“Restless.” That’s how Cheryl Reeves felt in the Spring of 2003. And maybe that sensation just made sense. After all, she had six kids (all elementary-age or younger) and happened to be in the thick of planting another church, Lifehouse.
Cheryl was also working to make her house in Snellville, Georgia feel like a real home. They had lived there for three years now, and she was beginning to hope that this location—unlike the previous five before—would actually become a place where she could put down some roots.
Still, she felt restless.
That Spring, John decided to visit Lexington, South Carolina to meet with Jeff Shipman, a fellow church planter who was involved with Crossroads Church in Columbia. John did things like this on a regular basis, and Cheryl had no reason to suspect this occasion would prove to be anything more than what it was supposed to be… a meeting.
But when Cheryl saw him that night, she immediately sensed something in his demeanor. Something she had seen several times before.
They put their six kids to bed early, and Cheryl demanded he spill whatever was on his mind.
“I think we’re supposed to move there,” he said.
That’s when Cheryl started sobbing. Not because she was going to be dragged against her will to some place she had never heard of. But because she was going by God’s Will, and she knew in her heart, by what she called a “supernatural feeling,” that His Will was for their family to move to Lexington. Her restlessness could now be put at ease.
Less than 24 hours after this, I climbed into our plum purple minivan, crammed in my reserved middle-left car-seat, and we headed toward Lexington to check out the town in which we would live for the next three years. When we returned, we began packing, cleaning, and staging (mostly I just watched), anticipating the daunting task of selling our house.
Two years earlier, John (my dad) and Cheryl (my mom) had placed the house on the market in order to move closer to their church plant. After several months, no one offered to buy it, and they removed it from the market, taking it as a sign from the Lord to stay.
This time, the house sold within days.
They took it as a sign from the Lord to go.
SIDE-NOTE: As John Reeves was walking and praying outside in Columbia, a college student drove by with windows down, making an obscene gesture and shouting “F*** YOU!” as he drove past. John Reeves told me it was right then that he knew Lexington was where he wanted to be.
…………
In late April of 2003 Salim Khalil received word that the Reeves were thinking of moving to Lexington. At the time, the Khalil’s were visiting churches around Lexington, searching for a place where they might plug in and become effective for the Lord in their town. So when Salim Khalil picked up the phone that summer and heard that the Reeves were, in fact, moving to Lexington to plant another church, they made what they called “a really easy decision.” They felt this was exactly what they wanted to do.