Photo: Courtesy Matt LarsonMatt Larson pastors the not-quite-2-year-old Anthem Church (EFCA) in Southern California, where he is already apprenticing another pastor for Anthem’s next campus.
When we set out to plant a church two years ago, my wife, Kristen, and I were compelled by one thing above all else: a passion for the gospel that leads to a reproducing vision.
That meant it wasn’t our call to start one church with the dream of growing that church. Rather, our heart was to start a church that was a sending church—to raise up leaders, finances and vision to send people out to various places to start new locations and churches. A movement of reproducing churches.
With that in mind, we made the decision to spend the first nine months of our church plant doing a leadership residency at Community Christian Church in Naperville, Ill.* We had actually been coached by numerous people to skip the residency, because we had all that we needed to start a church (seminary education, 10-plus years ministry experience, appropriate gift mix, etc.). In addition, we had to raise a year’s worth of income that wouldn’t be going directly toward the church plant.
Regardless, we knew that if we wanted to start a reproducing church, we needed some fine-tuning of our own DNA, language and vision, and the residency seemed the best opportunity for that to happen.
From day one of our residency, it was reinforced: It’s the gospel of Jesus that drives us—the mission of helping people find their way back to God. One of our greatest opportunities to live that mission is to be a reproducing church.
In practice, the biggest thing that Community Christian Church taught us is that if we can reproduce at the micro level (artists, leaders, small groups, services), then we can reproduce at the macro level (locations, churches, networks and movements).
Looking for leaders
When we launched Anthem Church (EFCA) in October 2009, our goal, then, was to immediately be reproducing. In short, everybody needed an apprentice: Whatever it is that you’re doing, bring someone with you. That applied from our teaching pastors all the way down to our setup team. (I think it’s the nature of being a pastor to always be lurking around, looking for potential leaders.)
Have you ever said, “I see in you a passion for Jesus and an ability to lead. Would you be willing to apprentice with me and see how God might want to use you for His kingdom?”
That is a big conversation to have with someone. It is valuable on so many levels. It forces you to pay attention. (I believe that there are many gifted, called, Spirit-filled people whom we overlook.) It lets people know that they are valued contributors on this mission.
And finally, it articulates the reproducing vision. Every time you have that conversation, you are reaffirming the vision to take the things you’ve heard and pass them along to faithful people who will teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2).
I teach you and you teach others
Using a specific apprenticeship process (see “Steps of Apprenticeship,” below), we were able to reproduce some key leadership roles early on. Within the first six months we had brought more than 40 musicians on stage to help us lead worship, with four worship leaders and four worship-leader apprentices. We had also gone from two community groups to eight, as leaders identified and trained apprentices, and then handed off leadership responsibilities.
From the start of Anthem, I have been apprenticing Kevin Bailey as a campus pastor. He is apprenticing as a leader, teacher, vision caster and church planter. It has been a great experience to have an apprentice from the very beginning. I quickly learned that I couldn’t just do what came naturally to me as a leader; I needed to also be teaching someone else what that looked like. It forced me to articulate the vision better and, ultimately, has made me a better leader.
That relationship is now bearing fruit: We are in the midst of starting our second campus, in Camarillo, Calif. Both Kevin and I are identifying apprentices with whom we hope to launch campuses/churches No. 3 and 4.
Our dream is that each and every church we plant would hold this same, incredible passion for the gospel that leads to a reproducing vision. Many churches talk about it; it’s not a new idea. But it truly is our whole reason for existence.
*Community Christian Church was started in 1989, and its leaders spent the first 10 years dreaming about what it would be like to be a reproducing church. Over the last 10-plus years, they have been living out that dream. Now they have 13 multi-site locations, with 20 other churches planted around the country and two internationally. They later founded NewThing—a movement dedicated to being a catalyst for reproducing churches. Another church that’s a great example of this vision is Reality in Carpinteria, Calif.
Matt Larson served as youth pastor in several EFCA churches before he and Kristen planted Anthem Church in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with a launch team of 150 individuals. Matt’s parents, Steve and Connie Larson, are lifelong EFCA leaders. Steve currently pastors The Bridge (EFCA) in Newbury Park, Calif.
7 Comments
I love this vision. I love that you’re looking for leaders and sending them out. It just feels so… Biblical! Great article, Matt!
Great article Matt! I love the vision, and am praying that the passion for reproduction can be “caught” at our church. I know that our leaders have it, but it hasn’t trickled down very far yet. Love the Steps of Apprenticeship from New Thing. Simple to understand.
Thanks Sarah, I agree about the biblical nature of reproducing. Darrin Patrick talks about this at length in his recent book “Church Planter”. He says, “Consequently, gospel-centered, missional churches in the 21st century will imitate churches in the book of Acts by planting new churches wherever the Holy Spirit leads them”.
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
Matt, you are our first fruits.
Spread the disease.
George
Love this line, “It’s the gospel of Jesus that drives us. . . ” What I love about this article is that when people are truly centered on the Gospel, one’s life leads to reproduction. This is truly deficient today as people focus exclusively on a private-devotional and moralistic life. Your story captures the story of Acts. Thanks Matt! I would love to hear more on the residency when you get a chance. Many would think that you had ‘enough’ to start a church, but you saw that you needed more.
Hey Joe, thanks for the kind words. The Residency was definitely a unique experience. In essence, NewThing churches will take on Leadership Residents for 6-12 months in preparation for a church plant, campus plant or arts role. They are looking for guys who are situations similar to where I was, done or mostly done with school, some reasonable amount of experience and an idea of where they are going to be planting. If somebody is still trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be when they grow up, there are internships that are available.
For the residency Kristen and I had to raise our living expenses for the year. We packed up and moved to the western suburbs of Chicago and rented a place out there. I took on a role as the “first impressions director” at CCC’s most recent campus plant, Plainfield. The role in and of itself was only a 5-10 hour a week role, but it was a great excuse to be around the office and it gave me something to work on.
Beyond that, the residency was largely on my shoulders to create value. I had to initiate, but if I did, it paid off. I could join in with meetings, plan messages, help create content for conferences, brainstorm ideas in the offices, crash lunches with key leaders, listen in on one on ones. When I wasn’t with people from CCC learning and asking questions, I was at Starbucks or the library working on our church plant. Fortunately the Naperville public library also had boatloads of awesome books (Driscoll, Keller, Bonhoeffer, etc.). I read a bunch, spent time on Facebook connecting with people back in California, worked on articulating our vision and had key fundraising conversations.
One thing that was amazing about the residency is that I felt like I was involved regularly in things that I had no business being involved in. There was one week where Hugh Halter (Tangible Kingdom, And) came in to have some meetings with the NewThing crew. They were going out to lunch at Lou Malnati’s. I heard that lunch was happening and asked if I could join. I sat at a table for two hours eating pizza and hearing about the formation of Adollum in Denver from Hugh Halter with Dave and Jon Ferguson firing questions at him.
The value for the residency ultimately lied though in being able to see day in and day out the language, culture and vision of a reproducing church over an extended period of time. I learned what kind of conversations needed to take place on a day to day level. I learned how vision was communicated and how other people received it. I spent a lot of time with Brad Prunty, the campus pastor at CCC Plainfield. It was great to hear his perspective on reproducing and the vision that he had for launching new campuses.
It was so valuable that I’ve gotten to the point where I won’t end a conversation with a potential church planter without recommending a residency. I genuinely believe it helped us transition from being church planters to being reproducing church planters.
As an update to this article, in the last 2 months I’ve had 3 guys step in to roles as apprentice campus pastors. We are looking at starting 3 more campuses over the next 18 months if the Holy Spirit leads us through the numerous obstacles to reproducing. If you think about it, be praying for Jonathan Shapiro (CLU campus), Yelson Navas (Nueva Vida campus) and Jeremy Bush (Warner Center campus). One thing that we have seen is that by using the language of reproducing and setting an example of reproducing, there actually is a culture of reproducing in which people see that they have a role and can serve the gospel in this way!