Two of my e-mentors (that is, mentors who wouldn’t know that they are mentors, except that I get all hero-worshippy when I get to see them in person and my wife laughs at me) is Rich and Rose Swetman who pastor Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline, WA.
A while back I ran into a video interview on off-the-map.org that captures Rose discussing the heart behind their church. I’ve been able to visit their facility a few times now (most recently the ELI conference), and there’s a lot that I like about it. As Rose describes in this video, they looked for a place in an urban area that they could renovate (to express Jesus’ work in our own lives), and then become a community center, more than simply a church. The church is one of the tenants of their facility, but there are others. I love how they go about being missional in their community.
The thing I like most about the video is that it puts into words a lot of things that I have been wrestling with, moving toward and sensing in my own self, but I’ve had a hard time expressing.
Anyway, watch the video. It’s about 30 minutes long. You’ve got nothing better to do anyway; if you did, you wouldn’t be reading the junk here :-)