Brian Knorr - Mountaintop Assembly

Brian Knorr is another church planter in the Penn –Del district that started his church from scratch with no mother church or anything, no community contacts or anything like that whatsoever. Brian Knorr and Mountaintop Assembly of God is yet another example of how being connected to the community and having contacts is so important in church planting. When starting the church, I wonder how it may have been a lot different starting if they had contacts in the community. They seemed to have challenges in finding a building and all with a lot of disagreements with the school that they were trying to rent from. Especially in this community where a lot of people didn’t respect a church that did not have their own church building. I think that a lot of people like Brian Knorr are realizing that they need more relationships with people outside the church, for many reasons. One that it is healthy and we are called to witness and be a light to the world. And secondly when growing a church or planting a church, people don’t always want to just go to a church, unless the church is doing something for the community. People no longer want to hear just what the church says, they want a reason why they should listen to them. They don’t only want to hear they want to hear and see today. I think that in Brian Knorr’s position having a church full of people that have never really been churched before, have a challenge and a great opportunity as well. That they have a great opportunity to reach those and train them correctly in the Bible and they don’t really have any previous bad experiences in church or have been taught false doctrines. And at the same time can be frustrating if you are used to preaching in a church where for the most part the congregation are disciple Christians. I think it is a great opportunity for them.

Bill Ellis - Riverside Community Church

I loved a lot of things that Bill Ellis had to say about the church and consumerism and also about the church and politics. I agreed a lot with him and had many of the same thoughts. And I can very much appreciate his desire to learn about the community that he is reaching and just the every changing culture and how the church should reach it. He seemed to be very up on the latest trends, but not carried away with them, but rather educate himself so that he could better reach his church. But also before you can appreciate that about him, I must respect his sacrificial attitude to go from a church of 700 where he was getting paid a great amount of money and was in a very comfortable position at that church . To a plant a home missions church, which is very difficult to do, especially at the time that he did it, I think that that is a very noble thing to do. And he didn’t give up on the church and grew it slowly, I think that that is awesome. Bill Ellis and his church are yet another church that I really love what they are doing with going to reach their own culture and realizing that they are missionaries to their own culture. I loved their go and be mentality. Another great church that is very missional and externally minded. What he said about if your church was removed from the community, who beside your attendees would miss it, really got me. I really think that is a great philosophy to live by when starting a church. I also agreed a lot with what he had to say about the church and politics and how the church can try to force its religion upon people, which it should never do.

Mike Hammer - Dillsburg

I can definitely appreciate Mike’s desire for people to have real authentic relationships with other believers within the church. I think that that is very important within discipling people. It is great to see churches look at these matters and not trying to always over –spiritualize things. And see the need for people’s lives to be changed and realizing the great impact that our early relationships with our parents and those who raised us have on our lives. It is important to look at the psychology of that. I think that it is important to look into our lives first and figure out our own issues before trying to help others and be in relationship with others. I can see this bridges program being extremely helpful for church leaders as well as for pre-marital counseling. Mike’s life is an example of how we need to work out these issues in our lives first before we try to lead others. But I can definitely appreciate his honesty while pastoring to go back and look deeper into those issues in his life that where there from before. And it does show that God can use every aspect of our lives to His glory. Even through our mistakes and life struggles we can be used to help others. God still uses broken, hurting people to help other hurting people as long as we can be honest with ourselves first. I think another thing Christian can struggle with as well is having a false idea of what humility is. We emphasize not being prideful so much and being humble, but we forget that we also need a correct view or our self and must not forget that we our created in the image of God.

David Kennard Riverside Community Church

I think that “seeker sensitive “ churches get a bad reputation sometimes of people saying that they are not Biblical or other reasons. But what they are really doing is trying to take the same message of the gospel that most churches are trying to reach the people with and just re-packaging it. There definitely is a need for churches like Riverside Community Church with the whole idea of free market small groups and attracting people to interests that they already have and just trying to provide community for people who desperately long for it in today’s society. And as there are doing that the sharing of the gospel comes more naturally and is a lot easier. I think that seeker sensitive churches can definitely be a great example for discipleship programs. The example of discipleship being relationship plus intentionality is great. But I think a lot of churches forget or leave out the relationship part of it sometimes. They can be very intentional about it, but they forget that people want relationships as well. I think that seeker sensitive churches get a bad rap a lot, but they can be very effective in discipling people. And also the can be very missional in their idea of free market small groups. Because they are reaching people that normally wouldn’t come to church, but are building relationships with them in their small groups. I think that seeker sensitive churches can be very much missional at the same time.

New believer number 2

The person I interviewed for my new believer survey was a student in my youth group at my home church that I help out at. His journey to Christianity seems quite interesting. He said he came from a very legalistic church. He said that it was hard to accept Christianity at first, but eventually got it. I would think that maybe coming from a very legalistic church that the thing that might have been the most difficult to accept was the simplicity of Christianity perhaps. Coming from a very legalistic church I could imagine how difficult it would be do accept that there is nothing to do to accept Christianity, but to accept it and let God do the rest and He already has. Another thing he said was that the best part about becoming a Christian was “the joy that is always inside of you all the time.” And when asked what would be the most helpful to help others grow in their Christian faith would to let them know about God’s love and to let that change them and not try to change them by yourself. I guess it goes to show that the Jesus’ yoke really is that light as He states in Matthew 11:28 when talking about the difference between the Pharisees legalism and Christianity. I think that sometimes it is so difficult to accept Christianity and it’s simplicity is because of our pride. Sometimes it seems like we want to be able to get to God on our own sometimes by however it may be legalism, trying to be a good person or whatever else it may be. But Christianity is all about giving up on our own efforts and accepting that it is only through Jesus that we can be saved. Maybe sometimes in Christianity today we do not stress this enough?

Nick Poole - Allison Park Church

Listening and hearing from Nick Poole is encouraging to see someone be able to do something right out of college, that many people are not able to, especially in church planting. And it is encouraging to see someone be able to be involved in something right after college and also it being church planting, something that I am interested in. I appreciate Nick Poole’s humbleness in his position. It seems like it would be easy to kind of get a little proud when going around to other churches and looking to see what they are doing right and wrong for a job. It could become much of a pride thing in doing that or it could be very difficult with people in the other church congregations as well. But Nick seemed very humble in his job and his passion to help church plants. It is kind of amazing to see someone who has just graduated from college three years ago and now being the pastor of church planting at a church, where his job is to go around to evaluate the churches. But his humbleness and personality allows him to be able to be effective at what he does. It shows how important being humble is and that is one thing that I know I need to work on in my own life as well. Also what he said about the one thing he regrets is not being involved with as many internships and hands on experiences and volunteering. And this is someone who was heavily involved with volunteering at different churches while in college, but still wished he did more. I have usually been involved with churches my first two years at school, but this past year I have kind of taken a little break from volunteering at churches and have been trying to focus on studying, but I have been realizing the importance of volunteering, but this just enforces that even more.

Unchurched Survey 3

For my unchurched survey number 3, I interviewed a friend in work. I thought that he would give some well thought out answers to the questions and some pretty good insight, being kind of an older guy and been around longer. But I was surprised that when He gave the survey back to me, it was filled out with all one sentence answers and a lot of them seemed very vague. Like when the question was asked why don’t you think many people go to church he replied, because it’s not a whole lot of fun. And when asked if you were look for a church to attend what would you like for, he responded “ a good time.” Answers like these always make me seem like the don’t really have much interest about church or things of God at all. But I began to think maybe this man can be very curious to spiritual things, but just does not see the church as a place to provide that. Possibly he was raised and has had assumptions that church was just a place to go to, just to get preached at and is very boring. Or possibly that the church should be a show. I would think that someone like this may have had a bad experience or experiences with church before. Maybe the church has let him down on things that are spiritual and helping people and had a become a place just to tell people what to do and perhaps the church wasn’t a very fun place to people because it was very legalistic and all. I sometimes struggle with the whole idea that church should be fun sometimes, but I guess there should be some kind of aspect involved with it though. The church should be a place where people are happy and are able to show the love of Christ. But at the same time there are churches with people who have a higher view of God and like to meditate on God and enjoy Him that way. I don’t know where you draw the line with church being fun, how much fun it should be and all of that.

Courtney Bancroft - Chi Alpha - Philadelphia

I can definitely appreciate the willingness of Courtney to be able to go into a tough city like Philadelphia and a tough college like temple to minister. I know rough Philadelphia can be, living there myself, seeing everything that goes one there. And for her obedience to God to come up here from maybe a comfortable place in D.C where she had a lot of support to here where there is basically known. I thought that it was very sad and a disgrace that a lot of the local churches would not even return her calls. I think that is a big thing that needs to be addressed in churches today and in the AG as well. There are not many programs for college age students or college groups. And there is a big turnover rate of people leaving the faith after the graduate from high school. Churches are willing to help other programs like youth, children or missions and they to need to focus on them, put not many are willing to give much support to the college age students. One of the things I like about Chi Alpha is that they focus more on discipleship than just reaching the numbers and get people saved. I mean it is very important to get people saved, obviously. But they focus on building people in Christ and their relationship with Christ which is very important as well. And especially in the college groups, because that is one of the main things that college students struggle with after graduating from high school , having a deep relationship with Christ, which can cause a lot to doubt, struggle or even leave their Christian faith and beliefs. I think that is great that they are able to reach out to and focus on reaching the unsaved and at the same time be able to disciple people and lead them in deeper relationships with Christ.

Courtney Lien

One thing that I can learn from Courtney is her patience in waiting for God to provide her with a position in ministry that she had a passion for. She gave up trying so to speak and trusted in God to lead her and possibly open up a position for her. It can be hard to be patient sometimes waiting for a position that you are passionate about sometimes. But it showed her humbleness in doing the job that she had been doing in administration. It shows that being patient and serving in the little things that God will honor you in that. In their approach to outreaches and discipleship I like their approach of getting away from the big, huge events of attracting people. That I think sometimes can be a waste of time, money and energy sometimes. But they have realized that they need to focus on people and discipling them. The idea of getting away from outreaches scares me a little, if they are not focusing on the community or the youth of the area. I think that it is very important for small groups to be a part of churches. But maybe they are putting too much emphasis on small groups. I think small groups are important, but they are just a part of outreaches and ways to disciple and outreach people. But I think sometimes small groups have too much emphasis put on them, there seems to be a lot of interests in small groups in the church today. But with all the emphasis on small groups they forget the other aspects of relationships between people. Small groups focus on intimate space, but forget the areas of public, social and personal space. People connect healthily through all four space public, social, personal and intimate. I think some churches focus so much on the two extremes of public spaces and intimate spaces in small groups. When there doesn’t always need to be so much focus on just one of the spaces at a time. With all the small groups, the church or youth group can be divided sometimes and are not unified.

David Crosby Jr. Pocono Community Church

I loved the focus of Dave Crosby’s church, to reach out and their commitment to reach the lost. I love their so practical ways to reach the community and just show love to the community. They had a vision of commitment to the lost and that’s what they focused on, their vision, reaching the lost. Again I saw a humbleness in a great leader, one of the main things I have been seeing over the past weeks in this class. He gave no credit to a specific recipe to doing things in the church or a specific model. But instead just want back to basics and relied on them, things like prayer. They built the church out of prayer and a love for the lost and love for people to grow in their relationship with Christ. One thing that he also said that encouraged me was that there are no philosophies that are the same in church planting and that any philosophy can be used as long as it is Biblical. I think that is important to be realized in church planting today, that with all the books out there and models of church planting and growth. He realized that no set model was to be relied upon, but only reliance on God and soaking the church in prayer. The idea of having a very diverse church I think is a good idea today in trying to reach many different people. The idea of having 33, 33 and 33 percents of people in the church, of those investigating Christianity, those just saved and those deep in their Christian walk. People today are looking for ways to incorporating all three different groups and reach each effectively. But I think that first needs to be an awareness and intentional focus on each group balanced in their message. I have been seeing humbleness in many speakers these past few weeks and have been realizing that that is a key aspect in ministry and especially in church planting. And also the need to love the community and reach them first before building their own church buildings even is a great idea.

Dan Miller Back Mountain Harvest Assembly

The one message that really stirred in my heart after hearing Dan Miller’s passion and the interview with him was what he said about the church’s role in the community. He said that “if you want to change the community, you can’t think about the church first, you must think about building the community.” What I have been hearing over these past two weeks with Gerry Stoltzfoos and this week in Dan Miller is really a heart and passion for those who aren’t in the church, but just for people in general. I think that’s is what sometimes we as Christians struggle with is what to reach people and love them, but wanting to do it our way, bringing them into the church first in order to minister to them. But I think now with the whole emerging church and the idea of being missional we are realizing that we need to meet and reach people where they are at. We don’t need to bring them into the church first. These past two week I’ve always seen the idea of reaching people who may have been hurt by church or don’t really want anything to do with the church because of their presuppositions about the church. And I think that is important and always I think being recognized in the idea of the missional movement. The idea of reaching people where they are at and just loving them, breaking down their presuppositions about the church that they may have had. And we do this by making them realize that we just want to love them and share what God has done in our lives with them and we don’t want to mold them into the image of the church and bring them into where we are comfortable, the church, in order to minister to them. My heart and passions have really been moved these past few weeks in realizing the need for church planting and the need to have the church re-imaged in a sense and think that it is very vital for the church to continually be the best means to change people’s lives.

Gerry Stoltzfoos, Freedom Valley Woship Center

Right off the bat I appreciate Freedom Valley Worship’s Center’s goal of reaching the unchurched, people who have been hurt by the church, and people who have negative preconceptions about the church and Christians. I think that there is definitely a need for that I think in my opinion. In all the creative outside the box ideas you see from Gerry Stoltzfoos, like the therapeutic horse riding, coffee shop, the band scene and all the other creative ideas that they have done, I think they are all great and are reaching people. I think it’s great that they are not afraid of failure at Freedom Valley. But in all the creative things I heard about what they were doing at the church you can begin to question their motives kind of and wonder if there just trying to be relevant, creative and maybe they have forgot about reaching souls. But then I saw and heard Pastor Gerry’s heart as he shared that it’s not all about the creativity, but it’s about a passion to reach souls that are going to hell. That the creativity part flows out of that desire and that is their main purpose to reach unsaved souls. And you can see and hear that when he talks about it. He stressed that the passion is the key component of evangelism and the creativity just flows out of it. One question I have been thinking about the past couple days as I am becoming more and more interested in church planting and hearing all the statistics and all. That question is what becomes of the churches that are already established, what becomes of them if everyone is being encouraged to start a new church? Are the already established churches forgotten about, it’s apparent that they are not reaching the people that are already solid Christians as the study at Willow Creek has shown. And they are not reaching unsaved people that effectively, according to the statistics. So what becomes their purpose, what are they to do?

Unchurched survey 2

This interview right off the bat brings up the same issue of that with my last interviewer. Before my interviewe, Jim, would respond to my email answering my survey questions. He emailed me and asked me before he would answer my questions if I would be able to listen to his thoughts, beliefs and lifestyles without judging him or think less of him. I guess my first interviewe is the only one who thinks Christians can be judgmental or prideful. Just thought that was ironic, but sad as well. The one thing that got me in this interview was that one asked why do you think most people don't attend church he said "If they are like me , I could say lazy. I would much rather take that hour or two or three and help my fellow man, and I do volunteer to be with and help others. I don't think going to church on Sunday makes one a better Christian, especially, if they act like a jerk the rest of the week. I don't need the show." Well I guess that shows that he thinks were hypocritical. What is happening in most churches when they can go to church weekly, but during the rest of the week be a jerk and a hypocrite. This makes me ask the question, what is the church doing wrong in this matter? Also maybe we aren't representing God and Jesus in the manner that he should be represented and really is. I think that we make Jesus look bad a lot. Maybe this is why so many people have more problems with Christians or the church then they do with Jesus himself. He also brought up a point about wars generally being fought for some religious reason and almost always being fought in the name of God or some religion. I haven't really thought about this until now, but I do see some truth in it. What is it with Christians always having or wanting to fight for their beliefs to be shoved down people's throats?

unchurched survey 1

I found this interview quite refreshing and also upseting at the same time. I interviewed my friend phil who does not regularly attend church accept for a college and career group occasionally. The one thing that he brought up in the interview was about Christians being judgmental and I'v heard this many times and this is a criticism that Christians get a lot and I believe we can be too judgmental a lot of times. But the thing he said was that "Most pastors start off with a tender heart, but develop a bitter condescending attitude over time as they begin to realize their success as a Moral Ruler." I think that this can be true sometimes and can happen when Christians especially pastors give into pride. I find it ironic that one of the main concepts of Christianity, well at least in my opinion, the idead of being humble. Being humble because we can't earn salvation and we can't receive it on our own and this is what we preach. But then as Christians I think one of the biggest things that we struggle with is pride. We can be judgmental sometimes and think that we are better than others just becuase we are saved. And I find this very said. He also shared with me, some of his bad experiences with Christian leaders and counselors, also we being judgmental and being ignorant I would say in the situation that he shared with me. I have been finding the issue of being judgmental as Christians very real and disturbing recently. I have also noticed this in my work, where I work as a banquet server working many events from weddings to business meetings and all. And I notice the people that are rude to me or usually condescending or ignorant are usually the Christian church groups. This problem with pride I think is a big issue for the church and needs to be talked about. I'm not saying that we need to change what we believe or our message but can we go about it in a way that is not prideful, especially if that's what were preaching?

Jason Lamer, Youth Alive

I like a lot of the ideas I see by Jason Lamer and his philosophy to go out into the schools and reach the students there, where they are at. I also like the ideas of his youth ministry and church that he started in the ideas of going along side local community projects and partnering with them. I think sometimes that the church today can miss those concepts of partnering with secular outreaches and programs. I think that youth alive’s ideas are good in their outreaches into school with assemblies and all and how to reach out. I feel that sometimes that while so much emphasis has been put on the outreaches and sometimes I see the Assemblies of God failing at discipleship once the students are in churches and youth groups. I do like the ideas of partnering with other churches in the community in doing these school assemblies and partnering with the schools. It seems like it is a lot easier to get into schools and places that are in the middle of nowhere. In the cities, such as Philadelphia that I have grown up in would not allow churches so easily into schools and have assemblies within the schools. Also a lot of the programs that I see being used seem to be very effective in rural areas, but in the city I have seen these same programs in the city and not very well responded to. I wonder if there are any different approaches in the city or even many of these projects in the city, as I have not seen many of them there. I do really feel for the idea of going to where the people are such as the schools in youth ministry and being able to connect with the community and partner with them.

Brian Bolt

One of the things that I appreaciated the most about Brain is his almost child like faith in believing God so passionately and faithfully. From the beginning of his salvation you could see and hear his passion for the lost and those that have real problems. I love the philosophy of his church with their full reliance on the Holy Spirit and looking for and expecting the supernatural. The belief that these people can have no other help and they need to see the supernatural in a place like that. And also their relization that it's all about God and his power. I think that his experiences have definately helped me in his inner ciry efforts. But you can also see his call by God and his passion for the inner city as well. His idea of having accountability as looking at their tithing is very interesting. I think ideas like that are very good, going back to the idea of where your money will be, their your heart will be also. His reliance on the Lord is incredible and its great to be able to see someone fully rely on God and the power of the Holy Spirit, I think it can be a great lesson for all of us. I appreciate his passion and full reliance on God.