3 Reasons why I’m encouraged in overhearing this conversation:

1. God is already doing stuff is Lawrenceville.
2. There are countless other Christians out there struggling and fighting for their faith.
3. Nothing this guy is saying new (It’s the same stuff that Christians have wrestled against since Jesus ascended).

All this snow gives Christians a chance to live out their faith. Most of the times we Americans are pretty good at pretending as if we’ve got everything covered. With a storm like this people are more willing to accept help. For those of us who are healthy it gives us a chance to care for people in a way that is often much harder. You’ll also notice that when people start to get cabin fever, and so even though its cold I’ve stood outside and had a number of conversations with many of our neighbors.

I know that many people will want to grumble when they hear the news of more snow  coming this week, but see it as an opportunity to get to know more about your neighbors and to help out some folks.

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

Second, people need to start asking themselves how can God change this region and what part does he want me to play? At this point far too many christians might be avid fans, but they haven’t gotten off the bench.

Third, Remember the motivation for church planting isn’t personal notoriety, or denominational pride, but as Paul says, a desire to see grace extend to more and more people for the glory of God.

Fourth, churches need to move beyond a church-vs-church standard. When I say church-vs-church, I mean that many churches today evaluate themselves not based on what they are called to be, or what God has made them, but by how they match up to other churches. They have a program we have a program, they get 170 we get 190, etc. When churches are content competing with each other for the self-awarded title of best church the Kingdom with suffer. It doesn’t matter what the best is, it might be most engaging, most missional, most evangelistic or most reformed, all these man-made crowns are a barrier to church cooperation and Kingdom expansion

Fifth, churches need to begin to strategically recruit planters to Pittsburgh. Local churches need to begin to get the word out that they are looking for qualified church planters. I think the PCA would have more church plants if we simply communicated our need for gospel-centered churches, with more potential candidates. This also means that churches need to speak with their bank accounts, and start putting money aside for planting. This needs to be done proactively rather than reactively. I know that many churches do not have extra money lying around, but church planting shouldn’t be one of those extra things we do, it should be as core to our church as Sunday worship.

Finally, churches need to make plans, and at the same time welcome unexpected opportunities. This was a lesson that I learned from Bruce Finn, a PCA church planting coordinator in the Philadelphia area. Sometimes we will make plans and God will have different ones, which will present us with opportunities that we never could have imagined.

Our last trip I thought to myself “this place is so limited.” Sure there were thousands of magazine, and probably over 10,000 books in the store, and yet they were so limited. Think about it, there are millions of books published every year, on hundreds of thousands of topics. There are even more magazine-quality articles written each month. You typical big box bookstore, just can’t keep up.

For instance, when I pick up a book in the store, all I have to go on is the back spine and maybe one of the store’s staff. The publisher wants the book to be sold, so the back spine isn’t going to give me a fair review, and of course staff people want me to buy a book, not necessarily the book that would be best for my topic. Additionally, because most of the sections in local bookstores are alphabetical by author, it is much harder to find other authors on the topic.

Alternatively, when I buy a book online, I can read reviews from countless sites, I can see additional books by the author, and I can looks for similar books from different authors.

B&N needs to make their stores enjoyable, social spaces where people can access the internet, and learn about books. They need to become more like coffee shops, and social spaces, where people gather around topics. The ironic thing is that in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Libraries have done a wonderful job of becoming these social spaces where discussions can be held, but as nonprofits they are bleeding money.

• 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?

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.

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

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.