Ministry: 2019 Reflection (Part I)

Our story picks up with a fairly quiet winter centered around vision casting and launch prep. We were still meeting every other week at the Princeton Garden Theatre, hoping to launch the church before Easter, but knowing that our time at this cinematic venue would eventually come to a close. That ending came faster than we anticipated when the theatre set our last showing for March 24th. All we could do was pray for a more permanent space, as we had only faint leads on alternative meeting places.

We began a few ministries intended to encourage community development and ecclesiological identity in the midst of this venue-exodus. Beginning in January, we started meeting once a month at On the Border Cantina for “Welcome to Church Nights,” a ministry during which bottomless chips and salsa become the bread and wine by which we met each other and Jesus at the table. In mid-March, we inaugurated two small groups/bible studies that later became known as “Community Groups.” Every gathering would begin with a meal prepared by one or two members of the Community Group. After meeting at the table, we would follow a four-week rotation: 1) socratically study the scriptures from Sunday’s sermon; 2) discuss social justice implementation in our Princetonian context; 3) pray for our church and community; 4) simply spend time together, because knowing another is the essence of loving them. As these specific ministries demonstrate, food is very important to Ecclesia—we are human, after all!

Community Groups were hosted in the homes of some gracious launch team members, settings that fostered a perpetual growing-together. Sunday morning services were no longer the only times we would routinely spend in fellowship. Out of these casual gatherings emerged a genuine sense of belonging and real friendship. Not long after our first Community Group meeting, I found that it was with fellow Ecclesians that I chose to spend much of my free time. If I was looking to grab a cup of coffee in town, spend a Saturday in the city, or escape to the beach for an afternoon, I knew I could always count on my Community Group. (Shout out to McCarty who loves spikeball and euchre just as much as I do.)

These ministries cohered our church family, expanded our evangelical outreach, and redoubled our conviction to plant a church despite all of the setbacks we faced along the way. So, when we weren’t meeting at Princeton Garden Theatre for service, we would congregate at Small World Coffee to host prayer walks downtown on behalf of Ecclesia and Princeton. (This was before the opening of Sakrid Coffee Roasters, for Sakrid has effectively become Ecclesia’s office space.) And in the end, God always proves faithful, for our prayer walks were answered in perfect timing with an offer to meet in the auditorium at John Witherspoon Middle School.

The pre-launch era of Ecclesia was quickly coming to a close. What better way for us to express thanksgiving and hopefulness than with a worship night! Just two weeks before our launch, we worshipped at the Paul Robeson Centre for the Arts, just down the road from where we would soon be meeting every single week. Ecclesia packed out the Art Centre’s upper room for a night full of indwelling and devotion. But I must admit, this worship night was the most stressful event of my Ecclesia life! In preparation for launch, we had purchased a new sound system: speakers and monitors that didn’t distort, a subwoofer that rumbled the floor with the bass, and a digital soundboard that could connect to my iPad for on-the-move audio engineering. It all arrived the day of the worship night, so I wildly tore apart a dozen cardboard boxes of new gear I had no clue how to operate and frantically learned how to make it all work. By the time the music began, we had a functioning setup, a packed room, and a worshipful atmosphere.

By the night’s final fermata, things had become so real. In just a few days, we would be launching a new church in Princeton, New Jersey. But neither the new gear (even though I’m an audiophile) nor the upcoming launch could eclipse the overwhelming sense of hope I had for the church family to which I had been drawn through God’s faithfulness and love. Hope and faith define Ecclesia’s movement towards launch. I look back on this time with a complex experience of what hope and faith feel like—I believe, but help my unbelief.

In my next post, I’ll cover our official launch and the rest of my time as a pastor-in-residence through September 2019. Thanks for reading!

If you would like to learn more about my work with Ecclesia Church, please visit our website.

Blessings, Tom Dearduff