Nathan E. Lewis

listen to the audio recording of this lecture presented at Westminster Seminary in California on April 23.

Lecture Three
The Evolution of Evergreen Church Planting

In the 19th century pioneers traveled west on the Oregon Trail. At Fort Hall, Idaho, there was a major fork in the road. Pioneers with Gold Fever turned south onto the California Trail while pioneers searching for a quiet agrarian life turned northwest toward the End of the Trail in Oregon. The California crowd was looking for an overnight success and a few struck it rich. Many more discovered that not all that glitters is gold. The Oregon pioneers discovered fertile and verdant valleys surrounded by spectacular mountain ranges with volcanic cones and a plethora of waterfalls. They purchased land for a song and settled into a grueling life in paradise, working by the sweat of their brows to subsist.
Church planting out west has followed a similar trail to a fork in the road. Some church planters have viewed the success of the Willow Creek model in the 1980’s thinking: “If I do exactly what Bill Hybels did, then I will build a congregation of 18,000 and an international movement.” In the 1990’s church planters said, “If we mimic Tim Keller and the Redeemer Network, then we will achieve an identical result.” In the 21st century we now hear church planters say, “What has happened at Mars Hill with Mark Driscoll will certainly happen for us as we do exactly what he did.” Most of these church planters all turned south at Fort Hall. The vast majority of church planters who continue toward the End of the Trail discover that the most common experience of church planting is a grueling subsistence. Many of them become discouraged. They no longer lift up their eyes to hills to look for the Maker of heaven and earth.
In the fall of 1992 the Bryan Estelle family of three and the Nathan Lewis family of three relocated to Beaverton, Oregon to plant Evergreen Presbyterian Church. As a Teaching Elder of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), I had completed, along with Glenda, my wife, the requirements of Mission to North America, our General Assembly’s committee charged to multiply PCA congregations on this continent. We were members of a second generation of PCA church planting, directed by a strong central committee. The model has become known informally as “the parachute model.” Mission to North America would choose targets then parachute qualified men accordingly. I landed in Oregon, still to this day considered one of the “destitute regions.” The boundaries of the Presbytery of the Pacific Northwest are the Canadian border, the Columbia River, which is the Oregon/Washington border, the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Range. Oregon was and remains clearly “out-of bounds,” and so we parachuted in to the Emerald Forest to plant a church.
I transferred from the South Coast Presbytery to the Presbytery of the Pacific Northwest, examined by three committees and on the floor of a stated meeting held at Green Lake Presbyterian Church in Seattle. Warmly welcomed into this sweet fellowship of presbyters, I also discovered their loathing of the parachute model. This model required our mission to be financially independent in two years. Direct oversight of our mission was the MNA Western Regional Coordinator. The Reverend Phil Clark, residing in Laguna Nigel, California, more than 850 miles from our mission target, oversaw all PCA missions west of the Mississippi. In our first year in Oregon, Phil retired and the Reverend Lewis Ruff became coordinator. The mission committee of our presbytery also provided oversight, mainly prayer support. To attend meetings we would travel, sometimes by air, as far north as Edmonton, Alberta, 993 miles from Portland, Oregon.
Consistent with the church planting statistics of the 1980’s – 1990’s PCA mission survivals were 50% of missions launched. Isolation of church planters is a major cause. Those of us with maverick spirits thrive on free space but sooner or later, the isolation provides space for depression, unwise decisions, drifting off course, and apathy. Anticipating this trend, Bryan Estelle joined me. Together, Bryan, Lisa, their baby Sean, Glenda, and our baby Hannah, formed a team, to work alongside each other for 1.5 years. In the 1990’s the parachute model improved as MNA began to parachute teams instead of individual church planters. Bryan and I were pleased to have been pioneers jumping together improving the national model. We do not take credit for the idea as it seems to have clear biblical precedent.
In 1997 Evergreen Presbyterian Church particularized as a congregation of the PCA. The Presbytery of the Pacific Northwest examined our candidates toward the ordination and installation of elders and deacons. The stated meeting of presbytery met in Beaverton and in our worship meeting, the founding members of Evergreen Presbyterian Church voted to extend a call to me to be the first Pastor of the congregation. In this same worship meeting, the next item of business of our newly formed congregation was to approve by vote our mission to plant Crosswind PCA in Gresham, Oregon. As a brand new congregation we were participating in the evolution of PCA church planting in the west. The reasoning for a new congregation starting a mission so early in its existence is that a congregation’s DNA is set early. It has been our desire from the very beginning to be a multiplying congregation. In 2000 we helped to start Eden Korean Presbyterian Church and in 2001 we started Evergreen Presbyterian Church of Salem, calling my brother and Westminster graduate, the Reverend Stephen Lewis, evangelist, then pastor of this congregation.
In this second phase of church planting we ceased to be “Parachuters,” as we developed a model of congregation sponsored missions within our geographic region. We formed the Oregon Mission, a collegiate gathering of church planters in Oregon caring for each other, preventing the isolation with its dire consequences. In 2002 Mission to North America, working with the Oregon Mission planted Intown Presbyterian Church in Portland. This same year, Crosswinds PCA in Gresham closed her doors. Eden and Evergreen of Salem continue to thrive to this day. In this second phase of church planting we were performing better than the 50% survival rate. However, by 2002, the costs to start a PCA mission in the west had skyrocketed. In 1992, our team of two, raised a two-year budget of $120,000. We made personal sacrifices to do it. By 2002, a western church planter working solo was raising a three-year budget of $450,000. In 2008 Mission to North America sent another two-man team to Oregon to plant Hope Presbyterian Church in the inner-east side of Portland. They have raised a five-year budget of one million dollars.
Not only has the cost of living increased during these years, but our experience has proven that it takes more than two years, closer to an average of five years, to organize a PCA congregation in the Pacific Northwest. While we have been grateful to receive Mission to North America church planters with parachutes, one chute for each planter and five chutes for his money chests, we began to create a new model of multiplication. In 2003 an independent congregation of six members on Mt. Hood, sixty miles from our Beaverton site, deeded its physical property to Evergreen, coming under our care. Our elders began to serve this congregation. Overnight, we became a multi-site congregation. For a few years we were too busy to think and plan a new multi-site model. Evergreen officers and members seriously undertook their labors of love on the mountain serving Hoodland Chapel. At the same time we had established St. Stephen’s Academy, a classical school as a ministry of Evergreen.
In 2006 four families, members of Evergreen in Beaverton, living 16 miles to the south in Newberg, proposed to our Session the opening of a new worship site in their town. The teen members of these families played water polo in Newberg. One of the families began to invite the water polo teams to their home on Friday evenings to socialize. Two of the boys on the team began to ask their hosts questions about faith and life, resulting in a late night ongoing Bible Study. Water polo players began to profess faith in Christ and their parents were beginning to notice significant changes in their lives, and thus showing interest in our church community centered in another town 16 miles to the north. Our Session decided to start a new worship site, resulting in the baptism of 28 teens and adults. After the fact we began to form our new model of church planting – the multi-site model. Plenty of congregations nationwide in various denominations are using and perfecting the multi-site model. At Evergreen we do not claim that we are charting its course or executing the model to any degree of expertise. I am here to report that we are doing it and that as a model it is an improvement over the parachuting model.
Our particular version of the multi-site model operates three worship/ministry sites with one Session, one treasury. Both the Beaverton and Newberg sites also have shared one Minister of the Gospel for the past 3.5 years. This decision has transformed me into a circuit-riding preacher, driving 20 miles from my home to Newberg to participate in a 9:00 a.m. Sunday worship meeting, then driving 16 miles to the Evergreen site in Beaverton to participate in an 11:00 a.m. worship meeting.
This multi-site model greatly improved our church planting efforts. The first significant benefit has been the Session’s direct and personal oversight of the mission. Church planting was no longer the work of one single evangelist approved by our Session. It was now the work of our Session. Teaching and Ruling elders together with our Diaconate began to make decisions, approving the work of site-specific ministry teams. Our Ruling Elders were further engaged in church planting as we began in 2007 to merge the Oregon Mission with the Puget Sound Church Planting Network to form The Pacific Northwest Metro Church Planting Network. Evergreen elders exploded in renewed enthusiasm for presbytery-wide involvement through the network.
A second significant benefit has been a real connection between PCA congregations and missions in Oregon, towards the future formation of an Oregon Presbytery. In 1992 I forecasted the goal of an Oregon Presbytery in the year 2010. We are nowhere close to forming the Oregon Presbytery in this coming year. This goal may be realized in 2020. When we do establish the Oregon Presbytery, the founding congregations will be known to each other, enjoying a rich history of joint ministry, fellowship, and shared worship. At the End of the Trail we have met with our share of fiery trials and tribulations. We have not considered these to be barriers preventing our kingdom advancement. Rather, we have viewed them as hurdles in a race. We members of Christ’s Church are not so much sprinters as we are hurdlers.
A third significant benefit of the multi-site model is the multiplication of opportunities for members to serve. Each new worship site produces a ministry team who prays, plans, and fulfills tasks. We employ a full time administrator, Frank LeClerg, who serves all three of our present worship sites. A large part of his job is to mobilize members to serve. In this multi-site model we have increased both the number of jobs and the number of members who actively participate in the outreaching ministries of the church.
A fourth significant benefit has been lower costs. Our Newberg worship site is 3.5 years old and we have spent an average of $18,000.00 annually at this site. This past October, our Session completed its search for an assistant pastor called to establish the Newberg site as a congregation of the PCA. We extended this call to the Reverend E.C. Bell, who is raising a fifth of the funds parachuting evangelists must raise. He begins his church planting in Newberg with approximately 80 regular participants, who know first-hand that others in Beaverton sacrificed to give birth to their mission known as Chehalem Valley Presbyterian Church. In turn, along with their new Pastor, they are already planning to be a multiplying congregation in Yamhill County.
In 2008 four Evergreen members met with me to express their desire to start a new mission. These four adults had worshipped at Evergreen for at least 12 years becoming more and more comfortable, and less active. Over the years Evergreen had begun to attract more upper-middle class families reaching out to fewer people on the edge. These four remembered that in 2004 through our food distribution at the Evergreen site, we had met a ring of prostitutes. The Evergreen secretary, Kay Kohlmeyer, began to teach a weekly Bible Study for them in the late morning. Several visited our Sunday morning worship meetings then told Kay that they did not feel comfortable doing so. When she pressed them they said that they had recognized several of their clients in the sanctuary. We began to worship on Saturday evenings with the members of the ring alongside other outcasts of our community. Ten or so weeks later, the leader of the ring was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a prison term in Umatilla. The Saturday worship meeting unraveled in fear. In 2008 I met with these four Evergreen members who said, “We want to do it again. We are proposing the planting of a new mission right here…. multiple congregations at one site. If we can host multiple worship sites with one Session, one treasury, one preacher, then we can cluster congregations in this one site facility under one Session, with one treasury and one preacher.”
The proposal sounded good to me. Along with our Session, I dreamed of our facility being used as often as possible. The thought of church doors closed at any time is undesirable. I was beginning to wear thin commuting to Newberg several days weekly and so, the thought of our next mission located in the Evergreen Beaverton building was attractive. With the approval of the Session we formed a ministry team who designed a new mission called Reconciliation. In March 2008 we began to meet as a ministry team on Saturday nights. We prayed. We planned to target neighbors living on the edge of economic stability, social acceptability, and spiritual confusion. Our facility sits on the busy corner of Hall Boulevard and Hart Road in Beaverton. The neighborhoods to the southwest are home to upwardly mobile families, mostly Anglo and Asian. The neighborhoods to the northeast are home to lower income families, mostly Hispanic and Anglo. While we have targeted a specific demographic group of people, we realize that we are not in control of whom the Holy Spirit sends our way. Reconciliation includes a single African American man who lives in our target area within walking distance of our site but it also includes a retired Disciples of Christ Minister, 79 years old, and his wife of 54 years, suffering the early stages of Alzheimer’s, living in the southwest quadrant rather than the northeast. The middle-aged sister of our guitarist, who stopped attending church worship in her early adulthood, rarely misses a Reconciliation worship gathering and she has invited her close friend, who is a member of a parish four miles from our site.
At Recon, our short name for our Saturday night mission, we worship together for about 35 minutes. We then share a meal together, prepared by a volunteer member of the group. People linger around tables for 1.5 hours. Anyone with a need may complete a simple, one-page form requesting assistance and the officers present immediately respond to the need. 25% of our evening offering is given directly to the needs expressed by those who participate. 25% is given to assistance organizations in Beaverton and Portland. 25% is given to our church planting work in Guadalajara. The remaining 25% is used for operating costs. These operating costs are low: we have one Minister of the Gospel and one facility, and so this new mission is relieved of the two largest costs in church planting. This allows us to relax the pace of natural church development. So many missionaries suffer under incredible pressure to produce numbers, conversions, results. The cluster model alleviates much of this pressure. In such a climate, then we must take to heart even more so, Jesus’ parable of the talents. In doing so we have replaced humanly manufactured benchmarks with a holy fear of the divine Master and his commission to expand his kingdom and to serve his Church.
At Recon we emphasize the ministry of reconciliation – God reconciling himself to us and reconciling us to God, then God reconciling us to one another. This is the biblical grid and theme for our consistent proclamation of the gospel at Recon. It informs not only the ministry of the word but also our prayer and fellowship. 13 years ago, I officiated the wedding of Ted and Robin. In the first 13 years of their marriage they did not darken the doorway of any church. Ted’s sister is one of the four Evergreen members who proposed the starting of Recon, and she invited Ted and Robin to join us. They began to regularly worship with us and in May 2008, Robin professed faith in Christ, requesting to be baptized. Ted is growing spiritually and in time we expect him to come to the font. This past winter I preached through the book of James and Robin told those gathered during our open prayer that a tumor the size of a grapefruit had been discovered within her. She requested that we anoint her with oil and pray for her healing. I keep a Crown Royal bottle full of olive oil at the Evergreen site for such occasions and so, we gathered around her. Elder Charlie Meeker and I laid hands upon her, anointed her with oil and prayed for her healing. The following week at Kaiser Hospital surgeons removed a benign tumor the size of a grapefruit from Robin. One of the amazing results has been a growing and enthusiastic openness in our times of prayer at Recon meetings.
Not every story has a happy ending. This past summer Recon hosted a BBQ in the church parking lot, inviting neighbors to listen to Roughly Hewn, a local Celtic band. One man, who loves Celtic music joined us and began to attend nearly every meeting at our church site, including Recon. He had been raised an atheist, and now, as a middle-aged man, he was investigating the church for the first time. His reason for doing so, beyond the Celtic music was that his girlfriend, a practicing Roman Catholic had terminated their relationship. This man told us that he wanted to learn how to pray and that his request was the restoration of this particular relationship. We taught him to pray in the context of embracing the gospel and following the Lord Jesus. All of this he complied with and practiced until the Advent season. His girlfriend completely cut him off and with no inkling of hope, his investigation into a divine Person who answers prayer came to a screeching halt. He concluded that there is no God after all, and we have not seen him for several months. Nevertheless, the ministry of prayer continues fervently at Recon.
Our Elders and Deacons gather annually in January at a retreat center for an extended time of prayer and planning. This past January 2009 retreat was dedicated to reviewing the Newberg Mission’s first vision, mission, and core values statements and to a proposal to start a third mission at the Beaverton site. This third emerging congregation would begin to meet at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings. Rather than host a second worship service, our idea is to establish another congregation under the same roof. Our multi-site model of one Session, one treasury, and one Minister of the Gospel serving multiple worship sites has now evolved into the cluster model: one Session, one treasury, and one Minister of the Gospel serving multiple missions using the same facility.
In February of 2008, one of the assistant pastors serving a sister congregation in Portland was notified that his call would terminate due to budget constraints. In March our Session extended a call to him as assistant pastor to assist me in forming a ministry team to plant Ascension PCA at our Beaverton site. In the space of three weeks he has raised $82,000.00 toward the support of this new mission. This late spring we will form the ministry team to pray and to plan through the summer. After Labor Day 2009 we will begin to worship at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays on the corner of Hall and Hart in Beaverton, sharing the facility with Reconciliation and Evergreen. The cluster model allows for accountability, security, frugality, and collegiality.
At this past week’s Diaconate meeting, one of our wise Deacons said to me: “Nathan, we can do Ascension. When are you going to develop the details of this cluster model?” I said, “We are writing it together as it unfolds. We don’t have a kit that was delivered in a carton by FedEx. We don’t open a three-ring binder and follow step by step a plan that worked in the suburbs of Chicago. I promise you more details than I delivered when we started Chehalem Valley PCA in Newberg. If you remember, we had more to go on during the Newberg launch than we had when we launched Stephen in Salem.” If there is any detailed ideology we tap it would be Natural Church Development founded by Christian Schwarz in Germany.
The evolution of Evergreen church planting has been more specifically the perseverance of the hurdling holy fools. If there is one deterrent to the establishment of reformed congregations at the End of the Trail it is the lack of perseverance. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
 He does not faint or grow weary;
 his understanding is unsearchable.
 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles; 
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.” “Pride goes before a fall.” Perseverance is most humbling. Picture the poor freshman hurdler in his first race slapping down every single hurdle, his shins bruised, all eyes upon him the other hurdlers already drinking Gatorade. Nevertheless, he perseveres, completing his miserable race, crossing the finish line as the bats begin to cruise at dusk. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
We need a few more men at the End of the Trail who can say at the end of their lives: “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” I think that the next congregation in our cluster ought to be named Perseverance Presbyterian Church. The breakdown of the analogy of the hurdler church planter is the length of the race. A hurdler faces a series of barriers placed upon the same stretch, the length of the sprint. But a church planter faces barriers placed upon a course the length of a marathon.
When I was student here at Westminster, I went to the $1.50 theatre to watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Perseverance, in the world of Bill and Ted is translated, “Party on, dudes.” In the military world, perseverance is translated, “Carry on, soldier. Stick to your post.” In U2’s song “Walk On,” perseverance is translated:
And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong -Walk on, walk on
What you got they can’t steal it
No they can’t even feel it - Walk on, walk on…
Stay safe tonight - Walk on, walk on
What you’ve got they can’t deny it
Can’t sell it, or buy it - Walk on, walk on.

At the End of the Trail we need men who will invest their lifetime to till the soil and sow a crop. Every once in a while an amazing bumper crop surprises us. But usually, we work our fingers to the bone, rejoicing in a modest planting, slowly growing, surviving the storms. A few strike gold and everyone flocks to them to discover how they did it. Most of us plow and plant and the harvest arises over several generations. Few people drive out to the farm to say, “Tell us the secret of your success.”