A Church On The Move

As Pastor Matt announced last week at church, we are in final negotiations to rent part of the Petersen Event Center for our Sunday worship for the summer. This is because the Pittsburgh Public School district plans to renovate and reopen the Frick building as a science academy in the near future. This left us without a space to worship
during the renovations.

Options For Moving:
We looked into purchasing a space, but it was impossible to finding something in Oakland that we could afford in the current economy. We looked at various spaces, many of which would have greatly increased our budget. For us the Pete is a great option because it lets us stay in Oakland and the price that we have negotiated is well within our means.

Where We Are As A Church:

Organization
A little over a year ago, City Reformed was still a church plant working under the supervision of First Reformed Church of Penn Hills. We are now an organized, self-supporting and self-governing church. We have an Elder Board (charged with praying, planning, and shepherding the church). We have deacons (who are working to serve the needs in and around our church), and we have a Woman’s Council (responsible for serving and connecting women to Christ and each other).
Growth
In the three years I have been at City Reformed, we have doubled in size and complexity. We are now averaging over 200 attendees each Sunday. To put that figure in perspective–we have grown by an average of 40% per year for the last two years. The reason this is exciting is that we love people and we hope to see as many people as possible find a place to connect and to grow with us. While some people might say that growth doesn’t matter, Jesus seems to disagree. His paradigm is that when he gives us something he hopes and expects that we will care for it, and seek to make it grow. We need to remember that as trees grow their branches multiple and their fruit increases, but their roots grow deeper as well. One sign that we are continuing to become more deeply rooted is that we have now seven community groups meeting throughout the city and at least as many smaller discipleship groups.

Challenges
We face many challenges as we grow and as we move to the Petersen Event Center. We know that we have many logistical obstacles such as parking, communion, and nursery-care that need to be ironed out. We know that there are many people that might now attend City Reformed each week, and we want to make sure they know about the move. We understand that there are many things that will be up in the air and will need to be settled after we are in the Pete. We would ask you to remember that we all need to pray and that no one in our church is even close to perfect.

What Can You Do To Help?

* Volunteer. We will need more people to greet and setup, particularly in the first few weeks at the Pete.
* Pray. Lots of things have to happen in the next few weeks, and we know that God hears and responds to our prayers.

Our hope isn’t just that we would survive the move to the Pete, but that we would use the new opportunities that we have been given to worship God, love People and point them to Jesus.
Update: We will hold our first service at the Petersen Event Center on June 14th at 11am.