Having spent the majority of last week hanging out with a family who may be moving to Macon to train and plant a New City campus, I want to take a few posts to reflect on my thoughts and things I learned from last week. I'll post as things come to mind, but not in any particular order. Here's the first...What We Intend To Do Is Good
What is it that we intend to do?
We intend to plant churches (New City campuses) in numerous cities in the Middle Georgia region. Currently we are considering Warner Robins, Milledgeville, and Forsyth.
While each of those cities does have some good churches, initially it appears that there is a need for a Gospel-centered, reformed church that is willing to engage unchurched people in the public square. It seems that not only is there a need for such a church, but there are also people wanting such a church. Visiting these cities and talking about them this past week with residents and others has only strengthened our planting intent. In fact, it has fueled the fire to plant sooner rather than later.
What do we mean by a NEW CITY CAMPUS?
This is always one of the first questions that a potential planter with New City asks. The reason for the question is because there are so many different types of campuses:
Video Venue campus - Generally the majority of the preaching at such a campus is done via video projection by one guy. Mars Hill has several campuses where Mark Driscoll preaches the vast majority of the time - not live, but by video projection. Campus pastors in this system shepherd people, organize, and lead a campus but do not preach very often.
Single Preacher Satellite Campus - This is a campus in close enough proximity to the church's main campus that the Preaching Pastor can preach in one venue and then fly off (sometimes literally) to the second campus where he preaches again.
New City Campuses - Our hope is to find a planter/pastor for each of our targeted cities (and then some). Each campus planter will serve as the pastor and lead preacher/teacher for that campus. In many respects he will function and operate just as any planter would - juggling getting to know a new city, building of new relationships inside and outside of the body, working on policies, studying, writing, counseling, and yes weekly preaching and teaching.
BUT - he would plant the New City campus with the shared resources of NCCd - we would share elders, share systems and structures, share bands (creating a rotation between campuses for our current 3 bands), share a common mission and vision, finances, Missional Communities and more! For example: A New City warner robins planter would come into a situation where a core group already exists in our Warner Robins MC (Missional Community). The MC knows, understands, and is fully on board with our mission and vision. They are ready to work toward a WR campus and several of them have worked in NCCd for over a year - THAT for a planter is PRICELESS!
So - I'll end it here with this... if you are interested in planting in Middle Georgia as a New City Campus - You'll get an MC Core, 3 awesome worship bands, proven elders, support from a guy near you working hard with you, and more... e-mail me keith@newcitydowntown.org
