Lane Mears
School of Church Planting (SCP) Pastor
Lane Mears serves as Director of the School of Church Planting. Lane and his wife Anna were married in 2001 and have two spunky kids: Caleb (4) and Abigail (2). They live in south Austin with their dog Lizzy. Lane practices law part-time and runs the training school part-time. (He says he "practices law and grace").
Lane had no clue about anything remotely related to Christianity until near the end of his second year of law school. He was having unimaginable success in law school (editor of the law review and at the top of his class), but it seemed hollow for some reason. At that point (around February 1996), he met a girl who invited him to her church (Second Baptist Houston) and to Houston Metro, a weekly city-wide singles gathering. He went because he liked the girl. At Metro, he was drawn to the music of Caedmon's Call and the speaking of Dave Edwards something about it stirred him. At around the same time, he found his grandmother's Bible in his nightstand, and began to flip through it (he'd never picked one up before). For some reason, he stopped in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes (King James version, no less) and began reading. It changed his life. He read about how King Solomon set off to learn the meaning of life (the very thing Lane was looking for). Solomon looked for the meaning of life in pleasure, work, and wisdom, and found all of these meaningless. It struck Lane that he had been learning this lesson as well, in his college partying, his long hours as a stockbroker and baseball executive, and his success in law school it all seemed meaningless. God used this lesson from Ecclesiastes as well as the teachings of Dave Edwards and Ed Young, Sr. to open his eyes and heart to Jesus and, in June 1996, at the age of 26, he surrendered his life to Jesus.
The people and things that have influenced Lane's life the most are: Anna, Caleb & Abigail; Ron Parrish, Chuck Swindoll, Ed Young, Sr. & Susan Ryan; Jim Elliot & Oswald Chambers; Keith Wheeler, Jimmy Seibert, & Floyd McClung; and Bill Wimberley, John Walters, Fareed Tulbah, John Nelson, Dan Gattis, Brad Chambers and other men who spent time discipling him.
Lane's interests include: baseball, fantasy baseball, Houston Astros baseball, Texas Rangers baseball, I guess pretty much anything baseball; scuba diving; traveling; reading; playing sports; Texas Longhorns athletics; Dallas Cowboys football; missions; and everything to do with the beach.
Email Lane at: lanem@hopeinthecity.org