by Peyton Jones: I recently sat with my church planting team from Refuge Long Beach. We’d planted together and as I sat with the church planting team that I’d left over three years ago, we discussed the possibility of another site move. I could see it in their eyes. It was the same look they got anytime we discussed a move. They didn’t want to see another neighborhood left behind. They wanted to see a church left behind there as well.But it wasn’t to be.

In fact, the reality is that in every neighborhood our church has been planted in, we’ve left some roots every time we’ve moved on. I told them that although we could go back and engineer an entire church plant in that neighborhood, there really would be no point.  What they really meant by a church plant was a Sunday Service.

“Is that what we’re trying to do? Start a Sunday Service in every neighborhood?”

They all shook their heads no.

Of course not. It would be absolutely ridiculous to think that was the mission. But we had a series of “micro churches” in every neighborhood we’d had a church service over the past 6 years. The park still had a viable witness through the barbeques. The school still had a home study right around the corner, and if we left Recreation Park, we’d still be doing meetings in the Starbucks directly across the street.

What if you changed your goals to saturate every square city block around you instead of starting a Sunday service? Wouldn’t that be something to get even more excited about?