All right, our panelists are going to share about themselves, about how they got started, how the church got started, what the community looks like, and what the future looks like, and how we can pray. There will be time for questions and answers, and you can ask as we go along, or you can wait until the end. Arbitrarily, give this to Lance. I love him the most. What are we supposed to do again? That was the weakest memory. All right. I'm Lance Lewis from Christ Liberation Fellowship. West Philadelphia. Did you say how we got started? That's a long story. We got started a little bit more than four years ago, and I'll make this as short as possible. We came to Tennessee in 1990, and I've been recognized as someone who had been called to the ministry by other kids that came from Swayne, while I was here, decided to plant a church in the book. Time really wasn't right at that point. He left to do some work on churches in Virginia. And then eventually, while I was down there, Mary McClatchy really had a vision also to see an African-American church plant in West Philadelphia. And we hooked up. And eventually, CLS started. November of 2001. And one of our founding members is here. This is a way I get to stand up, but she can't. So she won't get mad at me tomorrow. I'll be like, there you go. This is my man. Praise the Lord. She's been one of our founding charter members, even since our Bible study. So praise the Lord for her. She's a blessing. I think everybody should get what all the folks have been saying here. CLF, let me just go through right quick. Our neighborhood is a working middle-income neighborhood on the western edge of West Philadelphia. We're near City Avenue. The name of the area is called Overbrook. Overbrook and Overbrook Park, actually, is another extension of the neighborhood there. It's a few miles, several miles west of the University City area. Mainly African American, though still They do have some Anglos and have a number of people from the Caribbean who've moved in. So it is somewhat of an ethnically diverse neighborhood. One of the reasons we planted it is it didn't have a lot of Bible-believing churches. And that still, for the most part, indicates at least within a walking distance to the people who live in the neighborhood. I would say the mission of any church would be to make disciples of Christ, active followers of Jesus Christ. And while I would agree on principle that the PCA does a good job in making disciples, I would say that we do, as I said, Whether that translates into people becoming active followers of Christ, I don't know if we're doing a great job there. However, I think we are doing a much better job than most of the church. And I want to caution all of us to not downplay this issue of discipleship. If we don't have people who have a firm grasp on the gospel, and who have a growing love for the Lord, and thus a growing desire to see his kingdom expanded, then we're going to produce Christian consumers who only think of Christianity in terms of what it can do for them. And if we're going to end up in situations like when we go evangelize, well, people don't understand the gospel, know the gospel, think through the gospel. I ain't a great speller. But that's fine. Now our vision, you know, our vision concerns why we exist, and we're going to act as followers of Jesus Christ. That's the commission that the Lord gave me. I'm not at liberty to deviate from that commission, so that's what we're doing. Our vision really is to see transforms communities. I was born and raised in West Philadelphia. And the flavor of wine is in many of my vases, although not in the Will Smith. If a donation, I will take it. So I'm very familiar mainly with West Philadelphia. I'm a little bit familiar with the Germantown section. One of the things I'm concerned about, and I guess we can get into this as far as the denomination, One of the things that concerns me is that we might do a Starbucks church planting strategy where we will plant churches that are kind of like six to eight blocks from a Starbucks. And I'm really concerned about the breadth of West Philadelphia, the breadth of North Philadelphia, where we might not naturally look to plant churches because they're not as diverse and they don't have a growing percentage of white folks. I think we need to be praying about that also. I grew up in what's considered kind of westerly Poplar or West Park. And you get out by the University City, and you go from University City up to now half 63rd Street, between City Avenue, then to DeRogge, down to You go down to Southwest Philly, down to Cedar, Baltimore Avenue, you get many times a lot of black folks. So I'm really concerned about that. I'm concerned about those churches. So our vision is to see a transformation of those neighborhoods into vibrant communities of faith. That's right, give me some of that. Vibrant communities of faith, of people who are coming to be disciples. So that is one of my chief concerns. I don't want to take up all the time here, so I'll just kind of leave it at that. I do believe we need to impact every area of the city or the neighborhood or the community that we're called to socially, economically, psychologically, emotionally, as well as spiritually. And that is part of our vision, is to see the holistic transformation of whatever communities God calls us into. Now, of course, our strategy is, as our brother said, church planting. I believe that the church is still the manifestation of God's wisdom and the vehicle through which he gets glory. All glory be to God, be the glory in the church. Amen. Thank you. I don't know what else to say. Sorry. I'm going back to Holy Sepulcher. You guys are crazy. Anyway, that would be the church in which we should either assert, or some might say reassert, a position as being the hub in this community, the place where people go for worship, where people go for transformation, where people go to heal brokenness. So our goal, our strategy is to plant neighborhood, building community churches in order to accomplish this and that's kind of what we're looking for. what we're hoping to do, and I'll stick around, especially if we have a certain lunch. I don't want to get caught on other bugs. I guess I can say ditto to the things that Lance has said about neighborhood churches and believing very firmly that the way God continues his ministry in the world is through the church. It is through vibrant communities of faith, So we're landing in University City to try to start a vibrant community of faith. There are communities of faith that exist there. But we are particularly coming in to connect with the university community and the professional population there, the people that come in and commute to work. I'm tucked 4,000 feet, by the way. Yes, introduce oneself when one speaks to an audience that one does not know. So coming here from New York City most recently, I'm from the South. That's by way of background. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I started off ministry as a campus minister at the University of Georgia. Dan Kaysen did director of mission at West Richardson Institute over there. He's a student in my ministry. But that's where I started off. And so my love for the university community I started there. Why? I was one of those kids, as a teen, that Bill Christensen talked about last night, that becomes a Christian when you're a teenager. I go off to university, and that's the place that I grew up as a Christian, or at least started to grow up as a Christian. That's where the discipleship, the evangelism, the call to ministry began to take shape in my life. So I've had a passion for that kind of place since I've been an early believer. Headed off to Westminster Seminary back in the late 80s. And while I was here, I worked within a varsity down at Penn. So a little connection with Philadelphia and with Penn, in particular, during those years of being a seminary student. Left Westminster, went back to university and did a PhD in sociology. So staying in this academic world, interested, intrigued with that. Questions of culture. Then left the university community and started off as a pastor in Lexington, South Carolina. Then migrated to the University of Charlottesville neighborhood at Trinity Presbyterian Church and completed my dissertation and studies in sociology while I was there, actually. And then went on to New York, where my love and interest in cities really began to take off. I'm married to Stacey. My far better half should be around tomorrow, if you're around. And we have three kids. We love living in New York City. But as we started to think about what was next for us, where was God leading us, the two loves of university and city began to swirl in our head and our prayers. About seven years ago, I heard Richard Gordy, a philosopher, say that the university has replaced the church as the center of moral authority in our culture. It's a dramatic statement. And it's very true in many, many ways. And yet, as Paul says in Ephesians 3.10, it is through the church that God manifests his glory. Rory's statement reminded me of something that J.I. Packer says very briefly in his book, Knowing God, that the university is a context where people learn about living life in this world. And yet, it can so often be a context that we hear nothing about God. So we don't know how to really integrate our lives, really, as image-bearers of the living God in all that we do in life and in work. And so with that in mind, we've sort of started entering into this conversation with Bill Crispin and Bruce and some of the other pastors in the area here about what would be possible to come into this neighborhood, University City, and start a church that would connect. broadly, not just the students. When people say, oh, you're planning a church in a university city that's going to reach that community, you're a student church. Well, we hope that there will still be students there. We want to connect with the students. We want to reach the students. And yet, at the same time, we want to be a whole body of Christ, right? We want to connect with all of the diverse peoples that are there and the age spectrum that's there. We are one of those planets that does not have a core degree. Or a boss team, as we popularly describe it. Yes. So we're looking. We're looking for people that want to pray about whether or not God wants you and others to be a part of this work, this new church that is beginning to form. We've had a couple of information meetings already. We've had about a total of 80 people or so come out to hear about the church and at least say, hey, I'm willing to pray and ask whether this might be the place that I should connect and help build. And so we're excited about that. We have no idea who's going to commit. Arlene Navarro, sitting up here, a friend of mine from New York City, has committed, has connected. We're beginning to gather a small group of people that are saying, I believe this is where God wants us to connect. This is where God wants us to engage in his mission. And so we're glad about that. You can certainly pray for us. as we keep meeting, as we keep talking, that God will need others to be part of this launch group and this new church. We have a prayer gathering tonight at Woodlawn Presbyterian Church over in University City, starting about 5 p.m., we're going to have dinner, we're going to spend some time in prayer and a little bit of worship. So pray for our gathering tonight. If you want to come out to our gathering tonight, come out to our gathering tonight. And pray with us about this church that's starting. We're excited about it. We're looking forward to it. And I can't tell you much more than that, because I frankly don't know what God is going to do. But I can tell you, you know, we, as Stacy and I, prayed about and thought about why should we do this. We had all kinds of reasons in our head. You know, all of this fest, the themes of this ministry come together for us, but over and over and over again, one of the things that God has been very gracious to do with us is to help us to see that it's His church, not ours. And that He's already doing things. And we're just getting this great privilege of connecting with things He's already doing. And both of the information meetings that we've had, and the conversations in those meetings, and the conversations and follow-up conversations after those meetings, It becomes apparent that person to person comes up to you and says, you know, I've been praying about a church like this for some time now. And God's doing it. So it's exciting for us to come into a situation that, on the front end, we can look and say, hey, there's nobody there. There's not a courtroom. There's not a Bible study. And yet, the Lord is showing us there's somebody there. He's there. He's pulling people together. He's weaving this church into existence already before we ever even thought it might be something we recognize. So it's an exciting time. Thanks for letting me be here this weekend, and I'll be around. I also have a little sheet over there with a table if you want to learn a little bit more about our church. So pick that up, take it home, and pray for us. I'm going to say my name first so I don't jack it up. Doug Logan, County Bible Church, Kensington. Frankford, Monango, Kensington, Monango, whichever corner you come to closest. I'm a lab student as well, seeing that missionary-supported pastor, and we're going to be playing. I'm originally from Patterson, New Jersey. I grew up in the bad side of where David Howell grew up. I wasn't allowed on ditty blocks. I didn't have the complexion to make the connection to go down here. You got me at America's Got Talent. I had to get it back. But I came to Calvary Bible Church about two and a half years ago, if you know anything about Kensington. Kensington is Irish Catholic, hardcore racist, and the joke was about 15 years ago in Kensington, if you were black, you didn't either know how to run or how to gun. And that is very true. Aryan Nation is not far down the street in Fishtown. So that stuff is real in the mind. And so I come into an older church, a Brethren church, Charlie Church of the Brethren that became Cal Revival Church in the late 60s. All white church for every year. It's 86 years old. When I got there, we had a little piano player. She's 91. Her mother was pregnant and was going to that church when they were a church plant. meeting on Kensington Avenue. I came two and a half years ago. The first black member they had was in 2002. And I experienced a lot of racial discrimination. My wife is white, and my candidate and my denomination, I've been a Baptist for many years in churches in Philadelphia. I experienced great discrimination. A lot of evil statements, a lot of condescending, just nasty type of stuff. I was ready to just say, forget all y'all, I'm moving to Virginia. To Lynchburg. For real. So my cousin called me and said, yo man, I can't preach at this little church. I need you to go preach for me. And he said, don't you go over there trying to be no candidate. You go over there and preach the gospel and be a minister. So I went over there August of 2003 and October 12th. It was the United States vote and I came in and came on board. I didn't even ask them how much they paid me. I knew I wouldn't pay anybody. In the midst, we sought to be a haven, particularly in a diverse community, black, white, and Hispanic, to be a haven for that. A restoration station. So many people have been wounded by church folk. And so many interracial couples like me and my wife have been just beat up in the name of Jesus. And we wanted to be an inviting, family, couch-type sanctuary that was inducing. to growth and to cultivating true gospel living in a missional way. And that's what we sought to do. I was a homeless preacher. My denomination sort of cut me loose. My dad, I went to a Bible church, and I guess that didn't smell fast enough to him. So I was sort of homeless. So Bill Crispin came to the homeless shelter for preachers and adopted me. And he took me under his wing. Him and Miss Mary discipled me and my wife, and they just loved on us. And I became the initial guinea pig of cohort one of LAMP, Leadership and Ministry Preparation. And I missed class Tuesday, so I made sure to tell them I was here. And literally, Church was going to come on next, so I'm going to shut up. In this process of adoption of Bill Crispin, they took me on as CityNet to help support, as well as help to walk alongside me in Mission Development as we were replanting. The hip-hop, I don't call it a replant, that just sounds so generic. I call it a remix. So we're a remix. The song was alright in 1920, but we're just gonna put a better beat to it in 2006. So, Liberty Church has really come alongside and walked with me, and I'm not a Presbyterian, and those guys are, and I love that dynamic of outside of the box, a bunch of crazy white guys in the church that starts it with a small L. and to walk alongside the church with a bunch of different people. And they just really partnered and loved it, sent me a leader. And right now I've got about 20 kids from Cameron Crusade for Christ, and Steve Lutz has been sleeping at the church all week, and we've just done community stuff. It's been a wonderful ride. And as we seek to reface and relaunch over this year, I would just solicit your prayers in that, and God bless you. My name is Jeff Bradford. I'm married to Susan, and we have 4.5 boys, the next one coming in May. We're Southerners, like Tuck, and I'm the least likely person to be sitting up on this stage, honestly, being a part of any kind of church plant. because I'm from a small town in the South where everybody goes to a football game, and then goes diverging afterwards, and then they roll to the sidewalks. So, Philadelphia, when we came to visit Philadelphia, me and my wife were coming out to look at seminary. I was scared to death. We got on, I think it was probably Gerard Avenue, and I got on, and it looked like a movie set. It looked like a movie set, and I'm like, we are going to get killed. We're like, I just get my hungry down behind the geometric steering wheel. There's not much we can get behind. We are scared out of our minds. In the ten, eleven years we've been in Philly now, it's a lovely area. God is really, we call this home. Jesus has grown in us a great heart for people here, for this place here. I couldn't imagine going anywhere else. I am just thankful to be sitting up on the stage with these brothers and to be at this conference. I want to summarize a couple of things that I think have been said, because you've heard a lot of great stuff on action this morning. I think that one of the main underlying currents throughout all the stuff that we're sharing and that Bruce has presented is that the Church is measured not by its gatheredness on Sundays, but by its sentness during the week. The Great Commission says it's a going space. The Church is on the go. The Church is not measured by how much we're gathered on Sunday, how many people show up, and how much we break our arms and pat ourselves on the back for filling up buildings. But the Church is measured by its sentence during the week. the degree to which the people of God engage in the ministry of God in the city for the glory of God. I'm a pastor of, I'm a lead pastor for Liberty Church. We're a three-year-old church plant. We're about to become our own church and move out of mom's basement, pay our own bills, and make our own decisions. That's coming up this fall. We have three elders in training right now and nine deacons, and we're just really excited about that. But I want to tell you more of the story of what God's done in sticking us, instead of how many people we have and what all the things we're doing. God continues to convince us of the things that Bruce was saying earlier about this book of Acts. And I see there's a piece of paper here that's just begging to be written on, so I'll write on it. In the DCA, this is how we plant churches. We grab a leader. We go there to dig a community. We might get around to doing some evangelism, because we're convinced that's what we're supposed to do. And then when that doesn't work, or we get, you know, we're burnt out, we start praying. Now, that's the way we start. That's the way, you know, I'm wired, in terms of structure and programs, how we're going to make this happen. And, you know, I'm doing the mean version, he did the nice version of this. But, look at Max, who called us to reverse this, you know, pray like crazy. to then, from there, look for the Spirit's leadership and opening doors that we were promised. God is a God. John 10. There are sheep who are of this fold, who are not of this sheep fold, who will hear my voice and will respond. And we believe God's going to do that. And then out of that comes community development and then leadership. And we reverse this all the time. And it's not just because we're good at this. We're better at this, and we're trained at this, because we honestly don't believe we need the Holy Spirit. We believe in the trinity of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and us. And functionally, that's how we work in our churches. And at Liberty, we're It's not pretty, it doesn't work great, but we are constantly trying to push ourselves through our eggs in this basket, in the evangelism basket. And if there's anything I can encourage you in today, it's not like, again, have a couple new heroes, people sitting up on the stage, but let's all commit ourselves to expecting that what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit and His promises are true. And that God really loves the church. And he loves to see his people sin. And so my story is just a story that really is anybody's story. As we continue to try to lean hard on the Holy Spirit instead of leaning hard on what we can plan and organize to make happen, we're seeing God meet us in that. And so Liberty Church started off with a worship. We started meeting in the Yarkinson neighborhood, Fairmount. meet on Sunday afternoons. It was just a few people. The vision was neighborhood-based. We want to reach this neighborhood. We want to pray for this neighborhood. We want to see people come to Christ in this neighborhood. And as we did so, God started gathering people. We have a lot of folks who have been worn out and beat up by the church. Like Doug was saying, we have folks who have never been a part of any church. You call us up and say, what do I need to do to reserve a seat? No tickets here. But God has gathered people, and we've seen God really working with them. Our heart has been like, well, look, it's hard to plant a church. It's a lot easier to have a church that just continues to believe in the greatest mission, and sends out, and sends out, and keeps the poor out. So we started another worship site in the Northern Liberty community, 2nd and Spring Garden, that area. The whole idea was, hey, we're getting a lot of people over here. Let's see if God can do more over here. And as we were praying, we're saying, God, would you stretch us? Where do you want us to go next? Where do we see the spirit of work? Where can we plant new sites of our church that will eventually become their own new churches? And we think that's really key. So we're doing some of the same innovations on some stuff that Bruce was saying, but we're hoping to plant a site up in the Mannion East Falls community this fall. We're hoping to see sites planted in Jersey or North of Camden somewhere. We're hoping to see stuff planted down in Bella Vista and Fishtown. We're just praying, God, stretch us and send us. And the problem is, we trust you. that new people, we're going to keep praying, we're going to ask you to move us out of ourselves to be a church that exists for the sake of our neighbors. We're going to get involved in our communities and share the gospels. Out of that we hope community develops, and out of that we hope to see leadership develops. And one of the cool things that's been happening is as we're watching this going on, God is raising up leaders within our movement who will be the next church the next level of church planners for the city of Philadelphia. We have three guys going through the LAMP training program, who will be ordainable in the PCA. We also have another six that we see as potential church planners we're identifying. These guys got it raising up. And we want to see the city saturated like everybody else does. But we're continually wrestling with, you know, we pray, we trust that where you give your Holy Spirit, you're going to get resources for this. Leadership resources, money resources, and I'll ask you to pray. Pray for us as we move from a church that's been a mission church to now having our own elders and deacons. The impetus is always toward taking a seat on the couch. Don't we all like to sit on the couch? One of the things that we're in transition of is we're asking you to pray that we wouldn't slow down, that we would not take a collective seat and just say, man, it's great that we planted this church, but that we continue to hear the call, that we'd be generous with resources that we've seen and seen come and plant this church. Hey, this is a great opportunity for some of our folks who live in West Philly or are associated with the university community. Go help them. That would be better than staying with us. Go help them. Just pray for us that we would continue to hear the call of the gospel to the neighborhoods, and we would continue to see the kingdom stretch and advance. And we'll pray that for you. We'll pray that for Kenneth. I am so encouraged by hearing Phil Reichen's vision enunciated, articulated to the pastors here on Tuesday at CityNet, being articulated for a greater mobilization of the Philadelphia community for the advance of the gospel here. And we pray that that means greater advancement for the gospel overseas as well. God's given us opportunities to do that in Sudan. We see a lot of great opportunities for the way that God is bringing together this common vision. And I can't think of a more exciting place to be serving as a pastor for the gospel than Philadelphia right now, because there's great momentum for the kingdom. And we pray that that continues, that we don't get locked into territory, how we're going to figure out all these things. We're trying to nail down these things as the Holy Spirit is churning up a culture that longs for the advancement of the kingdom. And at great personal cost, it's been a great joy for all people. So thanks for letting me share. Thank you, and please pray for us. Let me turn this back over to Bruce. Before we entertain questions, any of the other panelists want to add anything? Yeah, I'll just say that just hearing their story, well, just sitting here listening to the guys reminds me of one of the great benefits of church planting for the President's area is just the presence of these guys amongst. I mean, they just have such zeal and passion parts of missionaries, it lifts every church and every pastor just to hang out on the corner with them. So one of the give-back benefits of church planning is that we get men like these to share their story and challenge us and encourage us to be missional and outreaching and sending in the existing congregations of the Presbyterian. And I would ask everybody to say something about their wife. My wife, praise the Lord for my wife, I married an angel 10 years. Gosh, March 29th, I have three boys and pray for me. My 17-year-old got his license the other day. Question. I had asked this question to Bruce, and I'll just ask it to you, and some of you guys have touched on this, but if you had a wish list for 10th Presbyterian Church's involvement in your church, what would it look like? What are things that you could say to the members of 10th? We would love for you to do this for us. Maybe it's the same things Bruce has said, but that's, how can, what would you, what would that look like, a wish list? How much time do we have? I want gray-haired people. I want people with gray hair. We are a church that is primarily people that are right around the age of 29 and 30, doing their first or second job right out of college, and we need people who don't want a position, who don't want to come in and make it look like their church, but are willing to be Ross in the midst of a bunch of tumbleweeds, and who are willing to hang out with people who have tattoos and weird shoes, but are willing to say, you know, actually, honestly, like fathers and mothers of the faith who can disciple, who in their 50s and 60s and 70s still have the twinkle in the eye of Jesus, and who are willing to see past the hour and being able to say, I'm going to walk with you. and help you grow as Christians. And those are the people who, Steve Huber, who's one of the other pastors with me, he always says, when people like that come to our church, I want to grab them around the ankles and beg them not to leave. So we'd love to see another greater diversity in our ages. A lot of people come in and say, I don't feel like I fit in here. And I don't feel like I do. I mean, it's OK. But I would love to see that. financial needs, which we see are the needs for that, for the long term, moving us to be a church-planning machine for the future, and particularly prayer outreach, for these things I've said, open doors. I guess, for me, on the opposite, I've got an eating and overcooking already. They come as far as Abbeyton, Glenside, down to Kensington. That's my breakfast club. I'm with them once a week. They got plenty of wisdom. They don't have to pop me in the head still. I still really would love, and again, I'm not blowing liberties for them, but Liberty came alongside me and I really needed help. So by way of a non-elder, provisional elder, they sent me a guide, Joe Marlin, who's really taken off and does evangelism and outreach for us now. My desire is for some TEMP guide to come over. If I had some young people out of college, a lot of times TEMP is like the Mecca of North America for great preaching and great teaching. And when I hear it's a small number of community people actually from this community that come here, I would love to see 10th, with the great teachings, send some folk into some churches and help out that aren't blighted. You know, young Christians straight out of college normally vote with their feet. So, you know, as soon as they don't like something, they're gone, or the Spirit told them to be here this week, and the Spirit told them they're here this week, they're back this tomorrow, then they're Presbyterian, and they're so all over the place. As soon as you work with them, disciple them, and love on them, they're just so unstable. So I would love to see a committed group of young people that are committed in terms of church planning to hold and stay. and say, we're going to work with you. We want a commitment. A commitment to hold on and hang in there, even if the PowerPoint's not working yet. You know what I mean? Let me say that Tim has been very gracious to me, at least from a leadership standpoint already. Phil and I talked early on in this project proposal. And really, it was right from the start behind it, encouraging me, praying for me, encouraging Brian Eskerling, the Parish 3 elder, to begin to corral Parish 3, which is University City is part of that Parish 3 group, and say, hey, pray about whether or not God wants you to be part of this church. Bill came to our invitation two weeks ago, went to Parish 3, and exhorted some of you perhaps who are here, and others, to do just that. So we've been very, very encouraged already from sense support, both financially and in terms of just exploitation. How can you help? Well, you can help by putting feet to that invitation. You can pray that people of parish three, particularly those who live in the neighborhood, would vote with their bodies. A lot of folks come across the river to tent. And it's a hard thing to give up a community that you love. that you're a part of, that you're integrated in, that you're taught, that you're discipled, that you grow up, it's hard to leave home in some ways. And yet, as we've heard over and over again this weekend, God wants us to go. A Christian is someone who goes. The Church goes. So pray about whether or not God wants some of you to be part of this Church. Pray that those that are considering being a part of this Church would understand his call in their lives. I can tell you that Stacy and I probably never thought we would church plant. This is not something we graduate from seminary saying, hey, let's go church plant. Isn't that exciting? You get to fundraise. You get to find people in all these things. No, never. I want to have a stable job. I want to be a regular patient. And yet, one of the things that God has surprised us with personally is how he uses this in our lives and our marriage to sanctify us, to mature us, to grow us up, to show us that in fact we build our life, our happiness, our peace around something besides the love of God and Jesus Christ. I mean, just last week we were sitting on the couch talking about a fundraising event. And we're looking at each other saying, you know, we don't like to fundraise. This is a time. And one of us wants to, sometimes we're at that moment where we say, well, we should just believe and just give, without us having to have the courage to ask. Right? Or on the other hand, if we just had enough relational capital so that we would go into these conversations, and just by the sheer love of Tucker Stacy Bartholomew, people would just go. Where's the gospel in that? It's not, right? And so it becomes an opportunity for us to sit on the couch and pray, and confess, and repent, and say, you know what? We really do believe that life is about us. It's not about a king. So church planning has been great for the Bartholomews already, because it's pushing us. It's stretching us. And church planning can be great for some of you, because it will also push and stretch you to believe that Jesus is the risen Savior, and push this hope of the gospel. And then, of course, you're like, but I'm drifting more sermons all the time. Tim, obviously, has been a great supporter of CLF since we began. And honestly, without his support, we would have to do one of two things, cut staff, or Lancaster would have to get another job. So I really thank Tim for that. And also for your willingness to be associated with a church plan that certainly has a theological focus on board, but in some of how we work out what we do. Certainly, it's definitely a little bit different to try to seal that. And a lot of teachers wouldn't do that. You would have to look right now. What we can do now, if I could have four or five small group Bible study leaders email addresses so that I can email them. for us, that would be invaluable. So if I could just get four or five faculty leaders, small group leaders, cell leaders, whatever y'all call them now. You know, they've changed names every five years. Whatever. But I can just send them prayer requests regarding our mission and our vision and the things we're doing and things going on with me. That would be invaluable. So I'd really appreciate that. Again, in the church plan, I said this to our church actually last week, and asked about folks coming in. I said, look, I don't care if it's black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Klingon, or Mongolian. If you're a believer and want to roll up in the camp, you are certainly welcome. But let me issue a challenge, particularly to those who are either familiar with or have come out of Pentecostal backgrounds. Because that's what I came out of. And I don't even become a detente myself. And that became a good friend of mine, Kevin Smith, who some of you know, some of you have heard of. at times, far too easy for us just to come to town, enjoy the good teaching, and kind of look down upon those other Pentecostal groups that we have come from. And I want us to challenge those who are from Pentecostal backgrounds to become involved with us, even just on a short-term basis for a couple of years, because that's who our focus is. It may not be enough for you just to be at a church-like tent and to give pot shots to the other Pentecostal churches and the early God-made colonies to be involved in early ministry to those brothers and sisters. So I ask you to play and consider that it comes from that background. Go ahead. I live in Easton, my city. And I've seen the power of prayer. And in my ward, we've got 17 churches. I don't see 17 churches. I see 17 silos. And Chuck, you touched on this earlier. What I want to know is, as you guys build your congregations, how are you going to prevent becoming centrally bureaucratic, hardly to the point of becoming isolated and acting as silos. Are you going to spill over? Are you going to, when you say churning off, are you talking about, you know, I mean, I look at the future of the church and the human mindset. Are you talking about literally figuring out your budget so that you can afford it? A large percentage of things externally are proposed internally. In terms of looking at leadership, and as one of the weakest links as far as finding missionary team leaders, are you thinking about identifying in the long term, identifying leadership in your bodies to be missionary team leaders? Is that kind of a PCA consensus, and that's something that you're concerned about? On the silo issue, I mean, one of the things that we do regularly is pray with other pastors and leaders in our neighborhoods. And I think that that's been really helpful for us to realize what's going on. We're not just the only game in town. A lot of times churches think they're like allomibuses. I think we're the answer. And that hasn't worked for him. It doesn't really work for us either. I think it's really like there is a tendency always for us within churches to think that our game is the only game. And I really appreciated what Bruce said earlier about getting outside the walls even of denomination and knowing what's going on citywide. It's been good for us to hang out with some of the people in the community who are kind of in the know. And I would encourage your nieces, even, to try to find, you may be one of those people, but finding other people who are kind of in the know, in terms of what's going on in the life of the churches in the community, and what's not happening, and identifying where there are break-ins, where there are walls, and what can be done. As a movement, we are identifying both, you know, we are looking at developing leaders, putting them, training them, spending a lot of time with them, and looking at saying we need to develop about twice to three times as many leaders as we can use because we're expecting guys to, you know, grow them and mature them toward opportunity. So, I hope that's helpful. I'll touch on that for a second. Me and Heinz 57 Church, we got to be a variety of everybody and come from a church that says you do it like this or get out. I know how those silos conform. I guess I would say, I don't really know what that looks like. Well, I didn't. I had just a conversation with them. And one vehicle for that with me is CityNet. CityNet doesn't wave a flag except Jesus Christ is Lord. So at those meetings, we've had people like Eric Mason, a Tiffany Fellowship from Texas, and Aaron Johnson from Coleman, Pennsylvania. We've had so many different people, multidimensional denominations, that get together under the banner of Christ to reach the city with the gospel. Also, Steve Huber from Liberty, he said to me, Doug, How can, like, a very white dude like me be partnered with a dude like you, a black dude like you, and a crazy race demographic like Kensington? You know, one thing Liberty put out one time, and I wanted to rebuke him at first, and then I paid attention, and I just admired the honesty, was, we are not targeting the whole Northern Liberties. We are targeting who we are and what we're set to do, and we're not so much chasing the whole world because we're not going to be a minister to the whole world, but we don't want to exclude anybody. So what Liberty did is they linked with me, and I linked to a community that maybe they weren't going to reach, and they still linked. they still touch that community with their health. And I think if we continue to link that community to West Philly, we link with Lansing, we link with the University, we link with Tuck, and we continue to link up. And again, I'm a non-presbyterian on the panel. When church is outside of the presbyterian scope and love across presbytery, love across denominationalism, and love across the differences, with the gospel missional focus, that's Kingdom. I want to read this passage. My wife adopted this passage as we saw in our ministry to desegregate Sunday. That was a point of mine coming into Calvary, Philippians 2. So if this is your encouragement in Christ, I'm sorry, so if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. I think, and here it touches on that, do nothing for rivalry or for conceit, but in humility, count one another as more significant than yourselves. I think if we have a church playing mindset that doesn't have like a Walmart feel, where Walmart comes in, and they don't care if there's already a store there, and they just come and set up and knock them out of business. If we have a church playing, Liberty has a great, healthy fishtown group, and They were thinking about planting a church. Well, they said, well, tell us there. And at least we've got a healthy church going. We'll just partner there. But my non-personal territory, I'm one of those, I guess it's a three-piece head, called an out of balance. You know, if we can function in that. And we have to be intentional and aggressive in pursuing relationships with people that don't look like them. We've got to come out of our color zone. and start looking to partner with people with a kingdom mindset. And that's not going to look like PC all the time. That's not going to look like this and that all the time. It's going to look different. It's going to look like hip hop. It's going to look in different things. But if we're not intentional, I'm going to say this and I'm going to shut up. Last night, we had 20 kids. I sat down with 20 kids from Temple, all white kids, one Lebanese and one Indian girl. She goes to town. Cheryl. And we talked about multiculturalism and they asked me about my background and all my stuff. I went to North Carolina A&T, it was all black college. How did you want to marry a white woman? And we went through this whole thing. After we got finished, they were talking about diversity. Diversity. I hear so much diversity talk. It's ridiculous. Diversity is not when two blacks go up to your church, and the whole church is white. That ain't diversity. It's people like you at your church. But I said to them, how many people go to white churches? They all raised their hand. I said, how many people have pastors that invited different ethnicities in to preach? Nobody's hand went up. How many people consider themselves diverse? They all raised their hand again. Does anybody know the definition of diversity? So I challenged them to say, when you get back home to your church, don't walk away from Calvary Bible from the hood thinking you did your good deed, because that's condescending and phony. But walk home changed, that you made an impact in the kingdom with the gospel, led by the Holy Spirit. And let's go back and take that change to our different corners. Let's not run back to our white corner, and our Korean corner, and our Presbyterian corner, and our Baptist corner. But let's get together that the joy may be complete. And let's challenge our leaders to intentionally invite people that don't look like them to their pulpits, and to conferences, and to seminars, and to forums, and to spend money in places where they normally would. And I think that's how we can take that walk there. Part of the question was, how do you keep from being a silo? I'm over 40, dog. The mind is level as a slug. I think you get a higher thing when you talk about how you allocate resources. I guess it's too far a question. Is it valuable? It sounds like it is. And in my experience, it is, but it's difficult. to build capacity within those silos, break them down, start building capacity to impact a community. I'm just thinking about the future. Yeah, I think it is not to let that happen. I think it is because it's really easy for churches to become silos, to become very independent. I think in looking outwardly, you have to target your budget that way. For example, our first hire of an immediate assistance, Patricia Little, sitting right here, raise your hand. formerly served in young lines for over 10 years, and her mission really is evangelism for young people. And so what she does is actually go into Philadelphia high schools, and not Christian high schools, but really Philadelphia high schools, talks about access, talks about marriage, and then she invites the kids out to a club. But that's how, I believe, churches That's how we have to hire, rather than, for example, us as a church saying, well, we're going to wait until we get an X number of youth in the church, and then we'll hire someone to come and babysit them or pastor them. Let's hire someone to go out who's already gone out to focus on an aspect of the community that we're hoping that our second hire would be a young man who's in STEM areas and interning with us right now to be our community development outreach person. His focus, his calling, his job would be to interact directly with the community, to coordinate our resources so that we can do consistent outreach. I think if you can look to hire people who are involved in the community, who are serving in some aspect of the community, who certainly have that heart for ministry, and yet they want to be connected to the church, then you could always be looking out for it, because any time you hire you can hope you can begin to build a ministry around that person. So for example, Pat has several leaders, young adult leaders, in the ministry of new love, new light, that are from our church. And you hope that those are the folks who are immediately in the face of people in your community, the people you want to target and reach, and that they gather other folks from the church with them. So churches have to look to hire outside. to work outside, rather than focusing all of our hiring and our resources on the inside. Steve, as somebody who's had the privilege of working a little bit with Lansing, I've got one foot as a temporary elder and quite a degree in fellowship. On Sundays, when I'm there, people say, oh, hi, how are you? And one thing I will say, it's a blessing for me to be here. It really, really is a blessing to be there. You've all talked about the need for prayer and commitment in various forms. And I'd like each of you, if you would, to issue an invitation to everybody here, just to say it flat, please visit us one Sunday. You know, not ask me to come and change your life and be part of it. You might want to do that, but come and be with us, get to know us so you can pray for us better, understand what we're doing, and if you want to bring that week's offering, that's probably the way to. I just wanted to say, Please, you folks at Temple, wherever you're coming from, will you please visit us once? I'd actually like to hear that. Please visit. Bring your pocketbook. No doubt, please, please. Lord have mercy. in the morning, but you're certainly welcome to come visit us at any time. We do have a casual dress code, so if you still got to get up too early to dress the children, don't even worry about that. If it's that, something on them, come on out. 9 o'clock on Sunday morning, we'll be on the corner of 65th and Lansdowne in Nova Rocha. Yeah, please visit and we'll let you know when we have something to visit. And before that, if you want to come to some of our events, our Bible studies, or visit at times, prayer times, feel free to come out and join us, even if you don't see it as a long-term commitment. Where are you located, sir, because I'm in University City. Right now, I'm located in New York City. We are having a prayer meeting tonight at Woodlawn Presbyterian at 530 at 42nd and Pine. site that we're meeting, we're switching around. We've met in some houses, and I'm not sure where it might be, but by the end of April and end of May, we'll be having a regular, a weekly sort of Bible study period time. So we'll keep the good folks attentive. Yeah, we'd love to have you guys, and I can give you a card with the service time, too. It's 1030-ish service, and it's 4 p.m. ish. One in Fairmount, one in Northern Liberties, and this has got the directions. Yeah, um, I'd love to have you out. We are at, um, 11, 1115. We came at 1115, because when you, right, they would ride the bus in, it would drop you off at 11, so they always 15 minutes late, and you can't serve until 1115. So... 11.15 to 12.30 we have service on Kensington and Venango. It's actually Helen Street, but somebody stole a sign off of Helen and Venango, so I picked the biggest corner, which is Kensington and Venango, right across from Howard A. Boxing Club. We'd love to have you. I was thinking if you're up for a really interesting weekend, you can go to the service at Rock of Israel on Saturday. night and hear the sermon delivered in Russian by Ilya Lizorkin and his Russian immigrant church. Then you get up early Sunday morning and catch Lance's at 9 o'clock, West Philadelphia, and skip out of there, and catch the 1030 service at Liberty, and then catch some lunch, and stop by the worship time at New City. Chinese here at the sermon preaches in Mandarin. It's translated for you to English. And then if you cut out real quickly, you could catch maybe the tail end of the All Nations worship service, African immigrant flavor. And then wrap up this Sunday with...