Families that Soar is a collaborative network of church pastors and community leaders dedicated to strengthening, encouraging, and restoring families in the Temecula/Murrieta Valley.
A message from FTS Partner, Mike Johnson
Three and a half years ago, I had a couple of those sleepless nights, well, not exactly sleepless. You know – the nights where you’re exhausted and you crash and fall asleep instantly, but something in your head wakes you up and then you can’t go back to sleep to save your life… well, they were those sort of nights.
At the time I was teaching Bible and heading up student ministries at Linfield, and that year I had done some level of ministry with Monty Sharp, Shawn Nelson, Mike Naggar, Randy Wikert and Scott Treadway. On these particular nights of sleep depravation, I couldn’t get their names and faces and ministries out of my head.
As I tossed and turned, I kept thinking and praying about the ministry each one of these guys had within their own sphere of influence. It occurred to me that maybe God could do more if we came together than if we remained working for His kingdom separately.
So, I called them all up and invited them to breakfast – AND THEY CAME. As we began to share our passions, our recent ministry experiences, and our personal trials and triumphs, a few commonalities began to immerge.
First, we all felt a common bond in our hearts for our region. We love where we live. We also sensed that our cities are at a crossroads. All the good that God has blessed us with could not be taken for granted, and that in fact, the very fabric and foundation of our community was being threatened as we spoke.
The bedrock of any community, as we discussed further, is the family and the local churches – God’s Family. This thought began to unify all of our discussions: As the family goes, so goes our churches – and so goes the community.
We continued to meet every month from October 2007 through May of 2008 and it didn’t take long for us to realize that what we were discussing was much bigger than ourselves. It was not some kind of program, or crusade, campaign or something that could be packaged and sold door to door.
If the health of our community was dependent upon the health of families and church families, then we needed to open the sphere of our discussion to other leaders, especially pastors.
In the summer of 2008, the circle grew larger with the addition of 10 lead pastors. The health of our families and the shared sense of mission to our region continued to remain central to our discussions, but there was still something missing.
In May of 2009, 25 more churches joined the conversation. All 40 of us continued to discuss ways to partner together to strengthen families in our region.
It is our sincere desire to partner together as the Church in our region. My prayer, as our time together unfolds, is that you will sense from the Lord how your family can benefit from The Church united, in this network of pastors and community leaders.