About four years ago a group of us began to pray together on Wednesday night on how SRC could reach the city of San Diego.   I had been raised in church and my memories of prayer meetings fell into two categories. They either took place in a side room off of the sanctuary where everybody prayed quietly kneeling over a folding chair trying to stay awake or they were so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think and you wondered if God was deaf. Visionary prayer is different. It paints the big picture of who God is and how much he loves your city and it asks Him to fill in the details for you. There was a lot of conversation with each other and with God. Everyone was continually reminded that the purpose of these times of prayer was for our city. God wasn’t deaf and we weren’t going to send you to a side room to fall asleep.

As we continued to pray on Wednesdays, God began to give us a target- the City Heights area of San Diego. I didn’t know much about City Heights so I began to learn as much as I could. It is the most diverse neighborhood of San Diego, full of immigrants from all over the world and under-served by churches. We asked God to give us City Heights and He has begun to answer our prayer.

Now four years later, we do a weekly outreach to children called SDMetro Kids. Dozens of children attend this fast-paced program each week. This year we gave away hundreds of back packs with our kids website, sdmetrokids.com, printed on them. One month ago, we launched a Spanish-language church in City Heights that is averaging 25 in attendance.

If you want to reach your city, no matter what size your church is, ask God for a vision. Pray until He answers. I don’t believe that God can deny a church who asks Him for His vision.

Today, we have taken our prayer times off site. We do prayer drives where we go to City Heights and other strategic neighborhoods and pray. We do quarterly House of Prayer Experiences (HOPE) which combine worship and prayer at the church.

After John 3:16, the next most quoted verse might be Proverbs 29:18- Where there is no vision, the people perish. The problem is- too many leaders have no idea what their vision is. I didn’t, and I was the pastor of my church for ten years before I really knew what our vision was. I remember being asked by a member of SRC what was our purpose. I answered with something generic that any pastor might say- “We want to reach people for Jesus.” But shouldn’t that be the answer true for every Christian? There had to be something more specific for a leader.

That question started me on a journey to come up with a better answer. I started by taking a look at my existing church. It was urban, located in a huge city (San Diego), multi-ethnic, small and in a rut. As I prayed (Yes, this really works), God helped me to see that what we had could be assets (except for the being in a rut part) rather than liabilities. I decided to leverage our size, urban location and multi-ethnic composition to be part of God’s plan to reach greater San Diego.

Here’s what happened as I began to latch on to this- the vision grew in me. Over time, I could speak more confidently about it, even when no one else was seeing what I saw! And people began to buy into it. That was five years ago and today I am still talking about the vision.

Two of my top themes in Strengths Finder are Strategic and Futuristic. Those didn’t exist in me five years ago. Two things have changed- the vision has grown tremendously and my capability of leading from the vision has also grown.

I am convinced that vision begins with God and is essential to accomplish anything of value. Without it, churches and ministry perish; perhaps not overnight but eventually.

I am also convinced that vision is both caught and taught. I have watched as my staff has begun to grow their own visions for their ministries. It has become contagious. Where did they develop their visions? Most had something inside of them that once they shared it and got encouragement to develop it, began the process of becoming visionary leaders.

I am convinced that you cannot talk too much about vision. It keeps you alive in the hard times and it needs to be shared with new people who haven’t heard “the rest of the story”.

Next- Part 3: Prayer

Over the coming months, this blog will describe the process we are following in turning this vision into reality. Already, we have three church planters for these locations. One plant is in the small group stage, another is a bible study of 20- 25 people and the third is in the beginning stages.

If you are a small church leader with a heart to plant, I want to encourage you to listen to our story and to contribute to the conversation of church planting.

Currently, most multi-site church planting is being done by large churches. Even if every large church planted another campus (which many are doing), there is still a huge need for more churches. We are leveraging our size to our advantage. We are big enough to have a full range of ministries but small enough to have a highly relational environment. Planting other campuses is an extension of what we already do. If smaller churches participated in church planting, their numbers would far out pace the number of big church plants.

Coming Next: Vision (You Can’t Talk Too Much About It)

We’ll do test runs in July and August and then hope to go weekly in the fall.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this location. We couldn’t have picked a better spot if we tried. By the way- you’re invited to the test run. More info will be coming.

We have begun the process by establishing seeker small groups along the University Ave. corridor running through the heart of Mid-City in San Diego. Once these groups grow in number we will establish a church site in the area.

Urban ministry in this century will look different than it did in prior decades. There is no set “church look.” Sweetwater River Church will not just be bricks and mortar church buildings. We’ll meet in clubs and coffee houses and empty buildings.

The sweet thing is that, under the right circumstances, 30 people can be a healthy urban church. And with all these sites networked together- we can save money and staffing. No one site will be mega- each location with maintain a community culture.

At Sweetwater River Church we are moving from temporary to permenent change and it is a struggle that is well worth the effort. We have committed ourselves to going multi-site even though we aren’t a megachurch and even though we don’t have tons of money lying around. These limitations have forced us to be creative in how we do things. There are days where it feels like the plan could unravel and there are days where it feels like it is the greatest dream in the world. Each day that we stick with the game plan is a day that makes change more permanent. A day will soon come where we won’t be able to imagine not being multi-site. Then change will have become permanent. In the meantime we keep working hard each day.