Acts 29

The Network at all Levels: How the Christ-Centered Mission of Acts 29 Helped Terra Nova Attract Key Leaders.

When you think of the Acts 29 Network, what comes to mind?  A list of churches with unusual names?  A few pastors you’ve connected with at regional or national events?  Maybe you think of those well-known within the movement—the ones who get noticed by the magazines and publishing houses?  In most cases that’s about where it ends, at the corporate or leadership level.  It is probably true that many of the people who are serving in the trenches of your church are unaware or largely unfamiliar with Acts 29. Let me suggest that it helps everyone if our people see the connection between their local church and this larger network.
 
When we started Terra Nova Church last year, Steve Tompkins (Mars Hill pastor and former Acts 29 Director) sent Zac and Chelsie to us having recently moved to Albany, NY from Seattle.  They were dying to connect to a church that shared some DNA with their church back home.  Before long, Chelsie was designing our children’s ministry and Zac was cursing his way through the assembly of IKEA furniture.  I shudder to think of what our children’s ministry would look like without this couple on the team.  They came to Terra Nova because we are an Act 29 church.  It’s that simple.  By the time of our core launch last fall, two others from Mars Hill joined our ranks having moved to upstate New York.  Again, they went on the Acts 29 website, saw our church listed and joined in with little hesitation.  All are serving and all are committed to a Tribe (Terra Nova’s version of community groups).  If you’ve planted a church then you know how even four highly committed people can make a huge difference in those early days.
 
Recently, one of our key couples, Sam and Angie, came to us and said that they were moving North Carolina.  They wanted to know if there was an Acts 29 church that they could connect with down there.  We immediately put them in touch with Vintage 21.  Sam and Angie visited the church while scouting for an apartment and when they showed up with a moving truck a few weeks later one of Vintage 21’s small groups was waiting to help them unload. The network worked!

Now please understand, it’s not as if our lead pastor gets on stage each Sunday and says “Welcome to Terra Nova, an Acts 29 church”.  However, it is on our website and we periodically explain to our people that we are not some lone ranger church trying to make it all on our own.  We are connected to something bigger than ourselves, something that is doing great things in the kingdom of God.  People seem to really appreciate that connection.

This begs the question: What is the common denominator?  What connects Terra Nova to Vintage 21 to Mars Hill to Sojourn to Missio Dei?  Is it worship style?  That can’t be since our styles all look and feel different.  Is it the overabundance of candles and incense in many of our churches?  Probably not.  No one sets out to find a church with candles that smell of “Sandlewood”.  Is it the shocking amount of product found in the hair of Acts 29 pastors?  I doubt it.  That’s not really core value material.  So, what is it?  What makes the people in our pews (or cheap folding chairs in our case) want to stay connected to an Acts 29 church when they move?  What brings more and more people to our Boot Camps each year?  I recently asked a friend and potential church planter this when he called me with questions about the Acts 29 assessment process that he is currently working through.  He said to me, “We looked at over 30 different church planting organizations or denominations and when we found Acts 29, it felt like home.”  When I pushed him on what that meant—he boiled it down to our network’s Christ-centered approach to missional living.  He and his leadership team felt like they had finally found a group of churches that shared the same commitment to living out the incarnation of Jesus Christ that they hoped to model in their community—and they wanted to be a part of that.

I believe that Acts 29, network-wide, has done a great job unpacking this missional living that Newbigin laid out so clearly.  If we, as pastors, are consistently sharing a Christ-centered mission and vision in our churches, then—over time—our people will actually get it. And when they move from one city to another, they will want to connect with another church that “gets it”. With God’s grace, there will be a church waiting to unpack the truck, welcome them in, and serve Christ’s mission along side of them.

Phil Taylor is the Executive Pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy/Albany New York which began worshiping in a microbrewery/club in January of this year.