Dear Pastor Tyler

Dear Pastor Tyler,

I write this from a lone coffeehouse in a small town named
Moyagalpa on an island in Nicaragua. 

Over the past three months my outlook on life has completely
been changed. 

You see; I have committed eleven months of my year to
traveling around the world, living and spreading the Gospel.  I graduated from State in December of
last year and over my time in Raleigh grew to love Vintage21 and the community that
I found there.  I continue to find
myself diving into the teachings and reading the emails of what the church is
doing in flipping the Triangle.  A
piece of my heart still resides with in the walls of that community and I thank
you all from miles and miles away for still challenging me to seek the heart of
God and to make the most of Jesus.

Maybe it took getting out of my comfort zone to truly
realize what this meant.  Maybe it
didn’t take leaving at all, but instead challenging my ideas of what it means
to be engulfed by the Gospel. 
Either way my life has been boiled down to the question of, “How can I
love Jesus more?”  (I have been
listening to the series on Acts.)

This question has rattled around in my brain the last few
days in a heavier weight then I care to ask most questions.  The truth is it’s not one that is
easily answered either.  I have had
the opportunity to hang out with orphans, to ask the people around me hard
questions and to pray over kids and adults in the streets, struggling with
addiction or that have lost the ability to physically move around.  And in all of these times I have cried
out to God, I have the audacity to question whether or not God showed up.  Nobody got up and danced across the
streets or broke out into a spirit of joy because they were being overwhelmed with
the Holy Spirit.

And honestly, I have seeded into brief seconds of doubt
because of this.  Not doubt against
God, but questions of narcissism on whether I have the faith it takes for God
to work the miraculous or how can I change myself to better observe what God
has for me.  It is interesting to
me that even the realization of taking a stance of the vastness of God verse
the smallness of myself still allows me to ask these questions.  But the truth is, I am a broken man.  And in that brokenness, I have the
capacity to see how God is changing me and growing me into a lover of Jesus.

There are things that I wish I would have understood better
when I was living in Raleigh.  There are things that God is continuing to teach me.  How do I daily deny my rights and
expectations?  How do I let myself
Be and not Do all the time?  How do
I move what I know to be truth in my head to the center of my being?  How do I become the community changer
that I first questioned by attending Vintage21?

My journey truly started in Raleigh, when I thought I was
headed down a good and honorable road. 
When I showed up Sundays at 11:30 and set in the third row and every
week I rededicated my rededication to the cause of fighting for a
community.  And yet I never
realized that it was the community that fought for me.  It was Jesus that was setting me up for
an adventure that began in the community that I found in Raleigh.  And it was there that I first felt the
weight of the possibility of living a life worthy of sainthood, not just being
a sinner saved by an indescribable grace. 

Now there is the present, just a short while later when I
have come to a point where I have been completely wrecked for Jesus and the
Kingdom.  I fight for a community
that normally I would have easily backed away from and I allow that community
access to the most vulnerable places of my being.  I am “strong and courageous” and “worry and fear” are not my
first nature, because I believe that “I am not forsaken” and that “God goes
before me” (Deuteronomy 31:6). 

And yet all of this boils down to… Jesus is enough for
me!  I don’t need answers and I
don’t need God to show me what I thought I came on this journey to see!  Now that is not being said without
fault.  I have my days where I long
to see the miraculous happen and I believe that it will or that I wish I was
back home and could head back to Raleigh and stand and sing at the top of my
lungs, “Heartsong” or “Come Thou Fount”.  And maybe that day will come, but for now I continue to long
to be drawn into the joyful heart of God and to seek how it is that I can love
Jesus more, for I want the world to realize what it is I am for and about.

So I thank you for asking hard questions and not giving up
on a community longing for Jesus. 
I thank you for your example of seeking and worshiping the One, True God
and expecting nothing in return.  I
thank the church for being a church without walls and longing to turn a city
upside down and inside out for the Kingdom.  I am thankful that God lead me to such a safe harbor and yet
allowed the boat to be rocked!

This year is a year of Isaiah 61.  Oaks of Righteousness are being restored and planted all
over.  The hopes and dreams of
Vintage21 are being seen and realized all around the world!  I am truly humbled and stand in awe of
a Huge God that is able to do Huge things through a church and through an
unexpected journey!