Leader Profile: Stephen Redden
Ecclesia Network
Apr 10, 2020

Stephen Redden is one of the founding pastors of NDC and oversees our  church multiplication efforts. He is also the director of  The Church Cooperative of Denver , the local church network NDC helped launch in 2017. He is a graduate of  Mississippi State University  (B.S. Computer Engineering, M.B.A.) and  Dallas Theological Seminary  (M.A. Biblical Studies). Stephen also does a variety of projects outside of NDC. He is the founder of  Third Circle , a consultative coaching practice, where he works with individuals and organizations to maximize their effectiveness.  Between 1996 and 2000 Stephen worked as an information technology specialist at  IBM Global Services  before leaving to work on a project with  Mission Aviation Fellowship  in Kazakhstan and Russia in 2000-2001. After returning to the US in 2001, Stephen joined the staff at  North Point Community Church  to help lead the Community Groups ministry. Stephen married Kate in 2002, and they welcomed their first son, Ethan, in 2004 and were blessed again in 2007 with the arrival of their second son, Andrew. Stephen loves football (Go Broncos and Hail State!) and futbol (Go Rapids and Gunners!), snowboarding, and considers himself a closet redneck and a geek at heart.

How would you describe the area your church is in?

Urban neighborhood

How would you describe the journey of pastoring New Denver? What have been some of the milestones/different seasons?

We started the church 10 years ago, and I was one of the founding pastors. In that time there have been a number of seasons and milestones along the way. The early years were marked by a lot of work to slowly build relationships and patiently serve our fledgling community as it grew slowly. In time, somewhere around year four, we hit a point where momentum began to build and we began to feel more stable. We had a steady self-sustaining community and focused on the tasks of growing our roots deeper. In some ways that season continues today in our main location, but four years ago we committed to making significant investments in multiplying our influence. We built on the momentum of our existing ministry residency and started a church planting residency as well. Two years ago we helped our first church planting resident launch a new church – Westside Church Internacional – a bi-lingual, multicultural church in west Denver. Today we continue to look for opportunities to grow and expand our influence at New Denver, but we are also exploring opportunities to bring on another church planting resident or work with an existing church to replant or revitalize a community.

Looking back, what do you know now you wish you had known when you first started New Denver?

Perseverance is the key to longevity in ministry. Everyone faces challenges and adversity, and things rarely go the way that you expect. If you can hold your expectations open-handed before God and believe that he is always at work in ways that you cannot fathom or understand, it allows you to persevere through the inevitable highs and lows of pastoral ministry.

As you think about what you’ve been able to do so far in ministry there what are some things you have done/tried that have worked well?

From the beginning, we sought to be a values-driven church. Our values have changed over time, but our commitment to discerning the few things we want to focus on as a community has remained consistent. This clarity of values helps us to know who we are and how we focus our limited energy and resources. In pursuit of living out those values, we never get too attached to programs or methodologies. One of our values is community, and to date, we’ve tried a variety of different approaches to living that out. The goal remains the same, but we hold loosely to our strategies. Lastly, I think one thing we’ve done well is to try and steward the people who come through our community well. Our city is very transient, and it has been easy at times to get cynical about how many people come and go. But the more we remain open-handed – celebrating people when they come and when they go and making the most to guide them and develop them while we’re here, we seem to see God bless and multiply our efforts.

What hasn’t worked so well? What have you had to rethink/reimagine/rework?

We’ve had to re-think evangelism over and over. In the early days, we were so desperate to “get the word out” and make new connections that it was difficult to be patient to see and appreciate the slow work of God. We were always pushing people to invest in others and to invite them to church. As we have been able to grow slowly, it has allowed us to be patient and see that in very post-Christian contexts like Denver, it may be years to see people open to engaging somehow in the life of the church.

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

In the early days, we were trying to create gatherings to build relationships and get some momentum going. I remember we did an event at someone’s house, bought a bunch of food, and invited 20-25 people. Three people showed up. It was so disappointing, but I tried to value and appreciate those three people well. It prepared me for the coming years when there would be low-attendance Sundays or seasons when attendance and participation would mysteriously drop. We developed a mantra – “Love the church you have, not the church you want to have.”

What is something you’ve been hearing from or learning from God in this last season of leading?

I turn 49 this year, and over the last few years, God has been impressing on me that innovation and leadership to engage coming generations doesn’t come from 50 and 60-year-olds. It’s time for me to start getting serious about moving from the “front” to the “back” – to get behind younger leaders and use everything I have to push them forward. This is not something that I’ve seen done particularly well by the church leaders in the generations ahead of me, but it’s something I’m convinced we need to do better.

What do you dream/hope/pray New Denver looks like in five years?

In five years I’d love to see us continuing to grow and engage people at our current location. We currently share space with the aging and dwindling congregation that owns the building where we meet. It’s been a great relationship, but over the last few years, we’ve felt constrained by their refusal to make space for us to grow by adding additional Sunday services. It would be great to get that resolved. But I’d also like us to continue to engage with reaching people through church planting and looking for ways to invest outside our current 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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