Unsung Heroes – Tucson

In Western society it’s difficult to do life together, but it does happen, it can be sustained and it can be life-changing. I pray these stories encourage you to keep meeting, keep searching and start gathering. I had the pleasure of meeting Jason Anderson recently, this is his story.

My name is Jason Anderson. My wife Catherine and I recently celebrated our 30th anniversary, and we have three grown children (and one daughter-in-law). I was born at Ellsworth AFB, SD and have lived all around the world in a multi-generational military family. I grew up in Germany, Greece, South Korea, Texas, and graduated high school in Nebraska. I also joined the military when older and lived and traveled all over again; to England, Europe, the Middle East, and all over the United States.

Growing up, I don’t remember a time when I was not at church, often more than once a week. I can honestly say that I practically cut my teeth on the back of the church pews. One day I took a quarter that was lying on a desk or counter at our church. When my mother noticed the money, she asked me where I got the quarter, and I told her how I had taken it. She talked to me about stealing and dishonesty and how it was wrong and made Jesus sad. I remember feeling very convicted and weeping remorsefully because I just knew I had done something terribly wrong and felt dirty inside and out. I wanted to be clean. So, I began to pray as my mother talked to me about sin and forgiveness.

My mother led me in a simple prayer to ask Jesus to come and clean my heart and be in charge of my life. I remember praying that prayer for weeks every night before bed, asking anew every time for Jesus to come to clean me and be with me. My mother eventually convinced me that once really was enough as long as I kept talking with God about everything and kept Him in the center of my life. I was baptized at Faith Baptist Church in Kaiserslautern, Germany shortly after my sixth birthday to much laughter and joy (a truly funny event which I will never forget).

I continued to faithfully attend church and grow in my understanding of God. I was passionate about Him and at various times wanted to be a pilot, missionary, and military member. I was never far from church and was very active in children and youth programs as I grew up and we moved around the world with my father’s job in the Air Force.

When I was 17, I spent a sweltering, super-charged summer at Maranatha Bible Camp in Maxwell, Nebraska. It was a week of fun activities, energetic worship, and inspiring teaching and bible study. Yet it was also something more. It was the week God gripped my life with an unshakable call. I don’t remember the speaker, and I don’t even remember his whole message except that he taught from John 21:15-19. I remember that at the end of his sermon it was like the Holy Spirit flooded my being and God spoke through that key passage to say, “Do you love Me? Then feed My sheep; take care of My flock.” It was a call and a destiny that I didn’t yet fully understand.

I shared this call with my home church but wound up seeking an education path on my own. I decided to attend Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona with the intent to complete a Christian Studies degree, follow-up with seminary, and cap it all off from the pulpit in some little Southern Baptist church. At least, that was my plan, but, as with many young people, that resounding voice became just a quiet breeze in my life-always present, yet easily ignored.

That was especially true when my wonderful helpmate, Catherine, entered my life in a gently insistent way during my second year of college. God drew us together quickly, building a deeply abiding relationship between our kindred souls. After only nine months, we were happily married and permanently part of each other’s lives. Yet, that left us with the predicament of providing for a new family with no work and school loans piling up around us.

I turned to the only work and life I was familiar with while tuning out the calling in that quietly insistent breeze which was God’s voice. I enlisted in the Air Force and was offered the opportunity to study Hebrew at the Defense Language Institute. I completed the course of study and spent a successful twenty-year career as a Hebrew linguist.

During those twenty years, I met many encouraging people, learned many leadership and management skills, and completed several degrees. At several points throughout my enlistment, my wife and I even considered separating from the military and entering the mission field, but some timely, sage counsel from one of our mentors, a Nazarene missionary named Cliff Wright encouraged us to seek God at every decision point, which lead us to completing an entire 20-year career.

Through those 20 twenty years of service, that still, quiet voice never let us rest. At every location, and in every church, we have both been involved in ministry. God never let go of our hearts, and we never lost His call. I struggled through disappointment and frustration as each year it seemed we moved further away from the calling and purposes God had for our lives. Looking back, I can see that God was maturing me and expanding mine and my wife’s hearts with His love for others as we learned to better love ourselves.

As we moved into the final years of my military career, from 2013-2015, God worked a major overhaul in our spiritual lives. Catherine had been pursuing and encountering God and He was stirring a holy jealousy within me for the same kind of intimacy and encounters. I deployed to Afghanistan in the winter of 2012-2013 and had a revolutionary, yet very peacefully quiet encounter with God one evening while in transit to my operational area. I didn’t even realize the extent to which He was changing me as I surrendered more and more completely to Him until I returned home. One day, my wife looked at me quizzically after what would have been a normally tense interaction with my bipolar teenage son (it was quite calm and mild) and asked what had happened to me because I was a different person. God was truly rewriting my heart!

Shortly after that, the military had moved us to Tucson, Arizona and a wonderful spirit filled church. It was there we were both baptized in the Spirit, and I spend most of our first year at that church face-down on the floor with God. He breathed new breath over our dry bones and gave us long awaited words of confirmation for our calling and purpose. The pastors guided and mentored us as we transitioned into a time of expanded and changing ministry. He verbally affirmed that God had a call to ministry for both my wife and me. He also identified a gift for teaching and an affinity for youth, especially over my life. Likewise, two of the elders and several other church leaders gave almost identical words at several separate times over the course of that first year.

The end of 2014 into early 2015 was a seminal season in our lives. It was the twentieth year of our marriage, and the end of my military career. Yet God was more interested in the new beginnings in our lives. Shortly after celebrating our twentieth anniversary, I retired from the military and transitioned right into a staff position at our local church.

While at the church, I was learning hands-on ministry as I went back to school to complete a seminary degree. It was a time of growth as I discovered how to take the discipline, leadership, and teaming skills God allowed the military to equip me with and turn them to the service of His kingdom. Throughout all this my wife continues a life-long struggle with significant health issues. We continue to believe for her miraculous healing as we seek to spend more time in God’s presence and in pursuit of Him. His voice has once again become strong and insistent-no longer just a gentle breeze.

As God’s voice grew stronger in our lives (or we just heard Him better), and after we moved to Tucson, Arizona, we began to have conversations with my brother-in-law and his wife about five-fold ministry and our dissatisfaction with the mini-concert, nice Ted Talk, church format that seems so prevalent today. We talked about true discipleship and walking in an intimate community, and we shared the frustrations of traditional ministry work (they were life-long pastors).

During the Covid pandemic, so many churches shut down and tried to adapt. While their church in California was completely shut down, my brother-in-law and his wife decided to step out and launch a house church ministry. Then in the Spring of 2021, they called and invited us to run with them by launching a house church in Tucson. We prayed about it and realized it matched a 20-year-old dream my wife had about us being in ministry with family. So, we took the plunge and launched that summer.

God faithfully grew our core down to just five people from my immediate family. But we remained faithful and gathered each Sunday. Then in the summer of 2023, a couple of families discovered the NewSong website, connected with our house church, and began to run with us. Within only a few months, God matured and grew us to the point where we launched a second house church and continued growing fast. A few more months later we launched a third house church in Tucson! It was a quick period of growth and stretching filled with many challenges and changes. We learned how to form an elder board, collaborate together to support each other, and begin to disciple and raise up more leaders.

The adventure of doing life together as part of God’s upside-down kingdom is challenging. We are constantly reminding ourselves of Galatians 6:9 “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” So, we encourage one another to press forward in God’s love, to stay focused on Him, and to do the tough work of loving each other and bearing one another’s burdens. We are determined to worship Jesus extravagantly while following Him as the head of the church body. We strive to practice other-mindedness (Phil 2:3), being unoffendable (Matt 5:21-26), and cultivating an atmosphere where we champion and love one another (John 13:35).

I encourage you to chase after God’ s purposes for your life (Matt6:23)! Be bold and step into the fullness of kingdom life as you continue to follow His call to the lost, broken, and hurting in your community and beyond with His power and love-which includes signs and wonders, praise and adoration, a deep understanding of His word, and discipleship. Continually learn to lean on Him more and more. Answer His resounding call and be eager to respond. It is time!

To connect with Jason and NewSong, check out the website https://newsong.life. Jason’s blog is https://upsidedown-kingdom.org/ and you can find his book on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Servant-Leader-Exploring-Principles-Upside-down-ebook/dp/B0BSDV4KMX.

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