dustin willis

BLOG has MOVED

Hey...my blog has moved by the way. You can check out the new temporary blog at www.dustinwillis.com  I am currently hosting it through vox.com but my awesome friend Josh Garrett is doing a sweet custom design that will soon be on the web.

VA. TECH - I am a Hokies Fan

Over the past 48 hours or so I have been in front of www.foxnews.com along with up to the minute reports on the TV. It breaks my heart to think through the families who now are missing loved ones due to the acts of a man who obviously was extremely sick.

Rewind with me just a few years back. I remember the day that I made a list of cities that God had laid on my heart as potential sites for the church plant. Those cities were as follows...Wilmington, NC, Raliegh/Durham, NC, Columbia, SC, and Blacksburg, VA. The main reason for Blackburg, VA was the interest in VA. Tech. I cannot imagine being a pastor on that campus right now in light of such a stunning tragedy. There is NOT much you can say....you can only hold people, pray with them, and cry with them.

I want to challenge everyone with some simple thoughts that most of you have already probably taken into account and action.

-Pray for the families of the victims
-Pray for the students, staff, and faculty
-Pray for the pastors who are seeking to give comfort and answers within chaos and turmole
-Pray for others that are sick in this world....that others would see it....point it out....get proper help and more than that...pray that Jesus would save their soul and heal their mind and heart.

Please don't just read these....actually pray your guts out....yea right NOW...don't wait....please....NOW

Lastly, to hear the student body screaping GO HOKIES at the top of their lungs at the candle light vigil service tonight was pretty awesome to see. You can find it online...it was powerful to hear and see.

GO HOKIES...

Are there GOOD PROBLEMS?

So the last fews weeks have been a season of dealing with problems. We have all heard the phrase,"When it rains it pours" My wife's car blew up and has now been in the shop some 2 weeks...our sewer line backed up for the 3rd time since we bought this house a year ago...we replaced the sewer line...had gravel brought in for the drive way...the guy put all of it in like 3 huge piles...thank you college guys who came and helped me spread that junk out...my car battery kind-of quit working on my car...replaced some grass with 100 pieces of sod...took out dead flowers...replaced dead with new/live flowers. Normally I would get completely ticked off...but it caused me to do some stuff around the house that honestly needed to be done. So in some ways I guess you could call it a "good problem."

Well as a church we are dealing with problems all the time, because honestly that is just par for the course when it comes to church planting. If anyone out there believes the church should be perfect...you are one of a couple of things...ummmmm too ideal or well just........stupid....seriously there's problems on occasion. Problems within the family/church are not always good but sometimes they are. Let's start thinking of church as family. Families grow...the church will grow. When a family grows it is an exciting thing...there is new life...new ideas...and well new problems. The house feels smaller, there's a need for more food, there's more opinions, there's more needs and so on.

Right now as a family/church we are completely maxed out on space. We are at a place where something must be done pretty soon to be able to fit everyone in the "house". We are currently praying and seeking hard after what God would have us do. Do we go to 2 Gatherings, do we find a new larger location, do we start another Gathering in another part of town on top of the one we already do? These are all good questions that come along with what we think is a GOOD PROBLEM. To be honest with new life coming in to the family it is exciting because now there are more hands to serve, more voices to speak the truth, more feet to take the truth of Jesus into our community, more mouths to pray.......God is up to something here and he is building his family to reach this community. The cool thing about his family is we are ALL adopted in and the adoption process will never stop. To those of you that are a part of the family at Midtown...pray hard about this "Good Problem". As a heads up...just so you know...whatever we do will take sacrifice on all of our parts. A key to a healthy family is sacrifice. We will have to sacrifice our time, our gifteness, our thoughts, and honestly our money. We are in an exciting time and I love being a part of this family. I look forward to growing together as a family in so many ways.

The Easter Gathering @ MIDTOWN

So it's 12:16am and I am wide awake and feel as though I could go run a marathon...except exercise is pretty much a foreign concept to me....but you get the general ideal of how I am feeling. Tonight, we had The Easter Gathering at Midtown, the church a group of us started just over a year ago here in downtown Columbia, SC.

So why can't I go to sleep at this point...is it because Wal-Mart now has Peeps on sale for half off or is it because I realized that the over grown bunny they call the Easter Bunny really doesn't exist....though all of those are great reasons to loose sleep...NO...much more and significant reasons than that.

God is at work in Columbia. Tonight I was reminded on why we moved here to start this thing called Midtown. Tonight I saw repentance, I saw celebration, and I saw the scales come off the eyes of a number of people. If the scales didn't come off during the band playing "My Hero" by Foo Fighters with 2 extra tom drums and an extra bass drum, which was being hit with a mallet they came off at the end when the high priest sat down.

In Hebrews 10 it explains how when the work was done once and for all the High Priest (Jesus) sits down. We symbolically had a quote unquote high priest, who stood the entire service, sit down at the end of the service. When he sat down the place erupted...it was as though everyone's favorite sports hero of all time just hit the game winning shot X10. It was huge, big, loud, and very very appropriate in light of the fact that Jesus took care of all sin for all time...once and for all and is SITTING at the right hand of the Father.

In that moment God tapped on my heart and showed me that this is only the beginning of this amazing plan he has for this city. A few tears and a few shouts...I am pumped and I cannot wait to see what happens in this city. To you Columbia folks that are involved in Midtown....thanks....thanks a ton for joining in this mission that God has called us to. I look forward to seeing many many many more people celebrating the name of Jesus in the days to come. See you this week!

Living Beyond Self

So this past weekend we as a church served a local neighborhood and school in downtown Columbia. We had over 100 people who gave up there weekend to give of themselves to a community of people. We worked with a local school, S.Kilbourne Elementary. We have built a great relationship with the principal at the school and she has basically given us the freedom to do whatever we want. Over the weekend we watched mosters inc. on a 10ft. X 15ft. screen, played games, water ballon war, basketball, football, crafts, ate pb&j, ate popcorn, an awesome relay, and an incredible block party with some awesome bbq cooked by our very own midtown cooking crew.

When churches begin living with open hands and begin thinking more about the people that are NOT in their church rather than how many they had this past Sunday doors of opportunity begin to open that normally would NOT. As a result of the hearts of all of you who gave of your time we are currently working on a partnership to start an afterschool mentoring program.

It is my hope that individually and as churches we can begin to live life beyond ourselves, our needs, our Sundays, and take the example of Jesus seriously and NOT just talk about it. I truly believe we MUST begin to live Philippians 2 out if we want to see real change take place. I am NOT there but I am going for it.

New York - MONDAY

I arrived yesterday here in New York City around 5pm.  I had a gig on Friday and Saturday in N. Augusta, SC, therefore I didn't get the pleasure of riding up here with the team of 50 who made the trek via 15 passenger vans on Saturday.  The trip ONLY took them....O'.....17 hours. From what I understand there were no engine problems, flat tires, transmission blow outs, just simply small blatters.  You get the drift.  After arriving the team hit the bed at the Hostel International (our home for the week).  It's awesome because there are people from all over the globe and all walks of life staying here. 

Sunday, everyone took in the sounds and sermons of some local church plants here in the city. (The Gallery Church, Origins, The Journey, The Village Church, Redeemer Pres...all different in style, but all missional in nature) The afternoon was free time and everyone did there own thing within smaller groups. (naps, Little Italy, Ground Zero, China Town, Time Square, New York Style Pizza, Learning the Subway and more) At dinner we ALL ate together and shared communion together here at our home away from home...we always should start anything we do with the reason we live and the reason we serve...Jesus. 

Today....breakfast @ 7am...Worship through Music (Brett Younker led...USC Grad...worship leader at The Gallery) and teaching by Jon Tyson (Native of Australia...Lead Pastor of Origins)...9am, time alone with God (many went to Central Park...I went to Starbucks)...11am Teams headed to Ministry Sites. Ministry Teams Include: Prayer Team, Kids Team, Homelessness Team, & Construction Team. Tonight we ate dinner with our teams.  As a team we ate in China Town at The House of Peking Duck, an awesome...awesome China Bistro...good stuff.

NUGGETS OF THOUGHTS FROM MONDAY:

I am on the prayer team.  We walked the city and prayed for the people of this city and the local churches that God has place here as missionaries to this crazy city.  For me walking around praying all day is honestly very stretching, but I loved it.  It is amazing how many times Jesus will allow our conversations with him to be interrupted with people who simply are in need of prayer and attention. (little sarcism there)  I am blown away by what God points out to us when we are in a constant state of communion with him.  Today, alone just with the prayer team the following happened....a number of people in grand central station were prayed for, many meals were shared with strangers, new boots for a man without decent shoes, pants for a man who's pants were on it's last day, and one guy asking why in the world would someone so young be so generous with what they had.....and the answer...."Well, Jesus was extremely generous to the world when he went to cross and then conquered death." The tears in the 52 year old mans eyes were enough that we will again arise to serve a great God in the morning. 

Please pray for the people of this city.....it amazes me that there are so many lonely people in our nations most populated city.  Thanks for your prayers and look for another update tomorrow night sometime.  Back to our sites tomorrow and a little Mute Math tomorrow night at Gramercy Theatre. 

ENTERING THE WORLD OF BLOG

I think there was actually a time and date when I remember saying..."Yea, blogging...ummm not for this guy" and yet here I find myself entering my first blog.  Why? Good question.  Basically, I actually enjoy writing and who knows someone may actually read it out in blog world.  So we begin here...who knows what is to come. Also, I want to see if I can actually insert an image right here...

Awesome I think this may have actually have worked.  This is a picture of me and my wife.