Twenty-five years ago this year, my wife Jeannette and I decided to try to start a new church in Columbia. There were already good and faithful churches in this city. But we believed God wanted us to start a new kind of church. A church that taught the Bible as one epic story that’s centered on Jesus — a narrative that has the best explanatory power to describe reality. But also a church that respected the way our culture’s narrative of reality has shaped what seems believable, desirable, and respectable. As well as what seems weird.
How does the Bible speak to our needs, desires, and questions as a culture? We believed the answer to that was exciting and powerful. And we couldn’t wait to get started.
But we wanted to do it with a team of like-minded people. Keith Simon and I had already known each other for fourteen years at that time. He and his wife, Christine, had been college students in a campus ministry I directed and later served with us on staff with that ministry. But now they lived in Chicago, where Keith had completed his seminary degree. We were talking on the phone one Sunday afternoon about Jeannette’s and my plans to start a new church, what kind of church we hoped it could be, how hard it would be to do something like this, and my desire to do it with a team approach from the very start.
I asked Keith, “Can you think of another pastor who would want to start this church with me?” “Yeah,” he quickly answered, “ME!”
So from January to June of 2000, we chose our church name (The Crossing), raised the necessary funding from churches in St. Louis so we could have a full-time staff team of four before we even had a church, began to ask people to be part of our new congregation (again, before we actually had a church), recruited our full-time worship leader from Chicago (Scott Johnson, who still leads worship at The Crossing), and recruited a full-time children’s and student ministry director (Rachel Casteel, who is Rachel Tiemeyer now).
Our funding for all this required us to have a self-funded church (money given by the congregation) within 18 months. In other words, we had to take off on a short runway.
Our first Sunday worship service was on June 4, 2000, in a long, narrow room in Memorial Union on the Mizzou campus. But that small-ish room still looked too big with the 20 people there for our first church service. About 10% more people came each Sunday until, by August, there were more than 80 people there, with some having to stand outside the doorway leaning their heads in to listen. So, two months after starting The Crossing, we moved into the Rock Bridge High School auditorium for our worship services and classrooms for kids. Six years later, in July 2006, we built and moved into the building we’re in now.
Looking back over these past 25 years, what I remember and think of most are people’s faces. I think of the faces of those in the first six years who sacrificed in helping unload a rental truck of tubs early every Sunday morning to turn a high school into a church and those who stayed after to put it all back in the tubs and load them back on the truck. Every Sunday. I fondly remember highly successful professionals working alongside college students, joking and laughing and enjoying serving together. Sometimes, the best part of church was the setting up and tearing down. Sometimes.
I also think of the faces of those who rose above their own difficult challenges in life in order to be a warm and friendly embodiment of Christ’s love when they welcomed new people at church. Many have moved away since, but others are still here on Sundays, still bringing a light to someone’s first visit to The Crossing. Whether it’s standing in the cold to hold the door open, or being a kind and welcoming face for Crossing Kids, or standing at a welcome desk answering questions, or serving people a cup of coffee—I think of so many faces of so many caring and hardworking volunteers who have so selflessly made someone’s life better. And I think of those who have faithfully led small groups, or men’s and women’s studies, or served those in and through our church in a hundred different ways.
And I think of the faces of the people at a difficult fork in their life story where they were able to find a true hope and redemption. We all need hope and redemption! I see the face of the husband who decided to end his adulterous relationship and return to his wife and kids with a humble heart and a determination to repair their family. I still see his face every Sunday. And I can see the face of the man who decided to leave his faith and leave the church, only to be back in my office less than a year later asking if he can come back to Jesus. He’s a faithful leader in our church today, helping others find hope and redemption! I see the face of the Muslim woman who was a college student who came to The Crossing with questions about Jesus, and she decided to follow Jesus. And now, more than a decade later, I got an email from her telling me she’s still a Jesus follower, now married to a strong Christian man and raising their three children together in the promises of the gospel.
And this year, we’re crossing 25 years together as a church. And there are stories of hope and redemption still unfolding in people’s lives every week. The question I’m excited about is this — What new stories are still to come? Whose faces will warmly come to our minds over the next 25 years that we’ve yet to meet?
Maybe you have a story about what God has done in your life at The Crossing. Whether you’ve been with us for 25 years or just 25 days, we’d love to hear your story.