Welcome Dalach's and Long's to the Ecclesia
Bob Hyatt
July 2, 2012

Welcome Luke and Linda Dalach to the Ecclesia Network!

Hi Ecclesia family. My family and a few friends are at the very beginning stages of starting a network of missional communities in Northwest Indiana. Our little section of Indiana is part of Chicago’s culture….we’re Bears and Sox/Cubs fans and get all Chicago media. Illinois forgets we exist, Indiana would like to send us to Illinois and we’re one of the most racially segregated parts of the country per capita. But God has great plans for our Region!

My wife and I spent 12 years starting commuter college ministries with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Northwest Indiana. We grew up in the area and have always had a heart to see God’s kingdom come, especially among the next generations and among folks who’d usually not step foot in a church building. After a season on campus, we started to sense that God was calling us to go after the “missing generations” post-college. Last September we moved to Crown Point, the county seat. In December we transitioned off IV staff and now we’re taking baby steps to pursue this next vision.

We believe that Jesus and his good news of the kingdom are too good to sit back and watch as many of the next generation live their lives apart from God’s family. We want to make disciples of Jesus among the “missing generations” who become a network of missional communities. We want to see apprentices of Jesus everywhere.  Almost all of our IVCF supporters were excited about our vision, so we are in a season of rebuilding a support team and taking small steps in gathering a first missional community. This fairly strange, slower season is giving us a chance to really listen to and learn about our new city and network to find the folks God will bring to be a first “missionary community.”

That’s a little about us and our vision. We’re excited to be a part of a group of mission focused churches and leaders like Ecclesia and we’re excited for what the Spirit of God is bubbling up all over in our country.

 

Welcome Bryan and Molly Long to the Ecclesia Network

Hi, I’m Bryan Long and my wife Molly and I live on the North Shore of Boston. Our heads are spinning a bit in the midst of some big changes in our life. I graduated seminary in May and two weeks later our first child, Mia, was born. Then in August we move back to my hometown of Rochester, NY to begin church planting with the Ecclesia Network.

Church planting was not the original plan, but it started with some growing thoughts. I was working as a youth pastor at a large church in suburban Boston and there I witnessed the power and draw of the expressions of that particular local church. But as I continued working with students and young adults, I began asking new questions. Are there people for whom these forms aren’t the way in but are actually obstacles and barriers? What if we could create new environments that were more untreated and organic to reach those who aren’t being reached? Over time these questions became a calling, and this calling became a vision of a new church.

When I got plugged into the Ecclesia Network and Fresh Expressions, I realized that many others were asking these same questions. We desire to create a space for religiously unaffiliated people in our communities to explore Christ. Many are suspicious of established churches and tend to be drawn more to smaller and intimate groups. We are asking how we can incorporate the strengths of both alternative faith-based communities and the existing church. We’re envisioning a network of missional communities that meet regularly, but also join with the rest of the network in regular times of worship. We’re calling it The Agora Community. Agora is the Greek word for marketplace, the public center of first-century cities. We seek to enter agora spaces in our world to bring God’s Kingdom.

We start this new venture in September with a mixture of excitement, fear, thrill, terror and everything in between. But I am reminded of something A.J. Swoboda said at the Ecclesia National Conference: “Jesus invites us to come and die…to go into the grave and die and return again.” Our prayer is that we can sense what that Spirit is doing in Rochester and give up our lives to join in.

Tithe.ly is Partnering with Ecclesia!

By Bob Hyatt • September 15, 2025
A New Ecclesia Network Benefit! 

An Ethical Response to Violence

By By Jim Pace • September 15, 2025
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, social media has been filled with perspectives, as is typically the case. I am reluctant to add mine as there seems to be no lack one way or the other. To be clear, this is not just about Charlie Kirk, this is about violence across the board. I did not feel led to write this because it was Charlie Kirk specifically, but rather another in a long and winding line of acts of violence, that my ministering at Va. Tech gives me a bit of personal experience with. But as I have just finished teaching two classes on Christian Ethics, and as I was encountering again the spread of responses from my Christian sisters and brothers, I felt led to look at this event through that lens. Ethics, at its base, seeks to answer the question, “What is better or worse? Good or bad?” As a follower of Jesus, this is what seems right to me… 1. We never celebrate harm. Whatever our disagreements, rejoicing at a shooting violates the bedrock claim that every person bears the imago Dei (Gen 1:27). Scripture is explicit: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” (Prov 24:17); “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44); “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). I don’t love blasting verses like this, but you cannot get away from them if you are reading the scriptures. 2. Moral responsibility sits with the shooter—full stop . Saying “his rhetoric got him shot” smuggles in a just-world logic that excuses violence. As a contextual theologian, I have an enormous amount of respect for the impact our various narratives have in shaping our understandings of the world around us. They are inescapable. But that is not what I am talking about here. Ideas can be wrong, harmful, or worth opposing vigorously, but vigilante ‘payback’ is never a Christian category. My primary gig is that of a consultant for churches and non-profits. Today, in my meetings and among friends, I have heard some variation of “He got what he deserved,” and “I vote for some very public justice for the shooter.” Both of these views speak of revenge; the follower of Jesus is called to lay these down as our Messiah did. Not asked to, told to. 3. Grief and outrage about gun violence are legitimate; schadenfreude is not . Channel the pain toward nonviolent, concrete action (policy advocacy, community intervention, survivor support), not dehumanization. Here are four thinkers who have had a profound impact on the Christian ethic I try to work out in this world. As I share them, three things are worthy of mention. One, I certainly do not claim to follow their guidance perfectly, and at times I do not even do it well, but they have all given me what seems like a Jesus-centered and faith-filled direction to move in. Second, I do not claim to speak for them in this particular matter; I am merely showing how my ethical lens has been formed. Third, clearly I am not dealing with all the components of our response to these types of violence, this is not a comprehensive treatment, merely the reflections in the moment. Stanley Hauerwas : “Christian nonviolence is not a strategy to rid the world of violence.” It’s part of following Jesus, not a tactic we drop when it’s inconvenient. Stanley Hauerwas, Walking with God in a Fragile World, by James Langford, editor, Leroy S. Rouner, editor N. T. Wright : “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good. In other words, we answer evil without mirroring it. David Fitch : Our culture runs on an “enemy-making” dynamic; even “the political rally… depends on the making of an enemy. Don’t let that train your soul.” The Church of Us vs. Them. Sarah Coakley : Contemplation forms resistance, not passivity. For Coakley, sustained prayer trains perception and courage so Christians can resist abuse and give voice against violence (it’s not quietism). “Contemplation, if it is working aright, is precisely that which gives courage to resist abuse, to give voice against violence.” Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self. Coakley would say that far too often we react before we reflect. This is the problem that Fitch is getting at in much of his writing, that our culture actually runs on antagonisms, the conflict between us. We need to find a better way.