Equipper Blog

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.

So your church Christ Church, is in Ft Wayne, IN. Tell us a little about Fort Wayne.

Well Ft. Wayne is a pretty blue collar place. It’s fairly traditional and politically conservative. It’s pretty common to see Fox News on the television when you’re going from place to place. It’s very family oriented. I’d say 98% of people I talk to are there because they are living close to family or have moved there because it’s a great place to raise kids. A lot of people went off to college and moved back. It actually has a really strong history of innovation. The television tube was invented here as well as the first pocket calculator. It’s also the birthplace of the NBA. So despite having a somewhat conservative base, it also has this intermingled history of innovation.

Talk to us about when your started planting and your process for starting.

We started with an alternative service or satellite campus in December of 2007. It started in our living room. Slowly, over time, it morphed into an official church plant, having its own entity apart from another church, which really came to fruition between September of 2009 and January of 2010.

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?

Well, we’ve taken what was a weekly worship service and turned it into a Missional Community (group of 20-50 people on mission together). So now, we have 2 worship services each month, which are pretty “standard” services. We then have a community meal once a month with some worship elements in it. Then one of the weekends we have a day “out” where we engage in practical ways of serving the community. So currently, that’s how we structure our weekends. We also have Huddles going, which are our vehicle for discipling people every-other week. What we’ve done for the summer is have a kind of “Taster” Huddle, a chance for people to experience what it is and we’ll start our first “official” Huddles in the Fall. We really see these Huddles as being our main engine for discipleship and leadership development.

I think 8 family units will form our first official Huddle that we’d like to see develop leaders to begin several MCs through that development and investment. Before Christmas I’m hoping and praying we’ll be able to multiply into 2-3 MCs that are networked together and gather for two worship services a month. But we’ll see. Sometimes it takes longer than I’m thinking. But we are really trying to structure ourselves for multiplication.

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

• Huddles have really worked for us. I think that was our biggest breakthrough and win for us. We’re starting to see people become like Jesus. I’m not sure we knew how to make disciples before and we are really seeing it happen now.
• I think another thing was not being shy about asking people for commitment. When we look at the people who have grown the most, the people who committed the most also grew the most. I was naturally sheepish about it at first, but it really seems to have worked. We have 8 very specific things we asked people to commit to, it was a really high bar.
• We educated people on the regular practices that will help shape and form us for God’s mission. We did it on an individual level, but specifically in our worship services by developing a pretty powerful liturgy. I’d also add that this liturgy has worked even better when it’s been in conjunction with discipleship process and engaging in mission.

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

1. In the beginning the leadership was really weighted too much towards consensus. I think we overreacted to authoritarian forms of leadership we saw. We weighted it so far in that direction that we often waited to see vision come from the “community” as a whole and it never really did. I’m not ready to say that it never can…but I may be close. We just kept waiting for everyone to be on board and on the same page and I think we got to a place where someone with vision had to lead and move forward and take people on that journey and then let people see it and get on board.
2. At first we socially engineered our MCs. We looked at a map and said, “Hey, you know what? You guys all live really close together. Why don’t you start an MC?!” It never quite worked.

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

Again, it relates to socially engineering our MCs. Our first iteration of Missional Communities were me more or less saying, “Hey guys, I heard about these things called MCs. They sound pretty awesome. Why don’t we split into two groups, each being an MC, and this could be your mission. Now go lead them!” But they had never seen one or had led or experienced it. When we decided to come back together and have a time where we modeled MC life together for the late spring and summer, one MC breathed a collective sigh of relief. But the other had developed some neat relationships and we asked them to pause so we could really build a foundation of discipleship through Huddle. Then, out of that, we’d launch MCs when leaders had a vision they felt God was giving them.

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

Better developed and equipped leaders. We’re starting to see the first of that in our Huddles, but we need more of it. I’d also like to see the ownership of the vision more widely distributed through the community.

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

If I had to break it down, it would be this: “Faithfulness to what God is telling me to do is more important than everyone being happy or having everyone like me.”

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

Well, we want to keep making disciples who make disciples, multiplying MCs into all kinds of neighborhoods and relational networks in Fort Wayne… and see where God takes us. I think it will be a lot like the book of Acts where the Apostles are hearing about things happening in Samaria or Antioch, not because they’ve sent people there specifically, but because people have gone and started something because they are missional disciples. I really believe that can happen for us here in Fort Wayne.

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