Southern California Leadership Community

Today we kicked off the first gathering of the last of five Leadership Communities for Externally Focused Churches. This is an outstanding group of ten large churches from North LA to San Diego who will gather for three days over the next two years...and because of proximity and common passion, much beyond then.

We are meeting at North Coast Church in Vista. North Coast is not only an innovator in their multi-site approach to church (five locations w/ 6,100 in weekly attendance) but also an innovative leader in externally focused ministry. The participating churches are:

• Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village
• First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton
• Grace Brethren Church of Long Beach
• Harbor Presbyterian in San Diego
• North Coast Church in Vista
• Park Crest Christian Church in Long Beach
• Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa
• The Crossing in Costa Mesa
• Yorba Linda Friends in Yorba Linda
• (Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Redlands)

We started our time with lunch, went into a timeline using the STEEPR (Society, Technology, Economy, Environmental, Political, Religious) construct, shared externally focused ministry models at "trade shows," did a reading breakout, building ministry volunteer models based on cognative metaphors (using unclear to give insight into the known). We finished up with a five minute video called "The Abilene Paradox"--the management of agreement. Then we had dinner together at North Coast. The ministry models are excellent with incredible externally focused ministry taking place. This will be a great community!