[0:09]
some of you all know a little bit about me because I was on a panel yesterday so I'll try not to repeat myself too much but yes I'm married to Tim we've been married for it'll be eight years in January and we're involved in a church plant in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne before this time last year we just finished off four years in Sydney so my husband was studying at Moore college and I was working full-time for our church Chatswood Baptist doing children's and women's ministry and then we moved back down to Melbourne where we

[0:40]
originally came from and started a church started off in a lounge room and eventually moved into a public venue and yeah being in that public venue since the end of July I think and it's been a very very interesting year and I'll be talking about that a little bit more um now I thought the way that I would talk about things because I could just rub it on for ages about all the things that I've learnt but I thought in terms of a

[1:12]
structure I'd talk about what did I expect in terms of going into church planting what was it actually like what was some of the struggles what was some of the joys of this last year and particularly thinking about what are some of the interesting dynamics that Tim and I have had to work out in terms of our marriage and our relationship in the process of church planting so hopefully that will be helpful to you whatever stage you're at so when I think back to my expectations about church planting it's

[1:43]
quite hard to think about actually it really depends on what stage of the process we're at I think when church planting was just an idea I had lots of romantic visions of you know lots of people who didn't know Jesus flooding into my house for cups of coffee and lots of people becoming Christians and all these kind of romantic ideas as the time got closer I got scared up and so I think at that point I kind of it's hard to think about what the expectations were at that point because I think I

[2:15]
just didn't know what the next year was gonna be like and I was a bit nervous about it so I tried not to think about it too much so I'm someone who generally doesn't love change and also I really like to be able to picture what things are gonna be like if I'm gonna be starting a new workplace I want to know where my desk is I want to be able to see myself working there in order to be able to prepare for it and really for church-planting I just didn't have a picture in my head and so in some ways I just went okay this is what we're doing

[2:46]
I'm gonna pray able to ask God to help me and then I'm just gonna block it out until we start but the funny thing is I think in terms of expectations and this is a little bit embarrassing to admit I think one of the expectations that I had was I thought that I would be a really good church planners wife what I mean by that is that I'd already had a fair bit of ministry experience when we started and Tim and I had done ministry together and actually worked quite well together and I was someone who loved evangelism

[3:17]
and had kind of spent a lot of my ministry life doing lots of evangelism so I think I had in my head that you know it's gonna be hard but I think I'm gonna do a good job I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that now but to be honest that was a big part of my expectations and one of the things that I had to deal with over this year is this feeling that oh yeah I can do this this is gonna be good yeah yeah I'm gonna be great so when it came to the the actual what it was really like there

[3:47]
are a lot of things that um oh no actually I should say another one in terms of expectations is people had told me that church planting would be hard so we had someone in Melbourne who was kind of I think a year or two ahead of us and they said to Tim and I just before we started your first year of church planting will be the hardest year of your life I remember that and Tim and I went away from that conversation and we said they don't know how hard we've had it Tim and I had been through some

[4:18]
really tough things in the preceding years and you know it had been challenging but God it got us through and so we really thought yes it's gonna be hard but we've done hard we can handle hard surely it's not that bad yes what we actually found out was that church planting the first year church planting is actually really hard I don't think it's kind of overall hard like I wouldn't look back over this year and say it was the most terrible year of my life or that I was miserable all the time but there were definitely periods

[4:50]
of time where it was really really hard particularly in the early stage that Tim talked about of the kind of first six months where we really felt like what nothing's happening like we're putting all this effort in we're working so hard and no one seems to be joining and nothing seems to be happening and we feel like we're letting our team down and our supporters down that that period of time was just really hard for a number of reasons that I'll talk about but I still remember when we moved back down to Melbourne Tim had set up my computer and he put his our screen saver a photo that that I'd taken in our first

[5:24]
year of marriage and was one of those kind of like we're not behind him and went like click and did a bit of a selfie and we're both smiling and and I'd always loved that photo because it reminded me of kind of the fun of the first year of marriage and I just remember one day last year just sitting at the computer crying looking at this photo going I wish I could be that Belinda because she doesn't have to church plant um so just like I hope that kind of gives you a little bit of a picture of yeah there were actually some really tough times of just thinking this is so hard it's so hard seeing Tim

[5:56]
struggling so much I just don't know if I can do this so yeah there really were periods of time where I'd say it was just some of the hardest periods of my life have been in the last year some of the one of the hard things and I think one of the things that we didn't expect I guess which I've already kind of touched on is the slowness of it that church planting is actually a lot of work and it's very slow one of the things that um I think I've reflected with some of the other wives about is often when we come to these kind of

[6:28]
conferences the husbands are all like yeah this just happened and this is really good and woohoo and you know isn't it great what God's doing and and you know you're sitting back going oh but God hasn't done that for us yet does that mean there's something wrong with me and you know you hear about other church plants and how they're going and so I think we'd had these expectations that things would happen we weren't exactly sure how they would happen but they didn't happen quickly but things were actually just really slow it just took a long time for people to hear about us and I think in some ways it took a while for us to get to the critical mass where when people

[6:59]
visited they kind of went oh yeah I could join this I think at first we were so small that people kind of went oh maybe when you're bigger I might join so I think that was a real challenge the kind of slowness of it and as I already touched on on before I think that very nature of not seeing the numerical group growth at the start was really interesting in making Tim and I think about well why are we doing this what is like God may not be growing our numbers yet but what is God doing and actually

[7:31]
reflecting on the people in our team how they were growing the Sunday School particularly I think being involved in that for me was encouraging because I could really see the way the kids were getting excited about God and growing and thinking well actually this is really worthwhile what we're doing it's not a waste it's really important it's actually doing great things for the kingdom even if it's small I think another thing that surprised me a bit was how evangelism takes time I know it's stupid I didn't know there's any way but um I think I went into I went

[8:04]
into church planting thinking I love evangelism I'm an evangelist this is going to be great but until that point all my models of evangelism had been in an established large church context I'm sorry done a lot of play group evangelism where non-christian women just turned up and I spent time with them and I built relationships with them and invited them to my Bible study and share Jesus with them but in a new church plant you just don't have any structures for evangelism it really has to all be relational and you have to meet people and we'd come back to

[8:35]
Melbourne with lots of good Christian friends but having kind of it's sad but kind of lost a lot of our non-christian contacts and so it just took a lot of time for Tim and I to actually build real relationships with people so that we could start talking about Jesus and I think I was quite surprised just how long that took and how challenging that was for me for someone who thought that that was something I was really good at to find out actually it is challenging and something that I need to keep working on and learning from another thing that was that I don't think I expected was how

[9:08]
much work search planting was and how busy Tim would be Tim is one of those people who he's yeah he's someone who's fairly kind of laid-back and cruzi kind of personality and a lot of ministry things come very naturally to him and so even though we've done MTS together and I've seen him do lots of ministry I hadn't seen him do just church planning there was just so much to do and Tim had to do so much of it and I think I just didn't expect how busy and how full-on

[9:41]
it would be and how much it would just absorb life I'm how much you know every you know dinner and dinner conversation would be about but what are we gonna do about this and what do you think about this and and how is it going to work and I'm really worried about this and yeah just how kind of yeah church planning just took over our lives I don't think I quite expected that so those were some of the kind of actual and expectation stuff that I found that happened now I'm going to talk about some of the struggles which I've kind of already touched on a little bit but I thought it

[10:11]
would be good to think about some of the things that have been a bit of a challenge I think one of the biggest challenges we found with church planting was trusting God not necessarily knowing that our church plant would work but trusting God anyway so God never made a promise to us that our church plant was going to work God never kind of tapped him on the shoulder and said you're gonna plant a church in Box Hill and it's gonna grow and wonderful things are going to happen we

[10:41]
prayed and asked God for wisdom and talked with others who knew us and in faith we just went well we think this is a good thing to do but we went into it knowing that God might choose to be glorified by our church not making it and that's a really that's a really hard thing it's really hard to trust God with that uncertainty and I think that has been one of the real struggles for me to keep honoring and trusting God and to

[11:11]
keep knowing what keep doing what God wants me to do living with that uncertainty I am someone who likes to plan and to know the future and yeah just to continue to do God's work not knowing what's going to happen I think was a real struggle for me and I think God has helped me a lot through that but that was I think one of the biggest struggles for me just trusting God with the uncertainty of what was going to happen with our church I think another one of the big struggles

[11:41]
has been in terms of relationships so relationships with people at church and feeling the expectations of things have to happen otherwise you're gonna feel let down by me or you're not gonna like me or or just those kind of personal things and also there was a lot of kind of wanting to encourage people to be involved you know get on board and yeah I actually found that really challenging and Tim got me to do a lot of the it seemed like a lot of our visitors at

[12:12]
first were women and so I was the one who had to kind of go and have the coffee and do the big sell and um yeah I just found that really challenging just yeah just I felt like I was putting myself on the line all the time in relationships and that was just a real a real challenge for me I think another challenge which was really interesting I think is so I'd been working in ministry for three years before we started the church plant while Tim was a Bible

[12:43]
College so I was kind of the full-time ministry one and he was studying and pretty much all through our relationship tim has been the emotional Rock and I've been the basket case I'm quite an emotional person I get really involved in ministry I get really stressed and tim has always been the one kind of looking after me and it's gonna be okay and one of the big challenges of church planting has been that there's been times where it's actually been the other way around where teams just really needed me to be the rock and that's hard because I'm not used to that and I think

[13:13]
at first I resented that a bit which is silly because he's been serving me in that way for so long of course I should be you know honored and privileged to be able to do the same thing for him but I think that was a real struggle for me actually getting used to having to be the strong one sometimes and then the other thing I think that's been a yeah it's interesting it's kind of a good one to finish on because it's been both a struggle and a joy I think but one of the things I've found really hard is what we're doing is really I'm

[13:43]
an unusual independent church planting without a mother Church it's fairly unusual anyway but it's very very unusual in Melbourne people don't tend to do it and so you know you'd have a conversation or what's what are you guys doing oh well Tim and I are actually involved in a church plant Oh what's you know what's you're sending Church oh we don't have one oh you don't have one oh well what denomination any with oh well we're kind of independent we're part of this if I see that you've never heard of and so

[14:14]
oh and you're doing inbox Hill why aren't you doing it in Caroline Springs or somewhere that doesn't have a church like it just felt like every time I talked about what we were doing I would have to kind of justify what it was about and why and that's actually really hard and exhausting but it's interesting over the year my view on that process started to actually change something that Tim and I have been praying for is that not just that our church would

[14:45]
serve God by you know having people know it come to know him and grow in him but that also our church might be a what have a wider influence on the churches in Melbourne and the people in Melbourne and so one of the things that actually started to find was all these conversations where we'd have to justify what we were doing it suddenly stopped being about me making people think highly of me and it actually started to be about me thinking well this person's never really thought about all the lost in our city and how we're going to reach

[15:15]
them or these persons never thought about how their church could do evangelism maybe in my answer I actually might be able to encourage them and so over time I actually got to a point where that was actually one of the joys of church planting that we were doing this weird thing that nobody understood and that I got an opportunity to talk about our church in its vision and what really mattered to a whole lot of people because of it so that's actually something that started off as a struggle but actually became a real joy for me other things

[15:47]
that have been a joy I touched on this yesterday so I won't go into it but seeing people in the church get excited about evangelism I think that has been a real highlight I still remember so we had our little training group and we used to pray every week for opportunities to share the gospel and I still remember this one week where every single person who came had had a conversation about God that week and we just kind of and I think we all just sit around and go when Wow God is really answering our friends this is so exciting and I think just seeing the way that people in our congregation even

[16:18]
when we were small were growing it was just really exciting it's funny we we had a couple of girls in our congressional seat of sisters who had left a kind of large established church to come to our church and I think we always felt a bit guilty you know they've left this huge church with lots of people their own age to come to our church and I remember talking to one of the girls about it and saying you know do you miss your old church and she said it was funny she said to me not even a little bit oh and she said in this

[16:50]
church I get to hear the Bible taught really well I get to be around people who care about evangelism and she had some particular health issues that meant that um there were difficulties in terms of her ability to serve and she said and I felt like at my old church no one understood my illness and they they didn't bother to understand or get to know me because you know I wasn't around as much because I was sick but I feel like at this church people not only care for me but they actually value my ministry and what I do and who I am and

[17:21]
so it's that kind of stuff that when you hear it you go yeah it's so worth it it's so worth what we're doing yes and that was a huge encouragement to me another thing that's been a huge joy I think as I said at the start at the start it felt like we didn't know many non-christians and we we struggled to meet them but one of the real joys I think for me with church planting is that because we're starting new because there's a lot of flexibility in terms of how we spend our time Timoteo and I were able to go okay

[17:52]
meeting people who don't know Jesus is a real priority and we're going to spend our time doing that and so one of the things that we did was Tim and I joined a local choir Tim sings quite well I sing okay and that was a way that we could meet people who weren't Christians we also started this English conversation Club in the local library where we ended up with about 15 people who weren't Christians and each week we would practice our English and then read the Bible and it's just actually been so lovely that at least once a week a week

[18:24]
well she's probably twice a week at least Tim and I are spending quality time with people who don't know Jesus and it's great I just love it they're wonderful people I love them to pieces I pray for them I really want them to come to know Jesus and I just think that's just been one of the huge joys of church planting then we've actually had time and energy to be able to devote to those who don't know Christ and that's just um yeah that's a real privilege and a joy another great thing has been seeing Tim doing ministry I I've known the whole

[18:58]
time that I've known him that this was what God made Tim to do God made Tim to preach the gospel and to train and teach and it's just so cool actually being out there and seeing him do that it's hard work and sometimes I struggle with you know the busyness and sometimes I wish that we could go back to college team who had lots of more time and energy for me but at the same time I'm really seeing Tim be the man that God has made him to be and that's a real privilege and a joy and a wonderful

[19:29]
thing to see and the other thing that's been a really wonderful thing about this year is just seeing God answer prayers yeah it was funny we had a period of time it was funny we so Tim and I have been struggling for many years praying for children and not having them and there was this one week where we had a whole lot of new people come to church that we didn't have a connection we've up to that point people who'd visited Weaver knew they were coming or they nice you know or they were someone we knew

[20:00]
personally we had a hold of people come who didn't know Jesus and we were just so excited and um and then the next day we found out pregnant which was just amazing and then the following week we prayed and we said oh god it was just so amazing that we had these new people last week we just really like to have more new people this week but when we prayed we just God had been so gracious to us that week we just didn't think he was gonna answer that prayer and we turned up a church and there were more new people and it just it was just so incredible and and it was

[20:32]
funny Tim said I know we should pray all the time but now that God's been answering prayers I just want to pray all the time and so it's just it is it's such a privilege we we don't feel we're very aware that anything that happens with our church plan it's not really us like the first half of the year we did the same thing as we did in the second half of the year but in the second half of the year amazing things were happening it wasn't because of anything special we did or any kind of efforts that we put in it was just God's grace God's grace to the people who to us and

[21:03]
also God's grace to the people who were coming along and learning and growing and things so I think that's been one of the real joys of this year is just being reminded that we have a God who cares for us and who answers prayers that's just been a real a real blessing to see and and it makes me think yeah regardless of what happens what happens with the church plan in the future it's worth it it's worth it to give it a try it's worth it all the hard things all the struggles have been worth it because

[21:34]
our God is good and he's worth suffering for now to finish off I just wanted to go through a couple of specific things to do with Tim and my relationship some of the things that I'm going to talk about Renee's kind of touched on as well so the interesting hearing how things are going yep I know that yep that's so true I think the yeah the real challenge for us has been that kind of colleague versus couple feet and working out what that looks like so yeah so one of the

[22:07]
challenges has been so I've been pretty much three days a week working at church and so in many ways I've been not quite not in the same situation as Tim but I've been working hard and being part of the church plant and so so often I can yeah I can want to be the colleague I can want to talk about things or critique things and actually what Tim just needs is a wife someone to be there and to encourage him and and my default is this is our ministry we're working

[22:37]
together but one of the things that I need to keep remembering is that Tim is in a really unique position here's the leader of the church and there's a lot of press pressures and stresses on him that can be quite overwhelming and that I'm I'm the only one I'm his only wife I'm the only one who's in a position to serve Him in that particular way I'm the loudest voice in his ear and so I want

[23:08]
to make sure that that voice is an encouraging voice there's been um Tim's been really good at really being quite communicative about this I still remember one day when Tim had this idea of a ministry thing and I was like oh darling I just don't think that's gonna work or it's just not a good it like that was my first response and Tim just said to me darling I actually need a wife and not a handbrake and it was just uh you know one of those things you really don't like to hear but just so helpful that he was able to really put

[23:39]
into words the way that I'd been acting and it just really challenged me to think wow actually I I need to really think about what I say to you that's the kind of power that you have and so that was really challenging for me to actually go I need to actually step back and let him be the leader and to be encouraging and that doesn't mean that I don't raise concerns or but I just need to make sure that actually encouraging him is the main thing that I do

[24:11]
there's also been a little bit the other way so sometimes when Tim's really stressed about something he needs me to do something he'll just say hey II need go do this and I've needed to kind of pull him up and go I'm a wife not a servant not a secretary and you know even the little things of you know so I said to him it might sound like smallest thing in the world but if you say please darling can you do this for me as opposed to just do this that can

[24:42]
actually make all the difference in terms of my attitude towards it so I think one of the big things that I've learned from this whole church planning thing and I mean it's it's what every marriage book says communication is important but it's just so important that through this whole thing that at Tim and I've been really honest with each other about how we've been feeling and about what we've needed it hasn't actually come naturally to me to know when to be the wife and when to be the colleague and so I actually need to talk and you know sometimes you know sometimes I'll say to Tim what do you

[25:12]
need at the moment do you need me to say you did a really good job or do you want some feedback and he'll say I need you to say I did a really good job but I'll say okay darling you did a really good job so I think that's a really important and helpful part of the process now I started off by saying that my expectations of myself were very high when we went into church planting and I think one of the challenges of this year has been that I haven't lived up to my expectations I haven't always been the

[25:43]
best wife that I could be I haven't always been the best sunday-school teacher the best disciple of the best evangelist that I could be and that's a really challenging thing for me to say and for me to admit but one of the great things I think about being Christian is that we're not saved by what we do we're saved by grace and that God in His grace has been able to use Tim and I in our imperfections in our weaknesses to

[26:13]
glorify himself and that's been a really wonderful thing to be reminded of and I think sometimes when you come along to these kind of things and you you hear all these different things about what church planning is like and you know particularly for those on this kind of side of the room you can feel like oh I'm just I just can't do this but actually God is gracious and he can use us and so I just really want to encourage you that yes church planning is hard but that it is worth it

[26:47]
God in His grace can use even broken people like me to achieve his purposes in church planting so thanks