Planting a Church in Philadelphia
by James Swynford
“How can we best pray for what you’re doing?” many from our diocese have asked me.
“Ask the Father for workers,” I’ve usually answered.
When you’re trying to start a church, one of your earliest goals is to find (or to be found by) your “first few”. Every work team has its first members. They are the first few workers. In church planting, you’re looking to build your initial mission team, the foundation from whom the church will grow. As you can imagine, your first few mean everything. And you wonder each day, each and e-v-e-r-y day, when the Father is going to see fit to give you an individual or a family.
The great majority of church plants (and it’s this way in our diocese as well) form when a group of Christians from a “mother church” decide to start a new mission. They are the “first few” for that church plant. There are no Anglican mother churches in the city of Philadelphia – nor are there in most places in the U.S. So finding those first few looks extremely different. Walking in the desert with a canteen that went dry a couple days ago – that’s a rough image of what it’s felt like here to look and wait for our first few. I never knew what a privilege it could be to try and pastor someone until I went for a long, long time with no one to pastor.
Finding those people who God intends for your initial mission team – it’s a mysterious process. You don’t know who is going to know who. Often the very individual or family you’d imagine (or hope) would be interested turns out not to be. Or a new acquaintance refers you to their friend who’s eager to hear more, only they’re about to move away. And then out of left field, from where I have found God’s grace usually comes, something shifts. There’s a lightening of the burden and a little opening in that veil between you and Father that, up to now, has seemed awfully opaque. For us here in Philadelphia, that shift, that little opening, is happening. A splash of water in our canteen that we and others have asked for – it has come. We have our first few!
This past November and early December, out of left field as it were, three families shared their interest in beginning to meet and hear more about this mission church. A few weeks ago, we had our first Sunday evening dinner gathering. It was an encouraging time of some personal sharing and praying a brief Evening Prayer. I wish you could meet these three humble, beautiful Christian families, with their seven children between them. It reminded me and Anna quite poignantly of our first church planting endeavor. I pictured the first gathering we had in August 2013 in Williamsburg, VA, and the “first few” who joined us then on our back deck. That was just a couple of months after we had moved there. I sure would’ve liked to have found our first few here in Philly in the same kind of time frame as we did down there. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?
I’m left to conclude, yet again, that Heavenly timing runs according to what I truly need and what is actually best for my formation. It's usually quite different from what I would want. We shall see what happens with this small, growing seed of a church family. Join us in thanking God for what we trust are the first shoots and fruits of a fruitful work up here in the City of Brotherly “Shove.”
We look forward to sharing more with our diocese, periodically. For now, know that it would be very encouraging to hear from you. Please be in touch via email or via phone/text: 757-561-5140.
Warmly,
James, Anna & our four littles
The Rev. James Swynford is a church planter in South Philadelphia. Learn more about this church plant here.
