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Last Week Jo Gus, and I traveled to Nashville so that I could participate in our church’s national leaders convention (know to us as the General Assembly) For me this time of meeting is incredibly encouraging and incredibly draining.

In the last few days I’ve heard things said by church leaders that have made me cringe, but I’ve also interacted with folks that get me so excited about what can happen when people are honest about their need for God, and live out of that need. I even heard from a old white guy who planted a black church in Georgia in 1954. Think about that–White Dude, Black Church, Jim Crow, Deep South. That means this guy might as well be Jack Baur’s great-grandpappy. General Assembly embodies the best and the worst parts of being connectional all wrapped up into one very long week, but it’s well worth it.

Here are 5 things I learned at General Assembly:

1. Sometimes Procedural stuff is good and sometimes it gets in the way of actual discussions – I wish we spent more time talking about our actually disagreements and less time wrapped up in procedural vortexes (Dave Snoke’s handy term). I hope next year is different.
2. World Harvest Missions is legit – first off any group that foregoes the usual free luncheon to rent out a bar and gives away good beer, good cigars and great Christian material has my vote, but I also got a chance to hang out with some of the folks planting churches in London, and they are doing some cool stuff.
3. Southern guys can bring it – I sat it on a lecture by Brian Habig Church Planter and Pastor down in Greenville NC and that dude was great.
4. Disagreement and Disunity are different things – Some speaks were very gracious and winsome and even when I didn’t agree with their point, I was glad they had the chance to speak, while at other times guys spoke and even though I understand where they are coming from I wish they hadn’t said anything. All young pastors need to take some notes from guys like David Coffin, Bryan Chapell,  Tim Keller, and Ligon Duncan.
5. Face time is important – Email is great and twitter will help build connections but, nothing can replace good face-to-face conversations.

I wanted to share a few thoughts about some of the things Im noticing in my small part of the world wide church. I am a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America sometimes abbreviated as (PCA). In this denomination there seems to be a lot of tension mounting around a few issues, and some of the issues are not tiny ones, but what seems to be happening is that people in my denomination are beginning to talk past each other and simply discount everyone who holds different convictions.  People are deciding that our procedures for dealing with disagreements are too slow–and instead are beginning to publish (for all the world and all posterity to see) things that they would never say to someone face to face. This is happening all over the place, and its a really shamefully thing to see.

People on all sides of are forgetting that we are supposed to see each other as family, that we are supposed to love everyone the way that God loved us.
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I want to discuss what things would be helpful in seeing more churches planted in Pittsburgh. Remember that I am speaking from my context within the PCA, but I don’t think that any of my points are necessarily limited to only the PCA. I admit that I am not an expert in the topic of church planting, but at the very least I think I could be called an avid supporter or a student of church planting. Most of the suggestions that I am going to make are coming from listening to other wiser church planters, men like Roland Allen, Harvie Conn, Bill Krispin, Tim Keller, Dick Kauffman, Bruce Finn, Ed Stetzer, and Mark Driscoll.
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I’ve compiled a map with all the geographic boundaries of the different presbyteries of the PCA. While I have seen, and heard of maps of the presbyteries, I do not know of any map that existed online. So I decided to create one, based off the information available on the PCA Administrative Committee’s website. At the bottom you will find the links to all the source files. Some of you might have a few questions?

Why do this?
I began this project by simply putting up the information for my presbytery, but I soon began filling out the northeast, and once i can to a certain point, I thought that I should just make one for the whole denomination.

How much time did this take you?
My wife might just reply by saying “too much time!”. It took me probably around 15 hours to complete, most of that was spent while my wife was sleeping.

What can this be used for?

• I hope Churches and Presbyteries will use these maps to for the purpose of planning church plants, and other cooperative projects. (This is the primary reason I started this project.)
• Ministers and Members could use it to learn more about the PCA.

Since most of the boundaries are marked at county lines, its very difficult to understand the size and shape of a presbytery without knowing alot more local geography than most people. Even in my state (Pennsylvania) I did not understand how all the presbyteries connected. I hope this project allows people in the PCA to learn a bit more about the shape and movement of the PCA.
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I’ve been thinking about the church planting figures in the PCA, on the one hand I am encouraged that the PCA plants on average 53 new churches per year. It has been noted that this means that we are planting one new church per week.

On the down side this means that by the numbers we are not even adding one new church per presbytery (76) per year .

This figure also means that we only have one church plant for every 26 existing churches.

Are PCA churches so devoid of leaders and finances that it takes 26 of us to start a new work? The real shame is that there are many churches and presbyteries that are very active in planting which means that there must people other churches and presbyteries that are doing almost nothing.

Some statistics on the Presbyterian Church in America can be found here.

In my second post on church planting in Pittsburgh, I want to examine the question: Why should people plant churches in Pittsburgh?
Short Answer–Because:

• God’s wants his love to be made real to people in the context of community (i.e churches).
• Pittsburgh is centrally located in the middle of half of the country’s population.
• Pittsburgh is economically connected on the national and international scale.
• Pittsburgh has a diversity and density that will allow for many neighborhood church plants.
• Costs associated with planting could be greatly reduced in Pittsburgh, leading to more churches being established.

Before looking at market research or demographic trends which might make Pittsburgh a good place to plant churches we must understand a more important reason to plant churches in Pittsburgh. We should plant churches in Pittsburgh because God uses churches as the main instrument of his redemptive work.

Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left…

One verse that encapsulates God’s desire for reconciliation is Jonah 4:10-11 “And the LORD said, ‘You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?’” God explains to Jonah that the reason Jonah was sent to Nineveh was because God loved and cared for the people of Nineveh, and he wanted to be reconciled to as many people as possible.

Unfortunately, some Christians today would rather enjoy their own vines, than do the harder work of declaring God’s love to a people who don’t know their right hand from their left.

I hope that beyond the circumstantial reasons for church planting in Pittsburgh, people will see it as a priority because God uses churches to care for people.

There are however several reasons why Pittsburgh is a good location for church planting efforts, from a strategic perspective.

Location

Pittsburgh is a half-days drive to 5 of the 10 most populous metro areas in the country. It is 6.5 hours from Chicago and NYC, 5.5 hours from Philadelphia and only a little over 4 hours to Washington DC. This means that Pittsburgh could become a strategic center for ministries serving half of the country’s population centers.

National and International Connections

Though Pittsburgh is small city it has many industries that give it a very long reach, both on a national and international scale. Pittsburgh is home to Carnegie Mellon University, CMU, which year after year is ranked as among the top universities in the world. Pittsburgh also has has a disproportionate number of fortune 500 companies(7 in all). Additionally, because of the influence of CMU, Pittsburgh is becoming a tech hub, with many new startup landing in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is so tech-connected that Google has an office here. All this means that people reached in Pittsburgh might very well end up being connected to many people in many areas of the country and even the world.

Neighborhood City

Pittsburgh like many Northeastern cities is a collection of smaller neighborhoods that all interact with one another. Additionally many of these neighborhoods are very densely populated. Some ranging from 5000 to 18000 people per sq mile. For church planting this means that churches can be planted very close to each other and still reach new groups and more non-christians. This means that church plants can be close and be connected to one another in their day to day lives.

Cost Effective

Finally Pittsburgh is a very cost effective place to plant churches. Pittsburgh never entered the housing bubble which means that it is much cheaper to live in Pittsburgh than most other large cities. For instance I recently saw a four bedroom victorian townhouse for sale in an up and coming neighborhood for 149k. In most American markets that would be the absolute minimum entry price for the city.

If Pittsburgh is cheaper it means that less support is necessary to plant churches here. This means that planting can be more rapid. It also means that church planters can be less concerned about being self supporting. Not because it would be harder in Pittsburgh but because it will me easier than in many other major cities. This means less time will have to be spent on support raising, and more time can be spent with people.
Because of low cost associated with planting in Pittsburgh, Planters can experiment with planting strategies.
Right now most of the PCA’s “research and development” is happening is places that are costly, but I would suggest that Pittsburgh would be a better testing ground for planting techniques.

These are just some of the reasons why people should consider church planting in Pittsburgh.
Can you think of any other reasons?

If you google the word “Technology stewardship” you will find two major definitions 1) Technology used by churches to encourage financial stewardship or 2) groups speaking about using technology to advance their causes.
When I speak about Technology Stewardship I’m speaking about something of a mix of the two.
I would define Technology Stewardship by asking a question: What technological tools are you using to advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ?

I know that guys like Drew Goodmanson and even Mark Driscoll speak about using technology, but from what I gather, they haven’t spoken about technology from a stewardship perspective ( ie Matt 25:15-30).

Looking at my own denomination of churches, I see that technology is not used well. I’m not sure of the reason, and I do not mean to disregard or downplay the work that has been done. Ill be honest when I first went to the PCA website around 2001 I was impressed that a denominations site looked that good. But the site hasn’t changed much in the last 9 years.

I’m not simply talking about having a website. I’m suggesting that we see technologies such as: twitter, facebook, skype, ning, googletalk, flickr, vimeo, texts, blogs and many others as resources that God has given for the purpose of serving our King.

The PCA is a small denomination many churches are very far from each other, and yet I believe that God has handed us resources that allows us to overcome many of the geographic challenges that limit our connection and our development as a people with a purpose.

I understand that it is not a one-to-one application of the text but I do think that it merits a longer conversation on the matter to that end I propose three questions:

Should Technology be consider a “talent” or resource that God is calling his church to manage well, with the implication from (Matthew 25) that God is very upset with those who do not use it well?

How can people in the PCA help each other become better stewards of technology?

Is this just a PCA problem or are other churches and denominations not fully utilizing the resources we have been given?

Today is Ash Wednesday which is a liturgical day celebrated by different denominations, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.

I know that historically some of the reformers argued that we should participate in other parts of the christian experience on days other than traditional liturgical days. Butzer argues in De Regno Christi, that we should not fast on Ash Wednesday, but instead have other times of fasting. In their defense, most people don’t want to look like the group that is persecuting you.

To be quite honest I can see both the benefits and dangers of participating in the liturgical calendar in general, and Ash Wednesday in particular.

Around the twittersphere lots of other church-folks have been talking about how or if they are participating in ash Wednesday.

Do you know of any Presbyterian Churches or Reformed Churches, that participate in Ash Wednesday or in the liturgical calendar more specifically?