charlieDEAN’S Blog

Truth be told, planting a church wasn’t a new idea this fall, or even within the past year. In fact, we probably first talked in our small group at the time in the fall of 2002. But one of the things I couldn’t shake at that time is that if we were to proceed, it would be largely defined by what we didn’t want to be. In other words, I tell people that if we were to have planted then it would have been the anti-First Baptist church.  Of course with age and maturity I’ve come to see that many of those issues were mine, so it really would have been a disaster.
Perhaps the most exciting thing to me over the last couple years as I’ve harbored dreams of leading my own church someday is changing my own inner focus from negativity and thoughts from a church plant that would be “anti” something to be a church that is FOR something.

It may seem a subtle change, but for me, it’s HUGE — it’s about internal posture and attitude and a way of thinking. Anyway, I’ll avoid going on a rant about planting a church as an “anti” thing, and instead offer some things that I know Imago Dei Church will be for:

• simplicity — people keep asking me what services will be like, and all I know to say is “we’re trying to figure out what it means to do everything we do as simply as possible.” So, at this point, I’d say our services will probably look something like this: a greeting & welcome, worship, then teaching…not much in terms of entertainment…simply a community learning together what it means to follow Jesus.
• community — I heard someone on our leadership team say Wednesday night at our meeting about last week…I was fun to go to church and actually see your friends.  I know every church claims to be about community…but community comes at a price.  We will make decisions for community, even if it costs us.
• mission — it’s not enough to go to church, we must BE the church

Alright…I’ll stop for now…I’ve actually been meaning to articulate our mission and values here (of course these are in there…but we’ve developed more formal statements), just haven’t gotten to it yet…stay tuned over the next couple of weeks.