In this episode, recorded at Jason Dunn's Ordination service, Senior Pastor Damein Schitter and Pastor of Formation and Mission Benjamin Kandt give an update on NewCity Next, which was first rolled out in March 2022.
A visual overview of NewCity Next can be accessed here.
In this episode, recorded at Jason Dunn's Ordination service, Senior Pastor Damein Schitter and Pastor of Formation and Mission Benjamin Kandt give an update on NewCity Next, which was first rolled out in March 2022.
A visual overview of NewCity Next can be accessed here.
Okay, so what we're about to do is going to take about 15 minutes, and what we're doing now is we're giving an update on New City Next, which we unveiled in March of 2022, actually, and so the cadence that we've had in updating on this has been basically annually, in the spring. So we launched it March of 2022, spring of 23,. We gave an update today, spring of 24, we're giving an update. There was another update in December on staffing, but for the most part, the cadence has been annually, and the piece of paper you're getting now it's really just for you to take home. Anything that we really refer to is going to be on this in one page. Sometimes it's nice to have something in front of you that you can write on. If you're not part of New City and you're like I don't even want to be here right now, you don't have to take one, it's fine, and, in fact, if you're going to take one and throw it away, don't take it. Unless it's going to help you, then take it. I really care about you. That's what I'm really trying to speak to Now.
Speaker 1:One of the big picture realities that we had at New City Next was that we believe that New City is stepping into its third chapter. The first chapter of New City was we were planted, and you never know if a church is going to take root. We were planted and then we were rooted, and it took years to be rooted right, and our roots went deep through challenge and through hardship. Like any tree grows, strain comes and wind blows and it causes you to put your roots down deeper, and so we experienced that in many ways, and we'll continue to, I'm sure, in certain ways as well. We said this third chapter that will take several years to step into. We're calling it reproducing, and so by that what we really mean is we want to see disciples reproducing at New City. We want to see a disciple making engine be at the heart of New City's mission, and so, with that, what I'd like to do today is pick up from where we have continued to take steps, and so you'll see on the screen, on a slide there. It is what it is we want to do tonight. We want to remind you of our mission and vision. In a moment I'm going to have Ben come up and lead us through that, and then I'm going to do a flyover of what we said, because I'm sure that you, unlike us, are not at home studying this weekly. What did we say we were going to do and how are we moving toward that? So I just want to remind you of what we said that we were aiming at in March 2022.
Speaker 1:I then want to show just briefly what we've done. Some of this isn't new to you, some of it will be. And then what I really want to camp out for a few minutes is what's next. And on those slides, what's really next is, we mean, in the next 12-ish months, something like that. And really, what we want you to take away from this is two things. First, we want you to know what are we doing. You could say the metaphor might be under the hood, in a sense Like, just pop the hood, just so you guys see what we're working on, what we think is important and if you have any questions, feel free to ask us about that and then what we want to end is okay. If that's what y'all are doing and you say is important. What's next for us? What is the action? That's where we want to end. Okay, so that's the high level. I'm gonna invite Ben to come on up here and just remind us of our mission and vision, and then I'll take over from there and we'll switch a couple of times.
Speaker 2:So you've heard us speak about various different things here at New City. Like, all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life. Those are kind of axioms that we live by here, and if I were to say what's our vision statement, many people would probably put one of those out there. This happens because our vision statement wasn't very clear, succinct, sticky, memorable, and so we've simply reduced it, we've simplified it, we've clarified it by taking what vision we had, which you can still find on our website, but reduced it down to what I think is the vision for literally every Christian church, since Jesus said I'm gonna build my church, which is to see God, the Father, answer the Lord's prayer. I mean, there's something powerful and beautiful about this, and I wanna invite you to do this for a moment.
Speaker 2:If you'd close your eyes, and I want you to imagine, imagine where you live, where you work, where you play, where you find yourself throughout the week, imagine if people in that space revered God's name as holy, imagine if the kingdom of God came, you can picture what that looks like, because wherever Jesus went, that's what it looked like the blind sea, the lame walk the deaf here. Those who are sinners are forgiven. Those who have demons in them are cast out right. That's the kingdom of God coming. Imagine God's will being done in every sphere and sector of society. Imagine nobody going without bread. Imagine people forgiving and being forgiven. Imagine the devil not having the reign and rule in the supremacy in people's hearts and minds that he has now. Imagine people resisting temptation because they're experiencing the leadership of God in their life. Wherever you find yourself live, work, learn and play you can open your eyes. That's what we wanna see happen. That's what we wanna see realize Now. How does that happen?
Speaker 2:How do we see the Father answer the Lord's prayer? First, super simple, straightforward pray it. Pray the Lord's prayer. He loves to answer prayers, especially the ones that Jesus gives us. And the second thing is is our mission? If we call form and send disciple makers, we are bringing people in, we're shaping them into Jesus likeness and then we're sending them out to go do that with other people to say follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life.
Speaker 2:Just an example is where do you learn to handle your temper if not in a disciple making relationship? Where do you learn to handle your money in a kingdom way, not worshiping mammon, which is the default for most, if not all people in a disciple making relationship? Where do you learn to get off the couch and actually serve people in a self-sacrificing way, taking up the towel, as Jesus says in John 13? Where do you learn that if not in a disciple making relationship? If those kind of things happen over time, iteratively, progressively, we would begin to see some evidences that the kingdom is coming here as it is in heaven, and so our vision is gloriously unoriginal. Every church throughout the history of churches has held to some version of this as their vision statement, and our mission is the one that Jesus gave in Matthew 28, standing up on the mountain. And again, it is delightfully unoriginal. And so we're just not trying to be original here. We just wanna do the thing Jesus called us to do make his last command our first priority and get about that and see God's kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. So that's the invitation to be a part of the vision and mission of New City.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks, ben. All right, so, in a sense, what we're doing is we started as high as we can, as big as we can, and we're gonna be narrowing down. Okay, so let's go to the next slide. This is what we said. There were two primary slides in this section. You can go to the first one.
Speaker 1:The first one was we laid out a multi-year path. One was organizationally, and we gave you the metaphor of a trellis. Anytime a living organism, like a church or a vine, is gonna grow, it has to have structure in order for it to grow on and have some type of health. And these numbers we put out there, as we said, you know what would be amazing. We basically wanted to shoot and pray for numbers and realities that, from now, seem like if this happened or anything close to it, god would have to show up. There's nothing that we could do in order to make this happen. And that's exactly how we described it. If you go back on the YouTube video and watch it and what's amazing is that we're closer on these numbers, particularly this first two, than I ever thought we'd be in two years it's really truly remarkable. And so we just put those up to say we're still praying that God would do these things, and I wanted to remind you of them.
Speaker 1:I wanna mention one thing about healthy parishes. Why is it under systems? What's a parish model? Well, depending on your background, essentially all that means is we want a system of care where people won't fall through the cracks and the way the church has historically done that is by grouping. Well, it's done in many ways, but one way is grouping the members of the local church into geographical regions and having elders and deacons over those geographical regions. And so for us, as new city grows and even expands across the city, the system that we would like to see in place, with at least 24 deacons and elders over them, is a parish model. So I'm just speaking to that to understand why that's a system and why we think that's important, and so on.
Speaker 1:So let's go to the next one. If this is a trellis, this reality that we thought in this chapter of multiplication, here's some key things we'd like to see God do. The other thing is we said, well, what's the vine gonna look like? What would health look like? And so we said we wanted 50% of members regularly praying for unbelieving friends and inviting not-yet-Christians to belong to Christ. Now, what's amazing about that is we've been praying for this as leaders, and people have been coming to Christ at New City. It's really remarkable. One of the things that Ben and I talked about that we love is that they've come to Christ sort of peripherally to New City and then they're here and then they're growing like weeds. It's really remarkable, and one of the things that we said is we really believe because of our own hearts. We just think this could be true is that this is the first way the Lord needed to answer this prayer before people started coming to Christ regularly at New City so that we could say, wow, we didn't have anything to do with this. This is crazy. People are coming to Christ and he's just sending them here. It's amazing, and so if you want more of those stories, we'd love to tell you stories of these folks. So we wanna see more of that and it's happening.
Speaker 1:We wanna see all of our members growing in their practice of the common rhythm. We wanna see a large percentage of people's engaging in our environments, and the reason is is because the form part of our mission. Where will people be formed? You all will be formed in our environment. That's where we all will be formed, and so we wanna see increasing engagement in those things. And then, of course, we wanna send people as Professor Glotto talked about as the priests into the world to represent Jesus and invite people into relationship with them and Jesus. So this is what we put out at the largest scale underneath our mission and vision, sort of like, if God does this, this would be amazing.
Speaker 1:So let's go to the next slide. This is some of the things that we've done, and I won't read through all of them. I'll hit a couple of things. I want you to know that we did not have a deaconate at all in March of 2022. We now have a deaconate and there's a next step we wanna see with the deaconate. But that's amazing. We should celebrate this. We I'll say more about this in a minute but we launched a communicants class.
Speaker 1:There was a reality in which our fourth and fifth graders if people were coming to the age where they might be making a profession of faith and coming to the Lord's table we had outgrown our system, which was basically yeah, just like, call Damien or email him and somehow we'll see if we can get your kid ready to have an interview with the elders, and the reality is is that that was great for the people who knew it, but most people had no idea and there was no process, and so we've instituted that process. We've been through two rounds of that Zikar training, which is remarkable and really great. We've instituted learning communities. We've added new city communities, we're training more elders right now three elders that were nominated in the spring and so this is all really good news. We put this up here not to say look what we've done, but rather look at what's happening and this is really encouraging.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go one more level down. What's next? So this would be again about a 12 month period. So I'm keeping the same buckets of people, systems and facilities. So, in terms of people, there are some key staff we really need to hire. One of them, for example, is a children's ministry director. It's not like we're starting now. We've been working, but there are other key staff that we would like to continue to hire and continue to dial in. What does our staff need to look like in order to best equip and support the congregation to carry out the mission of New City? The other thing I mentioned is we have a deaconate At the end of March, we have a first robust strategy session where we want to mobilize the deaconate to do the work that they're excited about doing. We've been praying, we've been working and now it's time to organize ourselves and mobilize. In the next, at the next level, we want to recruit 50 new City Kid servants. I'll speak more about that when we get to facilities in a second.
Speaker 1:In terms of systems, we want to pilot the parish model Again. What does this mean? It's just we want to keep organizing New City and the way our elders care for our members, that we keep organizing in a way that fewer and fewer people fall through the cracks, and that could mean they literally fall through the cracks. That could mean that they're not sure how to make their needs known. We want to be able to address that reality. We think that that's really important and so we want to. We want to take the next step on this parish model, this thing.
Speaker 1:You know this could be tricky, right? What do you mean? Metrics? Are you gonna measure my spiritual health, my spiritual growth? Well, kind of.
Speaker 1:So what we want to do is we want to design and track meaningful metrics. So if you say, well, what metrics do you have? It's like we have metrics. I mean I can tell you how many people have come. I have a spreadsheet and I can see who's in City Kids and what the average is, what the growth is. We keep budget. I can tell you how many people gave this month and what that was compared to two years ago, and I can show you a chart. It's really fancy, right. We can track those things and those things matter. But there are other things I can also show you. I can say how many circles do we have, how many communities do we have? How many circles do we need in order to get certain percentages? That stuff I actually can't tell you as clearly, and so that's what I mean by meaningful metrics. What we really want to do is we want to measure what we say matters, and we want to. The reason we want to do that is because we want to double down on our efforts toward what we think God's called us to, specifically in disciple making, and so I think traditionally, nonprofits don't do a good job at this. So I've heard, I don't know, and I know for sure. Traditionally, churches don't do a good job at this, and traditionally New City has not done a good job at this, and so we really want to step into that, do better here Now.
Speaker 1:The third thing here is facilities For the next three to five years. We are committed to staying here on Sunday morning, and so we are going to maximize this space Now, off the bat, you're thinking well, does that mean two services? And absolutely it could mean two services, but there are certain things that would need to happen. Right now we don't have enough servants on Sunday morning to open up city kids for one service, much less two services, and so we cannot move to two services until we have more servants willing to serve in city kids as an example. There are some other metrics. If we open up, as we open up, the front porch, so to speak, are we able to reduce the friction enough for all of new cities members and regular tenders to go from Sunday morning into communities and communities into circles? The answer to that right now is no. We're really trying to do that. We really want to reduce the friction and we want to change the current to where, if you step into new city, you just find yourself caught up in the current and you're getting woven more deeply into the fabric of new city, and so it doesn't mean two services, yes, and. But the fundamental thing I want you to know, as many people will ask hey, what are we going to do about a facility? And so my large answer here is on Sunday morning for the next three to five years, we're going to maximize this space. We have ways to grow, which could include, of course, launching a two-service model on Sunday morning, but there are other metrics that we need to hit before we would do that Now expand ministry and hub space.
Speaker 1:If you've been to our offices, you know that, in terms of staff, in terms of student community and in terms of any gathering we have, we have outgrown our awesome space. I love that space, I love the venue, I love the feel. It's so great, but we simply have outgrown it. It's one of the reasons why we have to do learning communities at St Paul's, and we're so grateful for their hospitality, but we don't have the space, which is why we have to have it there. It's not the only reason, but it's another reason why we have to have student community here or in other places because we've just outgrown that space and what we really want is a ministry hub space that can serve our needs in a way that will further our mission and vision outside of the Sunday morning gathering. And so what we're doing there is we want to expand ministry hub space.
Speaker 1:There is a committee of the session, that is, we've already begun. We're putting together what is it that we want in that space? Like one of my first votes is going to be, I love for it to be near a park, for example, for lots of reasons for student community, for children, for all types of things. But I'm just giving you an example of the types of things we're trying to consider when we think about who our people are and what it is the Lord's called us to do and how we could have a ministry hub space. Ok, so that's the organizational path. Let's go to the congregational path. I'm going to speak to the second one and I'm going to have Ben come up and speak to the other two, and then we just have one more slide and we're done. Ok, we gave Jason the night off on this because he just took like 32 vows and so we just felt like it was a lot, it was heavy on him, and so Ben and I are going to finish this up.
Speaker 1:So let me speak to city kids alignment. I mentioned earlier that one of the key hires we need is a city kids director, and there almost certainly will be another hire related to 0 through 18, hopefully this year. Ok, what I want to say in terms of city kids alignment is that in 2022, when we said our mission is to call for and send disciple makers, we said that student community basically student community, g45, and in some ways, city kids, were kind of like a sidecar and we really wanted to align those ministries with our mission of calling, forming and sending disciple makers. We started with student community. If you have a, if you're a volunteer in student community or if you have a child in student community Middle School, high School you know that we've spent the last, the large part of the last year and a half really aligning and hopefully continuing to align student community with our mission and our environments of congregation, community I'm sorry communities and circles, particularly OK. We then moved to G45 with the communicants class, so we're kind of working backwards and now we're turning our attention fully this year, squared shoulders, to city kids.
Speaker 1:What does it mean to pour all that we have into city kids in line with our mission, vision and multi-generational realities? I said this before and then I'll invite Ben up. Mike Goheen pointed this out to me. He's an author. He talks about in Deuteronomy when Moses is telling the people of Israel why they're gonna get kicked out of the land or what would get them kicked out of the land. He gives them two fundamental reasons. The first one is that they would commit idolatry like all the other nations and worship their false gods, which we recognize what that might look like in our life. I wonder, do you know what the second one is? If the first one is idolatry, it's like, yeah, that makes sense. The second one is you'll fail to pass on the faith to the next generation.
Speaker 1:That's the second thing Moses tells them, and so in large part we've been giving ourselves, first with student community, as we had the shortest amount of time left with them they were about to launch and then G45, and then now City Kids Alignment. So that is getting to the level we started with Mission and Vision we're coming down. A lot of this was review, even though you don't remember it. That totally get that. But hopefully this is encouraging and just at minimum shows you that we're still tracking with the chart and the course that we said, even though sometimes, because we talk about a lot of things, you're like what in the world are these guys talking about? The good news is is we are staying on track in this way. So let me invite Ben up to take the Cypher making engine, and then ministry environments, and then I'll be back up to close this.
Speaker 2:So if you read Genesis one, six days, the first three, god forms the world, creates these environments. The second three sets of days, he fills those environments. And we figured God was a good enough project manager. So we decided what if we stage it like that? We form these environments of communities and circles and then we give our efforts to filling these environments of communities and circles. So that's kind of the path that you've seen. So when we say deep in ministry environments, really what we mean by that is more people equipped, coached, trained, led, released to lead communities, which are a people following Jesus together in a shared, a common purpose pattern of practices, and to lead circles, which is three to six men or women following Jesus together in transparent trust to love God, love neighbor and make disciples. And so those two environments are really what we mean. As Damien said, the front porch of New City is growing, which is our Sunday morning gathering, but we wanna move people into the living room and then around the kitchen table and that would be communities and circles in likeness in that way. So that's really what we mean when we say deep in those ministry environments is we form them now, we wanna fill them and then this piece over here around disciple making engine.
Speaker 2:The primary vehicle at New City to fulfill our mission is in our circle space. The reason why that is is because it might be hard for me to look at all of you and say, hey, you all should lead a community. But I can look at all of you and say, hey, you all should be able to lead three to six other people in what it means to follow Jesus. You should be able to do that. Now, don't hear my should as some unbearable burden.
Speaker 2:It is our job, as Professor Glowdoe just said, to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. So our job is to actually equip you to do that. If you're like I, have no idea how to lead somebody in what it means to follow Jesus, great, that's what we're all about and what we wanna do with you and for you. And so in order to do that, our leaders lead out in that, which is why you see the officers leading in circles. First they're already elders and deacons in our church that are gonna be leading as kind of the spear tip of that. And then, once you've been in a circle for enough time, you kinda learn what it looks like. You then go launch out and you get to lead circles and people are coming to know Jesus and being woven into the fabric of New City, as Damien put it, and so that's just a snapshot of what we mean on this slide when we talk about deepening the ministry environments and our disciple making engine, if you will.
Speaker 1:Thanks, ben. Okay, so I said that we started big and we want to get really concrete. So then the obvious question is okay, great, what do you want me to do? Like, what's next for me? And this right here, the last three membership classes. If you've been in the last three membership classes, this is exactly what we told you there, and to others it would be new, but essentially they're all peas. Kelly Wilson is very happy about that. Ask him about that.
Speaker 1:So the first one is practice the common rhythm. Essentially, what we want you to do, we want everyone growing in their practice, is the common rhythm, like gathered worship on Sunday, prayer, fasting, fellowship, feasting, right. We talk about the common rhythm, practice the common rhythm. Next, we want people to pursue disciple-making relationships. We want you to look around. Sometimes I think you, I ask, I'll pick up my head and I'll say Lord, who's around me right now, who do I steward, who would I draw in? And so, if you're not sure, start with a community, as we heard this morning in that story that most people will find their first connection point at New City, in a community, and from that place then they will find those circle relationships. So we want you to be active. We want you to pursue it At New City. There's nothing we can do to provide community for you. You must build it. We can provide the environments for you to go pursue it and build it, and we want to help you as we can.
Speaker 1:The third P is we want you to participate in congregations, communities and circles All three. We want you to participate. That is the call. We're inviting you, not only Sunday morning, but in communities, in circles. Participate in our environments, because we believe that this is where we will be formed.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, we need all of you to play your part as a family member and we ought to think about it like that. And as a family grows, you have more needs, and as a family grows, everyone needs to have chores, essentially, right, I mean, if you have. You know we have four kids. I've shared before that Leah had this great idea, but once you're 10 in our house, you do your own laundry. And I thought that was crazy. Well, guess what? Our first 10-year-olds started doing laundry. Our second 10-year-old turns 10. I look at Leah and I said, hey, so are you going to teach her how to do laundry? And she said, no, livy is. And she did. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:So, as a family grows, everyone needs to have responsibilities and we need every one of you to step in and play your part. Particularly, we need everyone to serve faithfully. We need everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, even you if you're wondering, talk about me, talking about you, everyone to serve in some capacity on Sunday morning. And if you can serve in city kids plus another one, and if you have kids, you definitely should serve in city kids, all right. So I'm asking you, as a family member, play your part on Sunday morning, as we're hospitable to other guests and visitors who aren't yet woven into the relational fabric of New City. We want to be hospitable.
Speaker 1:The second thing is we need all of you to give sacrificially, financially. This is not because we're in trouble. In fact, it's not like that at all. We're going to give a Q1 update on finances. It's really remarkable. So the good news is is we get to heighten that volume when things are going well, but this is an invitation for all of us to contribute to the family needs and give sacrificially. And the last thing is relate wisely, and all we mean by that is you know that there's nothing worse in a family than when there's unresolved conflict. There's nothing worse in a family than when people ignore one another, and so what we want is we want a relationally, emotionally, spiritually healthy congregation and it starts by the pay setters of the members that we would engage one another in emotionally and spiritually healthy ways. Okay, this is what we're asking you to do. All of that that we said is on the one payter that you can take with you and you can check it out. That's it for today. I'm going to see you in a minute, bye.