I hold my hands up and say that I ain’t perfect!

Thankfully, human perfection is not an important factor in church planting. We can always be holier or have more experience or whatever. In 2008, I was just a guy. I had a job I quite liked, a brilliant family, and some great friends. I also had an unshakeable desire to do something.

The “Do Something Desire” is funny old thing. To start with it’s a bit of a dream, then it became a dissatisfaction and then it became an inescapable drive. In short, I was driving myself (and a few other people) mad. I needed to have a go at something quickly.

The “Something” for me was to plant a church. I wanted to plant a church in Manchester. I wanted the church to reach young people, creatives and the unchurched. It got to the point where it was all I could think about. I prayed about it, wrote about it, talked about it and I day dreamed about it.

The dream is so important. (I don’t know if I will ever see the church that I dreamt of but four years later that dream keeps me going.)

If you’re a football fan and you happen to be English you will know that it’s the hope that kills you. In a funny way the hope was beginning to kill me! I knew that I had to stop dreaming and hoping. I either had to lay it to rest or move.

The first option was looking the most likely course of action because I wasn’t exactly in demand as a potential church planter! I was not getting phone calls from big churches or apostolic people asking me to go and pioneer.

So what’s a guy to do? It turns out that praying and trying to force a move kinda works.