City Church is in its first year of existence and is filled with a growing group of people seeking to bring hope and love into their community. They recognize that they are “blessed to be blessings,” and this has  focused City Church on giving back to people. Their vision has moved their gathering into a punk rock club and sparked a passion for innovative small groups. I talked with Kyle Bonenberger, lead pastor, about his church planting journey.

Where are you from? How has your family impacted you?

Kyle: I was born in St. Louis and I moved to California when I was six. My dad was a pastor but I do not remember that from my childhood because a scandal led my parents away from the church. My dad never went back to ministry because he was burned by some stuff. Instead, he and my mom went into business together. Unfortunately, they split up, and I moved to Paris, France for five years. Later, I moved back to California and I have been in this area since 2002.

How did you become a Christian?

Kyle: Even though my dad was a pastor I definitely did not grow up in the church. I became a Christian when I was thirteen years old. I came forward and accepted Christ at a “sweaty Jr. Higher event” when the guy gave the alter-call. At thirteen, I understood intellectually what I believed, but I did not do anything based on my faith until I was fifteen. When I was fifteen, I read a pretty famous book called The Case for Christ, and I realized that this is not just a story… this is real. After that I decided to take my faith seriously and to actually try to emerge as a leader in faith.

How were you called to ministry? How did you start in ministry?

Kyle: I love small groups because a small group changed my life when I was fifteen. The next year I decided to co-lead a small group with a friend, and after that I led my own group. During that time I was going the law or politics route with my life. However, I really wanted to lead worship because I liked this girl who was a singer; and I thought that it would impress her. So I worked my butt off for five to seven hours a day on the guitar and vocally. I took lessons and seriously invested in being a worship leader. I didn’t end up with the girl, but I ended up with a gift. This gift propelled me into the singer/song-writer thing for a while, and it sucked because it is so hard. Even if you are incredible, you are a dime a dozen. Someone once told me that you can go into a random bar in Nashville where there are two people and hear the greatest concert of your life!

I realized that music was not for me during my time at Biola University. While I was at Biola, I got involved in their chapel ministry, and actually led it for a few years. When I graduated from college, I took a television producer job with the Crystal Cathedral. My biggest gift is that I am a connector, and that job gave me the opportunity to find people and connect them with what they would be passionate about and vice versa. That job was a great fit, and my boss knew that my heart was in ministry, so they started a contemporary service because they believed in me. They started it because they needed it, but also because they wanted to give me the opportunity to use all of my gifts, not just some of them. For a variety of reasons the contemporary service never took off, but from that experience came the realization that “hey I could do this,” “I could actually lead one of my own.”

For some reason up until that point I had bought into the “corporate ladder Christianity” belief system, which is this idea that “you can become a senior pastor once you have put in ten years as a youth pastor.” When I look at the Bible, I do not see that example at all. More importantly, I found myself frustrated because I did not agree with the leadership decisions I watched people make. I am a leader, and leaders do not like sitting in meetings but not really being a part of them. Out of all that, I realized that I could lead a church, and not in five or ten years, but today! For me it was not so much a call to ministry as much as a constant “knowing” that I am a leader. I have always known that no matter what I did, I would lead.

Why did you decide to plant a church instead of working within an established congregation?

Kyle: I decided to plant because I realized that I am gifted to do this. Also, my desire to plant was born out of frustration with my situation at the time. The people I was with are good people and they have great hearts, but I realized that my frustration really was not their issue. They were only being who they are. However, my own integrity did not allow me to be who I truly am in that environment. They were not making bad moral choices, but their style of leadership and the type of ministry they valued was so against my heart that it became a matter of integrity for me. Basically, I did not buy into their vision.

Having said that, I think there could have been an established church where I could have bought into the vision, felt empowered, and felt that my leadership mattered. Still, a common denominator I’ve heard from church planters, business leaders, and entrepreneurs is that the desire to do something “new” is born out of a frustration with the current, and it is from that frustration you find what you are uniquely wired to do. The one danger of this is that if you do it too quickly you can plant a church based on what you are mad at and not what you are passionate about. Instead, my frustration with their vision led me to discover what I was really passionate about. However, I do not believe in burning bridges behind you, and I still have great relationships with everyone at Crystal Cathedral.

How did you develop a vision for City Church? How did you gather people to help you lead?

Kyle: Originally, I was working with two other guys and it was not the right team. God showed us this reality and brought about three completely different ministries from all three of us. The vision for City Church was really born out of a disagreement between us three guys.

I felt called to a non-traditional church in the sense that we do not have a church building. However, I am traditional in that I place a lot of emphasis on Sunday morning gatherings and small groups. Those two areas were not important to my two partners because they came from church settings where Sunday mornings and small groups were done just to keep the wheels going. My focus on those aspects came from my experience with a really healthy church in San Diego. That church was built around small groups and that DNA has really stuck with me.

So the vision was born out of a disagreement and also a realization that while there are a lot of churches in the Anaheim area, nothing within five to seven miles is doing what we are trying to do. Even still, I wondered with God what is really going to set us apart form these other churches? Then I realized that we were going to be a church that gives back to the community.

Can you describe the mission of City Church? Why the focus on “blessed to be a blessing.”

Kyle: The whole idea of evangelism has been so intellectually based with a focus on memorizing definitions and passing out flyers door to door. Then the expectation is that since we have the “right” definitions we will naturally spring forth disciples. I feel that that this has done a lot of damage to people. So we decided not to push God on people. We say all the time, “God loves you, no strings attached.” We are going to start this big outreach movement this summer called “I Heart Hearts.” Basically, we just want to reach out to people in our community who are going through the toughest points in life. Our biggest vision in terms of outreach is to reach out to hurting people. There are a few points in people’s lives when they tend to think more about spirituality; Christmas, Easter, the birth of a child, a time of tragedy, or marriage. Statistically, those are key moments, and we want to capitalize on those by giving back to people tangibly with something simple like a care package or bringing meals to a mother who just had a baby. It may seem like nothing, but to them it can be powerful.

How do some of your ministries live out your mission?

Kyle: We try to keep our vision and mission simple. We focus on being “a church that gives back,” and that means three things. First, we give back to each other and to God in a larger context each Sunday morning. We give back through song, teaching, and lunch together. Second, we give back to each other in small groups. This is our time to give back to each other in a more one-on-one and intimate way. Third, we give back to the community outside our church through “I Heart Hearts.” We have also done a few significant events in terms of giving back to the community. The coolest one just landed in our lap. A woman from the City of Anaheim saw our church on twitter and asked us to do a children’s craft at a tree lighting display around Christmas. We brought this big display and did crafts for hundreds of kids. It was very neat to connect hand-to-hand with so many people from our city. We try to continue to do stuff with the City of Anaheim as much as we can.

You mentioned that a representative from the city found you on twitter. What is the value of social media for churches? How do you use social media?

Kyle: Social media has great value, but it can also really be a trap of the pastor’s time. I struggle with that, so I try to not use social media from 8:00am-noon each day. One of the coolest things for church leaders is a website called ChirpCity.com. It is a website that enables you to see what people are tweeting about your city, whether it is about Anaheim, or from people actually in Anaheim. You can search keywords like, “looking for a church,” and then you can connect with that person immediately. I think one of the main advantages of social media is that it gives you access to many more people; but I also think you can inundate people, so I’ve tried to focus on connecting and being very accessible.

I think Rick Warren (@RickWarren) does social media very well. He does an amazing job of tweeting something that is encouraging for everyone but it seems like he has zoned in on church planters and developed that niche. I think as a church, if you are going to do social media well, you have to find that niche. For us, the niche that we have really done well is a photo-blog on Facebook. After each service or church event everyone tags themselves in all the pictures. Due to this photo-blog our Facebook fan-page averages about 500 to 700 hits a week. We are still working on finding our twitter niche.

Describe a worship gathering at City Church? How do you move people into an experience with God?

Kyle: I am a decent musician, and because of our venue, we attract a lot of creative musicians. I always thought that when I planted a church we would be excellent in our worship. We have very good musicians, but our worship gathering is still not the flashiest thing out there. We are not overly concerned with having a service that is “seamless,” partially because we do not have a person to coordinate those things, but also because I would rather empower someone and have them fail and journey with them as they improve. I think this helps develop a really authentic leadership team.

Our worship gathering is fairly typically except we meet in a punk rock club which is atypical. We have a few songs in the beginning, a message, we have coffee, a couple of songs afterwards, and then we all go to Rubio’s for lunch. We try to use our venue to help move people into a worship experience. For example, we try to use the lights and things that the club has to offer. It makes some people feel a little uncomfortable, but when the non-believer walks through the door, they think it is totally awesome!

Why did you choose to meet in a punk rock club called Chain Reaction?

Kyle: Our venue was totally from God. Originally, the Crystal Cathedral was going to allow City Church to use their campus. One day they said they could no longer offer that for a variety of reasons. It was heartbreaking for everyone and very confusing. The next day I was leaving for vacation so I had to meet with a guy to give him my laptop for the contemporary service. I told him that I had no idea what we were going to do. This guy, his name is Ceaser (check him out on twitter @CezarMorales), told me that he knew of this venue called Chain Reaction and encouraged me to check it out.

I went and spoke with the owner about the idea of doing a church there. Turns out he had just been on a mission trip to build houses in Mexico, so he was very open to whatever God wanted to do. I shared the vision with him and his wife, and their hearts melted. At the end of the conversation I said, “Well, what do you think?” They both said, “Sure, you guys can meet here.” Next I asked what they would charge. He responded with, “I’m not going to charge you anything.” He simply said, “If you put the work in, we will put the work in,” and they have. They have been our biggest allies.

An hour after this conversation at Chain Reaction, a buddy of mine called me and said, “God has been speaking with me every month telling me that I need to donate a large amount of money to help you start your church. But there is one condition. I think you need to leave Crystal Cathedral.” So in one hour the Crystal Cathedral says we can’t meet there, an hour later we get a free venue, and an hour later we get a large donation to start our church. After all that happened I said, “Okay God, lets go for it.”

What is the biggest challenge facing City Church after ten months of existence?

Kyle: We have challenges at the leadership level and challenges facing our church as a whole. At a leadership level we need to build a team. We need to get to a point where it does not matter if I am there for City Church to succeed. We need a team of two to five people that are able to lead and sustain the church and fill key roles like a worship leader or a leader for student ministries. Other planters usually go in with a team of people, and in retrospect that might have been something to do differently. Still, I know that it was the timing of God and we needed to go when we did. At a whole church level we need to make sure that our members do not begin to see City Church as something that is now comfortable, steady, and established. It seems to me that every time you get comfortable and sit back in your chair thinking you’re fine… you are not. We need to continue to live out the vision of giving back.

What is the biggest challenge you have experienced as a church planter?

Kyle: This work is hard on your marriage. My wife is amazing and very patient. She has a ministry heart, and we have always known we would be in ministry together. But it is hard sometimes. For example, sometimes we get in a little argument right before worship, and then we have to put our relationship on hold so that we can be on for everyone else. So we are learning how to put unresolved conversations on pause and still be able to minister together.

What goals do you have? Where would you like to be in ten years?

Kyle: I would love to be a dad. That would be awesome. I would like to build a healthy family and a healthy church. I’d like City Church to have a healthy growth pattern and have three or four sites. There is not too much else on the radar right now. I like the film “UP,” and agree with the idea that when it is time for a new adventure, God will make that clear to us.

What advice do you have for someone who feels called to plant a church?

Kyle: Is there anything else you are good at? I’m stealing that from Mark Driscoll because that is what he told me. If there is anything else you can do, be sure and do that. Because it is hard work and no person can really give you advice on planting a church. You need to be sure that there is nothing else you can imagine yourself doing. The only thing I will say is be sure to have a few friends that, if three people come to your church, they still believe in you, and if 30,000 people show up, they will remind you that you’re not really that important.

Special thanks to Kyle Bonenberger and the crew from City Church. Be sure check out City Church on their website and connect with them on facebook and twitter. Also, check out their Vimeo account to watch some messages.

Ethos Church has grown from a small living room Bible study to a 600-person movement in only two years. This community lives in simple adoration for God and love for humanity. Ethos is awakening a movement in Nashville that calls people to love and serve those that are often avoided or misunderstood. I sat down with David Clayton, lead church planter, in the basement of a bar where Ethos gathers.

Where are you from? How has your family impacted you?

Dave: I grew up in Charleston South Carolina and was raised in a secular setting with a very Christ centered family. My parents were an embodiment of mission because they treated their life in Charleston as if they had moved to Africa to serve as missionaries. They had many friends who were not Christians, and we would always have them in our home for meals and great conversations about spirituality. Their focus on mission had a huge impact on my faith.

How did you become a Christian?

Dave: When I was sixteen I became a Christian, which was funny because most of my friends in the church became Christians when they were ten or eleven. My family always told me, “this is a pretty big decision, and you wouldn’t get married when you were ten.” When I started getting very curious about becoming a Christian my parents had me sit down and write out a response to this question: why do I want to become a Christian? My mom told me that there would be many times in the future that I would question if I knew what I was doing, and whenever I questioned, she would shoot me this letter. So that has been very formational for me.

How did you start in ministry?

Dave: My dad was a preacher in the Church of Christ for 32 years. My grandfather was a preacher as well as my great grand father. So I never thought I would be a preacher. When I was young I loved sports, loved surfing, I was in a band, and those were my passions. Eventually, I decided that I did not want to play sports in college because I did not see a future in it, but I realized that the relationships I had with my teammates was why I loved baseball.

At Lipscomb, I became a Bible major because that was the only thing that seemed interesting. During my junior year I realized that ministry was something I wanted to do. I had a real heart for guys that lived on my floor, and for guys that came to Lipscomb but didn’t want anything to do with Christian side of the school.

After my junior year, Libscomb called me, and asked me to be their chapel coordinator. I didn’t want to do that at all so I told them no, but they asked me to pray about it. So I prayed for two weeks, and felt God calling me to do it. So I told them, “hey I have no passion for this job I do not want to do it, but when I pray about it, I feel like I should do this.” They said “lets do it then.” Later, I realized chapel wasn’t for me. However, that opportunity gave me the chance to start the campus ministry, which helped me to see that ministry was what I wanted to do with my life.

Why did you decide to plant a church instead of working in an established congregation?

Dave: About four years ago we were asked to plant a church with a group up in Washington D.C., and I thought, “we will never plant a church because all the church planters I know are just angry youth ministers.” However, I led a bar ministry, and I continually met people that were very interested in Jesus, but had no interest in coming to the place where people that worshiped Jesus hung out. I can’t even describe it, but in the midst of walking with those people, God starting putting the idea of church planting on my heart.

I had not told my wife, Sydney, about this, and one night she said to me, “you know I’ve been thinking about church planting a lot.” So we didn’t tell anyone and prayed about it for about a month. Some of the weirdest and most out of context experiences with God and spiritual warfare took place during that time and after that time. So we went… “okay I think we’re supposed to plant a church.” After that we went through a year of assessment and discernment with great people, but we tell everybody that this was all God’s idea because we were pretty set where we were.

How did you develop Ethos and the leadership for this new church?

Dave: We did a lot of things backwards, and so we like to say “don’t do it like this.” Sydney and I began to pray very intently about who we should ask to be apart of our leadership team. Sydney came up with a list of about seventeen people I came up with a list of sixteen people and sixteen of those people were the same, which was amazing because some of them were not great friends of ours. Then we met with ten that said yes and began a six-week Bible study in my living room. We studied this question, “what does it mean to be the church?” We did not want to launch just a really cool church. We wanted to be on mission with God and go where he was calling us.

In May of 2008 I challenged our group to bring a friend who was not apart of a church and everyone brought somebody. So we grew from twelve people to about twenty-five. As a group we read through Mark, we took prayer requests, sometimes we would sing, and sometimes we wouldn’t.  Eventually we outgrew my living room so we moved our gathering to a coffee shop. When we outgrew the coffee shop we moved to a park.

During this time we did not call ourselves a church because we believe a church is a group of people who literally go into the world sent by God and when that happens your non-Christian friends will become Christians, you serve, and you dig in as a community. I firmly believe that those things will happen when a community becomes a church otherwise you are just a Rotary club that reads the Bible. So we decided not to set a launch date but agreed that we would call ourselves a church when those things start happening.

Towards the end of July we had grown to about sixty or seventy, and our first couple of people starting becoming Christians. Then people in our group starting serving by helping their neighbors, and so we said, “okay we are ready to start becoming a church.” The official launch was not big, we just moved what we did in the park to Sunday at the bar. We did not send out any mailers and we did not do any promotion. The very energy of moving downtown caused people to invite a lot of their friends. So we went from sixty to about 165 people during our launch. Now God has brought about 600 people into our movement. So we made adaptability one of our strengths because as we continue to grow rapidly it has been important for us to be able to adjust our systems and leadership.

Why did you choose to gather in a bar in the city of Nashville?

Dave: When we became a church we met in a park, and it was very simple. We had no overhead. We prayed and decided it was time to make a strategic move into the heart of Nashville because as the city has grown most of the churches have left the city and moved to the suburbs. We decided we wanted to be a bridge between young working professionals and the urban poor.

We chose a bar because we wanted a gathering place that would instantly remind Christians that they are on mission and would also provide a safe place for our Non-Christian friends to enter our community. This bar is across the street from two strip clubs. You cannot drive to church on Sunday morning without passing many homeless people. Some Sunday’s you park your car and walk into a room that still reeks from the night before and has alcohol all over the floor. The Communion plates and our Bibles sit on the bar. This is a visual reminder to our Christian people that they are on mission. Also, our non-Christian friends feel very comfortable walking into church here. For example, the four owners of the bar are all atheists. It has been so cool to meet them where they are.

Why did you choose Ethos as the name of the church?

Dave: Naming a church is like naming a kid it is tough. Originally we just called it church. First, it was church at Dave’s, church in the park, and church in the bar. Eventually, we wanted to choose a name that would stir up curiosity, that did not sound churchy, and use a word that is very familiar. There are twenty-six colleges in Nashville, and so the communication framework of ethos, pathos, and logos, is embedded in the fabric of this educated city. We like that the word Ethos captures a basic idea that our beliefs lead us to action. We hold to the notion that Jesus is our “ethos,” and everything that springs out of this place is because of Him and for Him alone.

Describe the mission and vision of Ethos?

Dave: We value simplicity. People who visit are often surprised because we are not super cool, hip, or different. Instead, we keep it very simple, very real, and very raw. We want to put our time and energy towards what we think Jesus is putting his time and energy towards.

So our mission is Loving God. Loving People. Awakening a movement. That came from Jesus’ Great Commandment. I don’t want to focus on anything else until I love God and our people love God more than anything else on the planet. When you love God we believe that the only natural movement is to see the Divine in every human being. So we try to move people to love others more than they love themselves. Lastly, we felt very called to non-Christians, and very called to drawing Churches of Christ back towards the lost. So the hope is not to resurrect a movement that has died in the bigger scope of Christianity. Our goal is to awaken a movement, within our own fellowship, and challenge them to ask questions about how we can really go after reaching out to non-Christians.

Our vision captures what it looks like to do those three things in our context. In our context we want to be people that are becoming disciples of Jesus. We want to help reveal what Jesus is already doing in our city. Also, we want to unleash mission and awaken a movement of people using their gifts within their own context.

Describe a typical worship gathering at Ethos. How do you move people towards loving God more?

Dave: Our worship gatherings are very simple. They only consist of a three elements: connection, corporate worship, and teaching. We want people to connect with each other through communion or discussion, and want people to connect with God. So we try to allow space for people to listen, reflect, and ask deep questions in their heart. Also, we have a corporate worship time that consists of singing and praying. We’ve found that people know how to worship very well, but they don’t know how to worship God very well. So every week we try and take time to explain why we worship God and how we worship God. In our teaching we focus on seeing God’s glory and then we give people space to respond to that through communion, giving, or confession. One thing we do that is a little more old school is we allow people to stand up in the middle of the room and confess their sin. One night we had about 150 people stand up and confess sin and we didn’t have time to do much else. The simplicity and authenticity of our worship gatherings seems to connect with people’s hearts.

How do your ministries actively serve your community?

Dave: In our effort to keep it simple we try to be very people driven. So instead of us organizing projects and asking people to do them, we look for people in our church who have gifts or passions, and we try to throw some gasoline on that flame.

For instance, we have a guy who has a deep passion for homeless people. So he moved into a house downtown with two empty bedrooms and we house homeless families in there. Another person was very passionate about the urban poor. So we rented a couple of apartments and as he finds people that are trying to get on their feet we provide them with transitional housing. We have two single women with a huge passion for poor kids, and they lead our children’s ministry. They decided not to do a Vacation Bible School; instead, we go into the projects and set up tons of inflatables, and we had about 400 kids come out and play. After we’ve built those relationships with families and kids we do a big back to school event for everyone in the Fall. At this event we buy them school uniforms, provide them with school supplies, and try to bless the families. These families may never come to our church, which is cool with us because we just want to serve.  We believe that if the Holy Spirit is in us then other people’s lives will be better when we are around.

Still, every so often we will develop an initiative and ask everyone to participate. So for the last forty days we have led what we call “40 Days in the City.” We picked six areas of focus: the poor, kids, the addicted, elderly people, recovering addicts, and the neighborhood. Then we organized strategic points of service and mobilized people to go into those areas and serve during a forty-day period.

What is the biggest challenge facing Ethos after two years of existence?

Dave: Our city is tough because 84 percent of our city claims Christianity, but 76 percent of our city is not connected with a church community in any fashion. In Nashville, people seem to believe that Jesus calls you to about an hour of your week, about two percent of your money, a little nicer lifestyle, and Christian concerts instead of secular ones. So, we are trying to figure out how to help people see that when Jesus says, “give me everything.” He literally means everything.

What is the value of social media for churches? How is Ethos using social media?

Dave: Social Media is a lot like anything, it is neutral and we have to decide how to leverage it. Our church is very young and our average age is about twenty-six or twenty-seven. So whether we want it to our not social media is going to play a huge role in their lives. We try to use it very practically as a way of communication. However, we try to be very careful not to use it in a way that creates a false sense of community. We try not to just give information about events but share challenges, stories, or ways to serve through facebook, twitter, and E-mail.

What are some of the challenges you have experienced as a church planter?

Dave: Church planting is a very lonely experience because you realize that not very many people think like you do. It is not a question of having friends. Instead, it is just a realization that there is a burden in you that is not in too many other people. Also, it is very taxing emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I always tell people, “do not plant a church unless you have no other option from God” simply because it is very hard. There are many days when you say, “I don’t want to push anymore. It would be great to take six weeks off” but when you plant a church you just can’t do that because the church planter is responsible for charging the hill even if nobody else is going to charge it. Lastly, church planting is challenging because you will always have critics and the people that cut you down are typically the ones you don’t expect which makes it more discouraging. But it is all worth it.

What are your goals? Where do you hope to be in ten years?

Dave: More than anything, I want to make sure that my own soul is connected to God. Also, I want my wife and kids to look at me ten years from now and say, “there is nothing that he loves more on the planet than Jesus” and have that be an authentic response when they look at my life. It seems that the longer we follow Jesus the less friends we have that do not follow Him. I want to intentionally reverse that trend in my life by having more non-Christian friends ten years from now. I want to always be learning from Jesus, other ministers, cultural leaders, and friends. I want to be a mentor to others. I want to have a better strategic plan for spiritual formation for my family than I do for my church. Lastly, ten years from now I still want to be able to give up everything to follow God. So whether our church is huge or small I want to always be able to leave it all if and when He calls.

What would be your advice for someone who feels called to plant a church?

Dave: Listen to God’s voice more than anybody else’s voice. Sometimes in the church planting world we get really infatuated with other church planters and we mistake infatuation with the One that calls us into it. Something that helped Sydney and I was writing a letter to ourselves about why we felt called to plant a church. We have not shared that letter with anyone, but whenever we want to quit we read that. Also, churches need a leader who leads in community not by committee. So as you gather people to lead with you do not look for consensus look for community. Surround yourself with people that respect your leadership enough to have the balls to tell you when you are off your rocker and also follow you into doing crazy things for God. Lastly, if it is from God… you have got to do it… refuse to settle for anything less even if it seems better.

Special thanks to David Clayton and all the staff at Ethos Church. You can check out Ethos at www.ethoslove.com. Also, follow Ethos on twitter.

Northland Village Church (NVC) is in their first two months of existence and already they are creating waves of change in North East Los Angeles. Northland Village is a group of people determined to “create space for reconciling relationships.” Their focus on reconciliation has moved them to think creatively about how to actively serve their surrounding community. I sat down with Nick Warnes, lead church planter for NVC, and asked him to describe his journey of developing such a creative church.

Where are you from? Describe how you became a Christian?

Nick: I am from Grand Rapids Michigan. I grew up in a nice family that displayed a lot of love, but they were not connected with the church world. We had a great family and a great situation, but I literally never heard of Jesus. Jesus had “nothing to do” with our great family. As I got older a Young Life leader was very helpful and supportive of me. I developed a friendship with him, and he pointed me in the direction of God.

Describe how you started in ministry?

Nick: My involvement in Young Life during high school led me into a Young Life leadership position while I was in college at Grand Valley Sate University. I started a Young Life club at that school, which was a new trajectory towards starting Northland Village Church. After college I became a Young Life church partner. In that role I was employed by a church and was responsible for the middle and high school ministries as well as the local Young Life ministry.

During that time I got married to my wife Whitney and we were both frustrated with the homogeneity of West Michigan. I fell in love with Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Fuller Seminary and so we thought LA would be a better fit. In 2006 we came out to LA, and I started at Fuller. I loved Fuller and a big part of my experience was the internship I did at Glendale Presbyterian Church. At that church I got to work with an awesome group of leaders, found a church home for the first time, and fell in love with ministry.

Why did you choose to plant a church instead of working within an established congregation?

Nick: Calvin talks about internal and external call and to pay attention to both. I have been fortunate to have some intense mentors that have affirmed my internal call to church planting. I also had some great friendships, a church community, an overseeing regional body through the PCUSA, and the ECC assessment center that all affirmed this call. So it has been just one external call after another affirming my internal call.

Those calls have been huge for me. Because church planting is a lot like an apple computer, it looks sexy, but when you are cutting bulletins an hour before the worship gathering it is not as sexy as it appears. Like many of my staff partners say, it is a lot of digging, clawing, grinding, and hard work that makes the difference. Often things don’t go the way you want them to, and you have times when you cannot even see how this could possibly work. So it is in those moments that you have to lean upon your calling both the internal and the external.

Describe how you developed Northland Village Church?

Nick: I went through a lot of pre-assessment screening with the RCA, Reformed Church of America, the PCUSA, Presbyterian Church in the USA, and then I was officially assessed through the ECC, the Evangelical Covenant Church. These organizations helped me with gathering resources, networking, assessment, and training. Then I graduated from Fuller in December of 2008 with a Masters of Divinity with an emphasis in worship theology and art.

In February of 2009 I started to put together a team, and I networked with other church planters. By June we were having dinner with about eight or ten people thinking about what this might mean. In the middle of September we started meeting as a launch team. As a launch team we took a communal gift assessment. Also, we did a pretty extensive soil analysis. We thought wide and narrow. We looked at the shrinking percentage of people in America that participate in church on a weekly basis. The numbers for this year show 16.1 percent of people are connected to church on any given weekend. Then we focused in on Los Angeles, and finally we narrowed on Northeast LA. Specifically, we did soil research on the three areas of Northeast LA that Northland Village is hoping to reach: Eagle Rock, Atwater Village, and Silver Lake. Based on all that work we discerned five felt needs of North East Los Angeles, and the goal was to intersect our gifts with the needs of that area. So we developed five different ministries that meet those needs, and Northland Village Church was born this past Easter Sunday.

How did you develop a leadership team for your church plant?

Nick: I sat down and made a list of people I thought were humble and asked those people to be apart of the leadership. We also did the hard work of building relationships within our leadership team before we launched. Since most of our launch team did not know each other we decided to spend a lot of time also hanging out. It was extremely important to me that we were all friends first.

Describe the vision and mission of Northland Village Church?

Nick: When we built a vision and mission for NVC we felt that Los Angeles is very similar to ancient Corinth with the presence of a lot of pluralism and syncretism. So we decided to focus on 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 more specifically the ministry of reconciliation. The Greek word for reconciliation is “katallasso.” The word is really two words put together, “Kata” which means, “to come alongside” and “allosso” meaning the “other.” Our experience is that the church has been a place that creates “others” instead of coming a long side “others.” We have found a high number of de-churched folks in our context, and they have all been made “other” by churches for various reasons. We attempt to come a long side people who have been made “other” by churches and now want nothing to do with church. Our mission of “creating spaces for reconciling relationships” is rooted in all of that.

Describe how this vision has shaped one of your ministries?

Nick: One of our most interesting ministries is the “Needs” ministry. This is the only ministry that we decided to place two elders on the team. The needs ministry is in charge of meeting the needs of North East Los Angeles. We try to do this in creative ways. For example, during the worship gathering we have a generosity box. At this box people can tithe as well as write down any needs that are present in their lives. Also, there is a “Haves” card, which people use to donate something extra that they have. Within one month we now have a whole storage room full of stuff to give to people. We have everything from furniture to guitars. The goal is to create a synergetic cycle of generosity in North East Los Angeles.

Describe a worship gathering at Northland Village? How do you attempt to move people into an authentic experience with God?

Nick: We do a few things differently. We meet in the auditorium of Glenfeliz Elementary School, and we chose to gather on Sunday evenings. We chose that time for two reasons. First, many folks we aim to come along side do not want to get up on a Sunday morning to “go to church.” Second, people in our area travel frequently. So we gather on Sunday evening to allow them the time to travel home on Sunday morning instead of having to cut their trip short on Saturday.

We value “participation” in our worship gathering. I do not want to be a talking head up front, and we do not want people to be inactive in worship. During worship we give a very significant amount of time to stations. The stations change every week, but one station we make available each Sunday is communion. We have offered a monastic prayer station were people can go and pray, as well as write in a prayer book, and read written prayers. We have done a baptism station where you dip your hands in water and remember your baptism. We also offer an art station where people can paint. The hope is that the community can experience God in uniquely through the stations.

What is one of your main goals for Northland Village in the next five years?

Nick: We want to be a church that plants churches that multiply. So our goal is not to become a big church, but whenever a church planter emerges in our community that is ready to plant we want to surround them with people to start another church. Also, we set aside money to give them to plant a new church. We are already in the process of trying to equip a new leader.

In your opinion, what is the value of social media for churches? How do you hope to use social media at Northland Village Church?

Nick: We are very fortunate to have people who are gifted at social media as well as people in our community that want to use social media. We use it because we have a desire to see people’s gifts being used for the community. In our network culture the only weakness is that it becomes easier for people to say they are connected but really be distant from each other. Also, I think it is dangerous when people lean so heavily on it as a foundation of their community. When I see all the .tv stuff that is going on in churches that pushes an edge that makes me a little uncomfortable.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing Northland Village?

Nick: Inwardly, it is challenging to move from idea land to embodying those ideas and living them out. People who get involved in a church plant launch team are typically full of new ideas. Now that our ideas have been implemented we face the challenge of how to work out these ideas within the community. Outwardly, people have been so hurt by the church and are so skeptical of anything church related that we are finding we need pretty intense relationship with people to even have a chance to connect them to what God is doing in our community.

What challenges have you experienced as a church planter?

Nick: For the first time, my wife and I had to insert “date night” into our calendar and nobody can mess with it. Because ministry is non-stop, there is always something to do, another email to write, person to talk to, or an organization to team up with. Balance and boundaries have been a big challenge for us. Another challenge is that church planting is exhausting work. I am learning that we want to be people that work hard, play hard, and rest hard.

What are your personal goals as a church planter? Where do you hope to be in ten years?

Nick: Another fun part of my job is that I get to work at a regional level with the PCUSA helping find and develop other church planters. I really hope to help the PCUSA to alter the way that it plants churches, and begin to get serious about church planting again.  Also, I hope to be around Northland Village until they kick me out!

What advice would you give to someone who feels called to plant a church?

Nick: My advice would be to seriously check out that external call. A lot of people “feel called” to church planting from their own inward spirituality, which is legit and they need to pay attention to that. But we went through fifteen people looking for our first church planter. It is a pretty specific gift set and a pretty specific calling. So with that in mind be sure to trust your community, ask your friends, ask your mentors, and your peers, “Do you really think I could do this?” And more importantly, ask them “what are the holes in my life that I need to fill in order to do this?”

Special thanks to Nick Warnes and all the staff at Northland Village Church. You can check out NVC at www.northlandvillagechurch.com. Also, follow NVC on twitter. Finally, special thanks to Whitney Warnes for providing all the photographs. You can check out her work at www.whitneywarnesphotography.com.