Grace Covenant Church | Wenatchee, WA

• Josh McPherson
• Jan 6, 2011
• Series: Church Profiles
• Categories: Church Planting Articles, Latest News

Briefly describe your story of your call to plant a church

After leaving a youth-pastor position and spending 5 years running a small business, my wife and I were a part of a small Bible-study that was kicking around the idea of planting. The call to preach/teach/pastor was still burning strong, and I found myself spending all my free time studying to do just that.

While attended a DG Conference in Minneapolis, while praying about the future, my wife stopped, looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said, "When are you going to start spending your full-time energies doing what God put you on this earth to do? I think you should plant this church, and I'm behind you 100%"

We went home that weekend and started making plans to leave my business, start seminary, and plant the church. We haven't looked back. God is good!

How did you build up your core? What advice would you give to guys in the core-stage?

Our story...we spent 6 months with 5 families just doing a Bible study, with real no thought to plant. After several months, the idea started floating around, so I drafted a 28-page vision/mission/doctrinal statement and invited 15 families to read it, pray about it, and see if they wanted to join.

7 families said yes, so now we had 12 committed families. We began a year-long process of meeting, talking, praying, and teaching through some key theological issues that we wanted to be firmly in our foundation (reformed theology, complimentarianism, missional-living, etc etc). When the core team felt "ready" (haha, yeah right!), we "launched".

My advice...get your theology nailed down and articulated, get the gospel built into the bones of your core, and then, as soon as possible, start inviting non-believers. We did not do this soon enough, and I think we suffered for it. The freshness and vitality of having non-believers among us asking really good questions has been so life-giving. Also, build replication and the expectation for multiplication into the DNA of your church from day one.

What were the biggest challenges you faced in planting your church (and/or currently facing)?

Biggest challenges we faced??...people coming from other churches! We realized very quickly that we could become the "new flavor of the month" for Christians unhappy with their current church-situation, and that if we weren't careful, we would be so overwhelmed with these church-hopping Christians that THEY would begin shaping the culture of our church (which would, by nature, make our church-culture very unstable).

And because of our theological positions, we were getting people from all over the map, from hard-core reformed, Psalm-sing-only paedobaptist post-millennialist, to card-carrying Arminian-credobaptist-flag-waiving charismatics, and everything in between. Yeehaw!

So, we made it a point to sit down with as many people as we could to hear their reasons for coming to GCC. For some, the reasons were Gospel-centered and misison-oriented. Awesome. For many others, it was because the "band was too loud" at their old church, or "they just weren't meeting our needs." We realized that these kind of people would say the same thing about us in 5 years (or less?), and we had ZERO desire to build a church around disgruntled evangelicals, so we kindly but firmly encouraged them to stay where they were and work for positive gospel-change (or ask the Lord to change their hearts, and repent from being a bench-sitting consumer and get their buttooties in the game).

While we probably appeared a little stand-offish at first, I think we saved ourselves a lot of headaches down the road, as well as earned the respect of fellow pastors in our area. The people that did come and stay clearly understood our mission as a church, bought into it 100%, and quickly put their shoulders to the plow.

How did you become involved with Acts 29? What have been the biggest benefits of being in the network?

I heard about A29 through some friends and started tracking the movement from a distance. We immediately had a sense of brotherhood around common doctrinal distinctives.

I then attended the inaugural class for re:train, met a ton of amazing men (Scott Thomas, Harvey Turner, Leonce Crump, Thomas Weaver, Rob Burns, Carlos Montoya, PJ Tibayan, Mike Anderson, etc etc), and realized that I'd found a community of long-lost brothers. Our theological, missional, and familial passions were of one accord...I instantly felt at home.

The biggest benefit I have experience so far is simply being in relationship with like-minded men. I find myself regularly challenged by the passion and zeal of my A29 brothers for Jesus, their families, their church, and their city. It is a humbling thing to work alongside such men, and it is becoming one of the great joys of my life.

What advice do you have for men who are wrestling with the decision to plant? 

-Don't do it. If there's anything else that sparks your interest, do that. Planting isn't one of several great career options...it is only what you do when you realize you'll go insane unless you don't. For us, it came to the point where we believed that we would be disobedient to Jesus if we didn't. Short of that, you won't make it.

-Seek council...God calls, equips, and confirms that calling in community. What is your wife saying? Your friends? Those closest to you? If there is any hesitation or concern from them, listen up.

-Get assessed...the value of having experienced planters lovingly but firmly poke, prod, and mettle in your life to see if you are called is priceless. Take advantage of it.

How do you pastor your family?

I want them to love what I love, so my first step is to be intentionally engaged in my relationship with Jesus. Seeing my father read his Bible every morning, often weeping and praying over it, marked me for life. I want my children to see the same.

Secondly, I want to be intentional about shepherding and cultivating the gospel in the heart of my wife. She exerts massive influence in the lives of our children, so investing in her is time well spent...both for our children and for me! Oh, how she encourages me...what an amazing woman!

Lastly, I try to be intentional about tying strings from the hearts of my young children to myself. In other words, I want to work hard cultivating relationships with them now, so when they're older, they'll want to come to their daddy for council/advice. If I don't win those battles NOW, I wont' get a shot at fighting the other ones later.

I want them to love their daddy, trust their daddy, and want to be with their daddy. I try to take one of my children out for a date each week, talking, listening, laughing, making memories. I'm also the bed-time guy, where we do family worship, sing, read the Bible, wrestle, pray, talk about the day, etc. I try to learn what motivates them, what they love to do, and then engage them on that level. And I also seek the advice of my wife A TON in this category, as she's an incredibly helpful allie in knowing how to win the hearts of my kids.

I don't want my family to be sacrificed for the sake of the gospel...I want to bring my family along so we can together make sacrifices for the sake of the gospel. By God's grace, I think we're on track...but oh my, lots of work ahead! :)

Outside of the Bible, what is the most helpful book you have read for church planting?

Mark Dever’s "Deliberate Church" and Larry Osborne’s "Sticky Teams." They’re not specifically books on church planting but thinking through the issues of gospel-centeredness and leadership was invaluable.

Church Profile: Grace Covenant Church
Launch Date: May 18, 2008
Location: Wenatchee, WA

Mission, Vision, Values of Church 

GCC exists to saturate our region with believers living out the gospel in community on mission for Jesus, making disciples and planting churches to the glory of His grace.

What is your philosophy of community in your church and what does that look like practically in your church? Of evangelism?

We have been greatly served by the GCM Collective and A29 guys like Jeff Vanderstelt. We are currently implementing Gospel Communities...and integrated core of believers intentionally living on mission together through the normal rhythms of life as an expression of the body of Christ in our city. This one "engine" drives the pistons of our discipleship, leadership development, community, evangelism, and much of our biblical counseling.

We believe that the gospel TRANSFERS us into a new community, the gospel TRANSFORMS us in that community, and that the gospel is most fully TRANSMITTED through that new community living out the wisdom and beauty of the gospel in life together. So, community is a big-deal to our mission as a church.

What are some examples of God's grace that you have seen in your life and/or the life of your church?

Exactly one year ago this month, we entered a very difficult church-discipline scenario with an unrepentant adulterer. After 6 months of pleading and pursuing, we finally made the difficult decision to bring it before the entire body and move forward with formal discipline.

While unbelievably painful/draining at the time, we have now been able to look back and see the profound purifying process it was for our church. That one meeting sparked a cleansing process in many people's hearts that we're still seeing the repercussions of today....confirmation that God's promises stand, and that He is faithful. God's grace was glorified, and His people were strengthened for more effective mission.

Also, we have an incredibly generous church. It is a daily source of encouragement to watch generosity happen in the life of our body. What a picture of the gospel!

How can we pray for you?

We're at a significant crossroads in the life of our church...we've outgrown our facility at 300 people, so we're trying to discern where the Lord would have us go next...two services, remodel a new facility, or plant again?