How Networks Are Transforming Cities
Published on 4/24/2012
by Warren Bird
Something unusual is happening to senior pastors in Gurnee, Illinois.
Several years ago, Pastor Scott Chapman of The Chapel, Grayslake, IL, formed a senior pastor network in the Lake County, IL, area, and since then, has seen every senior pastor in the city of Gurnee come together to develop relationships with each other, mobilize their congregations to take action together and initiate plans to transform their city.
“What we are seeing happen is the result of a significant investment of time and energy by all the senior pastors in Gurnee,” Scott says. “They have built real friendships with one another, and led their churches into doing collaborative acts of service for their community.
“Not only do they genuinely love and trust one another, they have experienced firsthand the potential of what the Church can accomplish together.”
Above: Senior pastors connecting at a city-wide gathering in Gurnee, IL.
Early efforts in Gurnee laid the foundation for the Go! Project—the name the leaders have given their initiative to share God’s love in practical ways with every single household in the city of Gurnee over the next three to five years. Currently, the churches are inviting their collective membership to participate in neighborhood-specific groups, which in turn are praying together and helping each other to relationally reach out to increase the love of Christ with those around them.
“Their hope is to help their people both live and share the gospel within the natural rhythm of their everyday lives,” Scott says. “Though only in its pilot phase, many of the pastors in Gurnee would affirm this project has already served to envision and re-invigorate their elders, staff and lay leaders around the mission of God.”
Thirty Other Cities
The idea is catching fire elsewhere, and Chapman has helped launch similar other church networks are exploring similar ideas in as many as 30 other U.S. cities—with two driving forces behind the movement.
“The first is simply the idea of the broader Church, united together around the mission of communicating and demonstrating the gospel of Jesus Christ to every man, woman and child in their geography,” Scott says. “The instant people hear about it, they seem to recognize it not only as a good biblical principle, but a beautiful and effective way to see the Kingdom of God increase in their community.”
The second source of fuel for the fire is relationships, Scott says. Many new networks are started as a result of pastors who experience this type of collaborative effort, then pass the word to pastor friends in other cities. Recently for instance, pastors Dan Weyerhaeuser and Chris Stephens traveled from Gurnee to Philadelphia, PA, to share what God is doing with a group of pastors there.
“Seeing what is happening elsewhere provides the faith needed to start a work in a new place,” Scott says. “When God is genuinely moving, word travels fast.”
Scott’s 7,000-attendance church is also utilizing its multisite platform to help form senior pastor networks. The Chapel has asked all eight of its campus pastors to find ten pastors in their zip code that they can bless and help to thrive. In these “Christ Together” gatherings every few months, the pastors meet to pray for revival, to deepen their relationships with one another and to discuss what their churches can do together to increase the Kingdom of God in their community (below).
In some urban areas of Virginia, the Christ Together groups are serving as the catalyst for churches to collectively rally around a particular city block overrun by gang violence, help a church among them that is in crisis, or minister to a select group of people with an acute physical need.
“We have discovered that personal relationships are the muscles that move the Body of Christ forward,” Scott says. “These gatherings are often the soil in which our best ideas, initiatives and collaborative efforts spring forth.
“As local pastors grow to love, trust and even depend on one another, they start to experience the full potential of the Church moving together.”
All of this collaborative activity in 30-plus cities is the culmination of a deeper burden for lost people that God put on Scott’s heart a few years ago—and the realization that The Chapel couldn’t accomplish the monumental task of reaching the community alone.
“That was an enormous wake-up call,” Scott says. “It put unction and urgency to reach out to people while they live. It made me realize we needed others to bring the whole gospel to the whole area. It pushed us outward into the community in 100 different ways. Now my mind can’t stop thinking about how the church can be better catalyzed in getting outside of our walls.”
And Scott certainly isn’t alone. He notes that most of his conversations with other pastors these days have shifted from growth and church mechanics to “learning what it means to be transformed by God, which then pushes us to greater commitment and takes us beyond our doors,” Scott adds. “I’m having those conversations a lot these days, asking if we’re capturing the New Testament edge or if we’re still just chasing it.”
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Warren Bird, Ph.D., research director at Leadership Network, is a former pastor and seminary professor, and is author or co-author of 24 books for ministry leaders, the most recent one with Jim Tomberlin: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. Some of Warren’s recent online reports include “The Heartbeat of Rising Influence Churches,” “Pastors Who Are Shaping the Future” and “A New Decade of Megachurches.” Follow him on Twitter @warrenbird.
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Recommended Book: To Transform a City: Whole Church, Whole Gospel, Whole City by Eric Swanson and Sam Williams
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Comments
I think that the following quote may be central to this positive movement…“learning what it means to be transformed by God, which then pushes us to greater commitment and takes us beyond our doors,”
However, Scott then asks a critical question, “...if we’re capturing the New Testament edge or if we’re still just chasing it?”
As a lay professional who has been thinking and writing about this since the mid 1980’s, I would suggest that ministers are tasting it, and it tastes good…, but professional ministers are still chasing it.
The New Testament assumption or strategy is to create a Body of Christ that is made of a Priesthood of laborers/believers not a priesthood of professionals. It was designed as a “distributive system” (small cells)and empowered to fulfill Genesis 1:28…“Multiple, fill, subdue and have dominion…” or the creation mandate as well as Matthew 28 with its focus on “discipling the NATIONS.”
-Disciple Individuals: change the heart, mind and behavior…repent
-Disciple Institutions: redefine the values, culture and policies wherever God places me
-Disciple a Nation/Community: create new institutions with appropriate values, policies and structures when the old institutions don’t meet the needs any longer.
It means that my secular work can be a holy calling. For example, the expansion of the early church in the Roman Empire up and through 300 A.d. occurred really through Christian merchants on the Roman Roads and Christian women taken as slaves to Rome and other major Roman cites not just apostolic teams.
Scott seems to be talking about a paradigm that is focused on programming that emphasizes ‘Creative Going.’ The Bible seems to be more focused on the laity engaged in ‘Creative Presence” in whatever world God places them and has little to do with programming. Having dominion implies, “Leave MY world better than you found it” by going beyond a problem and its symptoms and address the UNDERLYING CAUSES as well.
This is the message and actionable behavior that we should be showcasing to our young people and members. The 21st century could well see the Body of Christ move from the ORDAINED TO THE ORDINARY.
Then we will have arrived at New Testament Christianity. Then the professional church staff can play their legitimate and powerful role as great 1st FOLLOWERS rather than LEADERS. Because the apostles were really chosen to be great 1st FOLLOWERS. See Ted Video on 1ST Followers
One key metric of that the Body of Christ has found the edge will be when the professional ministerial staff “stop leading” and become great first followers who empowered the LABORERS…laity.
I am excited about the movement as well. I find it interesting - and maybe it is a geographical thing - but we have been doing this in west Texas for years through what we call Ministerial Alliance. I have been in several communities where it was very ineffective, but the community I now serve has a very active and effective Ministerial Alliance.
I’m in Indianapolis and we have something like this with a group called Loving Accurately Ministries. We believe that when you have healthy pastors, you then have healthy churches, which leads to a healthy city and healthy world. It first has to start with the Pastors though.
You should check it out at www.laminc.org.
Dr. Wilkie makes some great points. We are in a time when we need to see the church in a new way. It’s great for pastors to get together for prayer and planning, but this is not “the church of a city.” It may be some of the pastors in a city. The church in a city has real impact when the people of God live out their callings at home, at work, in places they serve and recreate. Pastors need to preach, teach, and lead in such a way that they are equipping and sending their people to live out these callings. Then our cities will be transformed.
I loved the TED video on first followers. Also—check your photo for Scott’s article. I know the subjects of the photo and the caption appears to be wrong.
I really don’t know how to put it in words.Let me start with my joys becasue I’m much more comfortable talking about that. My greatest joy is watching God working in and through the new believers. I love watching the excitement of a new discovery / revelation. I love the natural inquisitiveness and honesty and humbleness these guys have. They KNOW they don’t have all the answers and so are asking a lot of questions and LISTENING to the responses.I also love watching God develop our leadership. When I took over as lead pastor, I almost made it my personal mission statement to make the leadership as uncomfortable in their position as I possibly could. It’s been about four years now and they are each very different leaders than they were four years ago. God has done a number on each and every one of them and it is SO flippin’ awesome to see.OK, so challenges . I think my biggest challenge is my inability to paint the vision I have for the church. I’ve never had a vision painted , never been to a vision casting service, never attended a church that had a clear cut vision. We just always did church and that was good enough. Well the instant I took over here that stopped being good enough inside of me. I became VERY uncomfortable with the idea of just doing church. Now I have a vision and don’t know how to adequately and eloquently present it in a way that would inspire. Perhaps the reason for that is in my opinion it’s freaking huge. In my opinion too big what I mean by that is that I fear that if I present it people will think I’m being prideful, etc OK, so yeah, I’m concerned with the folks’ responses.This leads me to my second top challenge: lethargy. While the new believers are fanatically excited and are serving wherever they can, the folks that have been around a while and have a closet full of t-shirts (as in been there ) are content to let things go on around them. There’s no excitement, no evangelistic desire, no drive to serve the community, and no time for them to cultivate any of it. I’ve always heard that there will always be a church within the church , but that is just frustrating me to tears right now. OK turning off the valve. Thanks for the opportunity to share. Really appreciate it.
I coordinate a movement in Kansas City called “What if the Church?” We are a group of churches who are doing much of what Dr. Wilkie describes. Great relationships are developing between pastors and peoples and we are seeing much fruit from it all. Annually we group of churches for a three week message series with pastors sharing their pulpits with other pastors. We also do an annual community serve day and worship service which draws several thousand. I especially love that we are beginning to see the church become more than a gathering of believers. Men and women (laity) are leading their businesses to engage, and what was a partnership of churches is becoming partnerships between businesses led by Christ followers engaging in Kingdom work in our city.
It is encouraging to hear similar things are happening in other parts of the country!
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Very valueable thoughts for the community we serve. I believe its time for us as leaders to see churches in new way of living like what our Saviour said. The only sign for the world to see as true disciples is when we love one another,,, and pass it on to our community…
Thank you much for sharing,,, Great!!!