end result would be (of any tough and difficult circumstance) then we could be “faithful” and stick it out without complaint. But that isn’t us being faithful, its us wanting to not have to do the difficult task of actually trusting.

6. I am unworthy of God’s grace and generosity

I am truly humbled by everyone who is supporting us, and feel to a large extent unworthy of it. Unworthy to be an influence on God’s people through our planting efforts, and unworthy of even being loved and forgiven.

How quickly we doubt and forget God’s goodness. Normally we think it is God who owes us. This whole process as been such a reminder of how dependent upon him we really are. He loves us in spite of us, not because we in any way earned it.

As I mentioned, we still have a little ways to go to hit our goal. If you would like more information on what we are doing click here. If you would like to give towards our cause click here (and be sure to change giving reference from “General” to “Leadership Resident – Dodson”).