Woodfins in Wyoming

Hello Everyone, I am sorry it has been so long since we have updated you. We have had so much going on with the holidays, Legacy, and our family, it has been difficult to get online and explain every detail of what has been going on the last few months.

So as many of you know we attended the NAMB Assessment Retreat back in October. The results of this retreat would determine how we move forward in our call to church plant and move to Wyoming.

At the Assessment we are assessed on 9 characteristic of an effective church planter. Calling, emotional & spiritual health, family dynamic, leadership, communication, missional engagement, disciple making, social skills, and vision. After this, the assessors put us on one of three categorize. Ready, Development Needed, or Redirect.

Ready- The candidate is READY to enter into training and plant in the next 6 to 18 months. There may be a few minor growth recommendations that the candidate is expected to address with the accountability of their Sending Church and/or Network Representative.

Development needed– The candidate needs to pause in the process of church planting in order to DEVELOP in specific competencies as designated by the growth plan section of this Final Assessment Report. After completion of the growth plan and the timeline provided by the assessment team has been met, the candidate may apply for reassessment.

Redirect- The assessment team recommends that the candidate REDIRECT his focus away from churchplanting to address significant obstacles as designated by the growth plan section of this FinalAssessment Report. After completion of the growth plan and the timeline provided by theassessment team has been met, the candidate may apply to attend another Send NetworkAssessment Retreat.

They determined that we were development needed, in the areas of leadership, communication, and missional engagement. Frankly, we knew that these were our weakest areas. They didn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know and had planned to improve. We are very encouraged by the fact that they see the same short comings that we were concerned about when starting this process. It is comforting to know that NAMB is prepared to help us address these areas where we need growth, so that we can step into the call that God has put on our life and be successful in that call.

The piece of this assessment that hit hard was that they want us to work on development for the next 18 months before they reassess us. And it is not recommended to move onto your mission field before reassessment. Which delays our move to Pinedale a year.

We were not ready for that. It hurts. It hurts a lot because we were emotional and spiritually (working on physically) prepared to move to Pinedale in May 2023 and begin the church plant.

After receiving the assessment results, we took a few weeks to process and pray through what this meant for us and what our options were. We conferred with our Pastor, Lane Collins, and Church Planting Strategist, Don Waylen, as to how and where we get this development over the next 18 months.

During that time God opened the door to so a yearlong internship with Outfitter Church. Outfitter Church in located in Bar Nun, WY near the Casper area. The planter there is Tyler Martin, who incidentally, was the very first Wyoming Church planter that we meet on our Vision trip. We have stayed in contact with him through this whole process as he has been praying for us and our call, and we are very excited to get to work with him in expanding the kingdom in Bar Nun, WY.

We have seen God at work in so many ways through this, even though we were very disappointed at first to hear that the assessors didn’t think we were ready to plant and that we would need to wait. I look forward to sharing more of the details in my next post. Laying out the details of us raising funds, moving to Wyoming, doing the internship, and how we are going to grow and prepare for planting in Pinedale.