grow your own! (church planting network)

this is karen ward (in the pacific nortwest region of north america).

my latest project might have been motivated by jealousy, but god can use even that, to plant seeds for the kingdom.
on some post (on the blog of alan creech), i found out about an organic church planters group that was started in the heartland of the united states called the "midwest greenhouse."


immediately, i sent alan an e-mail saying "can i come out and play?" then, i realized that in order to play, you had to be in proximity to the playground... and i was 2000 miles (3218 kilometers) away. oh lord, what to do... well, maybe we'll build our own swing-set here in "cascadia" (our own little neighborhood of washington, oregon and british columbia).

knowing that each context is different, we will not ask alan to export to us a ready-made, "add water and stir," carbon copy of the playground kit they are using in the midwest. what god wants, i think, is for us to share the same spirit, yet grow our own local expression and network. ironically, "growing your own" is what people out here are known for. our region is a haven for free spirits and "do it yourselfers," and our pioneer spirit is evident in everything from our local microbrewed coffees, to our kickin' microbrewed beers.

today, i'm meeting with two other seattle church planters, eugene cho of quest and dwight friesen of another quest, to talk about what kind of swing-set we can build in our soon to be formed "northwest hothouse,"
a place to disciple one another, to re-create, to share, to discern, to grow in the knowledge and fear of god, and to otherwise play in the fields of the lord in the pac northwest (so stay tuned...)