Saint Paul, Minnesota
Deciding to move from North Carolina back to Minneapolis was a difficult decision for Touger. “My last winter in North Carolina, there was a 70 degree day in January and I decided to wash my car outside. I thought to myself, ‘When we move up north, we will never see another 70 degree day in the middle of January again!’”
On a more serious note, he adds that North Carolina had become home to him and his wife after three years of living there. “To leave something right when we felt like we were getting acclimated was challenging. Even though we believed God was calling us back to Minnesota to plant a church, it still was a scary proposition.”
Touger is happy with their choice. “I love pastoring a church that is planting other churches and are seeing transformed lives because of people meeting Jesus.”
He says a major obstacle all churches face in seeing transformed lives “is that we settle for religiosity—performing spiritual things—versus engaging in a transformative relationship with the living Jesus. If we settle for religiosity, then we lose. If we are willing to get our hands dirty, see the beauty of God’s love and mission in the world, and are willing to participate in it, then something beautiful can happen in us and through us.”
Touger says he doesn’t just feel a part of the Covenant. “The Covenant is actually in me. The Covenant seeks to keep the essential things essential and the secondary things secondary, which I also seek to do in my own life. This happened before I even knew the Covenant existed.”
Favorite way to waste time: Volleyball
Choose a superpower—fly or be invisible: Fly because it’s awesomer than being invisible.