Millvale – Nick Poole

Continuing my posts on our recent MCM church plants, we’re going to look at our most recent church plant, Element Church, which was launched in August 2009.

04-13element-a — Pastor Rich Jones speaking in a Sunday morning service at Element Church.

Element is a unique church that meets in a very non-traditional environment, Mr. Smalls Theater, a rock concert venue. Since their launch Element has really blazed the trail toward reaching the unreached in Pittsburgh. Their worship is a little edgier then most, but they are seeing people who wouldn’t normally darken the door of a church now accepting Christ!

Here are some highlights from this past year at Element:

They launched on August 16 with over 230 people! The place was packed with standing room only!!
On January 17 of this year, Element had its very first water baptism with 12 people being baptized and 7 more people responding to accept Christ! It was truly a transforming Sunday. You can watch the recap video here.
This last month, Element held their second annual ‘Great Millvale Easter Egg Hunt’ with over 300 people! What is cool with this egg hunt is that they actually partner with the Millvale community officials for this event.
2010 Great Millvale Easter Egg Hunt
Then this last week, Element Church was actually featured in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review! What an honor and opportunity. You can see the article here.

As Element approaches their one-year anniversary this August, we know that God is really moving in Millvale through Element. This community that has experienced so many set-backs now has a group of believers serving and pulling for the success of Millvale! That’s Christianity at its finest!!

Yesterday our 8th church plant, Element Church, had their first monthly preview service. It was a great initial introduction to the community; the worship team was incredible; and we had 148 in attendance! During the service, I couldn’t help but think how amazing it was to see the group of 7 we started almost a year ago with now ministering to almost 150! Rich and his team were well prepared and laid out at a quality welcome mat to the community. I’m excited to see what God has in store in the coming months!

Now, some might ask, with such a great first preview service, why not launch now? Great question! The idea of monthly preview services has been explained in Nelson Searcy’s book, Launch, and to understand it, you have to first understand the main premise: The larger a church can launch, the quicker it will sustain itself, the greater the impact it can have. With that said, these services are geared toward accomplishing a few things:

Allowing the launch team to refine their process and work out the kinks in service planning & implementation. Without fail, there will always be a few things to correct and fix. Having a month between services allows the team to have time to correct these issues. The goal here is excellence.
It gives time for the leaders to focus on building teams, which in the long-run will impact the size and sustainability of a church plant. As people from the community come to the monthly preview services, leaders & members of the various teams (hospitality, tech, kids, etc.) that make up the larger launch team can look for possible team members and encourage them to join them in serving. The goal here is team building.
These services allow momentum to build toward the Grand Opening. Although a Grand Opening creates natural momentum, having some going in makes it only bigger. It’s like throwing gasoline on a small flame – it makes the flame bigger and more impacting. The goal here is pre-launch growth.

With this model of planting, the launch team still meets weekly. This weekly meeting should grow as the grand opening draws closer. Also, in between monthly preview services, there are ‘easy-invite’ events called comeback events. These might include a cookout, bowling, or other relationally-geared event. If you are looking to plant a church, I would strongly encourage you to check out Nelson Searcy’s book, Launch, and see if his model or portions of his model might work for you!

I was in Millvale tonight for our last Block Party. This is going to be the location of our next church plant which will be launching in August of 2009. The Block Party tonight was a great gauge on the potential that rests in Millvale. I can really sense that God is moving in this community! We had over 175 people come out tonight and gave away 98 book bags!!

There was one lady who came tonight that had attended our outreach in Millvale last month as well. She has seen our Neighborhood Group meeting in Subway on occasion but had never stopped in. Well, tonight she took a step of faith and committed her life to Christ at the Block Party. This is the first life committed to Christ at one of our Millvale outreaches and I believe it’s a sign of things to come!

Keep Millvale in your prayers in the coming months as we will be bringing on a church planter (more on that next week!) and working toward the launch of this new church!!

Our Millvale Neighborhood Group had their first monthly outreach this past Saturday in conjunction with APC’s Community Care Day. It was an awesome day, but wow was it hot!! We helped a lady who has cancer clean-up her yard, and then had a cookout for her neighbors. I am so proud of the group. They worked hard in 90+ degrees for over 3 hours and didn’t complain even once! What an honor it is to serve God!! Check out more pics here.

Tag: Millvale

MCM Update: Element Church

Element Church & Monthly Services

Block Party in Millvale

Neighborhood Group’s First Outreach