Rethink Mission: Inspiring gospel-centered missional churches

Recently a lot of attention has been given specifically to urban church planting, with conferences, speakers and writers focusing on taking the gospel to the city, for the sake of the city.

That’s good.

But what about the ‘burbs? They need gospel-centered churches, too, don’t they?

With that in mind, we’re talking to Trey Herweck, planting pastor of Refuge Church in St. Charles, an outer-ring suburb of St. Louis.

Rethink Mission: Trey, you yourself are a product of the ‘burbs, but I know that God had to break down some of your misconceptions about suburban life before you could move back and plant in St. Charles. What were some of those?
Trey Herweck: Wow, I could go on for a while on this one. I think the “missional code” of the suburbs is easy to stereotype but extremely difficult to reach with the gospel if you are centered in the suburbs. This was hard for me to learn. Everyone is looking for acceptance. In the urban core, you do that by joining a certain group or movement that secures your identity. In the suburbs, you do it by building your own fortress complete with lawn, two car garage and picket fence. It’s not as much about who you spend time with as much as it is about what you spend time with. The ‘burbs seem to be built on outward appearance which makes it extremely difficult to really break inside. I thought it would be easier to throw out the “rebellion” movement and kind of daring people to be a part of something new, not the anti-church, but not the every-church. Here’s the problem in the ‘burbs – when you dare people to come back to your church, they won’t…they’ll go find something else.

RM: You came to expose the idols of suburban culture, but in the process some of your own idols were exposed. Tell me about that.
TH: Yeah, I’ve had to repent to our staff and leadership often of my rebellious nature toward the suburban attractional church plant. In trying to be cool and not be gimmicky, we failed (I failed) to convey to people that they were important and valuable. I had become more concerned about not being consumeristic than about engaging our community. It’s never good to be more about what you’re against than what you’re for…unless maybe you’re a politician.

RM: What is good about suburban life? What are the positive values you see?
TH: There is a lot that is great about suburban life. It does tend to be very family friendly. You get more bang for your buck space wise in a home. We have everything we could want close to us – a good school, office, nightlife, parks, etc… If you put effort into it, you can get to know your neighbors deeply. We’ve lived in our house for 2 years and now all of our neighbors who were previously unchurched have started attending, even joining Refuge. There are roughly 313,000 kids of similar age to our own just on our block (slight exaggeration). One family has an in-ground pool (jackpot!). When it comes to the church, you have a ton of kids, you have stability, you have givers, you have volunteers (to a degree), and you have a ton of kids. When you walk down the street, people will make eye contact with you, say hi in the grocery store, wave or nod when you drive past each other. When your family is in need, suburban people will flock to help out with meals, transportation, babysitting, finances, even space in their fridge (had to use that one earlier this year).

RM: What about the idols of suburban life that need to be confronted?
TH: Well, in all of that above that is great there also lays the deep idolatry that is hard to really confront with the gospel. I think the mindset of the suburbs with all of the stuff that surrounds you is “herein lies my heaven, herein lies my security, herein lies my salvation.” It’s hard because I have a tendency to err toward the cynical and I don’t want to do that. However, in the suburbs I see a lot of churches doing good things, I see help for the poor, I see passionate music and preaching, I see cool programs and state of the art technology and buildings, there is church growth, there is effective community assistance, there are good people, there are people overcoming addictions, becoming better fathers or businessmen…but if you’re asking me do I see a lot of people falling in love with Jesus? I don’t necessarily see that.

I think Tim Keller (ever heard of him?) talks about this as “outside in” Christianity. There seems to be some outside changes that takes place, but the hard problem in the ‘burbs with this is that the chief idol is the external because it’s easy to change and put on the show. We joke about how our first mission in St. Charles is to get people lost…because then we can introduce them to Jesus.

Our vision for ministry is Rethink, Renew, Respond. The gospel forces you to think differently, from worshiper of self to worshiper of God. This transforms your basic assumptions about the world around you. The gospel renews your primary identity being in Christ, which allows you not to be so dependent on the externals to tell you you’re ok, but is dependent on Christ. And finally, the gospel, having renewed your mind and identity, compels you to respond to the world around you in want for restoration and renewal of all things. It seems to me that most churches in suburbia focus mostly on what God says that shapes what you do, as opposed to who God is that changes who you are that then shapes what you do.

In confronting the suburban idols I’m realizing that you can’t just shame people in to dealing with internals. They will run away and there are way too many alternatives. So our hope is to provide a safe place where people don’t have to be perfect and can let out some of their crap. We want to make it easy for people to come and feel loved and feel apart, but we want to constantly challenge people to let down the show, ask the hard questions, be vulnerable. That’s difficult when image is everything.

RM: You planted Refuge over 2 years ago – what would you do differently now?
TH: This is such a difficult question because I would not have learned what I know now if I had not made a lot of the mistakes that I made (and continue to make) so I’m thankful for the time we’ve had and somehow, God still has surrounded us with amazing people. Probably, I would have loved my wife better and repented to her more often and taken the time to set up a better schedule with her in mind because I’m not married to any of the freaks that have come along the way and sucked the time and life out of me. And yet, some of them took my best which is absolutely shameful.

I also would celebrate more. It is so easy to see all that is not happening, especially in church planting. Too many times I failed to celebrate what God was doing and I am learning to celebrate better.

RM: What last words would you say to someone who feels called to move from a city to plant in the suburbs? What advice can you give?
TH: The suburbs are a worthy mission field and probably the toughest to penetrate with the gospel. Please don’t feel second rate, like somehow your calling is not as grand. People, money, kids, influence, they all dwell in the suburbs and they are in desperate need of the authentic gospel and not just a neat experience to go out and be nice people.

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For more on the gospel in the suburban context, visit: http://thesubtext.org

The heart of this website are the Missional Q&A Interviews, updated weekly, where church leaders like you talk about the issues they face on a daily basis.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Missional Q&A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.