Throughout the summer I'm going to be posting stories from other church planting wives. Please email me your story at j_antonucci@hotmail.com. Today's post is from Lindsay Kuhl.1. When and where will you be starting your church?
The plan is for Mosaic to launch on September 14, 2008 at the Muvico Theater in the Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Maryland…about 20 miles northeast of D.C. and 10 miles southwest of Baltimore.
2. Where at you at in the church planting process?
We moved here on January 12 of this year and have been getting settled, trying to get used to the area and meet as many people as possible. So, according to all of the church-planting terms we are in the middle of “pre-launch”.
3. Give us some history about you, your past, family set up, etc.
My name is Lindsay Kuhl, and I’m married to Carl with a 1 year old (July 16) little girl named Reagan. I’m also 9 weeks pregnant. I grew up in a Christian home and met Carl at Bible College in Cincinnati. We dated for about 9 months in college, but because of my stupidity, we broke up for 2 years. During that time, I learned a lot about humility and my relationship with Christ became mine and not just my parents’.
While Carl was in Virginia Beach doing is internship at Forefront (this is how I know Jen), we got back together and quickly got engaged and married. We got married in June of 2003, and in August, we moved to Virginia Beach where Carl became full time at Forefront as the Creative Arts Director. We met some great people while we were in VA Beach and it was great for our marriage. It was also good for me to be a part of Forefront because I grew up in a more traditional environment. Being a part of Forefront helped me be more compassionate for the lost and more forgiving, less judgmental of the saved.
In the summer of 2005, Carl was contacted by his home church in Louisville, KY, Southeast Christian Church, to come on staff for a year (give or take a few months) as the Resident Church Planter. Southeast had been involved in church planting before, but only financially, and they felt like it was time for them to become more “hands on” in the church planting world. The deal was that Carl would be on staff at Southeast as a resident, to learn the ins and outs of church leadership, programming, and more, and when his residency was up, Southeast would send him out to plant a church with not only financial support, but with a lot of experience and leaders behind him.
Carl’s dream has been to lead a church through preaching for a long time and God just happened to open this door for us to plant. There was a long process of deciding where to plant, but basically, Southeast wanted us to focus on the northeast part of the country because of the fact that a lot of the stats on the un-churched change starting from D.C. and going north. So, we looked at several places north of D.C. from Baltimore all they way up to Providence and Boston, and settled on Baltimore.
Our time in Louisville was great. We loved every second of it. Most of Carl’s family is there and my family is all in Cincinnati, so we were close to “home” when Reagan was born, and Carl learned so much being at Southeast. Now, we’re here, in the thick of it…trying to hold on for our lives!
4. What are some of the good and bad from your experience...lessons learned, etc.?
Since we are so new at this, I don’t have a lot of “good, bad and ugly” yet so to speak. I guess some of the good is also some of the bad…since we knew no one when we moved, we have had to spend a lot of time together…this can be good, but it can be bad as well. Especially for me, I think, because I love girlfriends, and there are some things I love talking about to girls that Carl just doesn’t get…as much as he tries, he just doesn’t. It’s really strengthened my faith to be here because at times, it gets really lonely and I have to constantly remind myself that God is all I need.
5. What's one piece of advice that you think every church planting wife needs to hear?
The one piece of advice I have comes in the form of a question…”Are you a drip?”
About 2 weeks before we moved here, our marriage started to struggle more than it ever had before…I didn’t really notice it until about a week after we moved here and we had unpacked all of the boxes, his family had left to go back to Louisville (his mom and brother helped us move) and it was just us, all by ourselves. We were arguing more than we’d ever argued…about nothing important, of course and we were just becoming distant.
I’m in the habit of reading a Proverb every day, along with whatever else I’m reading in the Bible, and of course, one day when it was really bad, I got to Proverbs 27:15. It says, “A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day.” You know sometimes when you don’t turn the faucet off all the way and there is this drip, drip, drip, drip, in the sink? Maybe the drip is subtle, or maybe it’s really annoying because of what it’s hitting...water in a dish, the bottom of the sink…no matter what, it’s really annoying.
When I read that verse, I realized, that’s what I had been. I was being really annoying. I was nit-picking, whining, short…all things I didn’t want to be. After really reflecting on this verse, I realized that the majority of our problems were because of me. Things didn’t get perfect overnight, but once I acknowledged that I was a “drip” and confessed this to God, my spirit and attitude toward Carl began to change and our relationship has been getting better ever since. It’s a good question to ask yourself…”are you a drip?” If so, don’t be…turn the faucet off all the way!
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