Interviews

So your church, New Denver, is obviously in Denver, CO. Tell us a little bit about where you guys are planting in the city.

Well Denver has 2.5 million people, but it still has the feel of a small city. It’s pretty young, very transient. People don’t come here to commit, they come here to play. It’s like an adult playground. The people are highly-relational, distrusting of institutions and highly secular.

Our church is located in a semi-urban place, about 3 miles outside the urban core. We’re in the first ring of suburbs that were built when the city first expanded. It’s actually kind of funny, the place where my family live is about 2 miles away from the city and originally it was where people in the city would build country homes to escape the city…2 miles away!

Anyways, we are located where people are fairly wealthy, want the amenities of the urban setting without the messiness, grunge or “riff-raff” of the city.

People tend to be fickle, have a hard time committing and are always looking for something better to do at the last minute. They really like to keep their options open.

Tell us about the process you used for planting your church. What did that time look like? What did you do?

Well my family came with 2 other families, we were all on staff at a church in Atlanta. The 3 of us are co-pastoring the church together (which we know is a little unique. I like to say, “Co-pastoring isn’t the way to do it, it’s just that it’s the way for us.” For whatever reason, it works really well for us). Before we moved here we probably visited the city once a month for about 6 months. During that time we just worked at building relationships. Psychographics. Figuring out where we wanted to live and plant.

I was actually the last of the families to get there; we arrived 6 months after the other two families. When I got there we already had a core of about 20-25 people and we started small groups.

How did you build that core team? I’m always interested how people gather core teams when they are “parachuting” into another city they haven’t lived in for very long.

I’d say about 25% simply came from networking. We were constantly meeting with people and “pressing the flesh.” Another 50% came because they were familiar with North Point or were transplants from Atlanta and had attended North Point in the past. And the other 25% came from Facebook microtargeting. We’ve actually had a lot of success with that.
But getting back to the question about how we started…we took this core group of people and developed weekly small groups, and in March of 2009, we started bringing these small groups together once a month for some very light worship and then on October 4 of 2009 we began our semi-weekly worship service.

Obviously the focus of this blog is more towards the missional church and looking at different church structures. What is the structure of your church? What would the average month look like?

Honestly, it’s very much like your average evangelical church. This Fall we will have 4 weekly Sunday gatherings and have a few small groups distributed around the city and we’re looking at starting a Huddle and seeing how that goes. Maybe start a Missional Community? I guess we’ll see. We also have informal gatherings. I’ve tried to really tap those who are strong people-gatherers and have asked them to be proactive in getting people together to do fun things. Just trying to make it organic.

So as you think about the last 12 months of planting, what do you think worked really well?

That’s actually kind of a hard question to answer. I still feel like we’re caught in between our megachurch roots and the more missional, organic style.

We have certainly dug into our toolkit and can “put on” a good worship service. What we’re doing is pretty stripped down, though, but we feel good about it. One of our core group recently commented that she feels like she “can bring all of me” to our gatherings. And that was a big compliment. She meant that her doubts, questions, and earnest pursuit of God – whatever that looks like – was welcome. Again, that was very encouraging to hear.

But the best things have probably been the organic, relational connections. I think there’s been a lot of life in that. It really seems to tap into the reality that people in Denver are often anti-church, yet hyper-relational. So the relational connections tap into the vibe that you find around here.

In the last 12 months, what hasn’t worked?

You know, I think we were pretty idealistic at the beginning. I guess that’s normal for church planters, right?

Before we were here we had people tell us to expect 80% of the Core Team to vanish within a year or two. And of course we thought, “No, that won’t happen to us.” Yeah, it definitely did.

We also tried something for 6 months where we didn’t have a worship service once a month and encouraged everyone to get involved with a mission project we were all doing together. It seemed good on paper, but never quite got off the ground. We might have had 20% of the people come out on those Sundays. I’m glad we tried it and I know there’s actually another church in Denver that has had unbelievable success with that; it just didn’t work great for us.

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

Some people might guess it’s been in the leadership aspect with three of us co-pastoring together, but that’s actually been great.

I think finding the right teaching rhythm has been hard with three of us. We tried to team teach the same message on one Sunday, that didn’t work. We alternated weeks, I taught for a week, then Stephen taught the next week, then Norton preached. Yeah, that didn’t work either.

Now we’re teaching for blocks of time, so I’m teaching for something like 4-5 weeks straight on one series. That seems to be working much better.

Ok. Let’s imagine it’s 365 days from now. What needs to be different in your community?

The key for me would be discipleship. We’ve got to disciple people. I just don’t know of many people who are doing this well. We’re looking to explore Huddles and that could really help, excited about that prospect.

We also really need to be sustainable. We’re top down right now and need to employ people who are evangelists and multiplying influence so we aren’t the only people carrying the banner. People are following right now and we need people who will lead with us.

What is the biggest thing God has been teaching you in the past year?

I think it would be easy for me to get caught up in creating a spiritual place for others. I think God is constantly reminding me that it starts with me. It’s the only way I can replicate anything, it has to start with me. One of the axioms we had in our last church that really stuck with us and gets to the heart of this: “Is what is happening here on staff worth exporting?”

So let’s think 5 years into the future. What does New Denver look like? What’s happened?

Man, 5 months from now would be awesome!

Well there are 3 of us on staff right now. I would think in 5 years we could have at least three networked churches, but maybe 6 or 8 that have spread and multiplied out of this (we can already see some of that starting to happen). Even now on a map of the city, it’s so interesting: There are three clusters of people with each cluster around where each one of us lives. And it’s not like we planned it like that, it’s just happened.

These interviews were originally published on Doug Paul’s blog:http://3dchurchplanter.wordpress.com/

So your church, Austin Mustard Seed, is obviously in Austin, TX. Tell us a little bit about where you guys are planting.

Austin in general is a creative class city. Its’ main industry is ideas. University. Software. Design. Film. Technology. It was an intentional choice over 100 years ago with how to compete with Houston. Houston is about oil. Austin is about ideas.

The particular place we live is a neighborhood of Austin proper. We’re halfway between downtown and the city limits. Our house is about 5 minutes south from the place where everything bumps up to more affluent neighborhoods and better school systems. I like to refer to it as the do-nut. Where other churches don’t go. They either go into the city (downtown) or to the suburbs. The people in our area value being closer to the city but are protective about being around all sorts of different people. So it has a quasi-suburban feel but an urban mentality.

Tell us about the process you used for planting your church. What did that time look like? What did you do?

When we got to Austin (we moved here from Seattle) we just started inviting people into our home for a meal and a time to read scripture, talk and pray. Coming here, we knew one grad student and one family that was also moving to Austin. The student is still here, the family has moved on. We were incredibly intentional about relationships as I am bi-vocational and we started to ask how these things tied together: church and relationships. It’s very casual, very relational. It has structure, but wrapped around relationships. I guess now we have about 35 people who regularly are a part of our community, with about 20-25 each week.

Obviously the focus of this blog is more towards the missional church and looking at different church structures. What is the structure of your church? What would the average month look like?

Currently it’s meeting in our home on Sunday and encouraging people to move into smaller spaces during the week. Women doing tea together and talking. Triads or accountability groups. We’re trying not to be rigid, but organically moving towards those smaller spaces.

So as you think about the last 12 months of planting, what do you think worked really well?

Taking our time.

Being bi-vocational lets us do this. We haven’t felt the pressure to be something we’re not or get to a specific place quickly. We can approach people and help them find a place, whether it is with us or another great church. With that posture, we’re starting to see the dividends of people feeling cared and loved for and doing the same in return.

We’ve also been really intentional about forming relationships. We have a structure but the structure serves our relationships. Our primary focus is to cultivate relationships. Inherent underlying all of this is we want to be cross-cultural missionaries in Austin. So we think about it like we would if we were in another country. If we were in another country, we’d have to make everything about relationships. So that’s what we’re doing.

In the last 12 months, what hasn’t worked?

We’re not trying to be underground, but we don’t have an open, visible presence in the city. I mean, our home is open, and it’s the stage where we are probably at, but how does Austin know we’re here? It’s a shortcoming to how we’ve started. But then, we’re also reaching people who wouldn’t go to church even on Easter.

The second thing is that we have lots of relationships with people who aren’t part of the church, but currently we don’t have people coming into our community, being a part of it, who weren’t at least somewhat open to faith or Jesus. We primarily have people who left the church or were detached from it but did have some church background.

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

I think we have failed to find a way to be the church outside of what we do on Sunday, which goes back to the presence in the city thing.

Ok. Let’s imagine it’s 365 days from now. What needs to be different in your community?

If we’re still in our house only, I’ll be concerned.

We would have allowed ourselves to get comfortable with who are here. Things that are living reproduce and multiply. I think we’ll be meeting in a public space and at least another group meeting in a home.

We also need more people meeting in groups of 2, 3 or 4′s to study and pray together. Our gathering is now at a place where we don’t have that kind of intimacy.

What is the biggest thing God has been teaching you in the past year?
Listen to me.

Trusting that the structure and the project list for how our church works isn’t going to be found in a church plant book written in some other context. That the Spirit is actively shaping this. When I listen more to God, he certainly seems to speak more!

So let’s think 5 years into the future. What does Austin Mustard Seed look like? What’s happened?

I love the parish model. I love what we’re seeing in Jon Tyson’s church in New York City. I see multiple worship settings in different parts of the city networked together with maybe 150 in each gathering. A pastor overseeing it and it being a community of 3-4 scattered, mid-sized groups throughout the geographic “parish” of that community.

So your church, the Renew Community, is in Lansdale, PA. Tell us a little bit about where you guys are planting in the city.

Well Lansdale isn’t in the city and it isn’t rural, but I’d also be hesitant to call it suburban, because it really isn’t. It’s about 30 miles away from the steps in the Rocky movie outside Philadelphia and is considered one of 10 towns or boroughs that are considered a part of Philly, which is the 4th largest city in the United States. Because it’s so wide and stretches so far it’s a bit like a megacity when you look at the metropolis in scope and size. But Lansdale itself only has about 16,000 people.

For the most part it’s blue collar, working class kind of people. The downtown needs to be revitalized and they’ve talked about it since the mid 1980′s, but a shopping mall about 12 minutes away saw a movement of many businesses in that direction.

Lansdale has a train station, which is actually an important feature because it allows many people to walk to the station and take the train into the city to work. Other people choose to commute into city by driving in.

Tell us about the process you used for planting your church. What did that time look like? What did you do?

Well we were coming out of a pretty painful time in leaving our last church, which is probably 20-25 minutes from where we are now. My wife and I just wish it could have ended a bit better. So even the very beginning was particularly hard.

In the early summer of 2008 we started having Vision Meetings and invited anyone and everyone who wanted to come to be a part of it. We ended up having three meetings because we had so many come to the first two and had more than 110 people come to the meetings. Pretty amazing.

When they got there, everyone was given Renew’s core values and vision and a Community Covenant everyone in the Core Team would have to sign and commit to. I was explicit that I didn’t want anyone signing it that night, I wanted people to take time to read over it and really process it. Then, I’d meet with each person or couple for coffee or meal sometime over the course of the summer. I wanted to take time to make sure they were coming for the right reasons. Lots of people go to a new church plant because they are leaving their old one. I wanted people on our Core Team who were coming to Renew, not leaving somewhere else. I wanted them to feel called to this community. For me, a lot of it had to do with motivations.

So yeah, it was kind of like an audition. Some people we said yes to, some people we said no to. In the end, we had about 40 adults on the Core Team and 18 kids. And even now, as I think about it, we probably should have said no to a few more people.

So once you got the Core Team locked down, what did you do to get ready for launching your church?

Our Core Team started getting together every week at the Boys and Girls Club in a back room. We’d sit in these squishy and somewhat terrible chairs. I think the big thing for that time wasn’t about learning something; it was about unlearning a lot of things.

Each week someone would share their story for about 15 minutes. We’d open up the scriptures. We’d discuss a lot of things.

We didn’t really have a plan and a timeline. I basically said, “Look, we’re not going to launch a Sunday gathering until we see some fruit from this group.” I really needed them to understand that the life we were looking for was in Monday through Saturday, not only on Sunday. So we waited it out. Some people really missed the candy of the Sunday morning service and they decided to leave.

Eventually we started meeting in house churches that met every week. We did this for a couple of months. And after we felt like those were established, we had a more public worship space that happened once a month on Easter of 2009.

Obviously the focus of this blog is more towards the missional church and looking at different church structures. What is the structure of your church? What would the average month look like?

We talk a lot about the dual expression of the church, how scissors have two blades that, when they come together, they do what they’re created to do. For us, our house churches and public worship gathering are those two things.

So we alternate between the two.

Twice a month we have public worship gatherings, and the other weeks each person is in their house church.

So as you think about the last 12 months of planting, what do you think worked really well?

In July of 2009 we started Lansdale’s first ever Farmer’s Market, which was about a year in the marking. I remember early on I sat on the back patio of a borough council member’s house asking questions, attempting to learn about the DNA of the community, its needs and its personality. As we drank Cokes and talked, I broke in: “Renew is here to serve the community – to be an ally and an advocate. And we’re asking the question, ‘How can we bless the neighborhood?’ Would a farmer’s market be one way that would really serve Lansdale well?” I threw out other suggestions during that meeting as well, like starting a community garden (which we’ve started as well), having a centralized recycling program in the borough, volunteering at the newly re-developed Center for the Performing Arts, etc, but the farmers market idea was received with the most enthusiasm.

You wouldn’t believe how successful and how much energy this has produced in the wider community.

We were really specific not to promote it or attach it to Renew, even though we were the one sponsoring it. Eventually word just got around that we were doing it and people seemed to really like that the church was doing it and weren’t taking credit. I think it actually had a more positive effect than if we’d tried to make sure everyone knew.

In the last 12 months, what hasn’t worked?

We just recently went through a formal assessment of where our church is, so some of this is on our minds even as we’re talking about it now.

I think one thing that came to light is that people feel like they are a part of two separate churches, like maybe the dual expression is actually working against us. They feel connected to the people in their house church (which has about 8-12 people) and when they come to the worship service the next, they don’t know anyone.

I also think we stressed Monday through Saturday so much that perhaps we’ve devalued what happens on Sunday. I feel like the pendulum needs to come back the other way a bit. Not too much, but a bit.

That being said, one thing that came out in the assessment is that people really felt like they were living the most missionally when were in the infancy stages, when it was just the Core Team. It feels like there aren’t as many Doubt Nights or parties or cookouts, etc.

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

Children’s Ministry is definitely one of those. Our work with kids has never been that strong. I know it’s like that for most church plants, but I think it’s just not something we’ve ever done that well.

I think discipleship is another big one. We haven’t emphasized it enough, it’s been lower on the priority list and it just has to be something we get good at. Right now we’re not.

Ok. Let’s imagine it’s 365 days from now. What needs to be different in your community?

For me, I really want to see my teaching gifts used differently.
I feel like the past several years I’ve focused so much on making leaders that I haven’t focused as much on being a leader. So practically, I’ve not taught nearly as much in our gatherings as I’d like because I was giving other people opportunities, letting them try or practice.

I think I need to take a more primary role “on stage” (not in the rockstar way) as the teacher of this community. It’s where my primary gifting is, it’s what I love to do and I think I need to have a stronger presence in that teaching role within our community.

What is the biggest thing God has been teaching you in the past year?

I’ve been much more open to the working of the Holy Spirit than I ever have been before and that has led to some pretty incredible things.

So let’s think 5 years into the future. What does Renew look like? What’s happened?

Man, I’ve been thinking about that and it’s actually a hard question. I honestly don’t know where Renew Lansdale will be in 5 years.

But I know from the very beginning we said we wanted to be a church plant that plants churches. And the big stat that has always stuck out to me is that if you don’t plant a new church within 5 years of starting, you more than likely never will. So we really need to do that.

In the next 5 years we need to have birthed a child. We need to be a parent.

I mean, we currently have two apprentices who are with us for the next year and they are really excited about church planting, so that may be it? I don’t know. I just know we’re going to be planting a church.

So your church Imago Dei, is in Richmond, VA. Tell us a little about where you guys are focusing in Richmond.

In  a broader sense, we’re trying to reach the whole city, but only until recently have we claimed a smaller geographical footprint. Because we started so scattered we really had a hard time creating missional momentum. So now, right outside the city on the near West end is where we are really focusing now…what is called District 1. We’re looking at it through two prominent high schools. But really, it’s a snapshot of the city. You have the upwardly mobile, affluent creative class. There are hard-working middle class people and then a group of people who live in poverty. All in very close proximity to each other. The church we rent is really at the center of that.

Tell us about the process you used for planting your church. What did that time look like? What did you do?

I think we are pretty unique in that three years ago, Chris Backert (my co-pastor) and I were both looking to plant churches in Richmond, independent of each other. Chris and I were friends and caught wind of what the other was thinking about and started talking. Once we figured out both of us were looking at planting the same kind of church, after praying and talking more, we decided to plant one church together.

So in the summer of 2008, which we’ve dubbed the Summer of Convergence, his crew from Blacksburg came and my group of Annapolis came down and we formed one community.

We started with one community that was trying to be really missional. We purposefully didn’t have a weekly service for the first year. Eventually we grew to have a sunday service along with Missional Communities (we call them Common Communities) and I believe our focus is still on mission and discipleship.

Obviously the focus of this blog is more towards the missional church and looking at different church structures. What is the structure of your church? What would the average month look like?

I’ll tell you what we’re doing and then what we’re transitioning to in the Fall.

Currently we have two worship services a month, on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. Pretty standard service. Worship. Teaching. Biblical themes. Communion. On the 3rd Sunday of the month we have a Storytellers service where we have a huge, gourmet meal [in his previous line of work, Brian was a chef] and three people tell stories where their life and faith is intersecting. There isn’t a gospel presentation, just a chance for people to invite friends, eat good food and hear stories. On the 1st Sunday of the month we’d like our Common Communities to be meeting and serving, and then they meet throughout the week on an every-other-week basis. Our Journey Groups (which is our discipleship vehicle) meet in conjunction with the Common Communities, so they happen when the Common Communities happen.

Now we’re about to shift this to make it a little simpler. On the 1st and 3rd Sundays will be our Common Community weekends. They’ll have a meal, short teaching and break into their Journey Groups. One the 2nd and 4th Sunday we’ll have our worship service. Once a quarter on the 5th Sunday months we’ll do the Storytellers service.

So as you think about the last 12 months of planting, what do you think worked really well?

The Storytellers was a victory for us. We also took Easter and went and served rather than having a traditional Easter service. That was a real highlight. Also, almost 100% of our people give online, which really works for us and gives us freedom on Sunday mornings. Journey Groups (which are similar to Huddles) have worked well. We’ve had a Leaders Table where we’ve invited small groups of people to wrestle through with us some of the changes and transitions within the church. That’s been really helpful.

In the last 12 months, what hasn’t worked?

Our original approach to mission never got off the ground. First we tried by geography because of the proximity factor, which didn’t work too well. Then we tried to define proximity by relationships since there were already some pre-existing relationships and allowed for people to follow Persons of Peace. But the process didn’t really work and with the frequency of change, I think we overestimated people’s abilities to adapt. We had unwittingly made changes that had left people in the dust. I think we have learned to wait a bit more and adapt rather than overhaul.

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

One of the areas as a church plant that’s been hard for us is a couple examples of people in crisis: marriage issues, addictions, etc. We just didn’t have the resources available (as a church plant) to really help. There are some shining examples of where we really didn’t have what was needed and we scarred some people. It’s one of those things when I put my head on the pillow at night I really wish we could have done better.

Ok. Let’s imagine it’s 365 days from now. What needs to be different in your community?

One hope is that our church would be more multi-generational. We (my wife and I) just sent our youngest daughter to college, but our average age is in the mid 20′s. From a life experience and spiritual maturity stage, I hope our church will be more reflective of our city. We need that. Folks that are in their 30′s, 40′s and 50′s. My wife and I have been praying for 8 couples that would fit that criteria.

Secondly, not because we’re about numbers, we’d really like to see growth! We’ve had new people come and some people leave, but I’ve really been praying for conversion growth. I want to see the Holy Spirit break this place open and I want to see the Kingdom move.

What is the biggest thing God has been teaching you in the past year?

Growing in the ability to hear his voice. This is a dominant theme in our discussions, our team Huddles and in our church. He’s our leader, he’s the Shepherd and we want to hear his voice. We’ve spent a lot of time learning to hear it and applying it to our lives.

So let’s think 5 years into the future. What does Imago Dei look like? What’s happened?

Well Richmond is such a tribal city and 1 church can’t reach every single part of the city. But we really believe our church can contextualize and incarnate itself into smaller communities within each tribe that will be connected to the body that is Imago Dei. Church Hill. The Northside. West End. Over the river. The Near West End. We’d be scattered but we’d also be connected. And obviously church planting is in our DNA and is core to us. I’d just be so fired up if we were planting church in all of those areas.

I know recently you sent out a letter to your Prayer and Financial Support Network reflecting on what you’ve learned in the past two years. Care to share two nuggets?

1. I think we really took for granted the abundance of spiritual maturity in the past. You know, we grew up with it and served in a community in Annapolis that was like being surrounded by the great crowd of witnesses. There was such a high level of spiritual maturity. In a church plant that level of spiritual maturity is often much lower and you really notice and miss it.
2. Transformation takes a really long time! It’s a slow process both for me as someone who is being transformed and for the people around me.