Rooftop Community Church

The Where Statement

I. The Where Statement - Introduction

Started on Easter of 2001, with much blood, sweat and tears, Rooftop Community Church has successfully established itself as a healthy, growing, Biblical, culturally relevant, interdenominational, medium-sized church in the St. Louis area. This itself is an accomplishment, given that most new churches don't last very long at all. So we're very happy just to be around as a healthy, growing, Biblical, culturally relevant, interdenominational, medium-sized church.

Now we could be happy just being what we are: a church that is healthy, growing, Biblical, relevant...you get the idea. The world needs more healthy, growing churches like Rooftop. But in the past couple years the leadership of Rooftop has wondered if God has something more specific in mind for us than just being a healthy, growing church. What does our future look like as a church? Is there a specific vision God would like us to pursue regarding our future as a congregation? Would there be any value in us formulating a long-term growth strategy as a church, other than simply hoping we continue to exist as a healthy, growing church?

Ultimately, the leadership decided that there would be value to having that discussion. It would benefit us, as a church, to have in mind where we believe God wants to take us as a church. (Which is why we call this document "the where statement." If the church is a boat, where is the boat going? Hence all the boat imagery.) We decided that the benefits of having a long-term strategic where statement are many:

First of all, it will serve as a reminder to not allow ourselves simply to become who we end up becoming. Without clearly-articulated, long-term strategy, the great likelihood is that Rooftop will become what it ends up becoming, for good or ill.

Secondly, as the church (hopefully) grows, we will have to make organizational decisions on staff, location, budget, programs, etc. Having in mind a picture of what we believe God wants to see us become in St. Louis will help us make those decisions in a more strategic way.

Thirdly, many of the people of Rooftop frequently ask what the church leadership's vision for the future of the church is, as the future of their lives is intimately related to the future of their church. We'd like to be able to tell them as much as we can, so that they can feel confident getting and staying on board.

Fourthly, having a concrete picture of what we hope to become can create excitement and energy among the leadership and people-in much the same way people get more excited to visit a new destination after "seeing" their destination in a brochure.

For all these reasons, the Rooftop Elder Team appointed a group of Rooftoppers (known as the SPC, or Strategic Planning Committee) to assist us in formulating a long-term vision, or "where statement." After one and a half years of discussion and reflection, the where statement we decided upon appears below. With the input of the SPC, t is the Rooftop Elders' opinion that Rooftop should strive...

To become an expanding regional network of healthy-sized, locally-rooted, big-six church communities.

In order to understand the basics of this vision, consider this "where statement" by its constituent parts:

An expanding network. An expanding network of church communities is a group of sub-churches that remain connected to one another through a common identity and the sharing of resources. In modern church parlance, the phrase is "one church, many locations."

Healthy-sized. There is no ideal church size. But because people ask how big Rooftop intends to grow, we've decided that Rooftop and its network site churches should aim to be "healthy-sized." Healthy-sized, in our opinion, are church communities that aren't so big that it's hard for people to feel a part of what's going on, but aren't so small that the church doesn't have the resources to achieve lasting vision.

Regional network...locally-rooted. Rooftop is currently a regional church, with people driving from all over the metro area to enjoy what God is doing here. While we celebrate our regional identity, we believe our long-term health should also emphasize local ministry alongside regional identity: being rooted in local neighborhoods and communities. We envision these local Rooftop network communities would fully engage their local neighborhoods with the gospel, while maintaining our regional identity as a church for all of St. Louis.

Big-six church communities. The "big six" refer to our six values as a church. While Rooftop's leadership wants to build on our strengths as a teaching, worship, and community church, we don't want to neglect weaker values such as evangelism, service and prayer. A "Big-Six" church is a church that practices all six in a balanced way.

II. The Where Statement - Strategy

Although most of the details and schedule of this vision has yet to be laid out, we've sketched out the implementation of the where statement as we imagine it will take place. Details will be forthcoming, but will certainly proceed according to the following phases:

Phase 1 - Build health of church and achieve "reproducibility." Organizations that expand run the risk of replicating their problems. Additionally, organizations with problems struggle to expand. Even though Rooftop is a healthy, growing church, there are "reproducibility issues" that may hinder our ability to expand beyond ourselves right now. Those reproducibility needs are listed below, as well as some of the steps we are considering as we address them:

Increasing church commitment among existing Rooftoppers, through the Fourth-Floor commitment program. Rooftop needs a larger core group of committed persons in order to achieve God's purpose for us. The Fourth-Floor commitment program is designed to help people be a more committed part of what God's doing at Rooftop. At every opportunity, the staff is actively encouraging people in Rooftop to go through the program.

Helping more Rooftoppers grow into more spiritually mature followers of Christ, especially through small and study groups. In order to offer more and better small groups-one of the best opportunities Rooftoppers have to grow spiritually-the church leadership is going to need to consider expanding the leadership team (and maybe the budget) in order to support and expand this very important ministry.

Expanding and developing the church Elder and Leadership teams, to serve more people in more effective ways. Through ongoing leadership development and active recruitment among volunteers we hope to expand our pool of potential elders and leaders-both for our short- and long-term benefit.

Increasing giving among Rooftoppers. Through the Fourth-Floor commitment program, State of the Roof meetings, and Sunday morning teachings, the leadership has been challenging Rooftoppers to give more sacrificially to God's work at Rooftop, in order to finance future expansion. Currently our giving would not support any expansion like the one we're discussing.

Increasing attendance on Sunday morning as a pool for volunteer recruits and future network churches. Through ongoing evangelistic training, community outreach, advertising, and involvement opportunities we hope to continue increasing Sunday morning attendance. Rooftop currently averages about 200 adults in Sunday morning attendance-75 at the early service, 125 at the late-but can realistically hold 175 per service. (This assumes we solve the Rooftots space issue-see below.)

Expanding children's space for our growing Rooftots ministry. Within 1-3 years Rooftop will be out of children's space on Sunday morning and will need to consider several options: converting existing space, relocating to a larger facility, altering the type of childrens' programs we offer on Sunday morning, or considering our first network site as a way to alleviate spacial constraints.

Phase 2 - Find and train second-site (R2) leadership. Healthy church plants or site churches have strong initial leadership. After achieving reproducibility as a church, we'll begin identifying potential leadership for a second site through recruitment. Building this second site leadership team may require outside leadership, but will also be open to current Rooftoppers who have a desire to be part of this second phase.

Phase 3 - Support second-site leadership with core and logistics. After identifying the leadership, we're going to need to supply them with a core group and all sorts of logistical aid, in order to give the second site the best chance of succeeding. We wouldn't mind sending off 20 or 30 or 40 people from the lead site if it would give the second site a better chance of "making it" as early as possible.

Phase 4 - Repeat in strategic third location (R3). And given that two site churches isn't much of a network, we'd aim to repeat it as soon as we could. Given that our two initial site churches would be still working together, launching R3 would be a cooperative effort that would make the third site even more likely to survive happily.

III. The Where Statement - Frequently Asked Questions

How did you guys arrive at this? What was the process? Who all was involved?

When the church elders decided that formulating a where statement would be a good discussion to have, we thought it best to involve the people of Rooftop in the discussion at the earliest stage. So the elders assembled a group of 10 committed, spiritually mature Rooftoppers-called the "Strategic Planning Committee"-representing a broad spectrum of people: single, married, with children, without children, empty-nester, urban, suburban, male, female, etc. Starting in the spring of 2006, they met monthly to formulate the where statement. They interviewed and talked with all sorts of Rooftoppers to determine what people liked (and didn't like) about Rooftop. They sifted through all this information prayerfully in order to determine, to the best of their ability, what sort of church the Holy Spirit has assembled in Rooftop Community and where the body of Christ, in Rooftop, might itself want to go. All along the way, we attempted to advertise the SPC's work on Sunday mornings and at business meetings, and invited the people of Rooftop to volunteer opinions and thoughts regarding the future of the church. After assembling their own where statement, the SPC presented it to the elders of the church, who reserved final say. The elders themselves, in the spring of 2007, scheduled a retreat at which we debated and dissected the where statement, ultimately adjusting it to conform with our own sense of God's purpose for us as a congregation. A loosely described implementation strategy was then assembled along with a description of the where statement itself. Both were presented formally to the church body in October of 2007.

What the heck is an expanding regional network of church communities?

Basically, one church meeting in many locations, throughout the St. Louis region. We don't like the idea of breaking up and existing as many separate churches, because we thought that might involve giving up our identity as the people of Rooftop. And while we liked the idea of growing bigger, we weren't too excited about "big church" issues, like anonyminity and intimidation (and parking). Our proposed solution is the "network" concept: one church meeting in various locations, as interconnected families of faith.

What are the benefits to this sort of vision?

The process of putting together a vision itself is very beneficial, given all the reasons stated above regarding why we should even have a where statement in the first place. We believe the benefits of this where statement are that it will allow Rooftop to keep reaching the people of St. Louis with the love of God in a strategic and thoughtful way. The network concept takes advantage of our identity as a regional body with great teaching and a great church philosophy in a medium-sized setting. But the concept addresses the fact that people driving long distances to Rooftop in Affton might not be a good long-term solution. Over the years, plenty of people have limited their involvement, or stopped coming to Rooftop altogether, because of distance. The purpose of this network is to bring Rooftop to them so they can grow more as a follower of Christ through the ministry they've come to enjoy. Additionally, they may and should feel more comfortable inviting their friends and neighbors to church, given that the driving distance has been seriously reduced. Now nobody will be required to attend any particular network site just because it's closer. But if they would like to, we'd like to give them that opportunity.

What's the timeline on this?

The timeline is as God does. Of course, we will be working hard to lay the groundwork for an initial second-site launch, but a lot needs to happen before that, and it could be anywhere from 2-5 years down the road. Rooftop Community, as a home base, has some growing to do before we're in a position to launch a second site. (See above, Phase 1: Reproducibility.)

Are you splitting the church up?

Nope. Nobody will be forced to go to any Rooftop network site if they don't want to. What we aspire to do is create alternate sites for Rooftoppers to meet in other parts of the metro area, if they care to. As mentioned, it is more likely that other St. Louisans will visit a Rooftop closer to where they live, and getting them there is the first step to helping them experience life in Christ. But if you like the community you've found at Rooftop "home-base" and don't feel God leading you to be part of anything else right now, not a problem.

What were the other options for the Where Statement?

After the church leadership decided that we wanted to set some long-term vision, the SPC and the elders considered various options. We considered, for example, simply growing the church as large as we could, making the necessary location, facility, staffing and even philosophical adjustments involved in growing the church bigger. We considered becoming a legitimate church-planting church that starts separate congregations throughout the area. We considered growing a larger church in order to become a legitimate church-planting church. We considered moving the church to a more accessible, regional location that would allow the church to grow more easily. We considered emphasizing, within the life of our church, one or two or three of our values over the others in order to take advantage of our strengths. Basically, we considered any number of options (and combinations of options) regarding our future as a congregation-options that each had lots of pros and lots of cons. In the end, we decided that the network concept had the greatest number of pros, given who we are as a congregation, and that it would be a wise direction to go in as we journey into our future.

I like the teaching and worship at Rooftop. Will the network sites have that?

This is a detail we haven't fleshed out yet. We know that many people enjoy the teaching and worship music at Rooftop. We've toyed with the idea of recording messages and broadcasting them to network sites, but there are limitations (and expenses) to that. Or we've thought of training various speakers to communicate using Rooftop's typical voice. We might try a combination of those things. As far as the music is concerned, we imagine that each network site will have separate worship leaders and a separate "house band."

How are you going to keep the network sites connected to each other?

Good question. First of all, we imagine that the leadership of the various site communities will work closely together in terms of planning ministry, sharing resources and coordinating events. Also, while the individual network sites will operate independently, we hope to do occasional regional events to remind us of our regional identity-such as retreats and conferences. Our philosophy and vision will remain the same, as will our organizational structure and governing documents. We also might keep each network site on the same teaching curriculum. And, of course, the colors of the logo will stay the same. (Black and yellow, in case you haven't looked in a while.) Additionally, while we are planning that each site will have separate ministries-women's, men's, children's, singles, etc.-they will have the opportunity to share resources with other network ministries and even meet together regionally.

What was the original where statement suggested by the Strategic Planning Committee?

Originally, the SPC recommended the following where statement: "to become a network of energetic communities where Christians and seekers alike learn to follow Christ through challenging discipleship and authentic fellowship." The Elders liked the SPC's network concept, and we liked that they emphasized some of Rooftop's strengths-teaching, fellowship, and worship-in the name of discipleship and evangelism. However, we decided to present the network concept with different language-expanding network of health-sized, locally-rooted communities-in order to communicate more specifically how we hope these communities look. And we decided to emphasize all six of our values-big-six-inside of only three.

Has this been done before?

Yes, in one form or another. Multi-site churches are increasingly common the United States-for the same reasons we're discussing it. Several St. Louis churches are actually currently attempting their own multi-site concept with positive results. (We intend to interview and visit those churches to see what worked and what didn't.) Having said that, there aren't enough examples that a manual has been put together on how to build an expanding regional network of church-communities, so we'll be putting together our own. And although people have wondered if Rooftop is copying another church's strategy, we might be guilty of that. On the other hand, good ideas deserve to be copied-especially if they might work.

Where will these network sites be?

We don't know. In the early years, we imagine that they will be strategically placed throughout the metro area in communities that have an existent Rooftop "core." But we're not sure where those are, and will entrust those details to the Holy Spirit to reveal as the plan unfolds.

What about diversity?

When Rooftop started seven years ago, the church was almost entirely a group of young white, newly married, Protestant professionals. Now the church is much bigger, and is still predominantly white, but more colorful than before. The church now includes singles, single moms, empty-nesters, married with big kids, married with little kids, married with no kids, college students, divorced people, remarried people, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, die-hard Protestants, Catholics, Charismatics, Presbyterians, Baptists...you get the picture. Over the years we have been able to slowly create a place that welcomes all sorts of people. However, we still have very far to go. At our current Affton site, for example, the church has welcomed its blue-collar neighbors but has yet to successfully reach the local elderly or Bosnian populations-opportunities that await our best outreach attempts. In fact, we believe that the network concept itself will better allow individual network sites to minister to the needs of the diverse types of people in their immediate vicinity. Rooftop Community in Affton will have very little success reaching out to the predominantly upper-class in Wildwood, for example, or working-class Hispanics living in the inner city. But Rooftop network sites based in West County and St. Louis city may more effectively minister to those populations better than Rooftop Affton ever could.

What about world missions? Shouldn't taking the gospel to the ends of the earth be our ultimate "where statement"?

You've probably noticed that the focus of this "where statement" is more local than global: to become an expanding regional network. This isn't because we're not interested in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, as Jesus instructs us to do in Matthew 28:19. In fact, Rooftop believes in the importance of world missions, and has designated 10% of its income for missions and benevolence ministries. We have also eagerly supported the work of God in India, Mexico, Honduras, and other countries. We take it as a given that every Biblical church should be about the urgent business of taking the healing power of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We believe that by focusing on building a regional network of communities in the St. Louis area we can increase our missionary sending and supporting ability, as these communities join together to support global missions in a unified, strategic way. As Antioch became a first-century "home base" of operations for the spread of the gospel in the Mediterranean, we hope St. Louis becomes a 21st-century "home base" of operations for the spread of the gospel around the world.

Will any of our current leaders or staff be leaving to start a network site any time soon?

None of the current staff or leaders have been approached to be part of a future network site-although we certainly hope that all of them are open to the possibility. We realize that people develop strong commitments to church staff, and that shuffling leaders around can be detrimental to a church's health. We also realize that Rooftop's home site will need strong, consistent pastoral leadership. So while our staff and leaders are open to whatever direction the Holy Spirit takes us, we don't intend to be careless as we make the necessary leadership adjustments in pursuit of God's vision.

Is it possible the vision will change?

It is absolutely possible the vision will change, and it should be possible for the vision to change. Plans change-even in Scripture (2 Corinthians 1:15-17). We did our best to discern God's will for us as a church, but want to be humble about the possibility that God might provide necessary course-corrections along the way. It will be the responsibility of the Elder Team to constantly remain sensitive to God's Spirit as the plan unfolds. It is up to us to remain sensitive to his Spirit as long as we exist. This original vision-casting experience was necessary because it (hopefully) gets us moving in the general right direction with strategy and purpose. If we end up on the right course the whole way through, praise God. If we discern a course correction in the near or distant future, we pray that we will be flexible enough to follow God in whichever (new) direction he takes us.

Who needs this?

It was enough trouble getting one church up and running-isn't it enough to be satisfied with what we have? Of course we're satisfied with what we have. But we believe too much in what God has built at Rooftop to think that he doesn't want to do more than what he's already done. Untold numbers of people have encountered the living Christ in new and vibrant ways through the Spirit-inspired ministry of Rooftop Community. People who never would have stepped foot in a church, let alone enjoyed it, have given their lives to Christ, been baptized, and yielded themselves to the life and power of the Holy Spirit. Given that success, it would be selfish to not at least consider how God might want to do that more broadly in the long-term.

What if it doesn't work?

Well then it doesn't work. Maybe it will work for the next church that tries it on the ashes of our best attempt. As a young, inexperienced church, most of what we do is stuff we're doing for the first time, increasing our chances of failure. As long as we learn from our failures, though, there's no harm in trying what we think God wants us to try.

IV. The Where Statement - Personal Commitment

From the outset it should be made clear that this new vision cannot be a staff or elder-led thing: it will require the combined efforts of all God's people, rowing the ship of Rooftop in the same direction. Hence, if you can commit to this vision as the strategic plan of Rooftop Community, there's a few things we need to be able to expect from you:

Commit to Rooftop as your full-fledged church home. Building a network of healthy-sized, locally-rooted big-six church communities requires a healthy initial one. A healthy home base will require healthy commitment from as many people as possible. You can commit to Rooftop via our Fourth-Floor commitment program. Check a box on your info card and the leadership will be in touch.

Keep giving. Rooftop consistently pays its bills, but hasn't been able to save much for future ministry. In order to expand our ministry into an expanding network, we're going to need to be able to hire staff and pay for new ministry needs-all of which require money. The leaders and core of Rooftop have agreed to push themselves towards (and beyond!) a 10% tithe of personal income to support the needs of our growing church. Consider the same.

Consider being part of a network site. We are 2-5 years away from launching a network site, but let it be known from the beginning that each of these sites will need people and volunteers. If you drive from far away but love coming to Rooftop, consider helping get a site (closer to your home) up off the ground, when the time comes.

Pray pray pray pray pray. In the fall of 1998, Pastor Matt Hendon sent our prayer requests to friends and family, soliciting prayers on behalf of their plans to start "a creative, energetic, and evangelistic church in the city of St. Louis." God answered that prayer, along with many others. The way here was paved with prayer, and the way forward will be, too.

V. The Where Statement - Tell Us What You Think

We want to know what you think about this where statement and what you've read about it. If you love it, we want to hear that and why. If you hate it, we want to hear that and why. If you have questions about it, we want to hear that. If you think it needs tweeking, we want to hear that. We believe that Christ thinks and acts through his body-his people-and we want to be open to what the body is telling us. If you have something to say, here's a few ways to say it:

Post on the website. Rooftop's website has a discussion folder (accessible to website members), in which you can post thoughts, questions, and comments. It's a great way to express an opinion and/or start a conversation.

Schedule a meeting with an elder. Rooftop's elders are the church's organizational and spiritual leadership, and want to hear from you. They will hear your thoughts with respect and curiosity. A list of elders can be found in the lobby at the church or on the website, along with their contact information. If you bring up questions or concerns they feel should impact the where statement itself and/or its implementation, the elders pledge to consider that seriously.

Contact the staff. The staff and church leaders will be directly responsible for implementing the vision, so will be able to hear any feedback you have. They meet regularly with the elders and can communicate personally with them any concerns they feel worth sharing.