You can see from our picture that we’ve had a lot to celebrate since December! We hope you have, too. As you have experienced life’s celebrations and heartaches, we hope you have sensed God’s presence as He has walked with and even carried you. We are thankful for His presence with us in this first quarter of 2025.
Here's what God has been doing in our lives since our last update (you'll see we are "excited" and "love" a lot of things He is doing . . . but we are and we do!):
In our City
- Church Planting. We co-hosted an interest meeting for The Church Project, envisioning those gathered about its church-planting paradigm of a church of house churches. As we follow-up and design next steps, we are excited about the strong possibility of God bringing this fresh expression of the church to Austin to join our city movement!
- Reaching and mobilizing Gen Z in Austin. God moved through SXSW SVC, three days of programming around gospel topics including the annual Sunday Service pictured above. Over a hundred young adults from the Austin area and Steiger, a dynamic ministry reaching the global youth culture, formed street teams to engage with SXSW participants. They were excited to experience many gospel conversations, some saying yes to Jesus immediately, and look forward coming back to next year’s event. Tim and two other Christ Together Greater Austin pastors had the opportunity to speak to this gospel-motivated team over the course of several days. Our next step is to identify and raise funds to send a delegation of Gen Z leaders from Austin to Steiger’s 6-week leadership movement training in Germany this summer. Please continue to pray with us that God brings the next Great Awakening in Gen Z and uses Austin as a catalyst.
- Christ Together Church Consultations. A favorite part of Tim’s ministry is encouraging and supporting churches through Christ Together’s church consultations. We love worshipping with and experiencing what God is doing in churches in our city and collaborating with them (Tim’s part) on potential steps forward.
In our Nation
- Exponential. We are excited about what God is doing through Exponential to foster church planting and multiplication. In January, Tim helped train their Multiplier Learning Communities, speaking to 14 cohorts over the course of a week. He also led two different workshops at the Exponential Global Conference in March, focused on aspects of collaboration among churches and multiplication of disciples in city movements.
- Multipliers Pathway Cohort. Over the past year, Tim has loved serving in the pilot cohort of 12 churches, coaching pastors to embrace and build a disciple-making and church-planting culture. He met just last week with the leaders to evaluate and sharpen their strategy for targeting “Jesus-style” disciple-making and gospel saturation (pictured above). We are very excited about how Christ Together National might provide the Multipliers equipping and tools to city movements in our network.
In our World
- Via Nations Austin Vision Dinner. As Tim continues to serve on the Board of Via, we hosted Austin’s first Vision Dinner. Our Austin faith community demonstrated its characteristic generosity with the highest giving of all the Via city banquets. We praise God for the church planters sent out and the churches mobilized as senders in the future as a result!
Teaching, Equipping, and Mentoring
God continues to give us opportunities to serve Him through teaching and training. Tim preached at the new Lake Church in Horseshoe Bay in January (listen here to “Upside Down and Unexpected”) and Northlake Church in Lago Vista in February (listen here to “Leaving a Legacy”). Cindy had the opportunity to teach at Hill Country Bible Church's Community Impact leader training, addressing "Hard Conversations," and to help with women’s ministry leadership training at North Way Bible Church. She also had the privilege to speak at two women’s retreats, one for San Antonio Cru college women and the other with Midtown Church, a member church of our Association of Hill Country Churches. God has continued to answer our prayer to be used by Him however He sees fit, and we are grateful.
On a Personal Note
- Sam and Alyssa are married! We had a wonderful wedding celebration on January 4th as you can see in the picture at the top of our letter. So excited for their life together.
- Amazing time in the United Arab Emirates. We spent two weeks experiencing the world of our oldest Kate in Abu Dhabi where she is a post-doctoral research associate at NYU-Abu Dhabi. Our time also included side trips to Oman and to Dubai. We loved every second of it . . . but that plane ride was not for the faint of heart.
Please pray for what is coming!
We would love for you to pray for:
- Via Trip to Lima, Peru. Tim heads out in May to help teach leadership principles to pastors and leaders in Lima.
- Young Professional Christian Leaders. Tim will teach on “Authentic Evangelism” to two different young professional Christian leader groups in April and May.
- Cindy’s upcoming teaching at North Way’s women’s bible study on biblical womanhood on April 24 & 25 and again on May 1 & 2. Please pray for God’s word to change lives and relationships.
- Key Conferences. In May, Tim is attending the 2025 National Disciple-Making Forum hosted by the Church Project in Houston and a Global Gathering for the Movement Leaders Collective of which Christ Together National is a part. Pray for kingdom connections and conversations.