Just got done reading the following article.  If you’re single or don’t have kids or both, read it and then I have a few thoughts for you.

Most people without kids don’t realize the stress and time that is envolved with raising children.  I don’t know how many times I’ve talked to a single person and wanted to smack them when they say, “I’m so busy!  I just don’t have time to __________.”  Normally their excuse is that they are working a part-time job and taking the bare minimum of credit hours at school.  Then for some reason they feel they have the right to look down on their married friends who only have a job and a kid to raise.

The reality that this article presents is that raising children (especially a stay at home mom) is probably one of the hardest “jobs” out there.  It is a strenuous joy that you can never truly understand until you get to undertake it yourself.

So here is my challenge.  Instead of living in your bubble, step back and evaluate how you could serve and sacrifice for your friends who have kids.  When the next great movie comes out, watch your friends kids so they can see it instead of seeing it yourself (it’s called sacrifice).  Show up randomly and do some household work (cleaning, dishes, dusting, laundry, etc.).  Take their kids out and let them have a quiet night at home.  Hang out with mom and give her some adult conversation during the day.

I can tell you from experience, these are some of the greatest blessing you can give to parents.

I was sitting in my office and thought I would share this quick thought.  A few months ago I had the opportunity to hang out with a close friend.  At one time he was a pastor for a church and had a large library for preparing his sermons every week.  He is now working a “regular” job and doesn’t see himself being a pastor ever again.

I remember coveting after my friend’s library.  I remember going into his office and thinking to myself, “I want a library like this some day.”  I remember just staring at his books and taking note of his collection.  I even remember the distinct smell his office had from all the books and wanting my office to have that same smell.

When he heard that I was going through Re:Train, he wanted to help me with my expenses, but due to life circumstances he wasn’t able to. While I was visiting with him, he took me into his garage where he had his library stored.  He humbly pointed out the boxes and told me to take whatever I wanted/needed.  I left his house with more than 500 theology, commentary, history, cultural analysis, and linguistic books.  The total cost has to be over $3000 easily.

While he couldn’t help me pay for my flights to Seattle or the cost of my laptop, what this friend did in my mind was priceless.  From his gift, I’ve been able to do all the research for my papers.  I’ve been able to loan/give books out to friends.  My library has more than doubled.  All these things are great, but the greatest gift this friend gave me was a lesson in generosity.  I had to ask myself if I would be willing to do the same thing…and I don’t know if I could have.

This makes me ask you the question:  What do you have that you don’t need (or do need) that you need to give to someone else to bless them?  Do you have a treasure that you need to pass on to progress the kingdom for Jesus?

As you saw from my post on Monday, I am in the begining stages of planting a church in Uptown Albuquerque, NM.  Over the past few years I have made some good friends who are also planning on planting churches in Albuquerque and across the U.S.  I thought I would take the next few days to introduce you to these guys so you can pray for them and follow them as they are on their own respective journeys.

Brad Ruggles

Brad Ruggles and I met through the interwebs a little over a year ago through a certain Christian beer blog.  Although I’ve never met Brad in person, I consider him a good friend.  He is one of the top three creative people I know (yeah I number them…I have a points system and everything), has a wonderful wife, and some adorable daughters.

Brad left his job, started doing freelance design, moved 120 miles (through a 2300 mile journey) from Fort Wayne to Carmel, IN, set roots, and is in the beginning stages of planting a church.  He has an amazingly compassionate heart.  I can’t wait to see how God uses him in Carmel.

If you would like to learn more about Brad and his church plant you can:

• Follow his Blog
• Friend him on Facebook
• Follow him on Twitter
• Add him to your LinkedIn network
• Subscribe to his channel on YouTube
• Follow him on YouVersion
• Add him as a contact on Vimeo
• Check him out on Flickr
• Join his ROOV Community
• Find him on Smaller Indiana

As you saw from my post on Monday, I am in the begining stages of planting a church in Uptown Albuquerque, NM.  Over the past few years I have made some good friends who are also planning on planting churches in Albuquerque and across the U.S.  I thought I would take the next few days to introduce you to these guys so you can pray for them and follow them as they are on their own respective journeys.

Clayton Bell

Clayton Bell and I met through the interwebs a little over a year ago through a certain Christian beer blog.  Although I’ve never met Clayton in person, I consider him a good friend.  Through reading his blog and a few online chats, I know that he is a wonder husband and loving father.

About four years ago, Clayton felt the call to plant a church.  Like me, about a year ago he felt that God was calling him off the bench to start his church plant.  This last Sunday, He left his job at Every Nation, Tallahassee, where he served as Family Pastor for the past year and is moving to the Tampa/Trinity area of Florida to start Trinity New Life Church.

If you live in in the Florida area and want to join Clayton on God’s mission to reach the lost of Tampa, you can email him at info@trinitynewlife.com for more information.

Please be in prayer for Clayton, his wife, and daughter as they follow God on this wonderful journey.

I’m going to come out and say this…I have a man crush on Moses.  Of all the men in the Bible, I have always found myself drawn to Moses.  I truly think this is a God thing.  Because of all the men in the Bible, I relate to Moses the most.

We’re both miracle babies (my mom wasn’t suppose to physically be able to have children).  We’re both overly ambitious (although I haven’t killed anybody…yet).  We’re not the “bestest” of speakers.  God has used trials, tribulations, and time to prepare us for our callings.  Most importantly, I feel like God has given me the same clarification on my calling that He gave Moses.

In Exodus 3, God tells Moses that He is going to use him to deliver His people out of Egypt.  Moses’ response is the same as any person who has a great calling put before them,  “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”   Moses is scared, perplexed, shaken and lacking confidence.  How could a screwed up man like him complete such a large task after he had failed so many years before?  He has been hiding in the desert for 40 years, and he is looking to God for a sign to give him confidence in his calling.

God’s response is classic.  He doesn’t give him some pep talk about how awesome Moses is and how God has been preparing him 40 years for this very moment.  Instead God tells him, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

This one verse has been the summation of my entire calling.  October 27 of this last year marked the 10 year anniversary of God calling me to vocational ministry.  I have known since then that God is calling me to serve Him as my full-time job.  And as I have sought Him for clarification of the years, His sign has always been the same.  It’s not a pillar of smoke or fire, or a damp towel on my front porch, or a star in the east.  Instead God has quietly told me He will be with me, and I’ll know I’ve fulfilled my calling when I look back and see that I’ve fulfilled my calling.

For this reason, I have never really looked forward to try and figure out what God wants me to do.  Instead I’ve looked backwards to see what Jesus has done in my life to determine where He wants me to go next.

By looking at the last 10 years of my life, I can see that Jesus has been moving me towards pinnacle moment in my life.  In college, I went on a mission trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for two-and-a-half months.  My main point of contact there was the head of the Purpose Driven Church Planting movement in Rio.  Him and others spoke into my life saying they saw in me great potential to plant churches in my future.  I filed the information deep in the recesses of my brain and went on with my life.

I came back to Eastern New Mexico University, started a interdenominational Bible study with my best friend, married the most beautiful woman in the world, graduated, and got a job as a youth minister in a small town in the panhandle of Texas.  It was during my time as a youth minister that God stirred the memories of Brazil in my head and moved in my heart.

I don’t remember the day or the time, but I remember the intense emotions and distinct clarity.  I knew that God wanted me to plant a church.  So I did what any young ambitious newly married kid does only a year-and-a-half out of college, I turned in my two week notice and made plans to move to Portland, OR (motivated by the book Blue Like Jazz).

When reality snapped to, we figured out that we had no jobs, no place to live, and no friends in Portland.  Therefore we did what every young ambitious church planter does, we packed up all our stuff and temporarily moved into my mother-in-law’s house in Albuquerque, NM.  It was going to be our half-way point on the way to Portland

We tried our best to find a way to get to Portland, but God kept shutting the doors.  And the longer that we stayed in Albuquerque, the more Jesus opened my eyes to the beauty of this city and broke my heart with the sin of its people.  In the quiet of our hearts, God showed us that He had other men for Portland, but He wanted us to stay here in Albuquerque.

As Shannon and I began to settle into Albuquerque, getting jobs and a home of our own, we started looking for a church that we call home while we prepared to plant.  We scoured hundreds of church websites and visited numerous in person.  We began to get so discouraged by what we found.  And as time went on, we began to see why God wanted us to plant a church in Albuquerque.

But like a diamond in the rough, we came across a small church that was meeting in a run down theater on Central Ave, City on a Hill (now Mars Hill Church Albuquerque). The church was a place of love, grace, and mercy as you would see the rich rub elbows with homeless and the messed up mingle with the self-righteous.  The pastor, Dave Bruskas, had planted the church only a few years earlier and had a heart to help young men plant churches in Albuquerque.  He had a deep love for the city and an even deeper love for Jesus.  His passion was infectious (and still is to this day).

It was during this time that a few things happened.  First, I felt like God told me to wait.  I had some growing up to do, and like the disciples, I needed to go up to my room and wait for the Holy Spirit to come.  Second, I learned about Acts 29, Mars Hill, and Mark Driscoll.  Through them I learned what it means to be a church planter and more importantly a husband and father.  Third, I got a job with UPS doing sales.  By working for UPS, I have traveled all over Albuquerque (and half the state of NM).  I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of this city.

But one area has always stood out to me as I make my daily visits to customers.  Uptown has to be one of the more unique areas of Albuquerque.  If Nob Hill is the cultural hub of  Albuquerque, I would say that Uptown is the socio-economic center. You have the wealthy and affluent who come to work in the high rises and play at Q Mall, but there are also the gang-bangers who come from the War Zone to roam the Coronado Mall.  You won’t find another place in Albquerque where more diverse group of people live, work, and play.  It has captured my heart (but more on this later).

The last thing that happened was I listened to a podcast that would change my thoughts on church planting for the rest of my life.  Up until this point I had planned on flying solo.  I was going to gather a small group of people and start our own church named after a weird latin term or vague Harry Potter incantation.  But God had other plans. As I listened to Doug Swagerty from Harbor Church in San Diego talk about why and how they do multi-site churches, God made it clear to me that this was His plan for me.

The organization, efficiency, and team-work that went into planting a campus as opposed to a new church spoke to the core of who God made me as a person.  It was then that I had determined that God didn’t want me to plant a church, but to plant another campus for City on a Hill in the Uptown area.  He wanted me to carry the vision and mission to another part of our beautiful city.

This brings us to this moment in time.  For the past three years, I feel like have been metaphorically sitting on the bench waiting for God to call me into the game.  Like Moses wandered in the dessert shepherding sheep for 40 years, God has been having me wander in the dessert waiting for His timing.  But as City on a Hill has made the transition to becoming Mars Hill Church Albuquerque, I feel like God has been calling my number.  The Holy Spirit has began to move fresh my heart, and I hear God saying, “Qualls…get in the game.”  I feel like God is calling me to be on mission with Jesus in Albuquerque as He reaches our city to impact a region to influence the world.

Working along side Dave Bruskas, we are looking to start a Mars Hill Church campus in the Albuquerque Uptown area.  Through Mars Hill’s campus model we hope to reach hundreds of thousands of people through preaching the gospel, planting Acts 29 Churches, and hosting Resurgence and Acts 29 events.

In preparation for this, I will be going to Re:Train starting on August 16th of this year.  Re:Train is a one year training center that trains “missional leaders to live for Jesus and lead their churches to effectively reach their cultures with the gospel by staying culturally accessible and biblically faithful.”  I see God using this training as a final step to prepare me for the mission put before me.

Looking back on the past ten years of my life, I can see how Jesus has been leading to this moment.  Each trial and tribulation has been there to bring me to this point in time.  He has led me here, and now He is telling me once again, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”  I don’t know exactly what the next few years entail.   But I know this, years from know there will be a Mars Hill Church in Uptown Albuquerque, and we will worship and serve our Lord Jesus on that mountain.

Here’s the deal though, I know I can’t do this alone.  And I know that I’m not the only person that God has called to do this.  I need all the help I can get.  More importantly, I need your help.  I completely believe in the sovereignty of God.  So if you have gotten through the 1841 words of this post to this point, I believe that God has a part for you in this.  I ultimately don’t know what that is for you (that’s between you and God), but I have a few suggestions.

1. Pray

I have seen God move in amazing ways through prayer.  I know that God chooses to work through the prayers of His people.  Therefore, I desperately ask for your prayers as I move forward with this endeavor.  Pray for me as I go through Re:Train.  Pray for God to bring laborers.  Pray for my family.  Pray for provision (finances, locations, volunteers, ect.).  Pray for a pouring out of the Holy Spirit in Albuquerque.

2. Join

Join in on the mission in Albuquerque.  As we get closer towards starting this, I will be getting out more information. For now this would simply mean joining the Mars Hill Church campus in Albuquerque.  Join a community group and start serving.  If you are interested in joining, email me, and we can start a conversation.

3. Give

Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything. – Ecclesiastes 10:19

Unfortunately, it is going to take money to do this.  Fortunately, I know that God will provide.  He will use His people (you) to provide for the tasks that are ahead.  The biggest financial burden at the moment is Re:Train.  I need to raise $2,000 in the next five weeks.  This will pay for my first month of training, travel, lodging, and a basic laptop.  Please pray if God would have you support this task financially.  If you feel moved by God, you can use the ChipIn Widget below or email me and I will send you my mailing address.

I am excited to see what God is going to do in the next few years.  I look forward to sharing with you what God is doing as we go through this journey together.

So I’ve been getting some questions here lately about RSS and Twitter. So I thought about trying to explain them…but I found these videos which do a much better job. Check them out and then start following me on twitter (twitter.com/gregqualls).

Or about the baby’s sex.

So we ended up getting in on Saturday to have Shannon’s ultrasound instead of waiting until the 25th. Shannon and I were so excited because we knew that the baby was now big enough to find out the sex (see my previous baby post to find out my feelings about waiting to find out). So we got up early on Saturday and went to Shannon’s appointment.

The whole morning I was anxious knowing that I was about to find out the big news. The lady that did the procedure was really nice (you got to think that is pretty fun part of her job…getting to tell people what they are going to have). The baby on the other hand wasn’t being very cooperative. They kept moving around and had their legs crossed almost the whole time. The lady doing the procedure was having to do some ultrasound gymnastics just to get the pictures that she needed.

She didn’t get a really clear view, but with the shots that she did get, she was 75% sure that we are having a bouncing baby boy (emphasize the bouncing part…that kid was really moving around a lot). There is a small chance that it could end up being a girl…but I saw something purturding in the pictures that she took. We are both excited and really surprised. Shannon was really set on the fact that she thought we were having a girl. I think she is a little depressed, but we will love him just the same. And there is always a chance for more.

We have already picked out the name at the moment and we are calling him Asa Jackson Qualls. Asa is one of my favorite Bible people, and Shannon really liked the name Jackson to go with it. Things are really starting to sink in now. The nicest thing is that we can stop saying “him or her.” It’s going to be nice to just say “him” from here on out.

If you haven’t noticed, I made some changes to my website. To the naked eye it might look like I just changed the look of the website around a little bit. But I actually gutted it and started from scratch. The last two days have been pretty crazy.

This all started a few weeks ago when I was talking to my friend Dave Ortega about my blog. You see I had been messing around with my blog for a little over a year now. Dave encouraged me to really take it seriously. So I decided that I would (hence all the posts over the past few weeks). The only problem was that the back end software (Joomla) I was using for the site previously wasn’t made to do blogging (it did the job…but it wasn’t designed for it).So I decided it was time for a change. So I did some research, and switched to WordPress. The past two days I have been spending a fair amount of time uninstalling the old software, installing WordPress, converting the databases of posts, and editing the posts. So far I have been really happy.

There were some small glitches in the process though. I lost all my old comments (there weren’t that many so I’m not put out that much) and I lost some of my posts. If you notice that there is a post that is missing that you really liked, let me know and I will try to recover it for you. There are a few (my BTotD’s) that I’m going to recreate in the upcoming weeks, and I can add your’s to the list. Just leave me a comment.There are also some new features to this site which I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think. I know so far I’m falling in love with my new site.Come back tomorrow…because we have some big news about the baby….yeah it’s what you think.

I must say that last night was a night to remember. Our church recently started gathering on Wednesday nights for something we are calling S.O.M.A. It’s been really cool. We’ve been learning about loving people and building relationships.

So I’m sitting in our group discussion when my phone begins to vibrate in my pocket. Wondering who might be calling me on a Wednesday night, I pulled it out to check the caller id. To my joy, I had received a text message from my wife. I think somewhere in the Bible it says that it’s a sin to read a text message during a church group Bible study, but I did anyways. So I flipped open my phone to read,

“I am going to the lesbian bar call me when you are done”.

Many thoughts and feelings went through me at that moment: First I laughed a little. Then I thought to myself “the” lesbian bar…I thought there would be more. Does she want me to pick her up? Should I leave and call her now? I need to show this to Keith and Sandra (some friends in the group). Should I text her back? A lesbian bar? Is that Pulse or is that a gay bar?

But the main thing that had happened, was I had this immense sense of pride come over me. While we were in this classroom talking about loving people and building relationships, my wife was out there doing it. You see my wife works with a wonderful lady who is a lesbian (we’ll call here Lisa). Unfortunately Lisa’s experience with Christians in the past has not been that good.Last night everyone from my wife’s job went out to eat together. Afterwards they decided they were going to the lesbian bar to watch Lisa sing karaoke.

Now the typical response that Lisa might have received from a Christian would have been two fold. One it’s a bar…so no. Two it’s a lesbian bar…so hell no (although they probable would have said heck no or something like that). But my wonderful wife’s response was, “Really, I can come!” (I love my wife). I don’t know if Lisa will ever become a follower of Christ, but I do know that she will know what it is to be loved by a Christian. In the words of my wife when asked by another one of the lesbian ladies there:

“Aren’t you going to try to save me?”

“I don’t do that.”

I think we all need to step back and realize that we don’t save people…Jesus does. It’s just our job to love them. Where are the places that you wouldn’t go? How long have you been talking about loving people and yet you still don’t do it with your actions? Who is in your life right now that you are trying to save…when you need to be loving and let Jesus to the saving?

p.s. I was really bummed that I didn’t get to go…but they said I can go next time.