New resources- It’s a fundraising truth that you will get more people to give to a new project than an old one, sure there are non profits who, over a number of years, have built up a steady stream of donors, but thats not a norm. For the most part people invest more in helping dreams take shape, than they do in keeping a struggling project afloat. When you start a new church it will stir up new resources than might not have been utilized before. (This includes peoples talents, their money, and even venues.)

reNewed energy – This is kind of connected to new resources, but often new churches create a pioneering spirit which causes people to be more energized about what they are doing. There might be people who are content with helping in existing ministry, but often a new project is the spark that helps reinvigorate them.

New perspective on neighborhoods challenges – Often older churches have come to understand their surrounds from a certain vantage point. Sometimes what this means is that they can be biased toward certain ideas or methods. New churches will accept new ways of dealing with the challenges of a neighborhoods because they have different biases. For example while many older churches gave away clothes and other goods, which in the long run kept people in a state of dependance. New churches began to consider the idea of subsidized sales which gave people a different sense of value associated with their goods, and allowed them to develop healthier values about money. Of course we have to realize that sometimes there are very good reasons for sticking with a certain way of doing things.

These are just a few of the many reasons why starting new churches is a good thing.
(For the record I understand that this list could probably be applied to most volunteer organization)

The first week of January Jo, Gus and I traveled to visit my family in upstate New York. This gave us a nice break from alot of the busyness.

As many people know we have been planning and praying for the opportunity to plant a new church for the Lawrenceville Bloomfield sections of Pittsburgh.

Last weekend I presented my plans to our denomination’s regional leadership and they decided to endorse it.

This means a number of things for the DeSocios and thedesocios.com

1. Joanna, and I will begin working toward starting a new church for Lawrenceville and Bloomfield.
2. We will be connecting with many people who might want to join us in this new church.
3. This means that we will be pretty busy preparing for our transition, including spending alot of time finding the needed resources to realize our hopes for this new church plant.
4. Starting in July 1st I will move from my position as Assistant Pastor at City Reformed, to being a fulltime church planter. The leaders at City Reformed hope to have a potential replacement in the works by June so that there might be some overlap.
5. I will not be posting as much as I had been on our site, as I will be spending alot more time networking and updating people about our progress. Im not sure that we will be using this site for those updates.
6. When I post they are going to be shorter.
7. We are gonna spend more time putting up pictures and videos of Gus (thats why most people come to this site anyway.)
8. We need help from lots of people to see our dreams of a new church community become a reality. Please consider how you might partner with us, in support prayer or participation. Contact hopeforpittsburgh@gmail.com

Frequently, established church have pressure placed on them to care for the needs of the people already present, this means that often the older a church is the more time it ends up spending on programs and services intended to care for and retain its existing members. This doesn’t mean that older churches don’t care for new Christians, it just means that often they are better equipped at training more mature Christians.