“What if children’s ministry wasn’t the direction I’m asking you to continue in? Would you step away?” As soon as Brian Henley answered, “Of course I would, Lord,” he felt God begin to speak to him about church planting. “I had a Willis moment. You know, ‘What are you talking about, Lord?’ I knew something new was coming up, but to plant a church? What did I know about planting a church? I think that moment is right where God wanted me.”

Brian called his wife Kasha while on his way to a Michigan District Council meeting to tell her what God was putting on his heart. Her response wasn’t what he expected, though. “I said ‘no’,” explains Kasha. “When you think of a pastor’s wife, you think of the expectations. Being a mom with young kids, that’s why I initially said ‘no’. The expectations I put on myself were unrealistic. But doing a church plant, you get to set the standard on your availability and what God’s calling you to do. With Brian setting the goals, you don’t have people set in their ways, saying ‘this is what the last pastor’s wife did’.” Eventually her answer became, “Brian, I’ll do whatever you feel God’s calling you to do, just be sure it’s Him.”

Listening to the meeting’s guest speaker Leith Anderson there was no doubt in Brian’s mind what he was supposed to do. “The whole service was on church planting,” he says. “Every word that he spoke was digging deep into my heart, and I knew that God was calling me to plant a church.”

Looking back, Brian admits he was out of his comfort zone. “It really caused me to rely on God during that time,” he says. Like most church planters, he was excited, but felt inadequate, so he devoured everything available on church planting – books, conferences, Web sites. “I did everything,” he explains. “But one of the things that worries me the most is that we see how everyone else who has been successful did it, and we might be missing the voice of God. We might miss the specifics of how He wants us to do it.”

With his calling confirmed, Brian approached Dave Williams, his senior pastor at Mount Hope Church in Lansing. “I was nervous,” he says. “Mount Hope had already planted a large amount of churches around the state. I knew it was his heart, but we’d never planted a staff member from within the church. All I could think was, ‘What if he looks at me and says no?’” There was no need to worry, though. Brian shared the vision God had given him, and Pastor Dave expressed his excitement at the possibilities.

In October 2006, Journey Life Church launched in Holt, Michigan, with seven families from Mount Hope. It didn’t start out perfectly, though. The group initially met in a funeral home, and quickly lost two families from their core team. They eventually moved on to meet in the Henley’s home, then rented space at a Holiday Inn for a year before they began their own building campaign. Throughout all of this, Brian and Kasha watched as God provided miracle after miracle. “A church in the district closed down, but they gave us their entire church – chairs, nursery furniture, everything. Then we got financial support from our district, and Mount Hope helped financially with our building campaign. They told us that if we raised $50,000 they would match it. With a group of only 20 people, we raised $56,000.”

With a building to meet in, Brian and Kasha turned their focus to discipleship and developing leaders in their church. “These have been our two greatest challenges,” he says. They implemented a discipleship program called, Get Rooted which is based on seven roots for growing deeper in Christ which has been life changing. “One thing we’ve intentionally done from the beginning is place people where they feel called and where their skill sets are, not just where we have a need. If we find out what they’re passionate about, then they’ll serve longer and be more effective.”

Journey Life Church makes it a point not only to serve within the church, but in the surrounding community. They partner with existing community incentives asking how they can help those already on the ground.   Whether from free landscaping at local schools, to free inflatables for kids they are making an impact. “It’s cool to see the church be the body of Christ,” he says. “We’re showing God’s love in a practical way.”

Members of the church get into the serving spirit outside of events, as well. “We’ll have people buy the guy’s lunch behind them in the drive-thru or purchase groceries for people throughout the community,” says Brian. “At Christmas  we gave everyone in the church $20 and told them to go out and make an impact on the community however they felt led. The goal was to get them to recognize needs around them.”

Journey Life Church has continued to grow throughout the years and Brian and Kasha have watched as God has done miracles in the lives and marriages of those in the church. “We have a strong focus on marriages and families because I feel that’s an area that’s being destroyed,” Brian says. “We’re seeing people who are on the verge of divorce have their marriages miraculously restored by God. Many of them say if it weren’t for JLC, they wouldn’t be married today. They believe so strongly in what God’s done in their lives and it just spreads. They start talking to a coworker who’s struggling and then invite them to church. And that same story just continues.”