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I want to begin by stating that I understand that church planting is difficult anywhere. I also think that church planting in Pittsburgh might be more challenging than other locations in a few ways.

There are many issues that might be seen as challenges to church planting in the City of Pittsburgh. I would say that its size and demographic make up are the most challenging hurdles when it comes to recruiting planters and planting new churches. I recognize that some people might suggest other, more fluctuating issues, such as unemployment rates, crime rates or school systems. Yet, the issues I am speaking of effect the shape of the whole city rather than the shape of individual neighborhoods.

Size

Pittsburgh might be categorized as a mid-size city, much of this is due to the fact that geographically, Pittsburgh is much smaller than many other cities, only 55 sq miles. It is also helpful to remember that Pittsburgh has never had the city-county mergers that have made other cities larger; ie. Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and Louisville.

Immigration Patterns

That being said, Pittsburgh does not have the same number of immigrants and therefore does not have as many large immigrant communities as other large Northeastern Cities, like Boston and Philadelphia. Statistically, Pittsburgh’s rate of immigration is not much less than Philadelphia’s. For instance the number of foreign born individuals in Pittsburgh is 7% compared to Philly’s 10%. Interestingly, Pittsburgh has a higher percentage than Philly of residents who have settled from another country, 1.2% vs .07%. For Pittsburgh, a smaller total population mean that the ethnic pockets that reside in Pittsburgh are also smaller. Smaller immigrant pockets are not necessarily bad things, but it does mean that they are not as noticeable as in other Northeastern Cities.

Historic Race Problems

Finally, Pittsburgh, like many other cities in the Northeast, has historically been troubled by race conflicts. Even today many of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods are divided along the lines of black or white. One thing that makes Pittsburgh unlike many other American cities is that only 2% of the city’s population is hispanic or latino.
For church planters this means that in many cases culturally diverse churches will have to be more strategically placed between existing neighborhoods. It also means that Pittsburgh might need more minority Church-planters to settle into certain neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that still carry biases than would make planting much more difficult for someone trying to cross the race and or culture barrier.

In my next few posts I am going to examine the topic of Chuch planting, and more specifically examine why more people should consider Church planting in Pittsburgh.

Church planting is a term that describes the process of creating a new local church community. In the last decade more people have come to recognize the importance of perpetual church planting. Though there has been a renewed interest in the topic, people estimate that 80% of church plants fail in the first year. Church planting is by no means an simple thing to do. In fact creating a new worshiping community might be one of the most challenging things that a Christian can participate in. Additionally there is no one proven way of planting, what worked in Town A might fail in Town B. In the following posts I am going to examined many of the ideas that surround planting in an urban context.

There are many questions that people might ask regarding church planting, ie why are new churches a good thing? Why not just renew existing churches? If you are new to the topic or undecided on the importance of church planting I would suggest you read a short article written by Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC.

My Perspective
Everyone has their own leaning which shapes why and how they think.
I would associate myself with Reformed Protestantism. I am a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and more closely I am influenced and encouraged by the Harbor Presbyterian Church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Citynet, and other similar churches. Important voices to my understanding of Church planting are Harvie Conn, Tim Keller, Jack Miller, Ed Clowney, Ed Stetzer, Rolland Allen, Manuel Otiz and others.

Much of what I am going to say is going to be geared toward the PCA, but I think that most of my arguments will not exclude other Christians. I understand that If you arent a Christians church planting will probably seem silly, and you probably wont care much about the next few posts.
In my next few posts I am going to cover the following topics:

• Challenges to church planting in Pittsburgh
• Why people should plant in Pittsburgh
• What might be done to see more churches planted in Pittsburgh
• Models that could be followed in Pittsburgh

At the beginning of the year I wrote about my time in San Diego at Harbor’s 2009 Multisite Conference. The posts in the series can be found here, here, here and here. What I never wrote was my take on how multisite church planting could be implemented here.

There are several reasons why this never happened:

• I didn’t know what to write…I though it might be a bit presumptuous to say “this is what we are going to do.”
• I was plague by alot of spiritual oppression, which caused me to distrust folks around me including my session. This made me worry too much about external appearances and I was scared to write on the subject. Fortunately things have gotten better, as I spoke to more people about the issue.
• I stopped posting as frequently as I had been, and I just didn’t have the energy to write about such as tough topic when I had such a deep sense of being bogged down.

That being said don’t expect the final Multisite09 post to come anytime soon, but I promise that I am working on several posts dealing with similar subject matter.

According to a recent AP poll, depression and or stress is on the rise on college campuses. The report states that 42% of students said that they have felt hopeless several days in the last two weeks. Whether its because of the economy, or just a shift in the way that people are beginning to look at their futures, people are finding life hard to swallow with a smile. Yet we all know that stress is not a young person’s games. Text books are traded in for a 9-5. With the 9-5 comes more responsibilities, and for many friends, family and even kids can add to the levels of pressure.

The question that I want to ask is: what does Christianity have to say about stress and depression?
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Last night Joanna and I went and saw The Soloist, the story of a Nathaniel Ayers, a schizophrenic cello player, and Steve Lopez, a news reporter, who befriends and at points exploits Ayers.

The film was good, not perfect but very good, and the uncertainty and long term challenges of interacting with the mentally ill clearly came across.

What really struck me was the film’s interaction with faith and spirituality. In the middle of the film Lopez takes Ayers to see the LA Philharmonic practice. Lopez is bewildered by the way in which Ayers is transformed by the music. Lopez is frustrated by the fact that he does not seem to be able to love anything in the same way that Ayers loves music. In his frustration Lopez asks his friend and ex-wife what is it? What does he have that allows him to love music like that? Her response is “grace”.

What a profound, and accurate response.
Though the world is broken, though we are perpetually hurting ourselves and each other. There is grace. There are many good things in this world that we abuse and neglect and yet miraculously they remain present. I think that if we take a good long look at ourselves, we have lots of things that we don’t deserve. Music being a chief example. I see grace in my marriage, I see it in the beautiful and broken community of friends that I have. I see grace in the warmth of a spring afternoon. I see grace in my ability to appreciate great art and music. Where do you see grace?