Had a great morning at Trinity Grace Church on the West Side (10:30am on the Upper West Side).

Morning Church was similar enough to DPC to make me feel a bit homesick. Casual style, similar size, even had fixed seating and a ramped floor that reminded me of DPC. Mix of young families and singles – tertiary trained professionals with a smattering of Uni students – undergrad and postgrad.

The music was executed well and a mix of hymns (with modernised arrangements like DPC 10:30am). Jon Tyson’s sermon is reminiscent of Tim Keller – reflective, theological, addressing the intellectual and world view idols of New Yorkers.

Nice self-depreciating, succinct announcements – no triumphalism or bluster.

A church financially supported by Redeemer. The pastor Jon Tyson is a young Australian guy who has been mentored by Tim Keller and been through the Redeemer Church Planting course.

Sermon was introducing series on the Sermon on the Mount, and the announcements included an invitation “calling all artists” to contribute artwork to complement the sermons. Not sure if the idea was that painting, poetry, drama would be contributed beforehand and displayed on the day that a particular passage was covered, or whether it was to be a response. Not sure how it would be displayed.

Had dinner with Jon that evening. Pizza in Chelsea. Jon is deeply indebted to Tim Keller but clearly isn’t attempting to replicate Redeemer but thoughtfully applying many of Tim’s insights to his context. Trinity Grace is committed to not growing too large (beyond 200 per congregation), but will carve off core groups and continue to plant. This is about when people cease to know one another well (I have written on this elsewhere – see “Church Size”) but also because beyond 200 it’s easy for people to be passengers and not part of the mission. So, eventually the whole church loses its outward focus and invests its energy in catering to the needs of members. Notice that difference though – the 200 barrier is not about “what works best for our members” but rather “what works best for those beyond our membership” – for our mission.

Jon is committed to evaluating church not by the number of people attending but by the quality of their Christian lives. Jon is very upfront that New York has some great churches to be part of, if you want to be a spectator, but you aren’t welcome at Trinity Grace unless you want to be part of the mission. Great stuff.

Their “clusters” are slightly bigger than our groups. They meet fortnightly and each have a particular mission focus in the city beyond the needs of church members – evangelism in the arts community of Chelsea, work with the homeless, etc.

Things I want to think about for DPC (but not necessarily settled on, so I’d love your comments)

I was convicted that we need to refocus on our mission to reach the inner west for Christ. In some ways God is doing some great things at the moment – JAM, our work at Drummoyne Public School, playgroup. At the start DPC was explicitly a place where I said to newcomers “if you don’t want to be part of our mission you aren’t welcome” and was happy to recommend other churches where the focus is far more on meeting the needs of members. Some of you reading this will remember being grilled by me on this. Somewhere in our busyness I think we have become lax in this. I think we need to return to our roots. There are lots of churches in the inner west catering to the needs of its members, and DPC doesn’t need to be like those other churches.

I think our Home Groups need to have a more outward focus. Would it be good for each group to identify at the start of the year a mission focus in the inner West beyond catering for the needs of DPCers and spend one week a month not doing Bible Study but working together for this mission focus? It might be visiting in a nursing home, providing support for a JAM outing, organising an outreach event at church...even my uncreative brain can think of a whole bunch of things I’m sure our groups could do even better.

Maybe our groups would need to be slightly bigger to accomplish this?

I loved the ‘calling all artists’ thing. Maybe do it with our upcoming Trinity series (May)? Or James series (Sept)? Trinity might work best as a reflection thing at the end. James as a more accessible book would be easier to do leading up to the series? How would we present them? What about quality control: Am I going to be the arbiter of good art?

Little things: good signage (see picture), especially to point out the “Red Boxes”. I could see us doing similar signs outside the front door, pointing out toilets (on the footpath on College St) and “Giving & Feedback” highlighting the Red Boxes.