What I’ve Learned In The Last Year Of Church Planting (Part 1)

Today is the first birthday of City View, a church plant that we started in the center of London, Ontario.  The last year has definitely been the most rewarding year of my life and as I look back we have a lot to celebrate.

I still remember our first morning together like it was yesterday and over the last year we have experienced some great wins and I have personally learned some valuable lessons.

Much of this has been brewing in my brain over the last couple of weeks so let me take a couple of minutes and share.

Today I will post some of the things we are celebrating and tomorrow I will post some things I have learned along this journey so far.

Some Things To Celebrate

Honouring The Past While Serving The Future

What I love about City View is that it has honoured the past while advancing into the future.  We are apart of a greater church community where we share vision and resources.  I’m thankful that Royal View is a church planting church.

A lot of the time new churches start because they think they can do things better.  That was never the heart with City View.  To be honest I pour as much of my time into what happens at Royal View as I do City View.  We love what God has done in the past and we honour that.  We would have it no other way!

 Moving From Programs To Community and Mission Together

One major win for us has been shifting from programs and putting major emphasis on community and mission together.  Programs are not bad, but we would rather see people in community, caring for each other and living out the gospel together.  We don’t have a building so that naturally forces things to be more organic.

Our theme verse in this endeavor is from 1 Thessalonians 2:8 where Paul says, “so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”

 Empowering The Priesthood

For those who know me well know that one of my greatest contentions with the church is that we often neglect empowering people to “be the church” and “do ministry”.

There is a lot of talk and there has been a lot written recently as to why young adults leave the church.  There are many complexities as to why this is but I do think that much of this can be attributed to the fact that we put to much emphasis on certain people (leaders, pastor dudes) and less emphasis on the priesthood.

Looking back on this year, one of the things we can most definitely celebrate is people doing ministry!  We don’t have money to pay anyone, yet a whole host of people have given their lives to lead, volunteer and serve the Kingdom of God in London.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”  1 Peter 2:9-10

 Church From House To House

From the onset we said that we would put as much emphasis on meeting in groups in homes as we would on our Sunday gatherings.  It has been beautiful to see five groups grow and live on mission together.  They range from groups with no kids, to family friendly groups to a group of young adults that meets to serve and grow with each other.

This has been the strength of City View.  There have even been weeks where we have had as many people in Community Groups as we have had in our Sundays gatherings.

Planting in a Canadian post-Christian context isn’t easy, but I do think we have some things to celebrate.

Below is a video that our kids shot for our birthday party!