Ecclesia Network

Gary Alloway serves as the Pastor and Director of Mission for Redemption Church in Bristol, PA. Gary is an alumnus of Penn State and Princeton Theological Seminary.  He is passionate about seeing the healing love of Christ spread throughout the world.  He also loves indie rock, startup businesses, community ventures, and his family.

We recently had a chance to ask him a few questions!

How would you describe the area your church is in?

A post-industrial suburban small town.

How would you describe the journey of pastoring Redemption Church? What have been some of the milestones/different seasons?

When we first started, we were young, immature, and ambitious. 3 years in, we re-booted, spending the next 6 years in a house church model, which helped us develop depth, a culture of discipleship, patience, and a willingness to invest in small things, rather than try to conquer the world. House churches forced us to focus on relationships, both inside and outside the church. We re-launched our weekly gathering this past year with a whole network of local relationships to invite in, rather than just a good idea for a new ministry in Bristol.

Looking back, what do you know now you wish you had known when you first started Redemption?

I wish I had known how slow things would go. We planted in a dying post-industrial town and expected to see growth and change right away. If I had had a more realistic expectation for the pace of change, I would not have been as discouraged in the early years and would have spent more time rejoicing over the little victories along the way.

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in ministry there what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

Community partnerships. As a small church with a small budget, there are limitations on what we can do on our own. However, when we have partnered with both individuals and community organizations, we have been able to accomplish things far beyond our scope. We have helped launch a housing non-profit, a coffee shop, and a community festival. We have worked with local businesses to host Bible studies, storytelling nights, and discussion groups. Our resources and possibilities grow tremendously when we work with others rather than only within ourselves.

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

One mistake was thinking that there would be dozens of people in Bristol who were excited about a new church. In our post-industrial, post-Christendom setting, nobody was excited that we showed up. People were interested in who we were and what kind of neighbors we would be, but not what we were offering on Sundays. It has forced us to think about how we do Monday through Saturday well, not just think about Monday through Saturday as a means to enlarge Sunday.

What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of leading?

God continues to bring me back to the truth that it is all about discipleship. We can build a big church, but all that really matters to God is whether we are being shaped and formed to be like Christ. This the reason we exist. And if we invest in this, whether the church grows large or dies, we will be successful.

What do you dream/hope/pray Redemption looks like in five years?

I hope and pray that our church community is even more enmeshed in the life of Bristol. That we would be the salt and light not only on our main street, but in every neighborhood, on every street, in our schools, etc. I pray that even if we grow large, we wouldn’t lose sight of the fact that individuals matter to God. That we would love our neighbor, not as a concept, but instead, actually love our particular neighbor.

John is the Pastor of Love Carrick. He and his wife Charity together lead a house church that meets at the Concordia House. John graduated from Trinity Bible College with a BA in Intercultural Studies and Biblical Studies and went on to get a MA in Intercultural Studies from Asia Pacific Theological Seminary. He is currently working on his doctorate in Intercultural Studies/Missiology at Fuller Theological Seminary. John has over 17 years of ministry experience, serving in the N. Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Nepal, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Pittsburgh. In 2015, the Trotters moved to the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Carrick with their 3 year old son Amos.

So your church is in Pittsburg, PA. Tell us a little about it!

We are in the Carrick neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Carrick is an urban neighborhood within the city limits and is home to about 10,000 people. We are a low-income, blue-collar community with one of the most diverse schools in the metro. We are home to 1500 Bhutenese-Nepali refugees who have moved to the area in the last decade. There is a lot of civic pride here, a good bus line, and is the destination for a lot of people to get back on their feet again. Though violence, heroin use, and poverty are realities no one can deny, there is a lot of collaboration and resilience among the residents.

Talk to us about when you starting feeling the pull towards church planting, and the process/discussions that followed.

I have been involved in church planting internationally and domestically for a number of years now. I assisted in a church plant in the Philippines, did work among unreached people groups in Nepal, planted an AG international church in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and my family of course launched Love Carrick a little over a year ago. The call to plant Love Carrick was birthed out of a desire to see our community come together through neighborhood focused initiatives revolving around the discipleship process. After living in the community for 3 years we realized that there simply was no church presence that reflected the make up of our community and culture. The story is long but little by little God began to birth the dream of Love Carrick in our hearts.

What are the distinctives you are hoping to embed in the DNA of this new church?

We would like to be neighborhood focused and Gospel centric at the same time. The confusion and cross over between neighborhood org and local church is truly a distinctive we are after. Being hospitable and gathering in homes is somewhat of a distinctive as well; this sets the tone saying to each other and our community that we will know and care for each other deeply. Extravagant prayer is a distinctive that we seek as well. Ensuring that women in leadership is at the top of our list of distinctives is important as well. Community dinners, neighborhood involvement, extravagant prayer, and our Bhutanese-Nepali focus are distinct points for us.

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in getting this church plant off the ground, what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

Being involved in the neighborhood and partnering well with secular and religious organizations has gone exceptionally well. Being visible and building relationships with neighbors and serving in practical ways seems to be working and bridge building is happening in people’s attitudes towards the church.

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

The balance between gathering and scattering has been a real challenge. In the first several months we were great at scattering but had not developed a great way to gather. Also it is tough in an inner-city neighborhood because you are dealing with a lot of people in dire need where their lives feel like they are falling apart on a frequent basis. I feel like we could improve on seeing some more stable folks from outside of the neighborhood commit to Love Carrick and help balance things out a bit. So there is definite room for growth in that area.What is one failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?By far the biggest challenge this last year has been some inter-personal challenges amongst our leadership. We are still doing all we can to communicate and understand each other well and it has been difficult. What we have learned is that we must own our own sin and shortcomings, apologize well, forgive well, and assume the best in each other.

What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of planting?

I am learning that a healthy team equals a healthy church. If we can each individually stay healthy, and even better if we as a team stay healthy, the church and community grows and blossoms. Easier said than done.

What do you dream/hope/pray this new church looks like in five years?

I hate this kind of question. I don’t know that I care a great deal what it looks like in 5 years. If we can just keep doing what we have done over the last year – know our neighbors, be involved in the community, multiply house churches, meet people at the point of their need, address our dysfunction appropriately, I will be satisfied in five years. For the sake of the question though, this probably looks like multiple house churches, larger community events, more attendance at community meals, a multiplication of more leaders and hopefully a community that is not so racially divided.

Raised in Boise, Idaho, Robert is an avid Boise State and Boston sports fan, he loves film, design, coffee and home-brewing and is currently looking for opportunities to play old-man soccer. He runs a creative consulting firm called solidcreative.media.

In August of 2016, the Fraziers moved back to Boise to plant a church- Redemption Boise.
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So your church is in Boise, Idaho. Tell us a little about Boise!

Boise is a unique city for many reasons. It’s growing like crazy, it’s beautiful and so close to great outdoor recreation, and it’s one of the least religious cities in the country. It’s also where I grew up. When we sensed God calling us to plant, we were open to anywhere but excited to invest our lives in a city that we love so much.

Talk to us about when you starting feeling the pull towards church planting, and the process/discussions that followed.

I was being recruited by a large church to be there executive pastor. It wasn’t a good fit with my giftings and passions, but at the end of a long phone call the senior pastor told me that I was built like a church planter and if I wanted to do that he would support us. He didn’t end up supporting our church plant, but he did call out this apostolic gifting in me that I didn’t see. We started to process with the church we were leading in, and they reluctantly agreed that God was calling us to plant, over the course of about a year of discernment. We moved to Boise and a year later with a great launch team we started Redemption Hill.

What are the distinctives you are hoping to embed in the DNA of this new church?

My ministry from the beginning was shaped by the missional conversations of the early aughts. I spent 10 years as a missionary to teenagers, so outreach was the driving force behind the church plant. We wanted to be hyper-local, missional, evangelistic, built to make apprentices of Jesus and multiply disciple-making communities. Some of that is happening, other parts are still aspirational.

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in getting this church plant off the ground, what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

We’ve had some early success connecting with families in our community through movie nights, a sports and arts camp and a Christmas indoor fair. Our community groups and discipleship classes have been vital parts of building the community…and we instituted a short coffee break before the sermon that has really been a surprisingly great part of our community life.

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

We have a million little kids, so anything with just adults, classes, formation, missional communities has been difficult to move quickly. In our community group we have 15 kids and like 17 adults. And almost all of the kids are under 8. We haven’t solved that Rubik’s cube, but we are starting to lean into the rhythms of parenting rather than fighting against them.

What is one failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?

The first year we were awful at new people integrating with the community. We had a bunch of people checking out the church and almost none of them stayed. Some simple processes and culture shifts around hospitality have been a huge part of turning that around.

What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of planting?

My job is to equip the saints, not do the work for them. I’ve been trying to set aside more time for developing people rather than doing “ministry.”

What do you dream/hope/pray this new church looks like in five years?

That we have planted 2 churches and are regularly developing great leaders to send as missionaries into their neighborhoods. I hope 100 people can say: my life was transformed by good news I heard and experienced at Redemption Hill.