Pastors Need Non-Christian Friends

I have a confession to make. The longer I worked in ministry, the fewer people I led to Christ. Actually, it happened somewhat quickly. I started spending all my time with Christians.BY ANDREW ALESSOAt one point I couldn’t identify any real friends that were in my life who didn’t go to church.Preaching was still a fruitful evangelistic activity for me, but I didn’t like who I had become. I couldn’t even preach with true conviction and empathy about evangelistic disciple making because I wasn’t doing it.I think my preaching became less relatable to the unchurched over time.The truth was that my life in the Christian bubble was a choice to live in sin. And when I moved into a role that required me to preach less often, the weight of this unconfessed guilt wreaked havoc on my soul. For a season, I wasn’t very fun to be around and I didn’t fully love ministry any more. It was no one’s fault but my own.So, when we started Thrive LA Church I just wanted to begin by being friends with as many non-Christians as possible.I wanted to unashamedly invite others to follow Jesus in the context of unconditional friendship. I coached basketball at the park. I started a secular book club on MeetUp and eventually became a city organizer for them. I started inviting the people I met into my life for meals and board games. I wouldn’t say I’ve been awesome at it, but I’ve invited my own friends to church and I’ve been re-acquainted with the joy of praying with friends to accept Christ.I feel like I’m living in obedience to God for the first time in a long time.Here’s the beauty of the vision, but also the challenge: When I do those things I’m not being a pastor, I’m just being a Christian. Ephesians 4 tells us the job of church leaders: To equip the saints for the work of ministry. God calls pastors to mentor a whole church of evangelistic disciple-makers.These two callings go together. You can’t give away something you don’t have. Spending half my time in the community and the other half training leaders to do the same has been the most fulfilling season of ministry in my entire life.But it takes time to lead someone from skeptic to follower of Christ, and from follower of Christ to ministry leader and evangelist.I realize now that I didn’t spend enough time at the beginning recruiting Christians to our team who were already trained and committed to personal outreach.As I manage the growing demands of our church I can feel my commitment to personal evangelism slipping away. I’m in a new season that involves preaching every week, facilitating our leadership pipeline, meeting for weekly discipleship conversations, planning outreach festivals, etc. I feel the strain of more responsibility and relationships than I have time to develop. I need to share the load in our church with mature believers to continue living a full Christian life.I have to do what it takes to keep modeling the mission as I lead our church.Friend, are you a disciple that makes disciples? Are you living in obedience to the great commission? Can you name the people you are leading to Christ and the people you are imparting this lifestyle?You can’t give away something you don’t have, but I can tell you, it’s worth finding.

Planting a Church in LA (Part 2): Majority Honestly Doesn't Know God Loves Them

This September, Thrive LA Church in Silver Lake will celebrate our 1 year-anniversary.BY ANDREW ALESSOEditor’s Note: Andrew Alesso, 29, is the pastor of Thrive LA located in the Silver Lake area. The church opened its doors just 9 months ago. Alesso is writing about his experience in an exclusive TogetherLA series, Planting a Church in LA. This article is the second in a series. You can read the first of the series, A Young Pastor's Story, here.I decided on the name Thrive while having brunch with my sister on a quiet Saturday in West Hollywood.“What do you think that God feels about you?”“I don’t believe in God.”“I know. That’s fair. But if you did, then what would you guess?”“Well, I feel really bad about myself when I go to church. I guess he’s mad at me or maybe he’s just ashamed of me.”It hit me like a ton of bricks.Two days before, another friend had already told me that the name “Encounter Church” made him feel like we were going to attack him. I guess I already assumed that most middle aged, gay men don’t feel welcome in evangelical churches, but brunch with my sister drove it home with incredible clarity: The vast majority of people in our city honestly don’t know that God loves them.Or, as another new friend put it after I shared the gospel with him, “God’s justice and standards make sense to me…. I just never would have guessed in a million years that Christianity is about loving your enemies.”I discovered that if we were ever going to lead our neighbors to faith in Jesus, then our church had to help them believe that the God of the Bible is actually for them and His laws are actually for their benefit! That’s why our mission is to invite our neighbors to belong, contribute, and thrive in the family of God as we make Jesus our savior and king.Our neighborhood has been known as a church plant graveyard because of all the new churches that have failed to get off the ground. As one local said about our plans, “I wouldn’t think that people around here are interested in church.” It’s our job to build a church for people who don’t want to go to church. If I thought God hated me, I probably wouldn’t want to spend Christmas with him either!That’s why we’re committed to building an inclusive family where people can belong no matter their story, and find purpose in contributing to the common good. We want to see people of every background loving their city and empowering others to invest their talents for Jesus.[bctt tweet="We want to see people of every background loving their city and empowering others to invest their talents for Jesus. - Pastor Andrew Alesso, Thrive LA" via="no"]We’re praying that our community would genuinely want us to be here to minister. And guess what? God is paving the way. It’s slow work, but he’s opening doors and changing lives. God loves our neighbors. We just need to come along for the ride.

Planting a Church in LA: A Young Pastor’s Story

When a Church Skips Sunday Service To Help a Cause

I couldn’t believe we decided to cancel our Sunday service.

BY ANDREW ALESSO

On July 1st at Thrive LA we asked our entire congregation to skip church and go participate in a fundraiser hosted by a local small business on behalf of families separated and detained at the border. It wasn’t even a Christian event.The event raised over $15,000 for free legal aid for those families, helped us form amazing relationships with a positive witness in our community, and helped catalyze our congregation towards lifestyles of service.I’m glad that our church was able to contribute and serve in this way, but we easily could have missed the opportunity. I’d never been part of a church that had ever done something quite like this before, so when one of my ministry leaders approached me with the idea I had a lot to consider.

Sundays Are For Sermons, Aren’t They?

In my tradition, to cancel a Sunday service is unheard of and radical. I wondered, “Will we get a really low turnout for this event? Are we capable of communicating it well? What will happen to attendance the week before and the week after? Is this even allowed?”I believe there is unique value when the church gathers together regularly for praise, teaching, communion, and baptism. But ultimately, we decided that we would be missing out if we didn’t use this particular Sunday for a different kind of worship — a worship through service and collaboration.We concluded that giving our congregation a unique opportunity to serve and give was more valuable than any one message I could give or any momentum we would lose. We did this to be a witness to our community and to meet the needs of families, but we also felt like it was a strategic way to give the new believers and non-believers in our congregation a vivid lesson on the biblical value of sacrificial service.

Who Wants To Be a Political Pastor?

The hardest part was the fact that social justice can be really complicated. To engage our church in a fundraiser for these kids meant that we were unavoidably associating ourselves to a political issue in tense political times. We had no control over people’s assumptions about our motives and our political stances.To be clear, I didn’t become a pastor as a way to implement political change. I became a pastor because I love introducing people to Jesus! I don’t like talking about politics and I usually like it even less when churches talk politics. For most of my ministry I’ve tried to avoid controversial political conversations to focus on faith in Jesus.On the one hand, the primary mission of the church is to make disciples. Yes, we teach those disciples to love their neighbor, but if we allow the American political cycle to define our priorities we are going to be distracted and bogged down.But on the other hand, when did God’s people receive permission to pass by our hurting neighbor because it was complicated or inconvenient? If we aren’t training our people to stand with the hurting, the poor, and the marginalized, can we really call ourselves a church or call our people disciples?Most people want to live in a just and moral world; it’s just that we don’t have divine revelation on exactly how to get there in every situation. Just as Jesus had a zealot and a tax collector on his team, I have people on both sides of the political aisle in my church.Serving at this fundraiser was never intended as a corporate stance on every nuance of immigration in America or on any particular political leaders. We simply said, “We must do our part to love children who are in a tough spot right now.”I can’t claim to be the expert on candidates or policy, but I can be bold and winsome in asking people from every walk of life to adopt the values and character of Jesus. We can’t allow the noise around politics to keep us from making disciples who love with action. We have to be willing to do whatever it takes to show others how to live and act with the mind of Christ.

The Value of Partnership

At the end of the day, I want to see people come to faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. His gospel provides peace with God, but it also offers healing and reconciliation for families, communities, and nations. It invites every generation, political tribe, and ethnicity into a beautiful and messy family.This event allowed us to partner with local businesses and non-profits without making it about us. Serving in this way built gospel bridges. Jesus and his church are receiving favor in our neighborhood because we were willing to be humble and courageous at a crucial moment.You may be like me, squeamish about politics and the church, but I pray we each have the boldness to do whatever good deeds will bring gospel favor to the neighborhoods in which we serve.Andrew Alesso is the pastor of Thrive LA located in the Silver Lake area. The church opened its doors just 9 months ago. He recently retweeted: "There are some needs only you can see. There are some hands only you can hold. There are some people only you can reach." - Timothy KellerPhoto: Pastor Andrew Alesso with wife, Katie, and son, Daxton.