Six months ago my wife, myself and our two kids (6 & 4 at the time) and our weimaraner packed everything we owned into a Penske moving truck and left Murrieta, CA for Austin, TX. We moved here because I took a job as Internet Campus Pastor at Gateway Church and it has been a fun ride so far, and this is just the beginning.
New Town
Austin has been great. It really is an ideal town for my family and I. In fact, when I was doing assessments prior to coming across the Gateway Church opportunity with a couple church planting networks, the ideal target community for me was one that had a Whole Foods (liberal/highly educated communities) and Austin is where their corporate headquarters are located…sweet! One thing I can say is that I don’t think I could move to any town in Texas other than Austin…if you’ve been here, then you know.
New Church
Well, of course, that’s why we moved out here. It’s always a challenge to come on staff at a church, especially if you come in from out of town. Churches are living breathing things and getting in sync with all of the little peculiarities of a church can take some time. I can say that, in a good way, it feels like we have been here for years.
New Friends
For the last 6 years I have been planting churches in Murrieta and the bond you form with people that you have been in the trenches of church planting with are life-long. For anyone moving, it’s leaving friends that is the hardest part and we feel that all the time; Facebook, Twitter and blogs have helped. We have made some great friends already and we are well on our way to growing solid roots here in Austin.
The Little Things
I miss Mexican food. TexMex sucks.
I am jones’n big time to get on top of a mountain. Probably the single hardest thing for me…I have always had mountains right outside my window. Texas is pretty dang flat.
The arts and culture are incredible here in Austin, it’s as an eclectic of a city as you will find anywhere in the United States and we’re loving it.
The Next Six Months
We launched a new site this year on WordPress and we are starting to lay the framework for a more long-term and robust solution on Expression Engine 2.0. The Sunday morning portion of our Internet strategy goes live on January 17th and The Intersection is scheduled to go live February 21.
Watch ChurchCrunch for news about our live pre-launch party.
Tim Bednar says
Dude — I would not go with EE but you have to do Drupal. IMHO.
human3rror says
Both are good choices… But drupal is looking really attractive.
John
Vince says
I like drupal a lot. we have a couple of sites on it working in concert with Moodle.
The biggest reason we're going with EE is that users and admins can manage a lot of sites with one login/backend. Currently me and my volunteers are logging into a few dozens different back ends to manage all of our web real estate.
human3rror says
word!