Church Planter Interviews – John Chandler
Bob Hyatt
Sep 30, 2010

So your church,  Austin Mustard Seed , is obviously in Austin, TX. Tell us a little bit about where you guys are planting.

Austin in general is a creative class city. Its’ main industry is ideas. University. Software. Design. Film. Technology. It was an intentional choice over 100 years ago with how to compete with Houston. Houston is about oil. Austin is about ideas.

The particular place we live is a neighborhood of Austin proper. We’re halfway between downtown and the city limits. Our house is about 5 minutes south from the place where everything bumps up to more affluent neighborhoods and better school systems. I like to refer to it as the do-nut. Where other churches don’t go. They either go into the city (downtown) or to the suburbs. The people in our area value being closer to the city but are protective about being around all sorts of different people. So it has a quasi-suburban feel but an urban mentality.

Tell us about the process you used for planting your church. What did that time look like? What did you do?

When we got to Austin (we moved here from Seattle) we just started inviting people into our home for a meal and a time to read scripture, talk and pray. Coming here, we knew one grad student and one family that was also moving to Austin. The student is still here, the family has moved on. We were incredibly intentional about relationships as I am bi-vocational and we started to ask how these things tied together: church and relationships. It’s very casual, very relational. It has structure, but wrapped around relationships. I guess now we have about 35 people who regularly are a part of our community, with about 20-25 each week.

Obviously the focus of this blog is more towards the missional church and looking at different church structures. What is the structure of your church? What would the average month look like?

Currently it’s meeting in our home on Sunday and encouraging people to move into smaller spaces during the week. Women doing tea together and talking. Triads or accountability groups. We’re trying not to be rigid, but organically moving towards those smaller spaces.

So as you think about the last 12 months of planting, what do you think worked really well?

Taking our time.

Being bi-vocational lets us do this. We haven’t felt the pressure to be something we’re not or get to a specific place quickly. We can approach people and help them find a place, whether it is with us or another great church. With that posture, we’re starting to see the dividends of people feeling cared and loved for and doing the same in return.

We’ve also been really intentional about forming relationships. We have a structure but the structure serves our relationships. Our primary focus is to cultivate relationships. Inherent underlying all of this is we want to be cross-cultural missionaries in Austin. So we think about it like we would if we were in another country. If we were in another country, we’d have to make everything about relationships. So that’s what we’re doing.

In the last 12 months, what hasn’t worked?

We’re not trying to be underground, but we don’t have an open, visible presence in the city. I mean, our home is open, and it’s the stage where we are probably at, but how does Austin know we’re here? It’s a shortcoming to how we’ve started. But then, we’re also reaching people who wouldn’t go to church even on Easter.

The second thing is that we have lots of relationships with people who aren’t part of the church, but currently we don’t have people coming into our community, being a part of it, who weren’t at least somewhat open to faith or Jesus. We primarily have people who left the church or were detached from it but did have some church background.

What is one failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?

I think we have failed to find a way to be the church outside of what we do on Sunday, which goes back to the presence in the city thing.

Ok. Let’s imagine it’s 365 days from now. What needs to be different in your community?

If we’re still in our house only, I’ll be concerned.

We would have allowed ourselves to get comfortable with who are here. Things that are living reproduce and multiply. I think we’ll be meeting in a public space and at least another group meeting in a home.

We also need more people meeting in groups of 2, 3 or 4′s to study and pray together. Our gathering is now at a place where we don’t have that kind of intimacy.

What is the biggest thing God has been teaching you in the past year? Listen to me.

Trusting that the structure and the project list for how our church works isn’t going to be found in a church plant book written in some other context. That the Spirit is actively shaping this. When I listen more to God, he certainly seems to speak more!

So let’s think 5 years into the future. What does Austin Mustard Seed look like? What’s happened?

I love the parish model. I love what we’re seeing in Jon Tyson’s church in New York City. I see multiple worship settings in different parts of the city networked together with maybe 150 in each gathering. A pastor overseeing it and it being a community of 3-4 scattered, mid-sized groups throughout the geographic “parish” of that community.

How It Is Now Is Not How It Will Always Be

By Bob Hyatt • 20 Mar, 2024
One of the main tricks in life, I believe, is not to extrapolate current conditions and circumstances off into the future. However, that’s exactly the tendency we have as humans, and especially, I’ve discovered, as ministry leaders. We look at things now and think they will always be that way. We long to see landmarks in the road, mileposts that tell us either we have now reached the pinnacle, the place we always dreamed of being (even if that place is only “stability”), or conversely, the bottom has fallen out and now is the time to bail out. But the mileposts are merely markers on the journey, telling us where we are now, promising nothing of the journey ahead. And so, when things are good, we see nothing but success and good times stretching out in front of us. In the depths of despair, during the most challenging times of life and ministry we feel as though the darkness has become the new normal. The reality is much more complex: there are always better times ahead, and worse ones as well. During those dark times, when ministry becomes more of a weight than a joy, I tell myself, “whatever is happening now will not keep happening forever.” Those words have kept me through relational breaks in our staff that seemed unfixable, through budget woes when we didn’t think we were going to meet payroll, even a time when our community lost a third of its members because we had let a beloved pastor go. In this way I have found hope. In the same way, during the successful times when we were growing, budget was bigger than ever, and when new people were engaging with the church seemingly every week I continued to tell myself, “what is happening now will not keep happening forever.” In this way I have found a measure of humility. There’s another way to read this mantra as well, one that encourages us not to miss what is happening right now as we overly focus on where we’d like to be or what we’d like to see happen. The challenge of ministry, like the challenge of life in general, is to be present to what’s happening now . Too many single people miss the joys of singleness longing to be married. Too many young married couples miss the joys of the early years without children because they long to be parents. Too many parents of young children miss the joys of the infant years, longing for the days when their children are more independent, less dependent on them for everything. And on it goes. In the same way we in ministry can miss the joys of a small, close community by looking at larger communities and wishing we had their resources and influence. We can miss the inherent learning and even joy of being shoulder to shoulder in community with others through challenging times because the difficulties and pain we are experiencing mask the ways in which we are being brought together, the ways in which we are being formed and the invaluable things we are learning. In life, and in ministry, remember: How it is now is not how it will always be. Learn to appreciate how things are now, but also take comfort in the fact that if things are difficult, there are better days ahead. Stay humble because no success is forever. Stay hopeful because, in Christ, no failure is permanent.

Exciting Announcement- Ecclesia is Joining Ascent!

By Chris Backert • 19 Feb, 2024
I’m writing to share some exciting and important news with you that we believe will be significant for Ecclesia in the days ahead! For the last few years, I have been engaged with other church and network leaders across the US and Canada about forming a new “connection” for the church in North America. The heart of the effort is around unifying, amplifying, and multiplying the kind of Christian witness that Ecclesia represents, for the sake of the gospel, over the next few decades. This new effort is called The Ascent Movement, and within the last 12 months, its momentum has picked up increasing speed. A few months ago, I was asked by the council of Ascent if I would help spearhead the development of the network in its next phase. I agreed to accept that task. One of the core goals of Ascent is to connect, coordinate, and collaborate with groups like Ecclesia so that we can do more together than we could in isolation. In many ways, it will function as a “network of networks” like Ecclesia functions as a “network of churches”. In addition to ministries like Ecclesia, there are also seminaries, mission agencies, and other ministry support organizations that are joining Ascent in these early days. For the last several months the Ecclesia board has been discerning whether or not Ecclesia would officially enter into a partnership affiliation with Ascent. We unanimously affirmed that decision at our recent board meeting. Since Ascent is in its early phases of formation, more information on the benefits and opportunities of this new partnership will be ongoing. However, we are happy to share some of the aspects of this new affiliation that we find compelling and will not only bless Ecclesia, but also all of the churches within Ecclesia. First, given the size of Ecclesia, there have always been areas of ministry that we believe are important, but toward which we have not had the scale to accomplish or contribute. Among these are concrete efforts around - increasing the witness of the Hispanic church in North America - supporting mission expansion to less-resourced parts of North America - increasing opportunities for disaster relief and response - and mobilizing prayer networks. Further, there are also specific and tangible benefits that are made possible through this partnership for any Ecclesia Churches. Some of these include things like - discounted tuition costs to Truett Seminary for any Ecclesia leader or member serving an Ecclesia Church. - discounted rate in utilizing the services of Chemistry Staffing for future hiring - access to a church-based missionary sending ministry for those Ecclesia Churches engaged globally, and more! Lastly, there is a specific aspect to this partnership affiliation that is particularly helpful to Ecclesia. Ascent has agreed to partner with Ecclesia over the next year to expand our church planting and multiplication reach in a way that benefits both Ecclesia and Ascent. Practically, this looks like Ascent investing a little over $1,000/month into Ecclesia over this next year and together working toward a set of mutually beneficial goals. As I think about this opportunity within the current moment of our network, it seems right for multiple reasons beyond the purely practical. At our Ecclesia board meeting in late 2022, we established a path for individual affiliation within Ecclesia to make concrete space for leaders who are outside ministry contexts that allow for our core congregational affiliation. The heart of this decision was a desire to increase the kinds of relationships that Ecclesia has within our scope of ministry. The decision to affiliate with Ascent is similar. Also, as I shared at our Ecclesia Gathering in January, this decision fits within the Core DNA of Ecclesia. When I look back at the founding of our network, three aspects were central then and have carried forward. First, our desire to extend the gospel to increasingly post-Christian, or more challenging, settings and groups of people. Second, a desire to exemplify a Christian witness aligned with the theological and missiological direction of affirmations like the Capetown Commitment. Third, our desire to provide a relationally rich journey of friendship for the churches and leaders who are part of our family. When I consider the affiliation with Ascent, we share in common those first two Core DNA. As for the 3rd foundational aspect of our network, I believe the time has come where Ecclesia itself needs “friends for the journey” in the same way that Ecclesia has provided a context of friendship for those within our community. On the other side of COVID, it’s clear that ministry in the days ahead is more exciting, while also more challenging and complex. We believe we need a greater community to be the most faithful to the gospel that we can. You can go to www.ascentmovement.org to get a quick glimpse of its vision. The current website is a placeholder for a more thorough site coming later this Spring. Ecclesia, of course, will have a seat at the table in its formation. We have also provided a one-page overview of Ascent on the attached document. We will keep you updated on this exciting development. Please feel free to reach out with any questions. - Chris
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