Our Story
In the Spring of 2013, God pulled together about twenty people from five different churches. We had several things in common. Many of us had been inspired by followers of Jesus we’d met on mission trips. We earnestly desired to see Christ change lives and renew our city. We had heard that God was doing that in other places through groups called missional communities. We were willing to try so we met for a season and organized our life together around worship, prayer, fellowship, and mission. In our “trial missional community” we learned a lot about ourselves, our neighbors, and how to (and how not to) to do life on mission together. We discovered strength in community, how to be more natural and public with our faith, more courageous in prayer, more adventurous in service, and how good God is.
After about six months together, about half who’d been with us returned to regular engagement in their home churches. But the experience had a deep impact. Several of us committed to journeying together and formed First Coast Missional Communities – which became LoveFirst Coast. We gathered for prayer and discipleship, invested in each other, and looked for opportunities to bless our neighbors and serve in our city. Over time, the administrative load became lighter as others stepped into leadership. This enabled our first pastor to be “co-vocational”, working a full-time day job and extending God’s grace there while helping to lead the church on nights and weekends. As a biproduct, this created additional margin for generosity.
That was the pattern we followed until the pandemic. But now, we’re going through a reboot.
Love First Coast Update for 2023!
That was a fast ten years, LoveFirst Coast is at a point of transition, but first a few words to celebrate what God’s done. God worked through a number of people who have generously given of their time, finances, talent, and dedicated much love and support to the work of LoveFirst Coast. God has led us through a number of adventures. Many of us know we will never be the same.
We started in 2013 with a shared prayer for a movement of mission and discipleship, for deeply surrendered disciples, and for a church made up of communities on mission spreading across town. How hard could it be, right? Well, in year one, we set out to start three missional communities. We managed to started two missional communities. And those two quickly grew to be… one missional community. Humbly, we had to a lot to learn and quite a bit to unlearn. We learned a lot about prayer, and about organizing light-weight, low maintenance worship services (Up). We grew to appreciate coming together to encourage and equip one another to imitate Jesus (In). And we served (Out) – sometimes together, sometimes apart – with Young Lives, with refuges, at an apartment complex, in our neighborhoods, and most commonly in our various places of work. We learned to listen, love, and pray. Our church of communities on mission never quite looked like what we imagined – but God opened doors for some of us to form groups wherever we went – what some thinkers now call “micro expressions of the church.”
Quite a few of the groups that had emerged from LoveFirst Coast that were doing some degree of Up, In, and Out. This would include prayer groups, workplace Bible studies, discipleship meetings, groups gathered for a specific mission, or those beautiful missional incubators where people were encouraged and prayed for as they stepped into mission personally. The list of the LoveFirstCoast micro expressions grew to twenty-one. This doesn’t include the personal missions or ministries we jumped in to support. The only requirement for making the list is this: the groups started, formed, and met long enough to do Up, In, and Out.
Twenty-one.
The groups lasted from a few months to ten years. Recently, The Tampa Underground shared a study a study that revealed that their micro-expressions generally last about three years. Some of our micro expressions were intentionally short-lived – such as the group that went to Nicaragua and the group that offered an on-line Alpha course. Others came to an end as people’s life situation changed. I recall some that never seemed to gell. (We can celebrate that, too. Per Luke 10, if we follow Jesus we should expect setbacks on mission.) Of the on-going groups, two have been going on for more than six years and two are less than two years old.
We never kept a tight list of the people who went on this journey with us, but from memory, I could identify about 130 different people who were with us on mission, in discipleship, or at our worship gatherings. (Again, not a formal record. We didn’t keep those kinds of records). But here’s something that can’t be measured: we do not know how many people God touched through us! People were listened to with love and prayed over. People were encouraged or equipped to follow Jesus. People were discipled, served, counseled, befriended, taught, helped, fed, and blessed. Many of the people involved with LoveFirst Coast saw themselves as sent and were equipped to minister to the people they met along the way. There is much to celebrate.
What about The Future?
LoveFirst Coast is at a point of transition. Our original core group is not really together anymore. There’s been quite a bit of life change: moving, retiring, taking care of family members, or following the Lord to serve in other ways. So how are we moving on from here? Our mission has been to encourage and equip people to live life on mission. We’ll do this in two ways.
First, we will continue to encourage people to engage in mission by following a simple strategy: Prayer, Teams, Groups, Gatherings. We will coach people to pray for those to whom God is sending them, find a teammate who’ll help, pull together a group for discipleship offering tools like Discovery Bible Study, and host periodic gatherings for worship and encouragement. This is already happening!
Second, we will provide free resources and ideas through this web-site for life on mission. We’ll share what we’ve learned about evangelism, prayer, prayer ministry, worship, and tools for discipling.
How Can You Help?
Pray!
Pray for God to deepen the love of his people for the people in their neighborhoods and networks.
Pray that God’s kingdom would come and his will would be done here on the First Coast. To quote the theologian Abraham Kuyper, there is not a square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus does not cry out, “This is mine!” That is certainly true of this region of Florida we call home. It’s true wherever you are as well. We have work to do, and the Spirit of God working in us to empower us to do so!
Lastly, here are a few photos from our ten years as a church! May the Lord bless you!
LoveFirst Coast 