Some time back I mentioned on my blog that we were looking at possibly moving ahead with a Greenville Campus in the near future. The vision of Stone Bridge has always been to be in multiple locations in order to make a large church small. Our goal is to be intentionally small. You may ask why intentionally small. Well, having served on staff at small churches and at a mega church, I have seen the advantages of both. There is something to be said about the community and fellowship that takes place in a small church. At the same time there are advantages for a large church in the terms of the amount of resources that a larger church can provide.
So here was the dilemma, how do you keep the community and fellowship of a small church and be able to provide the resources and creativity of a large church? The answer is one church with multiple locations. These are all live in person campuses not video. Video can be a great tool but it is not part of our vision to create a culture of community. The way we are going to accomplish this is through multiple teaching pastors rotating among the different campuses. Everything will be the same at each location. Same series, same set lists, same graphcis, same videos, and everything. This will allow us to remain small but still have the resources of a large church. By having the teaching pastors to rotate it takes more of the focus off of a personality and places it on Christ and the Church.
This is kind of a cliff note version of the vision of our church, if you would like a copy of the video of the vision of the church just drop me an email and I'll be happy to send it to you.
Anyway, I have said all of this to say that today we took some more steps in the journey that lies ahead for Stone Bridge. Today I met with someone representing a core group of 40 people who would like to be a part of launching a new campus in the Traveler's Rest area. The meeting was excellent and I am looking forward to the possibilities there along with the possibilities at the Anderson Location.
The plan for right now is to hold a preview service for the groups coming from Anderson and Traveler's Rest on Sunday Night March 2nd at 6:00 p.m. That night will be a regular worship service in addition to our regular Sunday Morning Morning service that day. That night I will share the vision of Stone Bridge with everyone and then people will have a chance to ask questions. The Anderson Campus will launch a month after that. The Traveler's Rest Group will then decide whether or not this is something God is leading them to be a part of and then we will discuss the next steps from there.
God is doing some amazing things, I'll see you Sunday.
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