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.