What’s a “Gospel Gypsy”?

For those of you who don’t know me, you may totally not get the name of my blog.  For those of you who do, you still may not get it.  To me, it represents what my life has been about the last several years.  For the sake of the gospel, my husband and family and I have been traveling the country.  First, we left our home, family and friends in Arizona to move to Maryland for my husband to be prepared academically for life in ministry.  We then moved to the Philly area for a year where he interned as a pastor to gain more experience and to prepare for a church plant (that means simply going into an area that doesn’t have a local church and building a church from scratch).  Four years ago, we began a challenging yet rewarding adventure in church planting in the New York City area.  Starting with only 12 people, we grew in size and now have a vibrant, God-glorifying church – in the city!  God has been very good.

We love the people in New York and have enjoyed our time here.  But alas, God has chosen to relocate us again.  Due to a number of circumstances, including the passing of family members, the last couple of years have taken a toll on my husband’s health.  In wanting to care for the church and provide them with the best leadership possible, my husband is stepping down from leading and has transitioned the church to a younger man who is very capable and who will do an outstanding job.  Though we are sad to leave something we’ve poured our hearts and souls into (literally), we are grateful for this provision because it allows my husband the opportunity to de-stress a bit (NYC is not a stress-free place!) and for our family to experience a season of refreshing.  As many options were reviewed for my husband to transition to, his desire was to support a younger man.  We’ve found that in our upcoming move to Akron, OH. 

I can’t tell you how delighted we were to hear the news recently that our move to Akron was greenlighted.  Initially, when the possibility of Akron came into focus, we wondered if we would enjoy it or not.  Not that it’s about our enjoyment – we’ve long since realized that our citizenship is elsewhere and that we can be content anywhere God places us.  But because we were hoping to not just plug in and serve but rather to enjoy fruitful relationships within that church body, we feel our hopes have been exceeded more than we could have asked or imagined.  The fun and depth we’ve experienced in such a short time, and the knitting of hearts that has already occurred is something only God can accomplish (and is sometimes helped by having a “stalker” – kudos to you Laurie!).  It is something we are very much looking forward to.  We not only have faith for this move, but faith that God is doing something really big with this church in Akron and we are just a small part of it.

Aside from the exciting relational developments and how knit our hearts have already become to the people there, we have found it to be a beautiful place to live.  It is certainly a departure from the hustle and bustle of New York City but we like the change and are grateful for the slower pace it represents in this season of our lives. 

We are thrilled with the endless possibilities of friendship for our children.  This has been one of the casualties of our church plant, that they have had very few kids their ages to relate to.  Those they have had they count as dear friends for whom they are grateful and will never forget!  And I only say “casualty” in the sense that we’ve realized it is something that has been missing but thankfully hasn’t seemed a painful absence for them.  They’ve had every church member as friends for the last 4 years.  Not bad at all really.

So I could keep gushing, but I’ll stop for now.  Hopefully you understand the name of my blog more.  We have been gypsies for Christ in a sense for the last several years.  And though we may be going to a season more settled, I pray that the fire of gospel adventure burns even brighter.

Blessings till my next post,

Kathy