I took this picture on September 19, 2010, when I walked through the doors of the cafeteria at Capital City Public Charter School and felt like I was home.
It was the first public gathering of The District Church — 48 people and two kids showed up. It was a testament to the strange and marvelous way that God works; we’d grown a lot in just four months from a small group of about a dozen folks, none of whom had ever intentionally started a church before. Little did we know what was to come out of the faithfulness of Aaron and Amy Graham in responding to God’s call to plant a church in DC.
I found this video from 2011, where I share some of how God led me to be a part of this community I’ve called home for the last few years:
Yesterday, we celebrated our fifth anniversary. Five years of learning how to follow God better, how to love others better, how to be more like Jesus. Five years of doing life alongside new friends, old friends, dear friends, and family. Five years of seeing God’s faithfulness and God’s Spirit doing far more than we could ever have done or even imagined on our own.
Five years has seen a vast amount of change even in my own life:
- my job description has changed from Leadership Resident to Associate Pastor to East Side parish pastor to Pastor of Teaching and Formation;
- I’ve been ordained, baptized folks, and married folks;
- I met Carolyn, we got engaged, married, bought a house, got a dog (living into our Jeremiah 29 commission? Next up: plant a garden!).
And what I thought would be a year-long internship has become my home for as long as God has me here.
I’m so unbelievably grateful for God’s grace in my own life. And even more so in the lives of those I’ve been privileged to get to know over these last five years; whether they’ve been passing through DC or whether they’ve put down their roots here, countless folks have chosen to throw in their lot with the rest of us, desperately daring to believe God is still at work in our city.
Let me share with you our most recent (5th Anniversary Edition) Annual Report, another testament to God’s faithfulness and the power of God’s Spirit:
Here’s to all that’s gone before and all that’s still to come. Thanks be to God.