Planter Profile: John Trotter
Ecclesia Network
September 17, 2019

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.

The Magic Power of Encouragement

By Bob Hyatt • January 17, 2025
When I graduated from college, I moved to Alaska and took a job teaching middle school- a job I had zero business doing. I want to give props to those of you who are teachers- it’s a fantastically important job, but also a ridiculously complex one. You must balance pedagogical skills, HOW to teach so others learn, with sociological ones, classroom management, and so much more. It was classroom management where my ineptitude really shone, though. I thought managing classrooms full of middle schoolers would be easy- just call them out when they do something wrong- make sure there are consequences in place, and the place will basically run itself. I learned that year that you cannot punish someone into good behavior. You more often just punish people into stealthier ways of misbehavior. It wasn’t until years later that the light bulb came on for me. I was volunteering in my son’s kindergarten class, and I assumed I was going to be walking into a zoo. Contrary to my expectations, Mr. Waters, the teacher, had that place running like a well-oiled machine. And the most surprising way was how he did it. He called for reading time when all the kids were supposed to get up from their tables and sit on the reading circle. He made this call and like two kids responded. Oh man, I thought- he’s lost the room! Nope. He just stood at the front of the class and said “I see Billy doing what I asked. I see Sienna doing what I asked.” And every time he said that another few kids would look up, leave what they were doing and rush to take their place. In about 30 seconds, he had them all sitting quietly around the circle. Blew. My. Mind. It seemed so simple once I saw it done, but I had never realized just how big a gap there was between trying to motivate with consequences and nagging versus motivating with encouragement. Which is funny, because as I thought about it, I realized my wife had been using this tactic on me for YEARS. I married a woman who liked to dance- swing dance, even. I grew up a Baptist, so… But whenever I would do a little two-step with her in the kitchen or just play-dance with her to music in the living room, she would go OVER THE TOP. “Bob, you are doing that really well! Bob, you’re a great dancer!” I totally knew I wasn’t, but… I sure liked to hear her say it, and so I’d do it more. So, here’s the rule: What you criticize me for, I may stop doing. I may also just try to hide it from you. But- What you praise and encourage me in, I will continue doing. The Apostle Paul was a master at this- just look at 1 Thess. 5:11- ”So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.” What is Paul doing here? Yes, he’s encouraging them to encourage each other by encouraging them for how they’ve already been encouraging one another! That’s a lot of encouraging. But he’s doing what he’s asking them to do- demonstrating how it works. I’m sure not everyone in the church of Thessalonica was good at encouraging others- but those who were doing it well were heartened by Paul’s words here, and those who weren’t yet, were… encouraged to be more encouraging. Paul uses the word “encourage” 7 times in 1st Thess. alone. This command to encourage each other is central in the NT. Hebrews 10:24-25 says this: Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. Paul writes in 2 Cor. 13:11 “Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.” How long can you go on one compliment, or one word of encouragement? A few days? A week? Our words have so much power! I once had an orange t-shirt, that had a disturbingly deep V-neck. My co-pastor Dustin would laugh every time he saw me in it. But you know why I continued to wear it? Because it was literally the only shirt I ever owned that had been complimented by a woman I was not married or related to. A barista one time told me she really liked that shirt… So, what I’m saying is, you can get me to do just about anything, if you encourage me. BUT- With great power, comes great responsibility. Notice that these verses on encouragement come in the context of helping others become the followers of Jesus they could and were meant to be. “Encourage each other and build each up.” “Motivate one another to acts of love and good works. Encourage one another.” “Grow to maturity. Encourage each other.” There’s a growth mindset behind the biblical admonitions that we ought to encourage each other. The growth mindset says “I may not be good at this or have mastered it… yet. But if I keep trying…” Unfortunately, most of us get stuck in a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset says “I'm either good at something, or I’m not. So, I’ll give myself only to things where I can show I’m good. If I must work at it, it means I’m not good at it, or smart enough for it, so why try?” Studies have shown that encouragement has a positive effect on performance, while discouragement has a negative effect. Ok- that’s obvious. But… studies have also been done about how TYPES of encouragement affect performance. Encouraging effort, for example, has a positive effect on performance, while praising ABILITY has a negative effect. One study showed that when two groups of students were presented with difficult challenges 90% of the ones who had been praised for their effort embraced the difficult tasks- while the majority of those praised for their ability resisted tackling hard things. I probably don’t have to spell out the leadership lessons here. So, I’ll just leave you with this: I encourage you this season to be thinking about the people you work with and especially those who work under you. They are just as hungry for encouragement as you are. You have the power to give them not only what they need, but through that encouragement to spur them on to the personal and ministry growth you want to see in them. (By the way, while we’re talking about encouragement, if you need some this season, join us Feb 25-27th in Alexandria, VA for this year’s Ecclesia National Gathering . I guarantee you and your team will leave feeling encouraged, equipped, and empowered. And think about how encouraging YOUR presence would be to everyone else!)

Focusing the Gospel Around the Table is Still Important Today

By J.R. Briggs • November 26, 2024
“Food is just fuel for your body.” When the raw vegan enthusiast in my community said it I knew that wasn’t right. I thought of all the great meals shared with family and friends around tables for Thanksgivings, Christmas Eves, and Easter afternoons – among others. I recalled the verse: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” And I realized that if this was God’s vision for food, then he would have designed our bodies with built-in IV ports where we would hook up pouches of food to our sides and let it drip in slowly to our bloodstreams. And Jesus wouldn’t have given us the greatest experiential metaphor of communion around the table in fellowship with others if it was merely physical and transactional in nature. I get his point: what we put into our bodies matters. Food is for much more than just physical energy. It’s also about connection, bonding, and relationship. Storytelling and laughing and crying and interacting. Like former U.S. President Ronald Reagan said, all great change in America begins at the dinner table. But I’ll offer a rejoinder: all great change – no matter the country – begins at the dinner table. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has declared loneliness as a public health crisis and an epidemic . 30 percent of adults say they feel lonely., with 10 percent reporting loneliness every day. 60 years ago the average dinner time was 90 minutes; today it’s less than 12. We are more connected to our devices and less connected to others. Almost twenty five years ago political scientist Robert Putnam wrote the popular book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community . Over the summer, the New York Times interviewed him , inquiring if he saw this crisis of loneliness coming. He stressed the idea of “social capital,” saying it comes in two forms: bonding and bridging. Bonding ties us to others like us and bridging ties us to people who are different from us. Meals together with others at tables have the transformative power to do both. They bond us to other people in our church; they bridge us to connect with others who aren’t yet connected to faith. As my next-door neighbor says when we’re trying to find a time to connect for a meal, “Everybody’s gotta eat.” Coffee tables, lunch tables, high top bar tables, card tables, dinner tables – all have the intent to bring us together with others over food and/or drink. It was Len Sweet who wrote in Tablet to Table that Jesus was killed for his table manner and his table company. Later he stated that the gospel message was Jesus eating good food with bad people. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find any gathering in the New Testament that didn’t involve some sort of table. And as Ian Simkins, lead pastor of teaching at The Bridge Church in Nashville, shared with me, the table is the centerpiece by which the gospel is expressed. The church has moved to prioritize the table by asking some key questions: What if we reclaimed the table? What if our tables weren’t for just feeding, but for forming? What if, at the table, foes became friends? What if, every time we sat down, we prayed, “at this table as it is in heaven”? What if we brought the gospel back to the table? These are the questions that must become front and center for the church in North America in the days ahead. In fact, you can view the church’s creative and compelling videos on Instagram here and here . Americans eat, on average, 21 meals a week. Think for a moment: how many meals did you share with others this week? How many meals did you eat alone this week? How many people did you share with those who weren’t your immediate family members? How many of those were with people who are not followers of Jesus? What if the greatest advancement of the gospel in the days ahead occurred not in our churches, but around tables?
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