plant and run
the NOLA Church Plant logo explained
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So perhaps you’ve noticed that we unveiled our “logo” for the church plant. I’m really happy about it. It was designed by our friend Samantha Carr. She did a great job.
Just to be clear, this is not the new church logo. In fact, we haven’t even determined the name of the new church. Part of this church planting process is the gathering of a core group of people who will help to start this new church. We want that group to have a hand in the selection of a name and the inspiration of a logo.
So the purpose of this logo is to help us communicate the vision and dreams of this church plant. We need a movement of people, both in New Orleans and around the country, who will rally around us to support, pray and encourage this new church. This logo is one of the tools God can use to help spark that movement.
The logo is inspired by the Crescent City Connection Bridge that spans the Mississippi River in New Orleans. For us, it is a great symbol that represents a number of things…
First of all, we our moving ministry “across the River.” Berean Bible Church is on the Westbank of the Mississippi and the new church plant will be on the Eastbank. For four years, we have sent short-term mission teams over that bridge to help people rebuild [the Westbank didn't flood].
Secondly, we want to be a church that “builds bridges” into our neighborhoods. Frankly, we are sick and tired of church being defined by merely coming together for a Sunday morning worship service. We want church to also be defined by going together into the darkest parts of our world to bring the Kingdom of God to bear upon the needs we find there. It’s time to stop standing around waiting for the needs to come to us. It’s time to cross over the gulfs in our lives that prevent us from going to the other side.
Thirdly, we love our city! This bridge is a symbol that defines our town and we want to embrace and love it!
our day with Fitz
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Whew. It has been quite a week. The Fellowship Associates Residency program has dunked us into some pretty exciting waters the last couple of days. I have hardly had a chance to catch my breath. Now that things are beginning to settle down [at least for 24 hours before Crystal and I leave for New Orleans on Thursday evening], I’m sitting in a Starbucks reflecting on what I want to share with you about the last couple of days. I could easily fill a couple of posts with stories and reflections.
I think that all five residents would hands down agree that one of our most exciting and inspiring meetings of the whole program so far occurred on Monday when we met with Fitz Hill.
Fitz Hill is currently the president of Arkansas Baptist College. ABC is a small historically black college here in Little Rock. It was founded back in the 1880s by former slaves. It is infused into an old neighborhood that reminds me a lot of the Ninth Ward [pre-Katrina]. It seems that this was the area where the first black homeowners bought their homes back in the day. Over the years, it has become overwhelmed by blight, poverty and crime.
Fitz tackled the job of President in 2006. While he has a doctorate in education, his background is primarily in coaching. Fitz was the Assistant Head Coach at Arkansas and the Head Coach at San Jose State. At the time, he was one of only five African-American division I football coaches in the nation. [One funny tidbit...when he found out I was from NOLA, he asked me where I went to high school to see if he ever recruited there. I said, "No, I'm pretty sure you never recruited at Ben Franklin." lol.]
We sat down with Fitz in the president’s board room for our meeting before grabbing lunch with him in the school cafeteria and ending with a tour of the school campus. Fitz pumped us all up with his vision that was literally being built before our eyes.
When Fitz took over in 2006 [that's three years ago], the school had about 150 students and was on the verge of shutting it’s doors. Today, it has 900 students and about 10 million dollars of ongoing construction projects to make it a state of the art school. They have purchased/acquired probably close to a dozen of the blighted properties in the neighborhood and they are turning them into dorms, offices, small businesses [run by students], GED/tutoring centers, parks, etc. They are literally transforming their entire community.
The craziest part…when we walked into the cafeteria…I literally didn’t see one female student. I almost choked on my lunch when Fitz told us that of their 900 students about 600-700 are males. Steve Snider [one of our FA mentors, who is a lifelong friend of Fitz's] later told us that when Fitz goes through the drive-thru at McDonald’s, he’ll ask the young male at the counter if he has ever thought about college and then precede to “recruit” him. Fitz told us that he travels around the regional area [rural Arkansas, northern Louisiana, etc.] and recruits black males with 15s, 16s on their ACT to go to his school. He pursues them like a college football coach would pursue a blue-chip athlete.
No one does that. No one.
In fact, I’m willing to bet that a majority of college presidents would admit off the record that they would be happy if those guys never set foot on their college campuses.
He challenged us to think long and hard about what role we can play in fighting that battle alongside of him. By we, I mean white, middle-class Christians [four of the five church planting residents are white]. He challenged us to think long and hard about tokenism [half-heartedly pursuing diversity]. He decried multi-culturalism as an inadequate solution that could potentially distract the exact group of people that have the most potential to help the cause. His words reminded me a bit of Steve Biko, the South African thinker/activist during the Apartheid era.
It was [literally] awesome.
So I find myself asking the question…what kind of role can I play? I will be [am already?] a church leader in New Orleans. We seek to become a church that reflects the makeup of our city. We seek to become a church that tackles crime and poverty directly.
The question I must ask myself is, “why?”
Why do I want that? Is it so my white middle-class conscience can go to bed feeling content? Further, “What am I willing to give up?”
Are we willing to hand-off ministry and opportunities to others when necessary? Are we more concerned about getting glory or making an lasting impact?
Are we Kingdom-minded or are we only desiring to build our own kingdom?
I’m very happy to say that Fitz is on our schedule a number of times over the residency program. I can’t wait to hear more.
tell me about your team [part two - punt]
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I still remember the first foreign mission trip that I lead as a youth pastor. We drove down into the mountains of central Mexico to work on a youth camp that was being built by our Missionaries friends Brock and Heather Hower. It was a great trip.
Whenever we took trips outside of the US, we would open up our Youth trip to adults in the church. Lawrence “Punt” Sisung, an elder and financial investment banker, decided to come. I knew Lawrence fairly well at the time, but I had no idea what kinda “entertainment” would be waiting for us across the border.
For some reason, I think work related, Lawrence was unable to drive down with us to Mexico. He flew in the day after we arrived. So by the time he showed up, we were already getting acclimated and comfortable.
Lawrence showed up decked out for the wilderness: brand new camping jacket, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, multiple new flashlights, handheld GPS and satellite phone. Apparently he had gone to the local camping store with a map of Mexico, pointed to a spot and said, “I’m going here. What do I need?” All of the teenage boys smiled and eyed all of these camping toys that they could tinker around with for the next two weeks.
Sometime in the middle of the Lawrence’s first night, the whole camp awoke to sound of yelling outside. The boys rushed out in their boxers to find Lawrence being chased back from the outhouse by a “wolf”… the camp dog he hadn’t met yet.
Oh, we still won’t let him live that one down.
It was a great trip. As a youth pastor, I was really grateful to see this white-collar investment banker get dirty in many ways. Of course, he worked his tail off to help build the camp. More important than that, though, was the relationships I watched him build with teenage boys. By the end of the trip, he knew those boys…and I’ve watched him continue to reach out and mentor them.
By the way, we took that trip in August of 2005. Less than a month later, our hometown was under water.
And we thought building a camp in Mexico was hard work…
It quickly became apparent to the leadership at Berean that the two men would would have the time, ability and passion to lead Hurricane Recovery ministries would be Doug and Lawrence.
So we dove in together, and we have absolutely loved it. Lawrence has challenged my faith in so many ways. I think our students probably got tired of hearing me use “Lawrence illustrations” in my talks on Sunday nights. I have to admit that I have honestly never known anyone who ruthlessly trusts God quite in the way that Lawrence does. He prays a ton and then he steps out in faith. I love spending a day with him because inevitably I’ll (1) pray more than I ever would on my own and (2) be thrown into an uncomfortable and unbelievable ministry opportunity that I would never have taken.
On the other hand, Lawrence would say that he could never have survived the past four years of ministry without me by his side. He would say that many of the ministry opportunities would never have happened if I hadn’t provided the structure around him to give him the freedom to follow God’s Spirit. He would say that God has used me to challenge him.
So when the opportunity arose to plant a church. I knew that I wanted Lawrence alongside of me…I knew that I needed Lawrence alongside of me. It took Lawrence a long time to process and gain clarity on whether or not his ministry should shift to the church plant. Just recently Lawrence felt tugged to finally join our team.
So that makes three of us as full-time co-pastors/co-planters: Alf, Lawrence and I. I have to admit, I think we might quite the formidable team. The idea of planting a church together brings to us a sense of confidence that never would be there otherwise. We have all talked about what the image of a “church planter” looks like in our minds. It intimidates us. As Alf likes to say, the expectation is that a church planter is “Jesus with a red cape.” We are asking God to use our three sets of complementary gifts, passions and backgrounds together to make an impact for the Kingdom.
Furthermore, we are all friends. We love spending time together. It is difficult right now for me to be in Little Rock while Alf and Lawrence are in New Orleans. We have decided to spend every Wednesday morning on a conference call together so that God can continue to bind us together over this period of separation.
Our team, though, extends way beyond the three of us. In fact, we believe that God is calling us to weave to concept of team into every little detail of how this new church operates.
Perhaps you are supposed to be part of our team too?
