Throughout 2021 I was praying that God would give me a ministry.  I also asked several friends whom I knew were people of faith, "will you pray for my ministry?"  even though at the time it didn't even exist.

My dad passed away in April 2021 and I had the opportunity to speak at his funeral.  He had live a long life and I believe he was ready to go.  So while there was sadness, especially for my mom who was his companion for over 50 years, it was a positive experience for me to share many of the fun times and lessons I had learned from him.

Later, after the graveside service, one of my mom's friends said to me, "You should move to Tampa and start a church... I would love to come to it!"

It was kind of her to say that (not to mention generous) but I don't believe the Lord is calling me to start a church.  There many good ones that already exist (note I did not say "perfect" here because none are) .  But I did receive that word of encouragement as a sign that I should keep seeking ministry opportunities.

In late October of 2021 I had the opportunity to speak at Highlands College about my experience building technology and how God has been using me in my secular career.   I believe God had given me this idea to speak at HC over two years prior to it coming to fruition and it was beautiful to see how God lead me to that event happening through the summer of 2021.  But that is another story.

The day before that event I had been looking around the internet and landed on a site about faith that got me excited.  I've been thinking about what it means to have real and abiding faith for some time now and landing on this site started my entrepreneur's mind turning.

A few days later on November 4th I believe God gave me the idea to look for the site greatfaith.com. I did a search to see if the domain name was available and it was; but not for the typical $20.  It was owned by someone and the price was $3000.  Not a huge amount of money, but not pocket change either.

I had left my job as CTO for a promising company in early September of 2021 to give me space to work toward fulfilling my purpose of helping to teach and encourage others. I mention this because I had zero income and was living off of savings when I found this opportunity to purchase greatfaith.com

I don't want to over dramatize this, but my family was on a budget and all of our expenses were being looked at very carefully, especially with Christmas just around the corner.

On November 8th, four days after seeing this opportunity, I was praying about this and wondering what to do.  And after some reflection and seeking the Lord I said to myself: "If you want to buy GREAT FAITH dot com, you need to have some faith yourself."  

So I pulled out my credit card and made the purchase.

Around six weeks later, during the Christmas holidays I got sick.  Terrible timing right?  So I ended up watching the Highlands Christmas service online.

During the service Pastor Chris Hodges gave us a message that included his word for 2022.

Do you want to take a guess at what that word was?

"Great Faith".

I remember thinking when he said this... "Of course it is!"

This was another validation point for me.  Note that I do not have a personal relationship with Pastor Chris.  We have exchanged greetings a couple of times but have never had a conversation and certainly have never discussed the need for greater faith in the church.  And yet God put the same idea on each of our hearts 100% independently.

There are many aspects to living your life for God and faith is merely one part;  and notably, faith only has power when it is combined with LOVE.  Nonetheless I strongly believe FAITH is an area where I and many others need growth.

Why is this?  In America and many parts of the developed world we spend considerable energy and resources trying to reduce risk and always be prepared for an unknown future.  We do this with insurance for all kinds of possible problems and by saving money for the future.  Note that I don't believe this is wrong and I do believe we should use wisdom in managing our finances. But if we are not careful we will completely circumvent any need for dependence on God by trusting in money or man-made solutions to the future.

When my wife and I got married she was very close to completely broke.  It was fine because I married her for other more important qualities, but I remember looking at her account balance and seeing a single digit number and thinking, "Wow!  You are flying the plane really low!".  With our culture of always seeking financial security, if we are not intentional about how we grow our faith in the Lord, we will put our ATM card into an account of FAITH, and we'll find that the balance is very low.

I have seen this many times in life both in myself and others.  A believer hits a seriously challenge and pulls out empty pockets when they start looking for their faith.

It was not much different in Jesus' day.  On more than one occasion He chided His disciples for their lack of faith.  It is an interesting paradox that the places you'd expect Jesus to find faith He often found deficiency and then at other times He's recognize GREAT FAITH in places that were not expected at all like a Roman centurion.

This should not be the case.  I want our churches to be full of people with an incredible faith.  The kind of faith that Jesus speaks of that CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS.

My experience so far in life is that this is uncommon and I want to change that in my life and in yours.  And if you are already moving mountains, and I certainly believe these type of people are alive today, I'd love to hear your story!

My goal for this ministry is to stir disciples to be intentional about growing their faith.  This will happen in a number of ways but I hope to reach people wherever they are.  

There will be a bunch of articles for people who are searching for topics centered on faith via Google.  

I've developed an outline series of lessons that can be used for Bible studies and/or small groups.  I plan to build out this content so that it is very easy to use both for teachers/leaders and for members of the class/small group.

My brother and I have started to record some podcasts for people who would like to redeem their time in the car or while working around the house listening to audio content;  and eventually I'd like to record a bunch of videos to reach people through YouTube.

Everything will be trying to pull people into a journey of growing their faith with practical teaching and training so that we see more mountains moved in Jesus name!

There is still a long way to go to achieve this vision.  Nonetheless, I'm excited about this journey both for what it is going to do for my faith and for yours.  Please join me!

-- Harris Reynolds