Archives For Leadership

Preview!

September 13, 2010 — Leave a comment

The Penn Hills Library: Our Meeting Place

Part of our process in launching The Bridge involves a series of monthly ‘preview’ celebrations.  We’re hoping these monthly gatherings help build momentum while setting the tone for what will be once things are officially up-and-running.  They also help to figure out what connects well and what doesn’t work so well given the culture and context of Penn Hills.

Yesterday, we had our first monthly celebration–our very first public worship gathering, and it was a phenomenal experience.  Thanks to those of you who were praying for us before and during the gathering; we know that it is God’s Spirit who is doing the real work in Penn Hills and that he honors the prayers of his people.  We had a pretty healthy crowd of just over 50 (not bad for a first-go on a Steelers’ Home-Game Sunday!), but of the greatest points of excitement for us is that we’re beginning to see the answer to our prayer for a multiethnic, multicultural local church.  When your launch team is made up of a group of anglos from Western Pennsylvania, it can be difficult to help people see that though we may not look multiethnic or multicultural yet, we are.  It was awesome to see a great deal of diversity in our gathering yesterday.

Reflecting on what happened yesterday got me thinking about our future, as well.  Even though I know that The Bridge won’t stay in ‘church plant mode’ forever, there are a couple things I hope we never lose from these early days:

  • The sense–inherently part of a ‘preview’ service–that we haven’t ‘arrived’ yet: we’re moving toward something greater.
  • A culture of change: Elements of this month’s celebration, timing, and order may never happen the same way again–and that’s okay because we’re attempting a variety of things to connect with those far from God, help people get to know Jesus better, and send followers of Christ out to live as Jesus.
  • Permission to fail: as mentioned above, we’re experimenting to see what works, connects, communicates, and builds the Kingdom of Christ; the beauty of ‘experimentation’ is the freedom to fail at something but keep pressing on.
  • The safety to dream big: the more I journey, the more convinced I am that God calls us to dream big, as long as they are his dreams and not our own fabrications.  The dreams we have for what God can use The Bridge to do in Pittsburgh and the world are. huge.  At least to us.  And in these early stages it is still ‘safe’ to cast gigantic vision and grow in excitement about how ginormous our God is and what he can do, even with broken vessels like us.
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Beauty in the Cluster.

August 31, 2010 — Leave a comment

image: NASA

One of the points of conversation following our FunDay the other day was the beauty of a cluster of churches working together with a missional focus.

We know that there’s no way The Bridge could have, by herself, provided the kind of quality event that people experienced this past Saturday during the Family Fun Day.  We could not have handled the expense, procured the necessary supplies, or raised the army of volunteers needed on our own.  One of the the things that made the day great was seeing so many of our District churches, all with different histories and of varying sizes, partnering together to love on the people of Penn Hills and demonstrate solidarity with us.

The same is true for church planting: for some churches, there’s no way they could, by themselves, daughter a healthy, multiplying church; at least not yet.  For all kinds of reasons, raising up a church planter and sending them out with a healthy team of co-laborers and maybe a good chunk of financial backing (not to mention the prayer support and cheerleading of a mother church) is not really plausible given the present reality of some churches .  But that doesn’t mean they are exempted from the call of church planting or living as missionaries in their spheres of influence.

The beauty of planting and working as a cluster is that the ‘churches that couldn’t’ suddenly CAN find themselves making a tremendous difference and planting healthy churches through partnership.

Sure, there are the needs to make sure there’s a shared vision and sacrifice and maybe someone to give point-leadership during the process… and I know it wouldn’t be easy or clean (but I haven’t yet found the easy, clean parts of following Jesus), but what I saw this past weekend is a small glimmer of what a few connected churches and groups of committed people can do when working in harmony.  It really could change the world.

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It’s just like riding a bike…

August 25, 2010 — Leave a comment

This Saturday, The Bridge is hosting our biggest event of the Summer as an opportunity to connect with our neighbors and build new relationships in Penn Hills.  Two weeks from Sunday, we’ll be hosting our first public worship gathering (we’re calling them “Monthly Celebrations” because “preview service” doesn’t really make a lot of sense to people who aren’t familiar with church or church planting).  All that to say: we’re in the middle of a big push to gain and hold momentum.  It has meant a lot of long days for Rick, our families, and me, and a ton of behind-the-scenes coordination and ‘procurement’ by people on our launch team.

We’re pushing the limit in terms of energy and emotional RPMs.  But just as much as we have been determined to push hard for what’s taking place in the next couple of weeks, we have noted the need to take time to refresh and renew.  Our sense is that ministry, apprenticeship, strategy, training, preparing, executing… all come in seasons — a season of pushing hard and a season of resting.

We’re determined to communicate with excellence, to have worship environments and ministry areas where everything is done very, very well.  We’re also determined to raise up new leaders… but apprenticeship is messy and sometimes our apprentice leaders won’t do things as well as we think they should or know they could–and ‘excellence’ can suffer.  So, there are seasons of pushing hard for excellence, and seasons of learn-by-doing-with-permission-to-really-mess-up.

The best illustration we’ve found (in the Ferguson brothers’ Exponential) is the idea of riding a bike and working the pedals: pushing on one pedal and resting on the other.  Momentum continues and the work is sustainable–but only if the pattern of push-rest-push-rest is properly applied.  For ministry-leader types, though, resting can seem like work.  So can letting off the pedal of ‘excellence’ to push harder on the pedal of apprenticeship.

I’m hoping that, like riding a bike, we may falter and fall at first, but will develop a proper sense of balance and harness momentum.  Time will tell.

In the meantime, I’d better get back to pushing hard toward this weekend’s event.  And then I’ll rest hard… next week :-).

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That way!

August 24, 2010 — Leave a comment

image: internets_dairy @ flickr

As Sarah and I seek clarity on the ‘where’ of our next ministry endeavor (planting The Bridge’s first daughter church in Pittsburgh), the cry of our spirits to God’s has been, “Show us where you are moving and how to join you there.”

A few years ago, in zeal and even greater  immaturity than I now possess, I probably would have forced an exciting vision to bubble up, created a strategic plan, and then charged after what I had fabricated.  But that isn’t right, and it isn’t at all what we want.  We are praying, “show us when and where to move,” and will develop our plan based on the open doors and sense of God’s leading.  In some ways, it feels like that means “let’s make this whole thing up as we move along,” but it’s the best way I know to heed what the Spirit directs rather than chase and build my own cardboard kingdom.

So, we wait for clarity and believe when the time is right we’ll find a passion for a specific people/area growing within us along with an undeniable sense of where we must be.  It is in the waiting and silence, however, when I am most tempted to pursue my own design.  I have a feeling waiting isn’t nearly as hard as the alternative of moving on our own terms and then expecting God’s blessing to follow…

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Seven.

June 21, 2010 — 2 Comments

In the June 7th Forbes Magazine, Rich Karlgaard noted some of the shared characteristics those companies which seem to have grown stronger and better despite the Great Recession.  His article is good and well worth the read, but I’m taking those ‘seven secrets’ and applying them to how we’re thinking at The Bridge:

Design.
I’m not a designer, I’m not even artistic.  But it doesn’t take too much to see bad design–in fact, in the past, I think a lot of our effort was just avoiding bad design.  Our design is getting better… thanks to GotPrint, t-shirt producers, and Cloversites, I don’t have to be an incredible designer to have good design.  We could be better, and we’re growing, but I’m glad we’re not settling for “free” when an investment in design speaks volumes about us.  We’re moving to a place where we’re pursuing beautiful design rather than just running away from bad design. I’m excited about that.

Speed.
In general, things are moving much faster than we thought they would… and this is building serious momentum–we’re planning to launch and daughter faster than we thought could happen.  We can’t take credit for this, but it’s happening.  We also are focusing on making sure we follow up fast and do what we said we would when we said we would.

Cost.
We’re working hard to show that when someone invests in The Bridge, we’re being wise in how we expend limited resources.  ‘Cost’ for us has less to do with what a customer gets from us, but how we manage the results we demonstrate to our investors.  In our community, it also means ‘free’ doesn’t suck.  We’re trying to do as much as we can at no cost to the people we’re ministering to… but we’re trying to do it as though they paid a premium to be there.

Service.
When it comes to our investor churches, we genuinely believe they are getting something by partnering with us, whether it’s people who participate and take a renewed passion back, or a sense of legacy, there are many benefits to being part of what God is doing through The Bridge in Pittsburgh.  But when it comes to serving our community, after just a couple of events The Bridge is already ‘the church that gave the free car wash–that’s great!’  We’re finding fun ways to show our community we care, we want to know our neighbors, and that God really loves them.

Courtesy of 'altemark' on Flickr

Communication outside.
Right now, this has to do mostly with face-to-face contact.  Rick, especially, has been knocking on doors and being ‘the face’ of The Bridge.  This will only go so far, and we’re analyzing where to best put some communications dollars: radio? adsense? street corner with a sandwich board? As we learn our community more and more, we’ll discover the best ways to communicate outside.

Communication inside.
We could do a better job at keeping launch team members on the same page, but we’re learning how to make sure communication among senior leadership is open.  Thanks to GoogleDocs, Calendar sharing, and Facebook, we’re growing in our communication and how we collaborate; we’re not ‘there’ yet… but I think we’re well on our way.

Purpose.
We’re here to help people connect with Jesus and see them grow in His likeness. More than that, we’re here to keep doing that by planting churches that plant churches to reach those far from God.  The Bridge exists to love, learn, and live Jesus Christ in our context at whatever cost.  We hope we have the purpose thing down… now it’s a matter of staying on mission when things, good and bad, tempt us to drift.

Why not run down the list yourself and give your church/organization a quick checkup?

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