At the beginning of the year I mentioned that church planting was one of the things I was most looking forward to in 2009.  Our church, New Community Covenant Church, is itself a 7 year old church plant with a vision to regularly plant new urban churches.  Since January there has been a fair bit of progress towards the vision of a new church in the South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville.

We’ve had a couple of prayer gatherings and information sessions for people to learn more about the vision to plant churches.  On Sunday night we held out first social event for New Community people to invite friends and neighbors to learn more about this future church.  Despite the snow, close to 40 people came out.  It was encouraging to see folks introducing themselves to each other and learning one another’s stories.  A New Community couple who lives in Bronzeville graciously opened their home to this event; their basement was a perfect spot to present the mission and strategy of the church plant.  Folks seemed to especially appreciate Michael’s historical perspective on Bronzeville and why this neighborhood could be an ideal location for a church committed to reconciliation and diversity.

We’ve added a New Community Bronzeville page to the church website.  This will be the place for regular updates and should serve as a way to describe the mission and vision to friends and neighbors.  The page is also available as an RSS feed.

I’ve been spending about half my time on the church plant for the past couple of months.  While it’s a huge learning curve, this is one of the reasons I wanted to be a part of this church in the first place.  I didn’t expect the chance to participate so soon, but I certainly won’t complain!  If by any chance you live on Chicago’s South Side or are otherwise interested in this vision, I’d be happy to connect via email (david at thenewcom dot com) or face to face.

There will, undoubtedly, be more updates about this adventure in the months to come.