Jeremy L. Berg

Every January we celebrate MainStreet’s birthday. On the occasion of our 6th anniversary since launching weekly worship in January 2012, I want to share some favorite memories from a forthcoming book documenting the MainStreet journey. Enjoy! 

In the summer of 2010 we were given the green light by the Northwest Conference and Church Planting Director, Mike Brown, to begin the “gathering phase” of church planting. In order to move forward with the Covenant’s support (especially financial) we needed to gather a Launch Team of 30+ committed adults.

I began with a degree of overconfidence when it came to recruiting this team of 30+ adults. The reason was I had the advantage of planting a church in my hometown where I have a lifetime worth of relationships. I had the following networks to tap in finding 30 people:

• • My parents still lived in town, and all of their church-going fiends would be interested in our effort.
  • I had my childhood church mentors and relationships from St. John’s Lutheran who might want to help out.
  • I had all of my old classmates who were still living in the area who would be curious about this new church.
  • I had spent about 6 years sub teaching in the schools, and coaching basketball. I could tap all of the families of the boys I had coached those years.
  • Most importantly, I had been a youth pastor in town at another church, and had launched the Revolution youth movement that reach well beyond that church. The families who were impacted by that ministry would want to help us with this effort, right?

So, Keri and I sat down and starting making our list of people we would invite to hear more about the vision for this new church plant. The list had well over 100 names on it. This was going to be easy!

I just assumed that all those families that had once attended local churches but had moved to other larger megachurches 20 or 30 minutes away in search of a more lively and impactful church, would all desire to be part off started a new, energetic, high impact church right in their own community. Who could resist such an exciting invitation? Finding 30 people was going to be easy!

Or, so I thought…

Only later did I remember the fateful word of warning from Mike Brown regarding recruiting a Launch Team. He said, “You will have your list of people, and God will have His list of people. Just rip your list up and toss it in the garbage. Its God’s list that will ultimately matter.”

He was right. In the end, very few of my local contacts ended up being part of that initial Launch Team. Facing the indifference or Minnesota-nice rejection of all of these personal friends was one of the hardest blows to bear as a “prophet in his hometown.”

But fortunately, God had his list of people and He was going to build this church alright. We just had to trust Him—again. That leads to the next story.