… living in Yanchep is paradise.

We have been here for 4 months now and some days find ourselves wondering ‘why did it take us so long to do this?’ Ok, so when you’re a pastor/church planter you are somewhat limited in where you can live by the geography of your missional community and up here we are a little further away than I would usually choose, but, we are loving life and wishing we had done this years ago.

In the thinking it thru we were worried that maybe it would be too far out, maybe the driving would kill us, the lack of convenience would annoy us and we may end up disconnected from everyone else.

And there’s no question there is a price you pay for quietness, seclusion and a different pace of life.

But I’d have to say that for us the benefits far outweigh the costs. We live in a house that feels like a holiday home – even 4 months after moving in. We live just across the road from the beach and we make sure we get full value from that. We wake up to dead quiet every morning – not a sound can be heard at 6.00am except for the waves breaking on the beach (and occasionally the crows going nuts.) We have good friends nearby and our church community just down the road.

But its something more intangible that we feel here and I don’t know that I can articulate it well. There is something in the geography, something in the ‘architecture’, something in the ethos of the place… I dunno I can’t really nail it.

We had hoped to one day live in a country town, but the possibilities of that are slimming as we bed down for a bit longer in the city and as the kids put their roots down. But living here really is the best of both worlds. We are a 10 minute drive from civilisation, (shops, take aways, movies…) but in the little pocket of ‘old Yanchep’ that we live in you feel like you could be in a little coastal town far away.

For the last 4 months I have been using ‘Pray as You Go’ each morning as I drive from home to Butler down Marmion Ave. I love the meditative aspect it offers and the way it make a 10 minute drive a beautiful way to start the day.

As yet we have no plans to try and kick start any kind of church up here. (It still surprises me that we would move into an area with virtually no churches and not want to start one) But we feel very committed to our friends and ‘family’ at QBC and to the community that is building there. So at least for now we are well bedded down there.

So if you’re wondering ‘where to next?’ I have to say that Yanchep might surprise you. Maybe not the new parts which still look like suburbia but with a longer drive. Instead somewhere in the old section where you can smell the seaweed and where the sand dunes dictate the shape of your block – where you might have a fence… or not… where you can hideaway if you want to, or come out to play…

Its good…