Yesterday I met with Jeff and I talked a little about what churches we would probably go to on Sundays until we started our own service. So between that and thinking about what it is going to be like to move into an area that has a decent amount of churches, I figured I’d look up what there is available in the area. I found a website for the Minnesota Council of Churches which I thought was pretty cool. I figured they would have a group like that since I haven’t lived in a place yet where my Dad hasn’t been involved in an area church group with the other local pastors, but it was cool that they have this website. Also, the building that houses the administration for this organization is about two miles from the place I’m thinking about living, and they have pretty nice facilities that are available to rent, which I thought was cool. Also, from that site, I found out that there are 150 Lutheran churches within 15 miles of the zip code of the apartments we’re looking at.
I like these kinds of area church organizations, they do a really good job at getting churches to cooperate on common goals, and it is always a good idea to know who you are supposed to be working with in your area. I think maybe I’ll check and see when they have meetings for the local Minneapolis area pastors and either see if Jeff wants to go, or just go myself, because getting to know the people around you can be a great resource and it helps people to get to know you when your the new guy in town. Also this organization partners with separate organizations that target specific areas of need in the community. There is a great looking program called Minnesota Collaborative Anit-Racism Initiative which is something that a lot of us feel strongly about in the church plant team.
Also I found pages for the Minneapolis and St. Paul Area Council of Churches…which is basically the local version of the state wide deal. I liked their web pages a lot because it detailed out some plans for helping aid the community, and they had a cool tag line “uniting people of faith – serving people in need.” This could most likely be a good place to start looking for some outreach and servant type of work until we find our niche. Also, there aren’t any Vineyards on those two organizations “member churches” lists, probably because all the Vineyards are in the suburbs, but non-the-less it would be cool to be the first one on there.
Anyway, Mom has been giving me a lot of stuff to think about with churches working together for a common goal, and I think one of the visions I have for our church plant is to partner with the churches around us, not work against them, not trying to take members from their pews, but to reach people outside the church with them. Wesley said “If your heart is my heart, then take my hand” which means, if you have a heart for Jesus, then who cares about theological differences because we share the same goal. That is really how I feel about starting this church in Minneapolis, that and I really had a vision of building a larger church so that there can be a place where area Vineyards, or are churches depending on what we are doing, can come and do training or seminars. It’s funny, but I never did think of having a small church (which is OK BTW) in Minneapolis…ever since I went up there with Jeff, I always figured that it would be a decent sized church, especially after the church planting coordinator for the region said that there needs to be a large church in the area for training and teaching.
Anyway, that was my find of the day, so now I’m all out of stuff to write..later people.