the Wilson family
People often say a picture is worth a thousand words. If you were to take one quick look at our picture, not knowing anything about our story, I can imagine what kind of words you would use to describe our family. Beautiful, sweet, maybe even Instagram perfect? However, if I could take you behind the scenes of our life leading up to this point, you might be surprised to find that beyond the picture perfect smiles, our journey reflects tremendous hurt from relationships and religion, depression, sorrow from infertility, insecurity in ministry, cancer, fear and anger. There have been many moments on our journey where we prayed and asked God to keep us from the pain we were walking through, but it turns out, every step was necessary and that pain was the very thing that pushed our little family to this place of complete and total surrender to God’s will. Our pain and our scars tell a story. A story God allows us to tell in hopes that others will one day hear it and discover that even when they’re walking through life’s darkest times, He is there. The English translation for the Greek word “NEO” is NEW and FRESH. We are excited to not only plant a church, but a life-giving church. You see, the local church should be the hope of the world. A place where anyone can come, truly just as they are, and discover what new thing God wants to do through them. A place where religion is diminished and relationship is developed. A place where there is evident joy and excitement in serving the Lord and the community. A place where God takes the broken and restores them into a new relationship with Him. I believe that because of our story, we are going to see those that have been broken, have given up hope, feel lost, have been hurt by relationships or religion, or who feel like they just don’t belong, come to know Christ and find community within our family. Even in the midst of our deepest pain, He was there. He was never using the pain to harm us. He was using the pain to prepare us for where He was planning on taking us. If we were to look at your life’s photo, what would it say about you? If God can take our broken mess and do a new thing through us, what new thing can He do through you?