Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - John 12:24-25

One night in September, 2007, as the sun was setting over Los Angeles, California, I sat across the table from my landlord / best friend / mentor / and boss Jeff Borkoski in his Valen cia home. As we were finishing dinner, he told me that he and his wife Suzanne felt called to move to New Jersey to plant a church. “Uh...okay,” was my response.

His father had died suddenly and they went to NJ for the funeral, and while there God gripped them with a vision. Over the next year and a half that vision became bigger and more clear. God wanted to start something through them, they believed. Not just one church, but multiple churches. A movement of churches that reached people nobody was reaching.

I was in support of it. “Go get ‘em, I said.” But I had no intention of going with them. Being from New Jersey, I knew what it was like. And it wasn’t like Los Angeles.

But the Holy Spirit soon started to bother me about the idea to the point where I had to pray about it. And I found myself saying to God -- over and over again - “It took me 8 years to build a life here. It took me 8 years to build a life here.”

Finally, in October of 2008, while at a conference in Atlanta, I heard a speaker quote a version of that passage above: Whoever clings to their life will lose it. Whoever loves their life more than me is not worthy to follow me.

Needless to say, I had to go outside and pray. I knew it was God and I knew that at the least, he was telling me that I better be willing to lay down this life I took 8 years to build, because it’s not really my life and it’s not me who built anything, anyway.

Long story short, I made the hardest decision of my life (not the most important, but hardest) and joined Jeff & Suzanne and moved to Monmouth County in March, 2009.

Jeff led the way into what was unknown territory for us all. We needed help, and he knew it. We met up with the District Superintendent of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, Bruce Terpstra, at an Applebees in Newark.

He told us about the history of the C&MA, their desire to reach the unreached people groups of the world -- the disenfranchised, the unchurched, those far from Jesus.

It was an instant match.

After God called many more people to join our launch team, Relevant Church of the Christian & Missionary Alliance was launched the first Sunday of March, 2010.

At the time, we thought the next church would be in Hoboken (because it was closer to Los Angeles than Ocean Freakin’ Township was).

But in January of 2011, while meeting with Jeff at a Whole Foods in Middletown, I told him that I was still behind his vision of planting multiple churches. However, I did not want to be the one to go plant anything in Hoboken. I was done with church-planting for a while. Too much work. Too many headaches. I had just gotten married, and I wanted some stability.

Then God messed up the plans again. My wife, Jess, said to me one day after church, “What if we planted the next church in Brick?” Brick? That’s even further away from being like Los Angeles, I thought.

But she pointed out that so many families were traveling from Brick up to Ocean Township, and she was from Point Pleasant and knew the area, so maybe we could reach her friends.

I ran the idea by Jeff, and he liked it. Then we ran it by the District, and they liked it. The Church Planting Director told us they had been hoping to plant more churches between Ocean Township and Manahawkin.

So we prayed.

Long story short, we began casting vision and building a team and raising money and on the first Sunday of March, 2013 - exactly three years to the day from when Relevant Church launched - True Life Church was launched in Brick.

At the time, Jeff & I had a shared vision. It was to plant a new church every 3 years out of both churches. This would lead to exponential multiplication. It would mean that in 2016, both churches would plant another church (giving us 4 churches).

Then in 2019, all four churches would plant another church, giving us 8 churches.

By 2022 we would have 16 churches in Ocean & Monmouth Counties.

Overly-ambitious? Apparently.

We hit many roadblocks since March of 2013. Relevant church went through a number of unforeseen transitions that I did not experience and do not feel qualified to write about.

But over the last 5 years, there were a few times where nobody seemed to know what would happen to Relevant. I partly felt guilty for leaving Relevant. I never wanted to abandon Relevant, or lead people away from Relevant. I laid down my life in LA to start Relevant, and I’ll be damned if it had to shut down.

But over the last few months, in talking with both Jeff & Anthony and Bob Riconda, I have realized that the original vision is bigger than Relevant. What God wants to do is bigger than Relevant.

In a conversation with Anthony he said something that made me realize God was in this. He said, “I don’t care what position I have, I just want to be part of this.” It was the same kind of attitude this whole thing started with: I’ll lay down my life to see what God does.

So here we are, asking Relevant Church to lay down its life. To die to itself.

It truly will feel like a death to many. The name, the identity, the bank accounts, the positions, the board, the titles, the salaries - all will be laid down and surrendered to God.

This should be mourned.

Then we are asking Relevant to UNITE with True Life Church.

To become one community. To build authentic relationships together. To reconcile where reconciliation is needed. To pray together. To dream together.

And then, together, to give birth to NEW LIFE.

Imagine what God will do with our two communities coming together? Imagine how much better we will be after learning many hard lessons over the years?

True Life’s vision is the same Jeff always had -- but with a bit more specificity. We are now looking to launch campus communities in Monmouth and Ocean Counties, not autonomous church plants. These campuses might become autonomous churches later on, but launching a campus under the same umbrella will make it easier, we feel, to go into a community and jump right into the mission without dealing with all the administrative overhead.

Our hope -- and we can only do this together -- is to launch two campuses in the next 2-3 years, with at least one being in Monmouth County.

From there we want to launch at least one new campus every 2-3 years (with all existing communities working together to send a team).

Imagine having, in 7-10 years from new, a campus in Asbury Park, Ocean Township, Belmar, Sea Girt and Seaside Heights!

We believe the best chance of accomplishing this is to start off together. This gives us more experience, more leaders, more shepherds, more missionaries, more care-givers, more resources, and more servants.

In September, 2007 Jeff told me he was considering laying down his life to come start a movement.

Will you lay down your plans for True Life and your plans for Relevant to join in whatever God wants to resurrect through our two communities?