The List, The Risk, The Story

A year ago from yesterday, I showed up to Garden City Church for the first time at a pre-launch core team meeting.

I had put my two weeks’ notice in at my job earlier that week, and all week could not understand how I had taken the risk of leaving a financially secure, stable job in Silicon Valley with no plan.

Clearly, though, God had one.

The meeting I showed up to was the one where Justin Buzzard, and his team of about 25 people, thought through “the list” of things they thought would need to be in place before their official launch in September; however, Justin was the only staff member, and thus had the job description: Do everything.

After the meeting, I invited myself to dinner with the Buzzard family, got really excited about what God was going to do through Garden City Church, and proceeded to send the following email* to Justin on Monday, May 23, 2011:

Hi,

I am thrilled to see how God is going to use Garden City Church. Let me share a bit of my excitement!

So I know I briefly told you about how I’d been thinking about leaving my job for a while and then finally put in notice for one of my jobs a week ago.  In light of that, I started really thinking and praying about what that meant for me in terms of vocation.

Yesterday, I saw needs at Garden City that I truly feel like God has been equipping me to fulfill… and I would LOVE to be able to chat with you about it.

Anyway, what I got so excited about was this: I won’t have a job, but I’m financially able to request being a volunteer staff member for Garden City.  I have an extensive background in admin/communications/office management, and I would be able to commit to being a part of Garden City’s first year (at least!) to create sustainable, repeatable administrative processes and help establish the logistics side of things.

I also love Jesus.

Please let me know if you would be interested to talk more about this.

Until then, I will be praying for you and your family, and for Garden City Church.

Karen

Immediately after sending the email, I second-guessed myself, thinking I could have ended up just freaking him out–he’d only met me a day ago.

But Justin ended up emailing me back, and after a series of meetings with Taylor (his wife) and him, I was given a sweet part-time position to serve at Garden City Church!

God gave me two great opportunities that week to take risks and trust him. Had I known the exact order of events and every detail of that story, it would have been far less exciting; there would be no story to tell.

*Parts of this email were edited/removed.