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.

...posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 9:52 am , filed under Stories