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Barnabas Project (California Trip)
Posted under Church, Leadership, TravelLast week I had the privilege of being able to spend the week in California as part of something called The Barnabas Project. The project is an effort by the Northwest Baptist Convention to expose 20 NWBC pastors to larger healthy growing congregations in the West. An all expense paid trip to visit some awesome churches and rub shoulders with some incredible leaders was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. Jim Fitzpatrick and I paired up and went to Clovis, California. Jim is the pastor of Crosspointe Baptist Church in Vancouver, WA. I consider Jim one of my mentors so that was an added bonus. Being in that part of California in mid-August meant some hot weather…108 degrees our first day. We basically were down there from Saturday through Friday. We visited four amazing churches over the weekend and then interviewed their staff and participated in some of their staff and leadership meetings throughout the week. I’ll give you a quick overview of what we discovered.
The first church we visited was Clovis Hills Community Church (the one SBC church we visited). CHCC was started about 17 years ago with a vision to reach the unchurched. Since that time, they’ve grown to a weekly attendance of about 1200. Their dedication to the mission was expressed by something their pastor said to us, “We make everything about the next person.” CHCC is a leading SBC church in baptisms.
The second church we checked out was First Baptist Church of Clovis. FBC Clovis is led by Tim Brown. Tim came to the Northwest and spoke at one of our recent Pastor Cluster groups in Vancouver. In the last decade Tim has led the church from about 70 to 700. Tim gave us a lot of ideas for growing our churches, everything from staffing to leadership to ministries. We also got to hang out with their staff and ask them a bunch of questions. They invited us to participate in their staff and leaders meetings.
The third church we visited was First Baptist Church of Reedley. FBC Reedley is a church that’s grown from about 260 to 600 over the past 6 years. Led by Gilbert Foster, a guy with an awesome Scottish accent, they have sort of a postmodern feel to what they’re doing in ministry. Gibert graciously invited us into his home for lunch on Sunday and we spent the afternoon with him and a few of his staff talking about church growth. They also gave us some great ideas for reaching the unchurched.
The fourth church we visited was The Well Community Church. TWCC started as a college ministry but in the past 6 years has grown into a church with a weekly attendance of about 2000. They currently have four Sunday services…9 and 11 and 6 and 8. We checked out their 6pm service and it was packed out. TWCC is a church that is effectively engaging young people through solid teaching, authentic worship, and a strong small group ministry.
What did we learn from our trip? Tons. But I’ll synthesize it all into a couple of principles that were evident in all four churches.
1. They are extremely focused on reaching new people (especially the unchurched).
2. They are effectively shepherding and discipling people through their small groups.
3. They are staff-led (both paid and unpaid) and driven by huge visions.
4. They are effectively engaging their culture through relevant worship and teaching.
Well, that’s all for now. In the coming months I’ll be sharing what I learned in California and working with our leaders to implement these and other ideas so that we too can be as effective as possible.
