by Matt Smith

SAN DIEGO - God is working in a mighty way among church planters in San Diego County.

Each month, new churches are beginning their ministries, reaching out to distinct communities all around the county. This is the story of Barabbas Road Church, which launched in February in La Jolla. Let me describe how God is showing His sovereignty over every aspect of the planting process.

It was 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, and we were exhausted from the long drive back from the California Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting. Having just returned, excited and purposeful, we were on our knees praying, asking God to help us to have a bigger vision. We were planting a church in La Jolla, geared to reach intellectual skeptics.

My wife and I prayed: "God, help us to be as big as You want us to be."

Two minutes after ending the prayer, my wife checked her e-mail and told me we had just lost our meeting place. Long story short, without our knowledge, a new board took over the retirement center we were set to use and decided they didn't want to rent to us. We hadn't officially signed a contract and were now stuck, a few weeks from our first meeting without a site. Needless to say, we were surprised and disappointed, but based on our previous prayer, we knew God was doing something; after all, it was uncanny timing.

The next morning we were half-panicked and half-excited to see what God was going to do. We called some of our core group and asked them to start praying. La Jolla is an exclusive area, and we had only one day to find a suitable location before we left to go back East for Thanksgiving. We went to pick up our dog from the dog-sitter and kept making calls to different sites, winding our way through La Jolla and getting turned around in the process.

As a last-ditch effort, I called the director of the place we had just lost, asking for some advice. She told us about a few locations and mentioned the Soledad Club, a spot she said was exclusive and nice but way out of our price-range. I asked her for the contact info, but she didn't have it with her and said she'd have to look it up.

About five minutes later, we stopped to check our bearings. I looked up and saw that "coincidentally" we had stopped outside the location we were just told about, the one out of our price-range. We pulled in, and the place was perfect, down to the last detail. At this point, I was almost shaking because I really felt God had just driven us to this location. There was one lady there who knew the contact person for the center and she gave me her number. I called right then and immediately got through to the right person.

The normal price to rent the Soledad Club is literally 10 times more than we wanted to spend, but a few minutes into the conversation, we agreed on a price that was 10 times less than normal.

All I can say is this: within a matter of eight hours after praying that God would give us a bigger vision, we had been moved from a smallish senior center to a magnificent dream spot in one of the toughest real estate markets in America.

It takes more faith than I have to view these events as mere coincidence - it's a miracle. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, "God is there and He is not silent."