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Acts 29 Amarillo, calling, David Ritchie Amarillo, david ritchie church, north david ritchie, trinity fellowship, trinity fellowship david ritchie, West Amarillo Christian Church
Every story has a beginning. For this blog, I will talk about the last several years of my life that led up to the adventure of this year.
After being radically saved in college, I felt like the Lord was leading me to lay down my education for a season and to go work at my then church, Trinity Fellowship of Amarillo. For years, I had placed my identity in who I was in the realm of Academia. I felt like God was asking me to draw close to him for a season let my identity be rooted in him. So I left behind full-ride scholarships and was hired on staff for the only position that was available at the time—an administrative assistant whose primary job was to write the weekly bulletin. It was a very humbling experience, but working at a church brought out gifts in me that I never knew I had: administration, leadership, and communication.
Within ten months of working at Trinity, I was promoted to our church’s senior staff, and I began to oversee roughly a third of the staff of this several thousand-member mega church. I oversaw our media department, the administration of our weekend services, membership assimilation, missions, discipleship, and pastoral care. This was quite a burden for a twenty-one-year-old who had been a Christian less than two years. But nevertheless God provided for me in my weakness, and my areas of ministry flourished. For whatever reason, I simply understood how church worked, and I was able to do my job well.
Then, in late 2006, God began to speak to the leadership of Trinity Fellowship and directed them to build a ministry to reach college students and young adults. I was reassigned to help build this new ministry, which would be named North. Technically this was a demotion in the organization, but it put me into the ministry side of the church, rather than managerial, support side. I accepted the new assignment.
Originally, I served as the “number two” role of this ministry. But even in the early days of the ministry, I began to emerge as a visionary leader. I began to preach a little, and after my pastor at the time (Marty Rowley) heard me preach, he promoted me to be the leader and main preacher of this ministry to help me develop into my calling. When he had promoted me, I had only spoken in public five times in my entire life, North had only existed five months, and I had absolutely no training in theology or in practical ministry other than my own personal study. Now I was supposed to lead and pastor roughly a little more than one hundred of my peers. It was the biggest challenge I had ever faced, and thankfully, God that saw it was necessary to give me a helpmate at this time.
During this season, I had also begun a relationship with a woman from Ohio named Kate. She was working as a children’s and youth minister for a church plant. We honestly shared our hearts with one another over the period of several months. Our dating relationship consisted almost completely of talking on over the phone, so we developed great communication early on. We couldn’t hide from each other in miniature golf games or movies or any other activity. All we had was to honest conversation, in which we wanted to discern whether or not we called to marry one another. Quickly, Kate and I came to believe that we were made for each other, and with the full agreement of our families, close Christian friends, and spiritual leadership, we decided to spend the rest of our lives with each other. We were married on July 3, 2008, and she is still the love of my life, my best friend, and helpmate in ministry.
In this manner, I was released into pastoral ministry, and it was the first time in my life that I felt like I was doing what God had created me to do. I loved preaching. I loved leading. I loved seeking the Lord for vision and him faithfully give it to me. I loved raising up, training, and empowering new leaders and then releasing them to minister. I had to learn a lot of hard lessons by experience, and honestly, there were many things I was terrible at doing (and I’m not out of the woods yet!). In North, God gave me a team of amazing leaders who were willing to sacrifice their time, money, and talents to reach their generation with the gospel. Over the course four years, my team and I refined our worship experience, created community groups, organized local outreach events, led international mission trips, and best of all saw people come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. The same Gospel that saved me in my college dorm room was now saving others through the ministry of North. It was a dream come true, and I still consider the ministry of North to be one of the greatest blessings of my life.
As I continued to grow in ministry, I had come to firmly believe that one day God would call me to lead a congregation of people. More specifically, I had a strong sense that this call would culminate in either planting a church (beginning a new church from scratch) or replanting a church (revitalizing an existing church that needed radical new leadership).
For years, I assumed that this call would eventually lead me to a new city. I felt this way in part because Amarillo already had many churches. However, in the beginning of 2011 God began to burden my heart for my city. While Amarillo has many great churches, I began to realize that Amarillo did not have a church like the one that was in my heart: a church that would preach the gospel, focus on Christian community, plant churches, and seek to missionally engage and transform the culture of the city. I began to be confronted with the reality of hurting people who I knew I would never be able to reach with my college ministry and that would likely never brave the threshold of existing churches within the city. I began to sense that God had raised me up and given me unique experiences and training in ministry for a reason. I began to sense that God was calling me to pioneer a church in Amarillo.
In the late Spring of 2011, after diligently praying and having this calling confirmed in wise counsel, I decided it was time to approach my leadership at Trinity Fellowship with the hopes that they would release me in good will. This was perhaps the scariest step of faith I had ever taken, since I was putting my family’s provision on the line. Not to mention, Kate and I had just recently discovered that we were pregnant with our first child. But we had counted the cost. And, after receiving wise counsel from trusted friends, family, and fellow pastors, both Kate and I agreed that we were willing to sacrifice the comfort of our current ministry, salary, and lifestyle to passionately, obediently, and faithfully pursue the call that God had placed on our lives.
After a series of meetings with several elders, my vision was presented to the full eldership in early August. Their response was breathtaking. They had agreed that I had served Trinity faithfully and with a pure heart. They had come to trust my motives, and believe that I would never do anything to be divisive, rebellious, or reactionary. They believed that I had truly heard the call of God, and agreed that I was appropriately gifted to lead a church. And they agreed to release me in good will, as well as allow Kate and I could to have our child on Trinity’s medical insurance. Trinity is not my sending or supporting church, nor will our new church have any official connection to TFAC. However, Trinity’s eldership was able to release me on good terms—and in the Bible belt, this is rare miracle.
I am profoundly grateful for my experiences and relationships at Trinity Fellowship. I feel like God used the last seven years of my life to form into the man and the minster I am today.
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In the blogs to come, I will address how we connected in relationship to our supporting church, how the Lord gave us team of people with which to lead this new vision, and how we were connected with the wonderful people of West Amarillo Christian Church.
(The following video was filmed at the ministry of North as I explained my call and transition.)
David Ritchie’s Transition from Joseph Elliott Schlabs on Vimeo.