failing to launch - Citylight Church

Thursday, May 17, 2018

As Citylight readies to celebrate ten years as a church, I am writing a series of reflections. This is the fourth.

In the first months of 2008, Stacy and I began hosting vision gatherings in our home for those interested in a new church plant. We had initial community with six or so families, but what was next? The vision was not to become a Thursday evening house church, and our modest home was already becoming maxed out.

Therefore, in June 2008, I led us in launching three Sunday morning preview services. I was not an experienced church planter, but according to church planting strategists, this is what I was supposed to do. Gather, train, and then launch at a strategic time, usually Easter or the fall start of school… not the beginning of summer like I was now leading us to do.

Can I confess something to you? The rebel in me as a pioneer church planter rebelled against some church planting strategies.

When I read the Bible, I see the early church “devoted to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Act 2:42). I read how “the word of the Lord continued to increase” (Acts 6:7), “the word of God increased and multiplied” (Acts 12:24), “the word of the Lord was spreading” (Acts 13:49), and “the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily” (Acts 19:20). This is what I read of first-century church planting – “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied” (Acts 9:31).

I do not remember reading much about the fear of the Lord in church planting books. Many church planting manuals seemed to focus more on sociology than God’s Spirit, more on business leadership than God’s Word. I did (and do) need practical wisdom for ministry, but I become “rebellious” if ministry is not fixed upon God’s Word and filled by God’s Spirit.

But there in the spring 2008, our home was becoming maxed out in Thursday evening gatherings. Sundays were becoming awkward. We were becoming a community around the gospel, and there came the desire to worship together on Sundays. For me, launching is more the work of NASA’s space missions, not gospel ministry. Nevertheless, I now led our core team in countdown to three Sunday morning preview services — May 4, June 1 and June 29, 2008.

We were generously gifted some equipment and worship supplies by the Gilsdorfs, a family from our church in Richmond. We also inherited more equipment from a church plant which closed in North Carolina. All of this was now stored in our garage. We now just needed a venue. I made inquiries to many rentable spaces in our neighborhood, but the option best available to us was Stonewall Jackson Middle School. This school offered us an auditorium for worship and an adjoining cafeteria for children’s ministry, but it is located in the southeast area of Roanoke where none our core families lived. Nevertheless, we were grateful for God’s provision, and so we readied ourselves for three preview services.

At this point I had designed a simple website made with Apple’s iWeb. Social media was still in its infancy with only the personal novelty of MySpace. For these preview services, we printed invitation cards and canvassed nearby neighborhoods, hanging them on doorknobs. I also hung a few self-designed posters around the city. This was a shoestring operation, not some strategic launch.

The first weekend of May came. We rented a U-Haul van to transport equipment in for our first public worship service. On Sunday morning, May 4, we set up a simple sound system and worship table in the auditorium. We set up a coffee and snack table outside the auditorium. We set up a children’s ministry area in the cafeteria — replete with rugs, interlocking play gates, toys and of course a small bounce house (which was a church plant essential at the time). The time of service start came. No one new from the nearby neighborhoods had come. Our core team was there in this next step of church planting. Our parents and a few family friends were there in support. One of our core team members played guitar and led us in music. And I preached some message for which I am glad there is no recording. It was a special, but awkward time with twenty of so folks in a cavernous, school auditorium.

A month later on June 1, we did a second preview service. The same preparation. The same set-up. The approximately same number of people. The same awkward feel.

We had a third date, June 29, reserved at Stonewall Jackson, but by God’s most sovereign mercy, I was notified by Roanoke City Public Schools that they had double-booked. We could not return and hope the third time was a charm in this middle school in southeast Roanoke where none of us lived. I hustled to figure out another option and soon reserved the shelter at Wasena Park next to the Roanoke River. It was a sunny, summer Sunday, and we gathered for an outdoor worship service and lunch fellowship. There was still the awkwardness of doing something for the first time, but this felt more like us — communal and relational, casual but reverent.

There are some church plants which can launch large, but this was not the model for us. I had led our core team to try a public launch, but I did not know what I was doing. And in reality, I neither had the ministry philosophy nor the resources for such a launch. By the Lord’s mercy, Citylight failed to launch. The Lord had steered us away from an expansive and expensive space. Finally we were figuring out our vision together in worship, community and mission.

That very next week in July, we began weekly, Sunday afternoon worship and potluck dinner at a small Episcopal church in our neighborhood… but that’s a story for my next post.

grateful for the Lord’s mercy, Derek Lam