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.

...posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 9:53 am , filed under Stories