In 2010, we ended a long season of serving in difficult and what felt like mostly fruitless endeavors as community group leaders in Silicon Valley. Divorces, funerals, betrayal, fruitless ministry, loss of property, and bad health ended this season. 2011 opened to an amazing time of new friendships and Holy Spirit encounters with a time to heal in Santa Cruz. In May 2011, I completed my degree and was dramatically healed again. Three years of serious lung issues gone in an instant; I could go to church, the grocery store, and sleep at night without feeling like I was drowning. It was amazing and brought so much renewal to us personally. Now we were ready to move forward. But what was next? For months, we discussed what was next, what we wanted in life, and another new start. The only thing we felt we knew, is that this next chapter of life would be somewhere up or down the Pacific Coast.
In early November, after a few months of looking for permanent teaching positions, I gave in and applied to two postdoc positions. Within hours of submitting the application, a leading professor in my field contacted me and offered an interview in southern California on the coast. We went to Irvine and then waited two weeks while they did paperwork and made a hiring decision. But I had a dream in this time where we were in my car and went down south, but we could only park in temporary parking while we were there, then at a future time we were able to point other people that way. I woke up and felt peace about the job and moving south for a temporary job. Within two days, I was offered the job and we began to pack to move in December 2011.
Irvine was a new city, with a new job, new apartment, new grad student group, a couple friends and relatives. We started by visiting a small church for a few weeks. Then a friend pointed us at Newsong Church. I went alone to the first service on New Years morning; it was fairly empty. (I guess there were too many late night parties the night before.) But I loved it; the worship, the preaching, the people… and at the end of service they did “something they’d never done before” by having the pastor and leaders anoint every one with oil and bless them. The Holy Spirit was at this church and it was to be our home church.
For the next year and a half, I would get up to go to church on Sunday morning and the majority of the time I would actually make it to Newsong. But there were a few Sundays as I would turn out of the driveway, I would feel a nudge to go somewhere else. One Sunday, I showed up at Mariner’s Church, they were having one of their “something we’ve never done before” mornings. They had everyone (all thousand plus people) come forward for blessing and prayer by the leadership and elders. If they were offering blessing, I was going forward. Another Sunday, I went to The River OC Vineyard, and they were having a “something we’ve never done before” morning. Someone got up in the middle of worship and spoke out in a tongue; then someone got up and interpreted it. It was beautiful. But they had to quickly teach on it; because that had not happened in years. They also called people up for blessing. Another week, I felt the nudge to go to Mariner’s college night service; again “something we’ve never done before” service. They had a time of going forward for public repentance. This happened so many times in the first few months, I would just go where I felt lead. I went to Harvest Church with Greg Laurie and saw about twenty people go forward at the end of service to receive Jesus, which seemed like a weekly thing at their church. Such a beautiful miracle of salvation. I also heard the last sermon of Chuck Smith at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa before he passed away. The first sermon back after months of retreat where Rick Warren spoke at Saddleback after his son committed suicide; such a deep heartfelt message. I heard Lou Engle as he moved back into the area to help spearhead more prayer among the youth and join with YWAM. I got to hear Joy Dawson speak for hours about her life and helping found YWAM, when she had not spoken in years. I felt like I was going to these defining moments in the area. These experiences were full of the Holy Spirit moving and incredibly dynamic.
I sat and asked God, why am I going to all these places on just the right day without knowing what to expect? And I heard “because you can see.” God wanted someone to see what He was doing. And I also needed to see it to restore me. By the end of our time in Orange County, the theme was apparent; the area was in a renewal. God was touching the churches. Newsong seemed one of the most deeply touched churches. But the churches were all being effected and most people were unaware of anything outside of their own particular congregation. But I got to see it. I needed to see it.
But what really impacted us deeply was the story of Newsong. A church that had been dry, boring, and sad (according to stories by the pastors themselves). The kind of church we knew too well from growing up in the Bay Area; the church we had lost all hope for. The type of church we prayed that we never have to go back to minister in but knew we probably were called to. But here at Newsong, the Holy Spirit got in; He had changed everything. Nothing flashy or showy: no shaking, wailing, or convulsing. But people were being set free, delivered, and filled… quietly and unassumingly. Surrender and change. We were seeing a powerful move of God that seemed to us to have started with a quiet little background prayer team, years earlier and an inner healing ministry, then move through the leaders. Some YWAM trips, foreign travel, special speakers, and other outside influences were also fanning the flame. We left Newsong with a renewed hope for the old tired church. Hope that entire dry churches could change. God pointed out that this was a first wave of renewal and revival hitting California. But we were going to be called back to the Bay Area, which seemed had been completely unaffected by this first wave of revival.
The move back home to the Bay Area in 2013 and it was nothing we expected; we were full of hope and ready for God to move immediately. But this ended up being the hardest move of our lives. We planned on the new job, a nearby apartment, plugging into a church, and being a part of God moving. The initial job was a disappointment and died after two years. We had a terrible time finding housing; and ended up living in my parent’s guest room for two years. We gave up finding a church after a few months and went back to the house church an hour away in Santa Cruz. I got shingles and very sick and had to quit working for several years. The first two years were discouraging at best. However, Greg did start a lively men’s group. But God was moving in us personally to stretch us. Greg went on a mission trip to Honduras and it was an amazing personal transformation. God called him into more: more fiery love for people, more Holy Spirit, and more leadership. This made up for the two very disappointing years. Finally, something was happening, even if it was just in the two of us.
Then God told us to buy a house in the summer of 2015, put down roots in the Bay Area and stick it out. After months of prayer and a dream with some direction, we moved from my parent’s guest room to Fremont (30 minutes north and too far to stay in the Santa Cruz house church). We restarted life in Fremont. Visiting churches, trying to plug in. We also felt a leading to start a non-profit called Revival Valley (God’s name for Silicon Valley) and start empowering a few people in their ministries (evangelism, outreach, and conferences for faith-filled intellectuals, and conferences on healing and the Holy Spirit.) We had also started a home group in our area to pray for a move of God, which became our home church. By fall 2015, we were hosting small conferences in the area to just get people more filled up without them needing to leave their churches. We were looking for the quiet unassuming prayer teams in the area; the hidden people that can already hear God but are feeling dry. We had hope from our time in Orange County, which seemed to be hard to find here at times. We would tell the story of Newsong coming alive. We would tell about the small quiet outpourings at the churches in Orange County. We wanted to restore hope.
We have seen glimmers here of the move of God. The TBC group launched and the church pastors and leaders have started to gather quarterly; it is larger than the old pastor gatherings. YWAM Redding in 2015 and 2016, sent groups to do door to door Bible distribution in Fremont and sharing the gospel. For them, 2015 was rough, mostly disappointment and rejection. But the reception in 2016 was entirely different. Ed Silvoso has lived in the Bay Area for years but held his organization’s annual conference in Hawaii. In 2016, it was the first time God let him have it in the Bay Area. And we keep running into people sent here by God, sometimes here begrudgingly but still sent here by God. But they also are fully anticipating that if God called, He will move. And we hear stories occasionally of this church or that church doing things. It feels like there are cracks opening up for the Holy Spirit to get in deeper. It feels like things are just starting to sprout; not much visible fruit yet, but sprouts.
We needed that time in Southern California to see God move. We needed that hope for the dry churches. It would be nearly impossible to be faithful to the calling here without that hope.
