C.J. Ortega was in the marine core and came to PA in 1997. He lived in San Diego during that time and he worked as an engineer. He lives in Reading, PA and he met his wife there. He fell in love with urban church planting and that’s what he does now. He worked as a bouncer when he first moved out to reading from San Diego. While working as a bouncer he had already given his life to Christ but he wouldn’t consider himself a Christ follower. He considers that to be someone who is sold out for Jesus. He met Christ through another marine that he knew. This was during a time that he had attempted a second suicide. He spent 3-4 hours talking with this marine and the next morning he had been delivered from alcohol, tobacco, and even some drugs. Then mike took him to a church and he had a pastor read him his mail.
C.J. looks at certain things we do in church planting and wonders why we do that. There are two churches that are planted in Reading. There was one day when he had to change up the order of service. They started with prayer and went right into the announcements, then the sermon and ended up with worship.
His wife went into labor and was having difficulty with the birth. After 18 hours no one could figure out why this was going on and she went in to have a C-section. He prayed unlike he had ever prayed before and he promises God that he would do whatever God wanted. He then went to church at Glad Tidings a couple weeks later and felt the hand of God on him and God spoke to him everything that He wanted. He made his way to the altar and after that he never looked back.
C.J. was discipled in a couple different ways. He had a one on one learning the basics type of discipleship and then the real grind and growth came in through small groups. He disciples people the same way now at his church. He is real big on keeping things in the living room at home. There are one on one type of discipleships also and they use a curriculum that allows the person who is being discipled to be a discipler.
C.J. planted a church because he wanted to see peoples live changed and transformed through coming to Jesus. He has always had that as a passion. Through being a small group leader his groups would grow and eventually he had an opportunity to go to church planting boot camp. He came to the conclusion that planting churches is the way to reach as many people as possible.
One of the success stories is this guy named Corey who he met at a homeless shelter. Corey is now no longer homeless, he has a job and when he cant come to church he shows up at 6:00 PM just to say Pastor I am sorry that I can’t make it to church today because I have to work. He would leave church to go sleep under a bridge and there was nothing C.J. could do about it.
Some of the lessons C.J. said he learned in church planting is that he doesn’t want to dismiss experiences that haven’t been good experiences. Everything hasn’t been good along the way. He doesn’t want to dismiss them and say that there is no value to them. He told us that we don’t have to learn the hard way. One of the first things we need to do is to be ourselves. Do not try to be another Pastor who is successful. Love Jesus and Love the people that God has given you to disciple. C.J. tried to be like everyone else. This did not work though. They planted at a place 7 miles outside of the city and this was not working. He then decided that he needed to plant in the city. Out of the 30 people who were there only 5 came with him to the city.
He used to be timid when it came to asking for money and that is something he had to learn to change.
Time management is very important in not burning out. C.J. and his wife decide what is important to them. They need to prioritize what things are more important. The people at the church have a lot of grace for him because of the job he has. When they need him he is there but not for things that others can do. One of the other things that helps is that his wife and him do everything together. This allows for them to have family time and not give that up.
The Biggest letdown in ministry for him is when people turn their back on God. When you pour into someone’s life and give and give and no matter what you do they still walk away. That is when you have to look to God and ask him to really perform a miracle.
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