I found out about National Center for Family Integrated Churches through the Vision Forum Ministries. My wife followed the resources from Vision Forum. We homeschooled for many years. So she found out about a conference here in Wake Forest last year, last year this weekend. About August of 2007 it would be.

At the time I was pastor of a local church, a fairly large sized local church around here. We were running about 1100 people. And I have a real heart for family integrated ministry. I have had it for years. I started a family integrated Bible study, a Sunday school class, at the church I was pastoring.

That Sunday school class just grew like wildfire. I started with two or three families, grew to 80 people. Then we started another one. Both of those grew. So, man, I was thinking, God is just really blessing family integrated ministry, even here at this local church.

And so it was August of 2007, and my wife said, hey, you know, you ought to go to this family integrated church conference. And I said, absolutely not. I'm not going because I know if I go to that, then God's probably going to want me to start a church or something. We're just so comfortable here. We lived in the church parsonage for three years.

The family Bible study ministry was flourishing and life was just great. Everything was comfortable and good and sunshine lollipops and rainbows. So I said, I don't want to go to that conference. So I put it off and put it off. A couple months later, the Lord was just really stirring in my heart.

I said, okay, I'm going to go. I'm going to go, and my primary purpose in going is so that I can learn how to better equip the men in my Sunday school class to disciple their families. That was my primary objective. And so I registered for the event, came last year on this weekend, and I ran into some people that I wasn't expecting to run into. First of all was our singles pastor at the church.

So I said, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here, you're the singles pastor. This totally violates everything. So why would a singles pastor be here? What are you doing here?

And so then I ran into another man who had been in my family integrated Bible study, who I was specifically praying would start a new Sunday school class because we had grown to the point we wanted to grow again, starting a new class. I wanted to start a new one every year. I found Rob was here. I was like, Rob, what are you doing here? Youíre not supposed to be here.

I didnít know you were going to be here. Whatís going on?î I just knew God was up to something. We were all standing in the foyer out there right after we registered. I saw a few other families that I knew real well. I'm thinking, man, God's just really up to something.

This place is packed. There's something going on here. That night during the dinner hour, I had Rob and his family come over for dinner. And I shared with Rob my vision. I said, you know, Rob, I really want you to pray about starting this new Sunday school class and teaching this and leading the men in that class.

He turned it right back around on me and said, Pastor Ryan and I am praying that you will start a church. And I said, what? You can't pray that. I mean, look, we're in the church parsonage. We can't leave this.

I mean, we'd have to, you know what that means? That means I have to find a job. That means I have to move. That means my family, everything in my family life's gonna change. Everything's gonna change if that happens.

So I couldn't believe it. I'm like, wow, that's huge. So at that point, I knew that Rob probably wasn't going back to the church that I was pastoring at the time. And we came back the next day, we talked a little bit more and we said, look, we're just going to start praying. Let's just meet every week and start praying and see what the Lord will do.

And I tell you, that conference was amazing. Vody Baucom was speaking. Scott spoke. Several other very gifted speakers. Really, the conference did for me what it did was it connected the dots for me.

I had all these thoughts and ideas in my mind about the biblical model for family worship, the biblical mandate for household discipleship, and how does all this stuff come together or crystallize? I just had so many thoughts in my mind, but hearing those guys talk and take me through the Word of God, expositionally, line by line, verse by verse, with the text that supported the doctrines, made all the difference. And so I endeavored from that point to pray and to dig into God's Word, to find out, you know, is this really what the Lord wants for us? And so we did that. I went off and for the next month and a half did tremendous research, read tons of books, several that were provided through the Center for Family Integrated Churches through the book ministry there, wrote a paper on it, tried to crystallize all these ideas, and then knew that God was really leading us to this as we prayed, as I researched and studied the Word.

Over the next four months, Living Hope Community Church in Youngsville, North Carolina was born. And so Easter Sunday was my last Sunday at the local church here in Wake Forest, and Living Hope really effectively started the next Sunday after that. So we now have three pastors there, started with three families, now have 14 families. Just in seven months, the Lord is growing us in depth and in numbers and we just give Him all the praise and the glory for what He's done.