The Garden City Family of Churches
Eight years ago we had a dream to plant Garden City Church, a church that could grow to plant church-planting churches throughout the 8 million-person Bay Area. Once you taste the abundant Life of Jesus, one feels an overflowing delight to share this Life with others. For the last few years our Elder Team has been seeking God's will for the most effective way for us to plant Life-giving churches. A few months ago I drew a strategy on the back of a cereal box that I thought captured our many discussions about how to both continually multiply our church and simultaneously provide longterm stability for our church. At last night's Prayer/Q&A meeting with our church members we presented 3 key initiatives that spring from that cereal box and move us closer to achieving our long-term dream.#1 Revitalize/Reform our Discipleship CultureOur church exists to grow disciples deep & wide. A Discipleship Framework I wrote during the 2nd year of our church (and have taught to many other churches) has guided a lot of how we do this. But, we can do better. We've learned a lot more about disciple-making over the last 7 years that has informally become part of our culture, but hasn't been codified into a single document or form for passing on. I've been in the midst of writing a lengthy Discipleship Culture Guidebook for our church that I'll begin teaching to our church next month. Please pray for me as I write the content. And, pray for Jason Jones as he designs this guidebook, building it around our logo which tells our discipleship story.#2 Moving our church to a location where we can have an anchored, stable presence in our city and a morning serviceIn our short history we've had 3 different homes for our Sunday service(s), which have always been during Sunday afternoon. We believe it's time to ask God to provide a long-term home for our church, and from this stable foundation to send out many church plants. We believe God is calling us to move to a morning service as part of this quest for stability, and to reach people we aren't currently reaching. I've been leading a Search Team of 6 people who are searching for a new location for us, and we've asked our whole church to fast from lunch every Wednesday and pray fervently for this until God provides. Honestly, I find this search very intimidating and stressful. But our God is BIG and he's always provided for our church. Please join us in praying big for this location search, and please let me know if you have any ideas.#3 Plant our 1st church this FallLast night we announced that on Garden City's 9th birthday (the 3rd Sunday in September) we will send out my friend/our Associate Pastor, Fred Mok, and a core team from Garden City to plant our first church. This is so exciting! The location will likely be in the Blossom Valley region of San Jose. This will be an independent church: Fred will be the Lead Pastor, it will be financially independent, they will have their own name, they will preach their own sermon series, they will develop their own personality and express their unique distinctives, they will develop their own elder board, etc.Yet we've also formed what we're calling "The Garden City Family of Churches," of which this church plant will be a part. We believe the core DNA and family-feel of Garden City is special and that God wants us to preserve and multiply this through our church plants. When someone visits a church that's part of the Garden City Family of Churches they know they will get: deep valuing of the gospel, our theology (Reformed), exegetical preaching, an emphasis on both the Sunday gathering and Life Groups, team leadership and every-member ministry, elder governance, thoughtful and servant-hearted complementarianism, church membership, church planters who are assessed through Acts29, and a passionate pursuit of our common mission "Depending on God to grow disciples deep & wide for God's glory" (which includes a commitment to church-planting in the Bay Area, and leaders who step out in faith to trust our BIG God).➔ Please pray for us as we prepare to plant this church, and further develop The Garden City Family of Churches. We don't know what we don't know, we anticipate learning a lot through this process.➔ If you're interested in this new church plant, please contact Fred Mok. We are asking and trusting God to form a humble, passionate, faithful, generous core-team to launch this church.➔ If you're hungry to become a pastor at Garden City and be equipped to eventually be sent out to plant a church in the Bay Area that's part of our family, contact me. Our vision is to hire Associate Pastors who join our staff for 2-4 years to shepherd and strategically lead in our church, while preparing to plant a church-planting church. I'm now beginning a slow, informal search for our next Associate Pastor/Church Planter.➔ As the years go by this model will, Lord willing, translate into a special camaraderie of Church Planters/Lead Pastors who encourage and sharpen each other in this great work of pastoring and pioneering. Fred and I get to get this camaraderie started, and we look forward to sharing it with the next special leader that God brings our way.To God be the glory! This is all so fun! What a gift it is to follow Jesus with this company of friends called Garden City Church![mc4wp_form id="9268”]