Thank you very much to all those who prayed for us yesterday.  We both did very well answering questions and the men who were asking questions were wonderful!  Please continue to pray for us.  We have our home on the market and need to have it sell so that we might move to Centerburg and begin to serve the people in that community 24/7 and limit our travel time. Thank you again for bringing our requests boldly before the father.

It has been just over a month since my last full post.  It has been great to keep up on all of you through Facebook and Twitter.  I wanted to again give an update on what God is doing in our lives. And show you what our Christmas list looks like!

We are now seeing pretty clearly that God is moving us in a direction of Church planting!  We will be doing a “Church Planting Residency” at a church that is 2 years old in Centerburg, Ohio called Center Point Church. Here is the location of Center Pointe for you to get an idea of the area.

View Center Pointe Church in a larger map
Center Pointe is led by Josh Franks who is quickly becoming a person for me to call a friend and a ministry partner.  Josh and his wife Jen are expecting their first child to be born at the end of January I know that they are very excited!

So I said I would let everyone see our Christmas list… ok here it goes!

• Our home is on the market and we are asking God to sell it in HIS time. If you would like to check out our home or you know of some one who has a Christmas list that includes a new home (hint, hint) here is the link so that you can check it out!!
• Finding a rental home or an apartment to rent near Centerburg and still be close enough for Christina to drive in to Columbus!
• God would continue to mold us and shape like he has been over the last 6 months. And that we would continue to answer yes to His leadings.
• God would continue to provide for our financial needs.

Thanks again for all of your love and support. We will be in touch!

So yesterday and today have been really great here at SXT (Strategic Multiplication Training)!  We are learning so much in terms of church planting and being around other people who are starting churches makes my heart beat fast!  There is so much to share and I am so tired that I will not write very much tonight.  I thank you all for your diligent prayers for Christina and me.

One of the major events for us in our journey to serve in ministry with the C&MA is a pre-accreditation interview that I had this evening.  It was only about 30 minutes long but it tells the district representative whether or not I am ready (with knowledge of scripture, personal walk with Christ, Marriage, and other things) to be formally accredited in the C&MA.  I did pass this initial interview (which is awesome!!!) so that I can go before an accreditation board in January!  I am so thankful that God is continually opening doors for us!  Thank you for your prayers!

Prayer Requests for tonight:

• Sleep well – us and the other church planters
• Sharp minds throughout the day tomorrow
• I am feeling 100% so that is great
• God would continue to provide clarity for our future in church planting
• We are drinking from a fire hose, please pray that when we feel weary that God will lift us up (Isaiah 40:29) so that we would not be overwhelmed.  We are processing a ton of info we and we want to make the most of all of it!

Thank you again for serving us by praying for us!

Please pray for us in the following ways:

• That we sleep well
• We interact with the other church planters well and that networking with these men and women would be fruitful
• That we are in touch with what the Holy Spirit is saying to us and that we would follow him bravely
• That we learn a lot and are able to assimilate the information that we are given quickly into our lives
• Our health.  Christina is getting over a cold and I am feeling like I have a touch of something.  Please pray that God would heal us both!
• Praise God with us that He is continuing to meet our financial needs
• Beseech the Lord of the harvest with us that he would raise up more workers from the harvest for the harvest

Thanks again for being faithful supporters of Christina and I and thank you that you wrestle in prayer for us like Paul’s companion Epaphras (Colossians 4:12).  This means the world to us that you are praying.  If you would please leave encouraging comments for us on Facebook or clintbieri.com that would help us greatly!  I will be doing my best to post summations of what we are learning and what we will be doing as information is given to us so that you will be able to pray for us all the more.

^“3I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, ⁴always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” – Philippians 1:3-5

Clint and Christina

Church planting assessment provides you with one of four possible recommendations. You can receive one of the following: R (Recommended) – ready to plant a church right now, no other training necessary; CR (Recommended with Conditions) – church planting is a yes, 6-18 more months of preparation, conditions must be met; SCR (Recommended with Strong Conditions) – church planting is a yes, 2+ years of training and preparation needed, conditions must be met before being reassessed; NR (Not recommended) – church planting is not the recommended fit for ministry

We received an SCR – strong conditions recommendation. Basically, they said that they do see church planting abilities in us. However, there are several things that we need to do/learn/grow over the next several years. We have a nice summary report that details out everything from the week and shows us how we need to proceed going forward. We definitely feel a peace about where God has us. We feel that we have more direction and specific things we need to do to grow spiritually and personally. Clint and I feel God’s hand in our lives and he did answer our prayer for direction. It was incredibly harder than we could have imagined, but the results were definitely worth the pain, sorrow, hurt, joy and peace we experienced.

We enjoyed our time with the other couples being assessed. We haven’t laughed as hard and as long as we did just sitting around with them and processing through everything.

We are grateful for the all of the people who love us, care for us and openly support what God is doing in our lives.

For those of you that have been praying for us – THANK YOU!!  Without you wrestling for us in prayer we would not be where we are in our spirits.  I must admit that both Christina and I are still a little anxious about what we will be told tomorrow.  I believe this anxiety is healthy.  We desperately want to know what God has next for us and this assessment time has been HUGE in helping us hear from Jesus in what he desires next for us in life and ministry.

Christina and I both know that this was a part of God’s wonderful plan for our lives.  We are both so happy to be here.  Praise God!

Prayer Requests:

• That we would sleep well and with peace that passes understanding.
• That we would be completely yielded to the Holy Spirit in our lives as we hear from the assessors tomorrow morning about 9:00 am what their recommendations to us are.
• That we would rejoice and be glad with what God is showing us in our lives.
• Please be ernest in your prayers for the assessors, that they would have heard from God this afternoon and evening.  They have worked sooooo hard at what they are doing.  This is very serious for them and for us.  We all (those of us who are being assessed this week) need them to speak the truth to us and for us.  * The assessors have been in a conference room since 2:30pm this afternoon.  They probably will not go to bed tonight until after mid-night.  AWESOME!

Again, thank you all for your prayers and support. Christina and I love you all very much!  We will let you all know in a few days what we have found out!

• 8:00 am breakfast
• 8:45 am I led worship (singing and playing guitar) not as a part of assessment but just to focus ourselves on the Lord before we started our day.
• 9:00 am we began engaging scenarios about a church plant – we did this for 3 hours!
• 12:00 pm was lunch which was very very good
• 1:00 pm was more working together and learning about our personality profiles and strengths
• 3:00 pm we were given a task to “plant 5 churches in Akron, Ohio in the next 7 years to present to a ‘donor’” so we worked on this until dinner
• 6:00 pm was dinner
• 6:45 pm Christina and I were given the results of a psychological exam which I am still in awe over!  Praise God for what he did in that session for both Christina and I.  We have many things to think and pray about. These people are so tuned in to what God is doing in our lives it is scary!  Thank you so much for your prayers in this area. Christina and I are overwhelmed with how God is working and moving in us.
• 7:30 pm we were back in the group to continue the work of bringing our proposal together.  We are working out the bugs and making sure that we yield to the Holy Spirit as we try and come up with a strategy of where to plant these new churches and how we will go about doing this.
• 11:15 pm Christina and I were finishing up some details and now I am thinking through my portions of the pitch to the “donor” tomorrow!

We hope to be in bed by 2 am!  I think we can make it.

Prayer Requests:

• We are both very tired
• There are so many things to think and talk about and we can’t talk them all through so please pray that God will bring these things back to our minds on our rest days.  We are trying hard to write tons of things down but we are missing having the ability to really sort things out.
• The dreamer in me is super thrilled and the organizer in Christina is filling all the holes, pray that we would continue to work well together and with the team of people that are here!

Stay tuned for more to come tomorrow!

Here are the highlights:

• Orientation from 11am to 12pm
• Lunch from 12pm to 12:30pm – which was really good!
• Interviews from 12:30pm – 12:45pm
• 586 question personality test which took an hour and a half from 1:00pm to 2:30pm
• Launch Messages & Vision Casting (given by the church planters) at 3:45pm to 6pm
• Dinner from 6pm to 6:30pm – chicken and mashed potatoes!! YUM!!
• Finish Launch Messages & Vision Casting from 6:30pm – 7:15pm

After we were finished with all this schedule, the assesssment folks locked themselves in a room at about 7:30pm and they are still talking about the four couples who are here this week and it is currently 10:21pm!!  I would love to be a fly on that wall!!

Tomorrow we are at breakfast at 8am and then running hard toward another day of adventure! We really don’t have a good idea as to what is to come although we (the church planters) think that we will be working in teams together a lot tomorrow as well as visiting with the staff psychologist!  I really don’t want to find out that we are nuts (cause we knew that already!!)!

Thanks again for all those who are praying for us!  Please continue to pray that we would yield completely to the Holy Spirit at work in our lives!

Hello everyone!

I am writing today to ask all of you to keep Christina and myself in your prayers over the next week. We are beginning to sense where God is calling us next in life and in ministry. I am asking that you remember us daily as we will be attending a Church Planters Assessment beginning tomorrow (Sept 21) and ending Thursday (Sept. 24). During these days Christina and I both will be looked at to determine if we would be suitable church planters or if our place in the church is at an existing church. We are thankful for the opportunity provided to us by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA for short) as they are taking us through this assessment process in hopes that we would be able to plant a church for glory of Jesus. Let me give you as much information as I know so that you all will know what to pray for as we are at Beulah Beach camp and retreat center over the next 4 days.

Sunday (Sept. 20) – Arrival and check in to rooms
Monday (Sept 21) – Registration at 10:30 am – Assessment begins at 11:00 am
Tuesday (Sept 22) – Assessment
Wednesday (Sept 23) – Assessment
Thursday (Sept 24) – Assessment ends at 11:00 am
Friday (Sept 25) – Amish Country to decompress and rejoice in what God has shown us
Saturday (26) – More resting and rejoicing
Sunday (Sept 27) – We don’t know yet
Monday (Sept 28) – Definitely on our way back home.

As you can see we don’t have a lot of knowledge of your daily schedule (but when do you really know your schedule in ministry anyway!?) I do know that the following things are going to be a part of our week because they have told us to be prepared for:

1) a ten minute message to our congregation on its first sunday
2) a ten minute presentation of our ministry philosophy
3) question and answer time for both christina and myself
4) a small presentation about my calling to ministry

As I have been thinking and praying about this coming week all I keep thinking about is having a great time meeting people and being ourselves. Please pray that we would not put on a “good appearance” but that we would continue to be real, relaxed and just Clint and Christina. It will not do us or any one else at the assessment any good if we are fake. Please ask the Holy Spirit to help us show the assessment center folks that we want to serve Jesus in whatever capacity He has and we are trying to figure out what He has in store. We are very excited to be a part of this weekend. I already feel like we are on the edge of something really cool! I cannot wait to start!

I want to lastly say that all of you mean so very much to Christina and me. Thank you for your prayers for us this week. I don’t know if I or Christina will have any time to post anything online or the internet access that we will have but I would very much like to take all of you on the journey! Please check clintbieri.com daily. If we can we will put tweets and blog posts about the events of the week on the site. All of our contact info is below if you would like to take the time to encourage us! Thanks for wrestling for us in prayer this week like Epaphras in Colossians 4:12 and thank you for helping us put Jesus in 1st place in everything like Colossians 1:18 talks about!

All Our Love,

Clint and Christina

Christina and I have been told by many people who love us that we would make good church planters. I have actually heard this since I was 17 years old but I have never had the confidence or the desire to set out on such an adventure.  Since our responsibilities have ended at Faircreek in August, I have been pouring my time into researching and preparing to attend what is called a church planters assessment center at Beulah Beach which is a Christian and Missionary Alliance conference center near Vermillion, Ohio.  This time in late September will be a time of asking godly men and women to evaluate Christina and I on wether or not we would be successful as church planters.

I for one am very thankful that these types of centers are available to men who think that God is calling them to such an adventure.  We covet your prayers in the coming weeks and especially during September 21-24 as Christina and I will be attending the before mentioned assessment.  We are excited and a little nervous being that we don’t know all of what will be asked of us at this assessment.  We have heard that these are very grueling and really separate the men from the boys as it were.

On another front we are still looking for good churches who are hiring people and we are looking around a lot.  I am actually taking much of this afternoon to hunt for more openings that could be a fit.  So if you could pray for us in this as well we would both be very thankful.

Also, I would like to ask those of you who would be willing to pray for us to actually sign up for a weekly prayer note of sorts that I plan on putting together.  This will be just a bulleted list of what our needs are.  If you are interested in joining a “prayer team” of sorts asking for God’s direction and guidance it would be very helpful to us knowing that our brothers and sisters are beseeching the Father to give us all guidance and direction so that we would be in step with the Holy Spirit.  I will be posting a signup list online for you to complete and then I will get prayer details to you beginning next week.  Thanks for all your love and support!