Equipper Blog

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.

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/