What we talked about at the congregational meeting

How’s that for a creative article title? It doesn’t get more straightforward than that! Last Sunday after the 11am service, we had a congregational meeting and gave those who attended some updates on life at The Bridge Church. We had a financial update, welcomed some new members, and talked about my upcoming sabbatical. The short story on that last piece is that from January to April, I will be working on my Doctorate of Ministry dissertation and our family will be spending the bulk of that time in Europe. I’m writing about what a church like The Bride can learn from how the early church engaged with its culture despite having little power or influence. I’m excited to visit some of the places the early church took root! In the meantime, The Bridge will have a few great guest preachers who will take turns doing short sermon series while other gaps are filled internally by staff and leaders. I know the Lord will continue to work in powerful ways and I’m looking forward to hear what He does while I’m away!

However, that’s not what I want to write about. I want to fill you in on something I shared regarding our longer term vision and direction as a church. You know that we have seen continual growth over these last 4 years or so. Two years ago, we had one Sunday morning service and it was becoming quite full. At the November congregational meeting that year, we shared a vision for moving to two services. The tagline I used (given to me from a pastor friend) was “it takes two to reach the one”- two services to be able to reach that person who is open to the Gospel. I shared Scriptures like Isaiah 49:19-21 and Luke 5:1-7 to make the case that we were needing to create more space for the people the Lord was bringing to us (and bringing to Himself through us). Now, a couple of years later, we’ve once again been feeling a bit of a squeeze (more so at the 11am service than the 9am). If the Lord continues to bring about this growth of numbers of people, how do we make more space to accommodate that growth?

What I presented on Sunday was what our leadership team has sensed the Holy Spirit may be leading us to. Essentially, we could take that tagline from two years ago and repeat it: it takes two to reach the one. However, the “two” in this case is not another service, but another site. I’ll try to explain. We recognize that we have people coming from a wide geographical range to Deep Cove on Sundays, especially from other areas of the north shore. We also recognize that some of those areas have minimal church presence. Instead of simply adding more services here in Deep Cove, could we plant an extension of The Bridge in some of those neighbourhoods and embody the Gospel for people right in their community? 

The particular approach we feel drawn to is neither an independent church plant nor a “satellite campus”. A church plant has to develop all its own structures and resources, a challenge that leads a significant number of church plant attempts to fold. A satellite campus will often show the video of the sermon preached from the “home base”, possibly making it feel more like a glorified overflow space. However, a multi-site model like the one we’re looking at tries to combine the incarnational strengths of a church plant and the advantages of sharing resources and leadership that characterize satellite campuses. The vision is that we would empower a site pastor who would especially shepherd the people who are part of that new site. However, preaching would be on a rotational basis among the sites- for example, I might preach two or three times a month in Deep Cove and once or twice at the other site, but all preachers at all sites would be preaching the same texts with more or less the same basic idea. All sites would be under the overall umbrella of The Bridge, sharing resources with the whole church. We’d have one board and one staff team. Some ministries would be together as one (eg. Youth ministry) but there might be some that a site would undertake in its own local context (eg. Alpha). A lot of the practicalities will need to be worked out, but the good news is that this isn’t some untested idea we’ve come up with on our own. Tenth Church in Vancouver has been using this model for close to 20 years. The pastor who oversees the site pastor team at Tenth Church is someone I’ve known for years. He visited our leadership retreat in September and walked our board and staff through the vision and logistics of becoming a multi-site church. The result was that our leadership were excited and united about moving in this direction!

What does that mean for now? Becoming a multi-site church won’t happen overnight. It may be one or two years before we’re ready to launch, assuming God continues leading us towards that vision. In the meantime, join us in praying for the process and for discernment. Also, consider how you can be used in multiplication. I shared on Sunday that even something as simple as paying attention to who you haven’t seen at a worship service for a few weeks and checking in with that person is huge. Greeting people you don’t recognize or who are standing by themselves in the atrium is another big one. Deciding to serve in a ministry like kid’s ministry or the hospitality team or the worship team would be a gift. To plant an extension of our church in a new community will require more people than ever being mobilized for God’s Kingdom mission.

Regardless of how it all plays out, I’m excited about what lies ahead for The Bridge! Jesus is our captain, so let’s follow him wherever he takes us!