When we started Evergreen, there were the inevitable questions of “Why start another church?”

And while there was a certain amount of reaction to our past churches and communities, the overriding desire we had was to begin a community that would reach people we saw as being unreached by existing communities. We knew that those communities were doing a great job of reaching and serving the people they were reaching and serving (obviously). But we also saw some pretty big gaps- some people that just weren’t showing up.

Further, we had the intuition that the kind of community needed by the people we were thinking of was by definition smaller and more intimate, so it wasn’t enough just to have one or two churches in our area that were connecting with these 20’s and 30’s, mostly unchurched or formerly churched folks. There needed to be many.

So for us, it wasn’t and couldn’t be about just starting one church that got bigger and bigger- it had to be a church that would plant churches (which would continue to plant churches). Multiplying communities that were doing their best to relationally connect to more and more people and connect those people to Jesus by living out, demonstrating and declaring the Good News.

We wanted things to be organic...

Read more...