It's taken a couple days to continue the roadtrip documentary. Wednesday found me working on a talk for my friend Matt's church and driving down to speak in Kansas City; Thursday was all day in the car; and yesterday was catching up from a week out of town.Before any of that though, I had spent a couple days relaxing with Jess and her family in Omaha before resuming meetings with pastors and church planters. Monday I got to meet with Doug Stevens, executive pastor of Core Community Church, a nine-year-old Acts 29 church in Omaha, and Phil Human, who served at Jess' home church before launching out to his own plant Journey Church in Gretna, a suburb of Omaha within the past year. Like the previous stop's meetings, these two were varied and beneficial on very different levels.
Doug Stevens (Core Community Church, Omaha)
I got to enjoy a delicious pizza lunch with Doug at Zio's in Omaha's Old Market [my new favorite pizza joint, by the way]. He has been on staff with Core Community Church and Ethan Burmeister for about 18 months, and was able to tell me much about the organizational side of Core, and I got some great insight regarding kids ministry. Core gave me one of their membership notebooks, used in a demanding 9-week class which lays a firm foundation for the philosophy of the church. They set the standard high, so that by the time people are members, they have a firm foundation for church life.
They're very heavy on group ministry, which they've learned to divide into two types over the years: more "traditional" groups, and family groups, which meet weekly like other groups, but one week per month it's just the men; another week it's just the women; a third week it's the entire family including kids; and the final week adults come and the church provides childcare. They still provide ministry opportunities on Sundays for kids all the way through elementary, but have developed a Sunday environment which is kid-friendly after nursery age, as they hope for families worshiping together.
Doug (and all the staff I got to meet at their extremely-cool office) were very kind and encouraging, and one of the best pieces of advice I got was "start small and do things well; don't try to do things bigger than you actually are" - it was in relation to kids' ministry, but was a good principle as we develop the core foundation of The City Church across the board!
Phil Human (Journey Church, Gretna)
I had met Phil a few years ago, when he was on staff at a megachurch in Omaha; Journey Church in a more rural suburb of Omaha has been meeting since March. They are approaching church from a more traditional structure (which perfectly fits the suburban-rural context they're in), and we spent much of our time together talking about the differences in our context; how we can best approach the culture we're engaging, and the first few years of a church plant.
The most important things I took away from our time together - other than some good laughs and many kind words from Phil - were...
- Communicate! Everything revolves around making sure everyone is in the loop, on everything. Communication is essential, especially in the early, chaotic days.
- Raise the bar - it's easy to begin seeking approval and risk losing people; that will be a detriment... and even regarding people's involvement, after a church reaches a certain size it quickly becomes easy for people to sit back and "soak in," rather than be an active part.
- Make yourself known - one thing Phil seems to have done very well is make their presence known in Gretna - he's personally there as much as he can (even while waiting to sell his home in Omaha), they've done some great flyers and cards, and it seemed like everyone who came into the coffee shop where we met knew him!
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