We Choose Rest

Crouching at the door is the end of the year. Waiting to pounce on us all. Some are readying themselves for it’s inevitable coming. Others will find it a shock once again that time has passed, seasons have changed, and so have we. My prayer is that each of you readers are in the former column. Preparing to rest.

For us as a family the school calendar helps us prepare for this unorthodox time of 2.5 school-free weeks where we eat sugar, don’t sleep, spend time with family, and wish it was snowing rather than the 299th day of sunshine in Denver. As I personally prepare to rest I find myself working more hours to wrap up all things “church” and “missionary” as well as our other jobs of coffee roasting, admin assisting, tattooing, table-flipping, and whatever else comes our way (not to mention buying those last couple of Christmas presents we forgot). All of this to bring rest to my weary mind, body, soul, and heart. Not because by controlling these things do. I find true rest, but because I want to make the best use of my time now so I can make the best use of my time later. Inevitably I will forget something and have to make that dreaded decision: do I trust that it will all be okay if I leave it alone? Do I trust that God is truly in control and I am not? Do I choose rest?

Of course this is something we practice all year not just at it’s seasonal end. For us as a family one of the key motifs in church planting has been ordered chaos. It looks like a wild array of happenings and goings on, but over the span of a few years it is a pattern of choosing trust, choosing rest. I would love to say it’s been smooth and easy, but of course it hasn’t! We have freaked out a lot over the last four years (hours?). But there is fruit. There is beauty. There is clarity.

One development that has happened includes a collaboration with a network of house churches in Denver known as Coram Deo Communities. We as Cap City are more and more locking in these friends to follow Jesus in a different way than we originally set out. Below I have included a bio that I wrote for their newsletter introducing ourselves with clarified language and vision of who we are and what we are doing. I include this to you, our prayerful partners, because many have wondered what’s been going on and why there aren’t any sermon videos, service times, and whatnot. I could overwhelm you with the details of what God has been doing, but I submit this to you as a preview and foretaste of what has been happening. All from a place of choosing trust, and choosing rest for four wild years in a place on the edge of the former wild west.

“We are Cap City.

Started by the five Van Waardhuizens and a ragtag bunch of hooligans a couple of years ago, Cap City began as a church planting effort to plant a traditional model church in Central Denver. Over the years God has shifted us to think more about living as missionaries and less about planting a church. 

Located in the Baker neighborhood we long to see the gritty spots in our city saturated with the love of Jesus. We as a house church are living to bring friendship and prayer into the places that make sense for us to exist. For many of us that incudes the Baker neighborhood itself. For ALL of us that includes our workplaces, our homes / apartment buildings, where our kids go to school, and the friends we are making along the way.

One of the primary focuses we have as a community is to see every person step into their missionary identity. Rooted in the love of the Father as sons and daughters, serving one another to learn to serve others, we go out to live as people who have been with Jesus and radiate the light of his presence (even when we don’t realize it).


We hope to see those in our home be the same person everywhere they go: a loved son or daughter sent by the Spirit to serve others. This looks like doing good work, praying for those in need, giving our lives away by feeding and clothing others (often literally), and being willing and ready to choose Jesus as the reason for the hope that we have even when it seems like a distant hope.

Simply put we are focusing our efforts in our home to become a team of missionaries who love and serve one another so that we can keep going in the good work God has put before us in the rest of life.

Gather and scatter. 


This is a process. Not just living this way, but bringing people into living this way. Whether we are long-time Jesus freaks, questioning many or all things about our faith, or never really believed in any of it before, Cap City longs to dwell with Jesus and deliver rest to the restless. ”

Merry Christmas!

--Michael, Ally, Aksel, Flora, and Frances