Who Are the McCools?
Chris and Summer McCool have enjoyed a wonderful journey!  Chris was born and raised in the city of the King (Elvis that is) Memphis, TN until he moved to Searcy, Arkansas with his family at the age of thirteen.  Summer was born and raised in the same lakeside town in Heber Springs, Arkansas for eighteen years.  They actually spent a lot of time together as teenagers from youth functions to swimming in the lake.

After high school they went their own ways.  Chris went to Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.   Summer attended Southwestern Assemblies of God University (SAGU) south of Dallas.  During college they ran into each other a few times at major events but never built on the previous friendship until later.

After graduating from college in May 2000 Chris with moved to Philadelphia to help plant Christian Life Church - a purpose driven church.  While starting this church he worked in banking and accounts receivables.  He also attended the Assembly of God Theological Seminary (AGTS) satellite campus at Valley Forge Christian College in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. 

Summer stayed in Dallas after graduation and served different roles at SAGU.  She than took a position working with Youth Alive – a program which reaches out to high school students to share Christianity with them.  She played an important role in this office.

In early 2002 Chris and Summer spoke by phone and email.  In Christmas 2002 they were both home in Arkansas visiting their parents.  They decided to meet for dinner and talk – that conversation was the start of something beautiful and a new journey for both of them.  By June 2003 both ended up in Austin, Texas for two different reasons - but designed by God (at least that is what they tell people).  Chris joined a team to plant a church in Austin and Summer moved to start a new career.  Both felt love in the air.  Summer likes to call love “friendship on fire” – whatever they felt it lead to marriage in March 2004.  In May 2007 they will have their first child (Tatum McCool) in the wonderful city of Austin. 
 

Texas? No, Austin!
What is so wonderful about Austin?  Anyone who has visited or stay in Austin can tell you that there is something different about the people.  Austin takes pride at being weird and keeping it that way. Austin is in Texas, but not of Texas.

What makes Austin weird? Come spend a weekend at Austin City Limits in September or South by Southwest in March and you too will think to yourself, “this city is interesting and strange at the same time!”  Austin is weird because is very unconventional for a city it’s size and pride of it.  Austin recognizes its differences from other cities in Texas – the eastern United States for that matter.  Austin is a city blessed with beautiful hills and vistas to look out onto, instead of man-made overpass being the high point.  And the music!  With over 100 music venues, Austin has long been billed as the Live Music Capital of the World, where many long-famous musicians either got their start or strutted their stuff. 

But it’s the people who make Austin the place to live and play.  There truly is no more “accepting” city anywhere than Austin.  Whatever your socio-economic status, culture, political or social persuasion, you will be accepted here.  The University, the Capital, and the Tech industry together have brought people from literally all over the world to this area, and many have chosen to stay. 

Casual, cosmopolitan, eclectic, five-star, techie, hippie, historic, chic, intellectual, fashionable, artistic, and weird… The adjectives used to describe Austin are as numerous and diverse as the people who live, work and visit here.  You’ll find Austin a place where government, education, business and people come together in one of the most energetic, creative yet somehow laid-back cities in the entire country.

Emerging Faith
Here, in the heart of Texas, in Austin is a great place to work out salvation.  One can rethink what it means to believe.  We like to think we are believers becoming Christian rather than Christian believers, because if a Christian is someone who selflessly follows Christ and radiates divine love in a broken world than we are profoundly aware that there is much of who we are that lies in shadows, still needing to be evangelized. 

We view evangelism differently now. There are two dangerous temptations each of us face when confronted by a stranger (someone who thinks and acts in a way that is foreign to our cultural or religious practices). The first is a desire to transform that stranger into our own image, endeavoring to obscure and replace their cultural and religious practices with our own. The second is to exclude and reject the stranger entirely, viewing them as a threat which must be guarded against. In one the stranger is rendered into a clone while in the other they are made into an enemy.

It is our personal challenge to seek to listen and learn from those who are different from us, instead of understanding ourselves as those who have mastered truth.  We consider ourselves heretics and students in Austin (and the world) who can learn from the beliefs and practices of those who seem foreign to us. We don’t claim that all beliefs and practices are of equal value any more than it is a fundamentalist one which claims that what ‘we’ (whoever ‘we’ may be) believe is absolutely true.

So what do we offer others? We endeavor to demonstrate how one may faithfully ask, seek and knock by making this a necessary part of our own lives.  By following the words of Augustine when he wrote, ‘God is He who gives God’, we realize that we cannot give God but rather, by demonstrating openness and humility, creating a space where God can give God.  In this way an evangelist can be understood as one who is open to God at all times and encourages others in this way of being - helping to produce a clearing where God is free to give God.    

Chris McCool