Do Something New - New Ministries Cal-Pac
Our churches were busy through 2015 moving forward, digging into God's promises, and building up vital ministries in Cal-Pac. Listen, learn and pray with us.
-The New Ministries Essential Ministries Team
New Faith Communities: A Path1 Residency at San Diego First
One of the things we’ve “never done that way before” in Cal-Pac is attempt to plant a church using a residency model.
This year, that changed, when New Ministries partnered with Path1 and San Diego First UMC to appoint Rev. Joshua Clough as the first Path1 Resident not only in Cal-Pac, but the entire Western Jurisdiction.
Why is that such a big deal?
Read More..."Spotlight on New Ministry: Path1 Residency at San Diego First UMC" by Christina Kukuk
One of the things we’ve “never done that way before” in Cal-Pac is attempt to plant a church using a residency model.
This year, that changed, when New Ministries partnered with Path1 and San Diego First UMC to bring Rev. Joshua Clough into the first Path1 Residency not only in Cal-Pac, but the entire Western Jurisdiction.
Clough, who was not raised as a Methodist, speaks excitedly about what Wesleyan faith and Methodist tradition can offer people skeptical of religion in a context of low participation. “There’s a great possibility for us to be part of a wider Methodist movement reaching new people in new ways,” Clough said six weeks into his new ministry. “It’s also kind of daunting.”
As teaching pastor of F5, Clough is spending his one-year appointment learning and planning and building a team to re-create F5 as a faith community sent out into San Diego by the larger church.
San Diego First UMC started F5 as an alternative worshipping community meeting on Sunday afternoons at 5 p.m. on the same campus as other worship services, but in a separate building. It included many elements familiar to traditional churches offered in a way the leadership hoped would be non-threatening to people who may not be familiar with traditional church. Prior to Clough’s arrival, 20-30 people attended on average. By late summer, that number grew to 40. By early December, it was 50.
But Clough and his leadership team recently decided to end F5, take the 50 people who worship together and launch a new faith community in early 2017 with 200 people as part of their strategy for “bigger kingdom impact” in the San Diego community.
“Instead of seeing ourselves as another worship service of F5, the hope is to build a new church, which requires that we lay a solid foundation focused on mission, discipleship, and building an identity,” Clough said.
Born and raised near Seattle, Clough attended seminary in New Jersey and spent two years in pastoral ministry in Hawaii, before this appointment. He married, moved to a new home in a new city and began this new ministry all in 2015.
Rev. Joshua Clough, Teaching Pastor of F5 at San Diego First UMC and the first Path1 Resident in the Western Jurisdiction“I think one of the biggest challenges for me, personally, is ‘Can I do this?’” Clough said. “There are days when things are really great and days when the challenges are insurmountable.”
It’s precisely those moments of doubt and questioning that the residency model intends to address by partnering the church planter with a seasoned mentor in a vibrant church. During his one-year residency, Clough gets to “learn leadership while doing leadership” under the mentorship of Rev. Craig S. Brown.
Leadership Matters
When Brown arrived on the scene three years ago as Senior Pastor, First United Methodist Church of San Diego had already started F5. But because different pastors rotated in and out of its monthly worship leadership, F5 lacked a sense of identity, culture, purpose and vision, Brown said. It became clear the worshipping community needed a singular pastoral leader.
“We couldn’t cut bait anymore,” Brown said. “We had to go fish. And if we weren’t going to fish, we needed to go home. The conversation internally was: We are either going to launch this thing and let it go fully – and that means getting the right entrepreneurial person to lead it – or we need to scuttle it.”
Prayer guided the church’s discernment. Could the worship service really grow into a completely new worshipping community that could be sent out into San Diego? Not knowing the answer for sure, Brown initiated conversations with the New Ministries EMT.
“It wasn’t so much that we heard about Path1 and we wanted a resident so that we could do something,” Brown said. “We were already doing something. We were just not doing it well. We needed to bring in the right person with the right kind of training and development that would be able to launch a new worshipping community and congregation.”
For San Diego First, part of that conversation included refining its own sense of mission as a teaching congregation. As the oldest Protestant church in San Deigo, it has relocated three different times in 150+ years. The most recent move to Mission Valley in the 1950s put the congregation intentionally on a spot where almost every major freeway intersects.
“When the church moved here, there was nothing here,” Brown said. “Mission Valley had nobody living around it. It was established almost 50 years ago that this would be a commuting church, that nobody would actually live near where the church was. Fast-forward 50 years, and all that has changed. Mission Valley is filled now with high-density housing. We have almost 100,000 people who live within a 5-mile radius of this congregation.”
But most of those new neighbors are not people with whom this traditionally commuting congregation has been able to connect.
“That’s what the residency is about,” Brown said. “It’s essential that we be able to reach those people.”
And they needed the right leader to do it. Years of learning about congregational development both inside and outside of the United Methodist Church have made it clear to Brown that the success of a new church start is 90 percent dependent on leadership. “My experience is that there is always a right time and there is always a right place, but there is not always the right person,” he said. “It’s about the leader.”
Through networking and interviews, Brown said he found the right leader in Clough.
“Joshua brings a gift for being able to proclaim and inspire vision. This capacity is about ‘dreaming out loud’ with a sense of courage and hope,” Brown said. “Joshua is not afraid to articulate what God is putting on his heart along with the capacity to lead with clarity and compassion. This, as far as I am concerned, is the essential quality needed by a lead or planting pastor.”
Those qualities helped Clough decide — with leaders, mentors and coaches — to close the public version of “F5” at the end of 2015 so that the launch team gathered through that ministry can attend new church boot camp in February in preparation to plant a new congregation in the beginning of 2017.
The partnership with Path1 and New Ministries made it possible for all of this to happen. In this first year, Path1 will contribute $25,000 toward Clough’s salary and a New Ministries grant will cover the rest, enabling him to meet the minimum standards for a first-year elder. He’ll also get access to Path1 resources, educational opportunities, and leadership development.
“One of the most effective things Path1 has done is create the residency,” Brown said. “[Church planting] is about developing the person… You’ve got to have the planter developed and prepared in order to do the work. If you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter.”
Collaboration is Critical
If all goes well, Clough will be able to develop a plan and a budget for taking F5 to the next level as a new church starting at the end of his residency.
A new model for church development in Cal-Pac, the residency approach also looked like an expensive model to many at first blush because New Ministries covers the bulk of the resident’s salary in the first year. But the residency model has produced fruit elsewhere in the United Methodist Church. It may take some time to see if it can also be a highly successful model here, said Rev. Nicole Reilley, Director of New Ministries.
“With any new thing we do, we can just show up and give what we have to give,” she said. “The success or the failure is really in larger hands.”
But because the planter coming out of a Path1 residency starts with such solid preparation and gets launched with a team, the model opens up greater opportunities for new church starts, Reilley said.
“We’re really committed to church planting, and there are lots of ways we do church plants,” she said. “Some are very small financial commitments and some are larger financial commitments. Some church planters have lots of training and some are new to church planting. We felt that a Path1 residency would really give the best soil for church planting.”
An added strength of the residency model is the partnership that makes it possible. San Diego First, Craig Brown, the New Ministries EMT and the district superintendent all worked together to make this inaugural residency happen.
“And of course the number one person who made it possible was the Bishop,” Reilley said. “In the end, it’s an appointed position, so she and the District Superintendent were the ones who decided if we were going to move forward or not. God was helping us all discern this direction together.”
Reilley hopes the impact of this partnership will multiply so that the residency model becomes one of Cal-Pac’s planting strategies in other areas of the Conference also. The Bishop, the Cabinet and the New Ministries EMT continue to explore which other churches might be vital bases for church planting residencies, if not every year, then possibly every other year.
“I’d love to see enthusiasm from local churches and individuals helping us continue this into the future… so that local churches and others are excited about this model of church planting, with financial support but also with prayer support,” Reilley said. “It takes a lot to start a new church and we want to have as many partners as we can.”
Do the partners in this first residency feel any pressure to succeed?
“I’m more concerned about the spiritual pressure of recognizing that there are people living in our community that need to know and need to experience the power and grace of God, the gospel of Christ, and they’re not,” Brown said. “And we need to get to those people.”
On those days when the challenges seem insurmountable, Clough said, “I try to remember that it is God building this church. We just get to be part of it.”
F5 gathered in worship
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Growing In Vitality: Costa Mesa
When the Rev. Dr. Amy Aitken first walked the halls of the crumbling campus of First UMC of Costa Mesa, she often found herself laughing.
Grow a new ministry at Costa Mesa?
It sounded impossible.
She chuckles now because she’s finding joy. In the possibilities. In the challenges. In the ways God works.
Read More..."Spotlight on Revitalization: Costa Mesa" by Christina Kukuk
When the Rev. Dr. Amy Aitken first walked the halls of the crumbling campus of First UMC of Costa Mesa, she often found herself laughing.
She chuckles now because she’s finding joy. In the possibilities. In the challenges. In the ways God works. But it wasn’t funny the first time she heard she’d be appointed there. In fact, she felt like Sarai in the Genesis story, falling off her chair while eavesdropping at the suggestion of a new baby on the way.
Grow a new ministry at Costa Mesa? It sounded impossible.
“It’s in the middle of downtown, and we have 19 parking spaces,” Aitken says. “There is no way to grow this church with 19 parking spaces.”
“I have Saddleback worshipping with about 1,000 people next door,” she adds, referencing the multi-site evangelical mega-church founded by Rev. Rick Warren. But in her own historic Spanish revival sanctuary, worship attendance averaged 34 people, most over age 75.
The Rev. Dr. Amy Aitken in the historic sanctuary of First UMC of Costa Mesa, slated for renovation in 2016.
Hemmed in by a medical office building on one side and a busy shopping district across the street, the future seemed bleak for the congregation whose sanctuary holds the center of the mural on a wall in Costa Mesa’s City Hall.
So, why didn’t the church and conference simply close and sell this prime piece of real estate?
“It’s in a city,” says Rev. Nicole Reilley, Director of New Ministries. “When you sell property in a city, your opportunities to go back into that city later are greatly diminished. We’ve been careful when we give up real estate and property in a community as it may curtail ministry possibilities.”
Its presence still central to the community’s identity, First UMC Costa Mesa served some tremendous needs. Among other ministries, it hosted 35 recovery groups on a weekly basis, bringing almost 1200 people through the building. But the wear and tear on two of the buildings left them in severe disrepair, and tensions sometimes boiled with neighbors over coveted parking spaces.
The Spanish revival sanctuary anchors Costa Mesa’s city centerAitken, who spent the last 10 of her 18 years of ordained ministry leading California Heights in Long Beach through a capital campaign and building renovation, came to help the leadership in Costa Mesa create a plan for redeveloping the property for ministry. She needed to meet with constituents – from the church’s eldest members to local government officials, business-owning neighbors and participants in the 12-step groups who’ve found hospitality there – and listen.
Since growth would be impossible without parking, the congregation tackled that obstacle first. Two of the church’s buildings are scheduled to come down in January to make room for a parking development that will enable ministry growth and provide a revenue stream. The second phase of the project will renovate the historic sanctuary. Aitken says they hope to have all of this accomplished by May or June of 2016.
“The Cabinet could have chosen to close,” Aitken says. “They decided they needed to go big or go home, and they decided to go big. Or at least explore what that could look like.”
New Ministries EMT supported the congregation by interpreting demographic data, sharing resources and offering Aitken monthly one-on-one strategy sessions with Reilley as the congregation discerned potential scenarios for ministry.
There are opportunities for a revitalized ministry centered in the iconic building. For example, demographic research indicates a desire for traditional worship in a community with fewer options for the sounds and forms of a classically European-based liturgy. Partnerships could develop with local musicians in the community for afternoon concerts for the many people who work around the church. Other local UMC choirs could boost this ministry by visiting to sing in worship.
Putting every demolition and renovation possibility on the table, though, was terrifying for a congregation whose parents and grandparents built the church.
“It’s like open heart surgery or amputation,” Aitken says. “It’s not something you’d want to do unless your life depended on it…. It’s really, really scary stuff, but it also has the potential to make a future for the church.”
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New Ministries Gallery
New Ministries Happening in Cal-Pac
Messy Church is a multi-generation worship gathering that meets monthly. We are setting up trainings for 2016 now! BIG NEWS Lucy Moore (one of the creators of Messy Church) comes to Cal-Pac in April 2016!
Launchpad is an a church planting bootcamp for teams starting new faith communities. It was heldOctober 1-3 at the School of Theology at Claremont. 90+ were in attendance for this great event about DOING NEW THINGS!
Readiness 360+ is a 15-month vitalization experience for churches. Five churches completed the program November 2015 and 13 more (East District) began the process in September 2015. Great job everyone!
People We Are Pulling For...
Imperial Beach UMC is organizing to continue to make a huge impact in Imperial Beach, CA. Every Tuesday and Thursday from 9-11am, the church helps approximately 1,600 people with food. Every Saturday from 7-9am, showers, clothes, toiletries and sack lunches are provided for the homeless. For two weeks in the year, the church hosts twelve homeless individuals through the Interfaith Shelter program...
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Resources
Looking to grow in Discipleship in 2016? Our New Ministries webpage has several new opportunities including an online group and a church-wide discipleship survery tool.
LISTEN, LEARN, PRAY... AND HELP US DO NEW THINGS WITH GOD IN CAL-PAC!
Use the social links below or contact us via the New Ministries page.
The California-Pacific Conference of The United Methodist Church
110 South Euclid Avenue
Pasadena, California 91101, United States
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