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I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ in 1991 while I was a sophomore at Miami University. I had grown up with a nominal involvement in the Catholic Church until I was 13. As a young man I had a belief in a God who had little or no interest in the human race. Lured by the promise of free pizza I heard the gospel in the spring of 1991. Over the next six months I pursued God intellectually while He pursued my heart. That fall I gave my life to Him and He started the process of re-shaping me for His purpose. He gave me a passion to tell others about him which led to my desire to be in vocational ministry.
While my wife, Elizabeth, and I were in seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield IL, we met Mark Albrecht, an associate pastor of a church in nearby Libertyville. We became fast friends and he became my spiritual mentor. As my wife and I were completing school Mark and his family were called to plant a church in Antioch, IL. We asked to be part of the launch team in order to learn about church planting from up close as well as to continue to be mentored by Mark. That calling led to the start of NorthBridge church where I have served as associate Pastor and my wife has served in a number of staff positions including children’s ministry, women's ministry and currently as our program director. The way God has worked at NorthBridge has been breath-taking. We've seen dozens and dozens of people come to Christ including many of my closest friends. We've had a partnership and relationship with our local community that I would not have though possible and we have seen young people, a generation that seems to be disappearing from the church across the country, taking leadership roles to see their peers and their town impacted by Christ. Through it all God has given us remarkable unity as a staff and congregation, it has been a tremendous joy to serve at NorthBridge and was not a situation I had planned on leaving.
About two years ago our church started to seriously consider what it meant to be "missional" and wondered what the NorthBridge of the future would be like as well as what sort of changes and repurposing would we have to go through in order to continue to accomplish our mission. One of the ideas discussed was church planting, As a church plant we believed in church planting with a gusto and had even played a small role in seeing Meadowland launch back in 2002. We knew we wanted to be part of more church planting efforts but how? Where would the future church planters come from? We looked across our congregation and saw several promising candidates but all were at least several years away. I started to ask the question "Who is the most likely church planting candidate we have?" Slowly I began to realize that it was me. My wife and I started to ask God if he wanted us to plant a church. We decided to attend the church planting assessment center in Greenlake WI in February 2008. While at the center we heard about the growing need for church planters. So many people right in our own backyards were living without Christ. We wanted to be part of reaching people with the gospel, helping people live lives centered on the kingdom of God. We had seen firsthand the way God had worked at NorthBridge in the lives of those who were far from him. At the center we saw a movement that was being used by God to support and train planters and we started to believe that God could use us to plant. While at the center I started to see how God had been preparing Elizabeth and I to church plant with both the experiences He had brought us through and the gifts and skills he had provided. Having that design confirmed by the assessors helped us to see God's hand even more. When we returned and started to share this new thinking with some of our staff and leadership we received further confirmation that this was the direction God was intending for us. As we opened ourselves more and more to the possibilities of planting, God appeared to be opening a door in Round Lake Beach, IL.
Pastor Gary Ricci
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