Pastor Joel Webbon on Church Planting: Part 1

Welcome to another edition of the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and we're going to have a special discussion today on church planning.

This is something that I've heard about from a lot of people who are interested in this because you can't find a church or you're in an area and it's just, you know, you have the burden, you want to plant a church because maybe the area is so dry of theological teaching and maybe that person's you or maybe it's someone else.

And without a seminary education, a lot of people wonder, how can I do this?

What's the process? And so the special guest we have today to talk about this because he has planted churches is

Pastor Joel Webben. Pastor Joel, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

And I've been on your podcast twice now before, and we're going to get together real soon in person.

Why don't you tell everyone a little bit about that before we get into the subject? Great. Yeah. So we're having a conference. It's going to be on March 12th.

So that's a Saturday. And then John will also stay over and preach for us on the Lord's Day at my church,

Covenant Bible Church, on March 13th, that Sunday. So Saturday, Sunday, it's going to be from 3 to 7 p .m.

Just back to back to back, four sessions, four hour long sessions, 3 to 7 p .m.

on Saturday, March 12th, and then the Lord's Day. Anybody who wants to come is welcome to join us.

Covenant Bible Church, again, is the name of my church. We're in Georgetown, Texas, is where we meet.

That's about 45 minutes north of Austin. So we're close enough to Austin to have ministry opportunity, economic opportunity, but in a separate county.

So far enough from Austin so that our police don't get defunded. So we've got some of the protections of Texas, conservative state, but near a very liberal, bright blue city.

So Georgetown, Texas, Covenant Bible Church. If you want to check out the church, go to CovenantBible .org,

CovenantBible .org. But for the conference, I am the pastor of Covenant Bible Church, but I'm also the president of Right Response Ministries.

So go to RightResponseMinistries .com, RightResponseMinistries .com, go to the menu bar at the top of the page and click on the link conference, and you'll be able to find the location for that, the times for that, and basically the title of the conference, name of the conference is

Resisting Tyranny and Wokeness, Resisting Tyranny and Wokeness, and it's going to be John Harris, myself, and A .D.

Robles. And so A .D. and John are both flying in, John's going to do a session on Saturday, I'm going to do a session,

A .D. is going to do a session, and then all three of us are going to come up for the final session to do like a live

Q &A. And so we think it'll be a really good time. John's going to be addressing social justice versus biblical justice.

I'm going to be, the title of my talk is Debunking the Boogeyman of Christian Nationalism.

And then A .D. is going to, I think, really be helpful in bringing it down to kind of the practical everyday stuff.

So his title of his lecture will be Practicing Everyday Obedient Defiance, Practicing Everyday Obedient Defiance and talking to especially individuals, but also men as leaders of their households and how to defy both tyranny and the social justice kind of stuff.

Those are the two big issues, it seems like, COVID and CRT. It's always some kind of C word that it seems like is always the problem.

And it's a G word. It's the government that solves both problems, right? Right. That's the statism. That's the heresy.

And so we want to address that. Yeah. So that's March 12th, and that's only 3 to 7 p .m. So this could be just part of an afternoon if someone wants to come.

But they are encouraged to go to RightResponseMinistries .com to sign up. And that's in Taylor, Texas, right?

Right. Yeah. So my church is in Georgetown, Texas. Taylor is just a hop and a skip over just a few miles away.

And so Saturday will be at, because our church is not even quite a year old, brand new church plant, which is what we're talking about today.

So we rent a facility on Sunday morning. So it's another like -minded church that actually has a facility that's letting us use their facility on Saturday.

And that church is in Taylor. So Saturday will be in Taylor at Christ Fellowship Church. Sunday will be in our normal venue that we rent with Covenant Bible Church.

And you're right. They need to go to RightResponseMinistries .com and RSVP. So the conference is completely free. So it's just a

Saturday, 3 to 7 p .m., four hours, no admission, no cost.

We'll have free refreshments and all that kind of stuff. So I would say if you're anywhere within an hour, hour and a half vicinity, it's just, this is so accessible.

It's so easy to show up for four hours, you know, and kids are welcome. You can bring the whole family, four hours.

It may be a little bit tough for little kids, but we'll have some breaks in between. And we'll have, we're getting a bunch of goldfish and muffins and things like that.

And we're going to have, instead of rows, our goal is to set up tables and chairs. Cause I know I have three little girls and it helps them to be able to sit at a table.

They can color and things like that. So, yeah. And if I could just make a last pitch here, you know,

I don't know when I'll be near Austin next or even in Texas, to be honest with you.

AD, I don't want to speak for him too much, but I know that he doesn't travel all that much for speaking.

This is kind of unique. So yeah. Yeah. For those, especially who, you know, you're in a radius,

I would say like a two or three hour radius, if you're wanting to come and, you know, meet, meet me, meet

AD, meet Pastor Joel, like this is a really good time to do that because I don't know when this opportunity is going to come up and to have a free conference.

I mean, that's kind of unheard of. So I just didn't encourage everyone to come on out. And we have 140 right now that are have

RSVP and space is limited. We can probably fit about 150 to 200, but we're willing to squeeze in.

So we're going to have to cap it when this is worth it being very full. We're going to cap it at 250. So I'd say we have comfortably another 60 spots or so, but we're going to take another up to another 110 from the 140 we have to 250 and be willing to squeeze.

But either way, the point is, even with going all the way up to 250, we're already over half. We're getting close to two thirds of the way to capacity.

So, so RSVP, that's a good number too. I don't know if you've been to smaller conferences,

Joel, but I've been to, you know, I've been to Shepard's conference and G3 and some of these bigger conferences and it's great.

Right. But, but I was just at a conference called War Room, which was like, I think we had 200 people there.

It was, I mean, it was amazing. I just, I loved it so much more just because the interaction that you get when it's that scale is so much deeper and richer.

And so this is a great time, even if, you know, if it's not about the speaking, just come on out to meet other like -minded brothers and sisters.

To meet like -minded people in the area and also like realistically to meet John, to meet AD, to meet myself because yeah,

I've gone to Shepard's too. And I mean, you literally, I'm not exaggerating. You've got security with earpieces and you roped off, you know, like John McArthur, you're not going to meet him.

You might, but it's very unlikely that you're going to shake that guy's hand. Same with Steve Lawson, Paul Washer. Those guys are, you know, and it's not that they're not friendly guys.

It's no knock on their character, but they're just practical realities of having a conference with 5 ,000 people.

This is 250 people and, you know, and with 250 people, like a decent amount of kids.

So, you know, it may only be 150 adults. So the likelihood of you showing up and meeting us or even we may even go to dinner afterwards and hang out.

And so if you want to meet us, it's a great chance to get to do that and we'd love to meet you. All right.

Well, cool. I'm looking forward to that. I really am. And my wife is too. So let's talk about church planning a little bit, if you wouldn't mind.

You know, you said your church that actually is hosting this, you're a year old, which I mean, that's a young church, but you planted before.

So I don't know if maybe the best thing to do would be to start just with your story, kind of both church plants.

How did it work out? You know, how did you go about it? What kind of challenges were there? All of that. All right.

Yeah, thanks. So just starting from the beginning, but going very, just hitting the highlights.

So my dad was a pastor. He's since retired and actually has relocated my dad and my mom to be a part of our church.

So they're members at Covenant Bible Church, but I grew up in a pastor's home in Bay City, Texas. So I was born and raised in Texas.

And my dad was kind of, kind of AG, like assemblies of God, Pentecostal.

And then once I was around like middle school, middle school through high school, he kind of transitioned to vineyard.

So a little bit more of the already and not yet. And a little bit more of like, I guess like John Wimber would have held that like baptism in the

Holy Spirit is not a subsequent experience to conversion, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit happens with conversion.

But there can be multiple fillings of the Holy Spirit where certain gifts awaken, you know, and so anyway, so my point is,

I would disagree with both of those positions at this point in my life theologically. But my point is to say that vineyard would be kind of like a lighter charismatic expression of assemblies of God or classic

Pentecostalism. So my dad was Pentecostal. Then he kind of lightened up a little bit and was vineyard.

And then after that, after high school, I went to Christ for the nations, which is in Dallas, Texas. I went there for two years, which

I would argue is not just like Pentecostal vineyard, but straight up heretical. So not even within the banner of orthodoxy.

For instance, like they had Kosty, who is a friend at this point, but Kosty and his dad, which would be

Benny Hinn's brother, Henry Hinn, came and spoke at the school. I think we had Joyce Meyer before.

We've had Cindy Jacobs, if anybody knows who that is. Dutch Sheets would be another heretic.

And so the school, I mean, I had a professor who said that if we had enough faith, we could live forever, right?

Because, you know, you won't get sick and you'll never die. So a very bad theological experience there, but incredible relational experience.

I made some of my closest friends, and then we transferred from Christ for the nations after two years.

It's kind of like a two -year non -accredited school, kind of like, you know, the school for witchcraft and wizardry, you know,

Bethel, one of those kind of, you know, so it was kind of like that, you know, kind of like a

Bethel kind of flavor. Bill Johnson, Bethel. And then we, you know, after that, we transferred to Dallas Baptist University.

And so I finished my degree there, and that was theologically a much better experience. And after that, my friends from Christ for the nations who remain friends throughout

DBU, Dallas Baptist, we moved together. There was five of us, and we moved together to San Diego, California to plant a church.

And so that was in the fall of 2009. And for a couple of years, we basically just had a glorified

Bible study in our apartment. Our apartment was located in the heart of Ocean Beach, San Diego, right above a bar there that's called the

Arizona Cafe. And so we lived there for a couple of years, and we had people in our home on Sunday nights. We did this Bible study.

We're evangelizing throughout the week, and the Lord blessed it, and He blessed it in His mercy.

The reality is looking back, I had no business planting a church at the time. Now, that said, my motivation for planting a church is a lot of what guys are feeling today that, you know,

I had this disenchantment with the church, and some of that was rebellious and arrogance. But some of it,

I think, really was, you know, I was on to something. I knew that the church was legitimately failing in some way.

And so I was like, I've got to plant a church, you know. But I knew enough, even at that point in my life, to say, okay, well, if I'm going to plant a church, you know, somebody has to give me permission.

I need to go through some kind of assessment. I need to go through some kind of process and be blessed by someone outside of myself to do this work.

And again, my dad being a vineyard pastor at the time, that's all I knew. So I went through the vineyard. I was still a continuationist at the time.

I'm a cessationist now. And so I went through the vineyard process, but it was just very anemic.

Their church planting process. And so it was kind of, I mean, like an hour and a half, literally an hour and a half lunch with a guy who at the end of it was like, hey,

I love your heart for the Lord. And boom, I had the stamp of approval. I'm a vineyard church planter, you know.

So I'm planting this church at the age of 23, single, not married. Not to say that no single guy can do it, but I think ordinarily married men are typically pastors.

And I was, you know, some single men may be able to do it. I was not one of those single men. And so my theology was still certainly,

I believe insufficient. And then my character, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't going around, you know, sleeping with girls, but I was still struggling with lust.

And at a degree that I would say, yeah, I shouldn't be doing this. But I had older men in my life giving me this approval.

And so I was like, well, you know, I'm submitted to authority and they gave me the okay and blah, blah, blah.

So I'm doing this work that's really over my head that I'm not prepared to do with my college buddies, you know, and, and, you know, we really did, did,

I believe we were converted. I believe we love the Lord, but we just weren't, we weren't prepared to be leaders in a local church.

But over time, you know, it got out of our home, became, you know, not just a glorified Bible study, but eventually we got, you know, a neutral location, rented a little venue and it kept growing.

And it was kind of like, you know, building a plane in mid -flight and, and slowly, but surely the

Lord continuing to convict me of sin. And also, also just teach me from his word, right doctrine, sound doctrine.

It was, it was kind of like this thing where all of a sudden, about four, four years in where like,

I really look, even looking back now with everything I know now, I would say, yeah, about four years into this work,

I really was both by life and doctrine. My character and my apt ability to teach was reaching that minimum bar of, of the qualifications for eldership, not, not the world's best elder by any stretch of the imagination, but, but by God's grace qualified.

And the problem is by the time I had grown to the point where not only I was qualified, but even a couple of years past that with enough maturity to look back and see that I, at the beginning of this work,

I was not qualified. It was kind of one of those situations. I've talked to other guys who've been in this, where it's like, you reach a point where it's like, oh,

I now realize I shouldn't have been doing this. How do you solve that problem? Like, so, so let's say you're, you're six years into a particular ministry and you've been qualified for like two or three years.

And you're looking back and saying, well, my first and second year, I really shouldn't have been doing this. So do you step down?

Which I legitimately consider that option. Should I, should I retroactively to right this, this, this past wrong?

Should I retroactively step down now that I am qualified because I started unqualified, even though I, it's not like I've been qualified for a day.

I I'm just now realizing I wasn't qualified. And I think with other people speaking into my life, I really truly have been qualified for a couple of years now.

So it was, it was one of those things where it's just, it, it, it just was not the way to plant a church is my point that I would never recommend that somebody go and plant a church in the way that I did.

It's a testimony, not of, of my genius or my ability or my character or my gifting, but a testimony of solely the mercy of God.

So again, started as a vineyard church plant. And by this time I had had decided I'm going to be ax 29 because I was a

Calvinist. And and I was complimentary in the vineyard. That's another thing. It's not just the charismatic piece, but the vineyard is egalitarian.

So they have women pastors and that, that was really beginning. I was seeing the problem with that.

So I transitioned out of the vineyard, subjected myself to a nine month assessment.

So it was certainly more robust than the vineyards process. But nine months of three men who were working with me to, to look at my ability to preach my my personal character, this and that.

And during that nine months I was engaged to my wife. So it's like, I'm heading towards marriage and my personal life.

I'm submitting myself to these men and, and, and making sure, you know, dotting

I's and crossing T's and making sure I really am qualified to be a pastor. And so after nine months, we were officially a ax 29 church and we were in ax 29.

This was like 2014 to 2018. So about four years, maybe four and a half years.

But by the end of 2018 transitioned again and pulled out of ax 29 one, because because there were a lot of cessationists in ax 29, and there still are at this point.

But that began to kind of, the tide began to turn because Chandler, you know, being the president was really big on I'm a

Baptist coastal. And so even though you, you were permitted to be a cessationist, the flavor of ax 29 became even one of their core, like distinctive theological distinctives was all about the

Holy spirit, but that you knew that the way that they were embracing, I'm all about the Holy spirit, but the way that they were interpreting that was the sign gifts, you know, tongues and prophecy.

And that, that was around the time that Chandler was talking about, you know, pirate ships and sharks, if you remember that.

So there was that, and that was rubbing me the wrong way. And then, and then worse than that, significantly worse than that was

Eric Mason. He came out with his book, woke church, and you've got Ligon Duncan writing the Ford and you've got

Matt Chandler. Eric Mason was on the board with Matt Chandler for ax 29 at that point. And it was like, like five years of conferences, every conference

I went to, they would set up a panel. It'd be, you know, like Chandler or some other white guy as a moderator and four black guys giving anecdotal evidence for, you know, this is how many times

I've been pulled over, you know, by the police. And, and this is how many times they made me get out of the car. And this is how

I've been mistreated. And all these are pastors conferences with wives and it's all, you could just look around the room.

I would look around the room. It's just all these white women crying, you know, just immersed with guilt and condemnation for a sin that very likely none of them, you know, actually have committed.

And it's not proving anything. And I remember one of the conferences was a week after a particular shooting. There was no evidence at that point of whether or not the police officer was actually in the wrong or in the right, but it was just immediately assumed.

I remember Eric Mason saying the N -word from the stage, you know, I'm just a viewed by, you know, the white people as a, as an

N -word with degrees, you know, I thought that I could, I could get past my black skin by being educated, but I'm just an

N -word with degrees. This is how I'm viewed. And he was visibly angry and, and it was Brandon Washington, Thabiti Anabwile was actually the plenary speaker for, for that conference.

And, and so he was there and, and repeating the same rhetoric. And that's when I realized, okay, we got to get out of Acts 29.

This is not biblical. And it's just ridiculous. It's not just that it's not biblical. There are plenty of guys who don't like the

Bible, like guys with the daily wire and, you know, like, and, and they're like, you know, James Lindsay, right?

He's an atheist. And he's like, this is stupid because it's just not true. It is just not true that we live in the systematic racist, you know, you know, culture and country.

So we, we got out of that. And then I just decided to finally embrace my, my Baptist roots and just say, you know, we're just going to be a local autonomous church and, and we're going to be confessional.

I, I had been doing for so long and it was so taxing theology, what I would say, theology a la carte, right?

You come to a new text, right? Or you come to a new topic. And what, what, what do we think about this?

What does John MacArthur say? What, you know, what is R .C. Sproul say? What, you know, and you're, and you're debating it for hours with your elders and you're reading, you know, you assign homework, you know, where you're all reading different books and stuff like that.

And, and finally, I just was like, you know what, I'm just going to embrace the 1689.

There's a couple of pieces, like the Sabbath, I wasn't there yet, but I was like, well, maybe these guys just know something that I don't.

And that's, you know, and, and I know that there are faithful guys who are non -Sabbatarian, you know, but I just decided I want to be confessional because I thought there was a safety there and, and just having a, a tried and true historic confession of faith that was not anemic, but robust and covered the gambit of theological issues.

There were still some things, you know, like, like the 1689, the Westminster don't address head coverings, you know, or like, so there's, you still gotta, you know, put your thinking cap on and handle some tertiary and secondary issues.

You know, the 1689 doesn't have a prescribed eschatology, but, but it gave me just this awesome foundation.

And so I just was like, I'm going to become Sabbatarian. Plenty of guys have been set, you know, Thomas Watson, the

Puritans, you know, if it was good enough for the Puritans, it's good enough for me, they could have been wrong and I could be wrong, but man, if I can get there theologically and biblically, then, then, you know, then

I can embrace this confession of faith. And so finally, it was just slowly, slowly, slowly, but we became from Vineyard to Acts 29 to confessional, reformed

Baptist, independent, you know, autonomous church with a plurality of elders. And that was in 2019.

And the last piece of the story is, unfortunately, in 2019, my elder board began to fracture.

We began to disagree because a couple of the guys didn't want to be confessional.

We had five elders at the time. A couple of them didn't want to be confessional because of the Sabbath and maybe some other things, but primarily the

Sabbath. And then a couple of guys wanted to go past, significantly past the confession with some other things, like I said, like head coverings that the confession doesn't address, but they wanted to take hard stances, right?

So they wanted to, you know, discipline, maybe not first Sunday, but over time, actually discipline, church discipline over a wife and her husband, if she doesn't cover her head on the

Lord's day, or they embraced King James. Now, to be fair to their position, it's not technically

King James only -ism, but the TR Texas Receptus. So they would have been okay with the

Geneva Bible or even new translation if it comes from the received text rather than the critical text.

But they wanted to hold that as the position of the church. And the problem is when you get to that point, not even saying that position is necessarily wrong,

I don't hold that position. I would be more in line with James White than someone like Doug Wilson, who would be TR guy.

But the problem is when you get to that point, if you got a couple of elders who are convinced of that, then if I'm preaching from the

ESV, in their perspective, I'm not preaching from the, I'm not using the Bible, right? So for them, it's a big deal.

They would say the ESV contains, to a large degree, it contains most of the

Bible, but it is not the Bible, right? So it's not, it contains 95 % of the Bible, but it's not.

And when you have elders that disagree on something that pertinent, so we were beginning to fracture.

I had guys to my left, and then I had guys to my right, and then that was 2019. And then boom, 2020 hit.

And COVID just took our disagreement and just made it all the more apparent.

And the guy who was towards my left, he was convinced of the Imperial College model.

He was convinced that the most credible institutions in the world throughout all of human history is the

WHO and the CDC, you know, like poking holes, you know, and this is all the way back in April of 2020.

And I was already poking holes, even though we didn't have any definitive evidence.

I was poking holes by saying this, simply as a Calvinist, presuppositional Calvinist, I was saying, here's the deal.

Neutrality is a myth, and that applies to everything, including data. Because when it comes to data, you have researchers with a particular allegiance in their worldview, who are either for Christ or against them.

They're gathering the data. But then it's not just those who gathered the data. It's those who present the data, right?

So you have godless Yale, and then you have godless CNN, right? You have godless

Harvard and the godless New York Times. And so even with data, that doesn't mean we don't ever believe anything that a nonbeliever does, right?

God can use nonbelievers to ascertain things that are objectively true.

But I think that there should be a certain degree among Christians, presuppositional Christians, of holy suspicion.

And so I had this holy... I wasn't saying this is all bogus, but I was not hook, line, and sinker, drinking the

Kool -Aid like one of my elders was. And then very quickly, even before John MacArthur, we were like, we need to start meeting.

But we couldn't agree as elders. So we outvoted this one elder and began to gather again on the

Lord's Day, April 26th, the last Sunday in April of 2020, before MacArthur did, before he made it cool.

And we started physically gathering together as a church, but that elder didn't even come. He didn't even come to the service.

And then afterwards, he's wearing a mask and still very much just taking a very different position on Protestant resistance theory and Romans 13, and how we should actually exegete that.

And then also just a view of government. Quote was, one of his quotes was,

Gavin Newsom is doing a wonderful job. And that's in like May. And I was like, Gavin Newsom is doing a wonderful job?

Like what in the world? So it's just our differences, theologically, culturally, civil differences, our view of government just became so apparent that I realized, all right, we have a showdown at this point, and I can try to beat this guy.

And I wasn't convinced that I would. But I could try to beat this guy, and we have to take it to the congregation.

It would be a nightmare for the church and put our people through that. You know, elders fractured and divided and all this kind of stuff, or I can bow out, right?

So either I beat him and he leaves, or I leave. And the reason why I decided to leave, my family and I, we left at the end of 2020 to come to Texas, is because I realized, you know what?

I'm going to leave eventually, regardless of any of our disagreements as elders, because by that time,

I had come to the place where I just decided, I don't want to raise my family in California.

I want to move back to Texas. I want my kids to have grandma and grandpa near them, and both sides of my family.

My wife's parents are in Texas, my parents in Texas, my wife, both of her sisters and husbands and all the cousins.

And so I was like, I want to be near family. I want to be in Texas. I don't want to have a state tax.

I want to be able to build wealth in godly ways. I want to be able to do deep works that last for a long time.

And people, the pushback was, well, John MacArthur, he's in California, it can't be. And I always tell people this, the difference between a 30 -year -old dude, a 35 -year -old dude with young kids or no kids, determining where he's going to plant a church or where he's going to raise his family in MacArthur, that guy's determining, the young guy's determining where to start the race, and MacArthur's determining where to end the race.

So if we were actually going to do an equal one -to -one ratio, we would have to say that MacArthur, the decision we're talking about young guys making today about,

I'm going to raise my family in California, plant a church here, that would be the equivalent of MacArthur making that decision in 1969.

We forget that MacArthur has been 52 years. So in 1969, MacArthur deciding, I'm going to do a deep work in Southern California, in the

LA area, that was a different California. That was a different world. Over half a century ago.

And that's not to say that California doesn't need churches and that no one's called. There are certainly exceptions to the rule, but I decided that for my family and for myself, given multiple different providential details, like both sides of our family being in Texas and all these things,

I decided, you know what, I'm probably going to leave California within about five years.

So what good does it do for my church that I love, that I don't want to drag through the mud?

What good would it do for me to have a battle royale with one of my elders, one or two of my elders, win?

And I didn't even know if I would win, but let's say I do win and he loses and he has to leave.

And then I turn around to my church after all that a few years later and say, I think

I'm going to leave too. Whereas this guy, this is the guy who Gavin Newsom is doing a great job. This is a guy who loves

California. He literally told me, he was like, I think you probably should leave California because you disagree with the civil policies here.

And I don't. I was like, how do you not? I couldn't understand that or comprehend that, and I think he's probably changed his position now, but at least at the time he was like,

I love California and not just the geography, but I think they're doing a bang up job. I think they're doing a great job.

Ron DeSantis could really take some pointers from a great guy like Gavin Newsom. So I was like, all right,

California is obviously, that's your space. It's not my space. And if I'm going to leave it eventually, then it's really not fair to you or to the church for me to make you leave by fighting you and then me turn around and leave later too.

So it's like, you love California and I know this man, he loves the Lord and he loves the church, right?

We disagree strongly on some things, but he loves the people in the church and I know he loves

Jesus. And I think he's just ignorant on some things. But even that, I was like, the Lord will lead him.

He'll come out of it. And I think he has come out of some of those things. So I was like, this guy should stay. And if I'm ever going to leave,

I might as well leave now. So I'd say the general things with California and blah, blah, blah, that answered the what piece of what

I'm going to do. I'm going to leave and go to Texas. The disagreement with my elders answered the when piece, the timing.

And that made it, it was a catalyst that just expedited this reaction where I left in 2020 and now planting

Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas. So we moved at the end of 2020, three months of just visiting light -minded churches on the

Lord's day, worshiping with them. And in April, started meeting in my home. And in October of last year, we started meeting at Tejas Meat Supply, which is just a barbecue restaurant in Georgetown.

That's where we're currently still at. I'm preaching in a barbecue restaurant. I told my wife that. I was very excited. Beautiful. So all that being said, we moved.

And the cool thing is that seven other households moved with us. Your reasoning,

Joel, for wanting to leave California, we agree with. Some people strongly disagree. That's okay. And they strongly agreed to the point where they sold their homes.

And COVID, it just changed the whole map because a lot of these guys were able to take their jobs with them.

And then other guys maybe couldn't take their jobs, but there was a shortage because people weren't coming back to work.

So there was a ton of companies hiring. Austin has a ton. I mean, you've got Elon Musk building

Tesla. You've got all this opportunity. So seven households came with us. So we were able to just, in April, be doing church in the home.

After three months of visiting churches, start services in our home with including kids, about 25 people.

And so it was a church. And now we're about 85 people or so.

This has been part one of my conversation with Pastor Joel on church planting. We're going to get into more detail in part two, which is going to be released tomorrow.

So you're going to have to wait for that a few hours. But in the meantime, if you're interested, please go to Right Response Ministries, check out the conference tab, and we'd love to see you near Austin next month.