Innovating faithfully is at the heart of what we do as a community of churches and ministries. And it is precisely that approach to ministry promoted in a book that my colleague Nick Warnes co-authored in 2014 that has helped us pursue transformative work that we could have only dreamed about only a decade ago.
The pandemic has helped us all to see that, as a body of disciples, how crucial it is to keep in pursuit of transformative work and there is much there that we can celebrate:
- We are moving forward with the “Church Starting Church” as a way of expanding our missional collaboration between the New Worshipping Communities and more established churches. The door is now open for us to see an influx of new leadership, vitality, and vision into our shared ministry.
- We are experiencing a notable increase in the ethnic diversity of our church and committee leaders. Not only do we see a broader variety of people responding to God’s call to serve in our committees, but we are in partnership with congregations serving Arminian, Korean, Punjabi and Spanish speaking communities in our region.
- The desire of our sessions to pursue creativity forms of ministry is evident in the fact that the majority of our churches has signed up to the Vital Congregations Initiative, starting next month.
- We are submitting to our national church body a proposal for exploring alternative ways of more fully incorporating the participation of participants in over five hundred New Worshipping Communities into our church. If approved, that would be a very significant step forward towards strengthening our present and future impact in the world.
I am pleased to inform you that after months of prayerful conversations between me and with my colleague Rev. Nick Warnes, our Personnel Committee has adopted an new role and an updated position for him as part of our Presbytery staff. As Associate for Innovation, Nick will now be working with certain established congregations seeking to initiate new forms of ministry that embody the Gospel amid the significant changes that we are experiencing in today’s day and age. Along those lines, he will also be lending his expertise to updating our systems of administration and communication as well as to the development of an overall strategy for financial sustainability.
I am convinced that the 25 hours a week that Nick will be dedicating to his part to our Presbytery will be contribute much to the implementation of our shared goals. His gifts and relationships will help continue to deepen the exciting transformation that is now underway.
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*Starting Missional Churches: Life with God in the Neighborhood. Intervarsity Press. 2014
I did not grow up in the church and I remember becoming a member of a church for the first time. It was in 2007 and I was so fortunate to join Glendale Presbyterian Church. I joined while in seminary. I have some fond memories of my time at Fuller Seminary; most of my memories from that season of life were around doing ministry with the people of Glendale Presbyterian Church. The same church then supported both myself and the presbytery as we started Northland Village Church in 2008-2009. After partnering to start 15 churches out of Northland Village church, our very own Ken Baker asked me to consider going to halftime at Northland Village Church to frame out what God was doing with all of the new churches in the Presbytery. Six months later, we gave birth to Cyclical LA, a ministry of the San Fernando Presbytery. My coaches and mentors at the time had an intuition that other denominations would be interested in similar frameworks and this prompted me to get to the work of creating Cyclical INC, a 501c3 non-profit. I transitioned out of Northland Village Church in 2017 and became the Executive Director of Cyclical INC. To have the opportunity to function as both the Director of Cyclical LA, and the Executive Director of Cyclical INC has been a dream come true for me. I never would have imagined that I would get to spend my time helping people bring to life that which God was asking them to create. So with all this said, and with this trajectory in mind, thank you. The foundation of support from the Presbytery in igniting what has now become both a local and global movement has me steeped in gratefulness and this gratefulness roots from the courage and vision of our Presbytery.
Recently, Cyclical INC has made a pivot toward a vision broader than only church starting. We have moved into the sphere of what we have called faithful innovation. It is in this same stream of faithful that I have now also been invited to join our presbytery to become better practitioners of faithful innovation. Similar to the birth of all the other initiatives that we have begun, I do not know where this movement may go. However, I do have some hunches. These hunches have come from relationships that I have with many of you. While the addition to my position is only five hours per week, I can’t wait to dive in deeper to figure out what God is inviting us toward next.
Be on the lookout for emails and phone calls from me as we follow the bread crumbs of the Holy Spirit to increase our witness for Jesus as co-creators with God in the historical work of faithful innovation. In the meantime, if you have any promptings, I’d love to talk. Please feel to reach out and contact me at any time. Again, thank you for including me in your process of moving our Church toward what God is creating. It continues to be one of the greatest honors of my life.