DNA of Village Church: Christ & Community

On Friday July 17 we had our first Village Church information night. The intent was to do two things: (1) connect those interested in Village Church together, (2) to give an update of where we are in the roll-out phase of the church. These two things were accomplished. People hung out, talked about life, the church, and I shared for 15 mins or so about how we got to this point in the journey, and a few points of Village Church DNA. Here is basically what I said, with some extrapolation, highlighting Christ and Community.

Christ: First, and foremost we are a community of people who have as our top priority Jesus himself. To Know him and to make Him known. This means when we gather corporately (services, small groups etc.,) we will worship, preach, teach and honor Jesus unapologetically in everything we do week in and week out without fail. Our conviction is that Jesus is God, that he died for our sins on the cross, rose again from the grave for our salvation and that all who believe in him are given eternal life.

Community: Community is one of the top values of Village Church and it works in two directions. First, we will establish and nurture Christian community. The way people grow, are discipled and crafted into the image of Jesus, which is God's will for Christians (Rom. 8. 29), is communally. We want to be a loving community of people who care for and support one another.

The second direction Community travels in is being missional and community-oriented: how do we serve South Surrey and the surrounding districts to the glory of God? How do we serve the people who live here? We want to be involved in their lives, help them, connect with them as a church corporately and individually. Being missional means we take the incarnation of Jesus as our model and we live in their world, in their lives, and not expect them to simple "come to church" where we are comfortable but to live and move and have our being in their world. God got his hands dirty and came to earth to live and die beside us, for us, instead of us and because of us. The churches posture must never be removal from the surrounding culture but engagement from start to finish. Salt and Light not from the comfort of our pulpits, but from the shoulder to shoulder, day to day, life of the church in the midst of its community.

Simple Church: The Three "S's"

One thing that kills young churches is that they try to do too much. Every need that arises, and

every person who says "we should start a ministry" gets addressed and this causes them to be stretched too thin, because of limited resources and people, and while it may keep more people around for a few months, it is not sustainable in the long run. So we are going to be very selective about what we do and what we do not do as a church, especially in the early years.

We recognize that we cannot be all things to all people, so instead of doing many things poorly (shotgun approach) we will try to do a few things well. The book Simple Church by Thom Rainer is helpful here. He suggests a simple process of discipleship based around churches doing a few things well. Keep it simple.

Village Church is going to revolve around three "S's": Sunday Gather

ings, Small Groups, and Service.

Sunday Gatherings: In the scramble to do a hundred different ministries often Sunday's themselves are left until the last minute, making them stale, monotonous, unchallenging and uninviting. We will spend time making Sunday gatherings a place where people feel welcomed, engaged, and challenged through thoughtful worship and preaching.

Welcome

Most people make decisions about community engagement within the first 3 minutes upon arriving at a place, if not sooner. We want to help people, especially new people, or the un-churched to feel welcomed. We will do our best to greet you and/or your family, give clear answers to questions and generally be hospitable as a church. We really are here to serve others as Jesus served.

Worship

We want to lead people in worship which, for Village Church, is about music, Scripture reading, and a variety of artistic contribution (i.e., short-films, original songs, etc.,). Worship ministry is about helping us to connect to God so we can know Him deeper and we want to do this using all the different avenues, technologies and talents God has given us.

Word

Central to our gatherings, and our life as a church in general, is the Bible itself. We will preach and teach the Bible every week at Village Church in an intriguing and thoughtful way centered on Jesus and relevant to life at all different stages. In our age we believe preaching from Scripture is integral to the life of the church. Thus the most popular form of preaching at Village Church will be sermon series' which will go through whole books of the Bible verse by verse understanding it and applying it, and secondly, theme-based series' still centered on Scripture but addressing issues and theological themes (i.e., a series on the questions skeptics ask about Christianity).

*One of our top priorities for Sunday Gatherings as well will be Children's Ministry. We will serve the young families of South Surrey and the surrounding districts by having a top quality Children's Ministry with qualified teachers, and leaders teaching kids about Jesus, the Bible and the Christian Life in a fun and safe environment.

Small Groups

Small Groups will be groups that meet in homes all over South

Surrey and the surrounding districts which will meet weekly to grow together in prayer, study, accountability, and relationship with one another. It gives Village Church an opportunity to grow larger while at the same time growing smaller. Where a Small Group can care for one another, love one another in a more intimate and effective way than a larger church can. Small Group content will revolve around notes and questions connected to the sermon of the previous Sunday morning, or formal studies with set curriculum.

Service

This is where the people who make up Village Church get to give back. There will be a lot of spaces to fill and a lot of things to do at the Village as we move forward, including people to do set up/take-down, coffee bars, music, art, welcome, hosting small groups, leading small groups, media, children's ministry, and a whole lot more. We want people to use their God-given talents and gifts to serve Him in a way that equips the church and serves those who may not yet know Jesus at all.

These are the three simple things we are going to begin with, and which we are going to ask Village Church people to engage in, and only as God provides us leaders and clear calling will we begin to add ministries to this. Which means we may not have all the ministries that everyone is looking for, and that is alright, there are other good churches in our area we can point people toward, but we are going to do our best to reach and serve as many people as possible being good stewards of the people, passions, gifting and resources God has given us.

If you have any questions please contact us at info@myvillagechurch.org

The Anatomy of a Name: Village Church

Names are important. We talk about the names of our children for months, debating back and forth; companies hire other companies to think up names for their company for marketing purposes; writers wrestle torturously over what to name their books, only to have it changed by the publisher. I am writing a Masters thesis right now, and while I am only half done I already know my title - which no one will actually see except the panel of men and women who have to read, and the three or four Regent College students who look at it for a paper or something between now and the second coming of Jesus (they get bound and placed in the Regent College library). The title? The Gospel of God: A Critical Examination of the "Sonderweg" Reading of Romans 9-11. I told you no one would read it.

So, when it came to naming the church which we are planting out of South Delta Baptist Church in South Surrey the challenge was on. First, we knew we could not name it South Delta Baptist Church for obvious reasons - it was not located in South Delta, but in Surrey. We knew it had to be something that made sense to South Surrey, something that connected to the people who live here - it had to be a missional and incarnational name. Secondly, it had to convey some of our values as a church.

Things to Stay Away From

The basic rule of thumb for naming churches today is that you try not to be explicitly geographically bound in your name, because it is limiting. For instance, when a church is called by its town name it has to work harder to include people from other towns which may be attracted to the church. And as today's churches move toward multi-site venues, video sermons, and campuses connected through movie-theatres etc., it is again limiting. For instance if my friends church, The Meeting House in Oakville was called Oakville Church - then what sense would that make to their Toronto sites, nevertheless to their new Ottawa site that gathers at a Famous Players in Ottawa?

We also wanted to stay away from trendy names because the one thing we know about trends is that they don't continue - sooner or later they stop being trendy and become, well, just look at your wedding photos and you know what I'm talking about. Many in this category choose not to have the word "church" in their name. From the outset we wanted to have "church" in our name. We are not a company, we are not a abstract entity, we are a church and telling people that in your name is, we thought, very important.

From names of churches already in the GVA for obvious reason, though this is not a hard and fast rule, many churches share names with other churches even in the same city! There may be another Village Church in the GVA but we couldn't find it.

Names that sound more like specified ministries. Churches today sometimes name themselves so that they sound like ministries instead of churches: The Warehouse, Elevation, The Highway. I am not being critical of these names, again, very successful church are named in this category (Guts Church) its just not the direction we wanted to go.

Names that mean nothing to anyone who is not a Christian or who does not speak Greek or Latin. Some churches like to be abstract so they name their church with a very Christian word, usually from Latin or Greek (i.e., Ekklesia, Imago Dei, Koinonia) which is something we also wanted to stay away from.

Names that need a lot of explanation. Its not wrong to have a name that may need some clarification if, for no other reason than to get a conversation started. So something like Mosaic Church is alright because then people say why Mosaic - "well because it is made up of many different cultures, and a wide variety of people." But sometimes church names are too abstract and again too Christian and need so much explanation: The Holy Tabernacle of the Anointed Ones, The Foundation Stone Temple Worship Centre, Church of the Incarnation., etc., etc.,

Why Village Church?

This is how it happened. I was away on vacation in March reading and thinking about

everything in regard to the church (and swimming in a very cold "hot tub" with my daughter, but that is for another day): How are we going to reach people? Who lives in South Surrey? What should we be called? One evening on that vacation we were talking to two members of what would go on to be the Core Launch Team over Skype and she said "What about Village Church?" - I liked it initially, but knew it was one word away from being the same name of church as a great preacher I listen to every week - The Village Church (Matt Chandler). So I told my wife that and she said "Where is that church?"... "Texas, I guess that's far enough away right?"

So I stuck it in the back of my mind, and it kept surfacing throughout the months. Once the Core Launch Team was assembled I gave them the assignment: research South Surrey, read your Bibles, and email me ideas. I expected lists and lists of names but that was not the case - people kept saying they liked Village Church. And then we moved into South Surrey and it all started to make sense. Everything in South Surrey is marketed as a village. You drive in over

the highway and the first thing you see is a massive sign with big block letters that says VILLAGE LIFE, promoting the condo/shopping complex they are building. On your way out you drive past a sign for a real estate developer whose website is southsurreyvillage.com - and all the housing complexes are marketed as creating a village lifestyle -

When I saw that I began to warm up to the idea that maybe we didn't need something completely original - and Texas was a long way away. Then we began to talk about what the idea of a village conveys to people: community, relationships, depending on one another, small in the midst of big, hospitality, etc.,. All of these cut to the heart of our values as a church.

I tested the name out on people I knew. Different reactions. Some scowled and said "It reminds me a horror movie" (referring, of course, to the M. Night Shamaylan movie The Village), and others "it reminds me of the Village People," all of which I took seriously - because it matters. Others said "it sounds welcoming" and "it sounds like you are building a community" - "it conveys relationship" - and even some who originally thought of a horror movie started coming back and saying "it is growing on me, I like it now."

In the end the Core Launch Team really adopted it, leadership at SDBC liked it and we decided that it really did communicate well to our demographic here in South Surrey.

I am still debating though, on Launch Sunday in January 2010, whether I should dress up like a police officer, or a construction worker. We'll see.

Why Plant Churches? (Part 3) - Tim Keller

'But,' many people say, 'what about all the existing churches that need help? You seem to be ignoring them.'  Not at all.  We also plant churches because-- 

 

We want to continually RENEW THE WHOLE BODY OF CHRIST.  It is a great mistake to think that we have to choose between church planting and church renewal.  Strange as it may seem, the planting of new churches in a city is one of the very best ways to revitalize many older churches in the vicinity and renew the whole Body of Christ. Why?  

 

1. First, the new churches bring new ideas to the whole Body. There is plenty of resistance to the idea that we need to plant new churches to reach the constant stream of 'new' groups and generations and residents.  Many congregations insist that all available resources should be used to find ways of helping existing churches reach them. However, there is no better way to teach older congregations about new skills and methods for reaching new people groups than by planting new churches. It is the new churches that will have freedom to be innovative and they become the 'Research and Development' department for the whole Body in the city.  Often the older congregations were too timid to try a particular approach or were absolutely sure it would 'not work here'. But when the new church in town succeeds wildly with some new method, the other churches eventually take notice and get the courage to try it themselves.  

 

2. Second, new churches are one of the best ways to surface creative, strong leaders for the whole Body. In older congregations, leaders emphasize tradition, tenure, routine, and kinship ties. New congregations, on the other hand, attract a higher percentage of venturesome people who value creativity, risk, innovation and future orientation. Many of these men and women would never be attracted or compelled into significant ministry apart from the appearance of these new bodies.  Often older churches 'box out' many people with strong leadership skills who cannot work in more traditional settings. New churches thus attract and harness many people in the city whose gifts would otherwise not be utilized in the work of the Body. These new leaders benefit the whole city-Body eventually. 

 

3. Third, the new churches challenge other churches to self-examination. The "success" of new churches often challenges older congregations in general to evaluate themselves in substantial ways.  Sometimes it is only in contrast with a new church that older churches can finally define their own vision, specialties, and identity. Often the growth of the new congregation gives the older churches hope that 'it can be done', and may even bring about humility and repentance for defeatist and pessimistic attitudes.  Sometimes, new congregations can partner with older churches to mount ministries that neither could do by themselves. 

 

4. Fourth, the new church may be an 'evangelistic feeder' for a whole community. The new church often produces many converts who end up in older churches for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the new church is very exciting and outward facing but is also very unstable or immature in its leadership. Thus some converts cannot stand the tumultuous changes that regularly come through the new  church and they move to an existing church. Sometimes the new church reaches a person for Christ, but the new convert quickly discovers that he or she does not 'fit' the socio-economic make up of the new congregation, and gravitates to an established congregation where the customs and culture feels more familiar. Ordinarily, the new churches of a city produce new people not only for themselves, but for the older bodies as well.  

 

Sum: Vigorous church planting is one of the best ways to renew the existing churches of a city, as well as the best single way to grow the whole Body of Christ in a city.