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His Will in His Perfect Time
By Nathan Leierer
My journey into church planting started in Bible
college. I had grown up in a Christian home. I made
a profession of faith as a young boy but I could not
remember it and was relying on a piece of paper
that said I was saved. At the age of 15, I finally gave
in and truly confessed my sins and received Christ
as my Savior. I never thought of myself as a pastor
because I did not see myself as a leader. I thought I
would be a music director or youth pastor. But God
had other plans. During my junior year in college,
I took a church planting trip with a group of men
to Las Vegas, Nevada, and saw the church planting
work there. The Lord gave me a zeal for church
planting that has remained with me ever since.

I began a relationship with my future wife during
my senior year of college. She had always felt she
would be a foreign missionary, but the Lord worked
on her heart to surrender to be a missionary to the
United States as well. We felt the Lord leading us
together and we were married in July 2011. The
end of that year we moved to Salem, Oregon, and
began working with my father-in-law at Salem
Baptist Church.

We originally thought we would serve there for
five years but the Lord had other plans. We worked
in many aspects of ministry that helped us prepare
for church planting. We prayed for the Lord to
show us where He wanted us to plant a church.

We even drove through Portland before we had
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children and we both really did not want to live
in a big city like Portland. I just brushed it off and
thought someone else who had a love for the big
city would start a church in Portland.

We continued serving and praying. I was part-
time at the church and worked several other jobs
on the side. I did not like having to work around
my jobs for ministry and finally decided to start a
landscaping business. The Lord allowed it to grow
and it got to the place where I could rely on that to
fully support my family if needed. There was a point
I really considered if God wanted me to work full-
time to be a financial blessing to missionaries and
a helpful layman in our church. I felt if I did that,
it was the easy road. I tried to give good excuses to
just run my business but God’s call back in Bible
college kept coming up and I could not shake it.

Then one day in 2019, I can vividly remember the
Lord telling me to not continue the business but to
go plant churches. That is what this world needs.

One of the things that also made me hesitate
stepping into church planting was that I felt as
though I still had so many things to improve in my
spiritual life before I could be a pastor. It seemed
I had the excuses to not step out into church
planting, but then in Scripture one does not see the
disciples with their “ducks in a row” before they
went into ministry. After the resurrection of Jesus,
the disciples still did not believe what Christ had



already told them that He would rise from the dead
after three days. They were scolded by Jesus for
their unbelief and right after that Christ tells them
to Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature (Mark 16:15). I believe many hesitate
going into ministry because they fear failure or they
have not attained the spiritual level of their pastor
or other great men of faith. One does not have to
attain the spiritual level of some of the great men
of old before stepping out in faith to serve God in
full-time ministry. The reason many of these men
reached that spiritual level in their lives is because
they took steps of faith into the ministry God had
for them. Many times they did fail but those failures
grew their spiritual lives. I do believe there needs to
be a doctrinal foundation, but that does not mean
that one has to be a biblical scholar.

At the beginning of January 2020, the Lord began to
again lay the city of Portland on our hearts. I was at
a pastor’s meeting in Washington and the need for
Portland came up as it always did in the Northwest.

While sitting there, I was having a conversation
with God and wondering “Why does not anyone
do something? We always talk about it, but why has
someone not gone?” In the eight years we had been
in Salem, we had not seen one church started in
the city of Portland. There were a couple churches
started in the suburbs but not in the city. Then again,
I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Then do something!”
I thought, “Me, Lord? Are you sure?” It is so easy
to say someone needs to do
something but to be willing to be
the one to do it is another thing!
This is why the Lord says, Pray ye
therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth labourers
into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38).

One cannot pray this prayer
without saying, “Yes, Lord, I will
go.” I shared this with my wife
and we prayed about it. I needed
the Lord to give us a clear confirmation this was
what He wanted because I knew we could not do
it without it truly being His will. If it were up to my
fleshly desire, it would be no.

A few weeks later, I was at a Capital Connection
in Salem and the host pastor shared a story of a
man who travels all over the world for his job.

He goes to many spiritually dark places. He said,
“I do not know why, but every time I fly into
Portland, Oregon, I feel a spiritual darkness like
no other place I travel.” This is what the Lord used
to confirm the calling on my life—God wanted us
to go to Portland! Many places in the world are
spiritually dark without God; however, right here
in our own country there are places that are just as
dark as one would find on the foreign field.

The Lord also had His timing and it was not as
fast as we thought, but God was putting the puzzle
pieces together in His way for us to leave Salem
Baptist Church. In 2020 we continued to help our
pastor through the unique ministry challenges
that faced us. We decided to stay on staff through
the church’s 25th anniversary in September 2021.

We started deputation in October and then took
off for full-time deputation right after our fifth
child was born in December.

Traveling as a family of seven with a truck and
travel trailer all over the country has been quite
the adventure! To the average person, it looks
absolutely crazy! Yet, we have learned so much and
our faith and trust in God has grown. From my
wife breaking her foot to several
vehicle and trailer breakdowns
to the Lord sending us the
surprise of our sixth child, we
have seen His hand directing
our steps and guiding us in the
direction He wants, even when
it was very different than we
thought. We are excited to get
to Portland and be where God
has called us! This journey has
been His story and a visual of His hand leading us.

His timing is truly perfect. W
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