Saturday morning (3.7.09) rolled around and our very first Launch Community* was upon us. I didn’t really know what to expect, whether those who had RSVP’d or said, “Hey I’ll be there,” would actually show up or if we’d be left standing there at square-one needing to seriously retool our entire approach towards planting this new church. Fortunately, my greatest fears and the worst case scenario didn’t play out before my very eyes!

As we prepared and envisioned what our first Launch Community would look like I said time and again, “If we have 10 people there that’d be great! If we have 15 that’d blow my mind!” Well, neither of those classifications fit. For our very first Launch Community, 17 people showed up to participate in this new thing taking shape in the city! I could hardly believe it, but it left me realizing two things that morning : 1) There is a real need in this city for a new church; 2) God is up to something BIG! and this is just the beginning!

We spent the morning introducing ourselves to each other, eating a fantastic brunch and dreaming together of what this new church could look like to truly make a difference in the city of San Francisco. We talked about how we can impact the community for good—to literally be an integral part of hepling this city succeed—to how we could serve the city and the important aspects of who we truly want to be at our very core. It was a fun morning, an exciting morning, and the anticipation for what’s next was palpable! I can’t wait till next month… April 4th at 10:30a when we get to do it again and take another BIG step forward towards launching this new church. I’m looking forward to seeing who’ll join us next, who’ll step up to the plate and how God will continue to bring together the right people for this time to create something that will long outlive all of us!

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*Launch Community is a gathering of people who are interested in joining with us in launching this new church in the city of San Francisco.

Leadership books are worthless. At least that’s what I continued to tell myself most of the way through college, grad-school, and throughout the first 10 years of ministry. They were always the books that everyone pined over, drooled on and referenced at every corner with the goal of helping you take the world by storm. I very much loathed and despised this genre of book and instead chose to skim, push through, or simply ignore them all together.

My thinking on the subject was simple: what does leadership really have to do with pastoring? How is learning business models of leadership really going to make me a better pastor? The church world and the business world are two completely different spheres that narrowly intersect… why waste my time? For many those questions may seem asinine whereas for others its a perfectly valid line of questioning. Today I have moved from one sphere to the other and for the (perhaps) the very first time, I completely understand why pastors seek after these books and strive to understand the issue/subject of leadership.

As a church planter, despite all the assessments, all the training, all of my previous 10 years of experience combined in a variety of settings and roles, never have I felt more unsure and incapable of leading a group of people to start something new than I do on this journey. The questions that keep me up at night are: How do I maintain this momentum (as small as it may be)?; How do I lead our staff team to create the cultural environment that’s only alive in my mind?; How do I balance all these plates that are spinning overhead?; How do I not lose my mind?! So, I have found myself turning not only to my coaches and mentors for advice but diving headlong into leadership books such as Seth Godin’s Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us and Tom Rath & Barry Conchie’s book Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow or Alan Roxburgh’s The Missional Leader. In the pages of leadership books, both far and wide, I have discovered my own reasoning for seeking the wisdom within (and perhaps the reasoning for why so many others clamor after them as well).

I have found they provide me (as an uncertain, confused, sometimes desperate leader) a security blanket to fall back on for ideas, strategies and even a zone of ideological bliss when I don’t know where else to turn. This genre of book has become the leaders version of self-help. (Now obviously this is a gross generalization, and many leaders turn to a few a year not in desperation or self-help but as ways of tweaking and improving their skill.) Whether you agree or disagree with how the leader uses this genre, one thing that’s not debatable: it’s not going to change anytime soon.

As I continue to struggle through, wrestle with and strive to lead a “start-up” church I’m quite certain I will be visiting and re-visiting the leadership section of the bookstore multiple times in the coming years for any wisdom that can help make this dream a reality.

About a year ago Bret Koontz shared an idea with me he had devised for connecting pastors and church planters with people in the community in more of a 2.0 sort of way. Immediately I was intrigued, especially considering my introverted nature when it comes to stepping up to strike up conversation with a stranger.

Our culture has quickly shifted to what I’d call the “facebook-friending” culture (perhaps soon to be replaced by the “twitter-following” culture) where people perform Google searches and Facebook friend requests in an attempt to check you out before really wanting to pursue some sort of deeper friendship/relationship. The utilization of technology into “interviewing” potential friends/relationships is a good way to speed up getting to know someone and dive deeper into a relationship. (I’m continually amazed at how much more connected I feel to people and how much more I know about a person because of their Facebook status updates and Twitter updates.) So, enter a church-planter or pastor who is new to an area and looking to strike up conversations and develop relationships in our highly networked 2.0 society.

Bret’s idea was to create a physical connect that blends both 1.0 in-person conversation with 2.0 web networking, therefore the advent of the ‘personal network card.’ A business card that has nothing to do with business, but rather everything to do with who you are as a person and ways to connect with you online. You can hand them out to people you meet, or simply leave them in places you frequent, hand them to a barista or waiter in restaurants and coffee shops you frequent, the possibilities are endless… and the potential for new relationships is great!

Now don’t get the idea that this is a business card, because it isn’t… it looks different and functions differently. I recently designed my first one, had them printed up at VistaPrint and they arrived today:

On the front of the card is a design of sorts and different adjectives to describe who I am by my interests (mac enthusiast, coffee junkie, teacher, photography, runner, baseball fanatic, etc.) Then at the bottom is my name and 3 online ways that people can check me out and connect with me: aaronmonts.com | twitter.com/aaronmonts | and my gmail address. The back is simply my name along with the same design from the front.

As connecting with people becomes more and more of an online sport, I hope this will give me an edge and the ability to meet and network with people that once before couldn’t have been possible.

Today is a day not unlike any other; there is nothing about the 29th of October that really truly makes it stand out above any other. The weather is nice, the city is alive, but above all else it just feels like any other day… normal. However, today is far from any other normal day because today is the official launch of a new church.

Our church plant won’t launch with the typical pomp and circumstance that surrounds the new birth of so many other new churches–mainly because we’re just a small group at the moment and because it’s not a worship service–but today is the day. Today a new church forms and comes into existence within the city of San Francisco that wasn’t there before as our first house church meets tonight for the very first time. Today is a big day and immediately I can see more and more just how frail new beginnings and new birth can be… so pray for us tonight if you would. A new church is coming to life!

Today is the day. For nearly a month now Tracy and I have been in transition, packing up our belongings and preparing to move across country and the day is finally here. This morning we’ll load the car up one last time and make our way from Carson City, Nevada around Lake Tahoe through Sacramento through Oakland and across the Bay Bridge into our new home: San Francisco.

It’s been a long drive and one that has provided a great amount of reflection of the past and a great deal of excitement and anxiety about the future… Today is the day. Today we truly begin the next chapter of our lives and today a brand new adventure becomes blatant reality. I’m not sure what it’ll be like to drive across the Bay Bridge, what emotions and feelings I’ll undergo as the city becomes visible and we descend into it but the time is here and today is the day.

Here goes nothing… and yet here goes everything.

Today the next chapter begins. In a little over an hour from now we’ll be hitting the road and driving from Mt. Vernon to San Francisco. It’s going to take us a little while and we’ll be stopping in different cities like Lawrence Kansas, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Carson City before finally ending up in our new home.

For about a year we’ve been talking about and anticipating this day, planning, preparing for and praying about this next step and now it’s here. It’s a bit overwhelming and exciting all at the same time—so much so that it’s fairly difficult to describe. For a year it’s been “all talk” and now it’s time to put action behind the words, action behind the dream and take this massive step of faith into a brand new community to start something that only God can do.

I feel completely overwhelmed with this next step, despite all the coaching, preparation and people cheering me on. As I reflect and ponder exactly what God has called us to do and the sheer size of it all, I can only sit back and ask “Why me?!” I don’t feel worthy of such a calling, I don’t feel like I’m the right person at the right time going to the right place… but yet God continues to make it happen and continues to put everything into place. Part of the dream has been to go somewhere that we knew only God could make happen, and I guess we got what we asked for…

Despite the fear, despite the anxiety and complex feelings that are swirling around as we start our drive and this new chapter, I know that God is present and that’s the only thing that keeps this adventure worth doing!

Here’s to the next chapter and an amazing ride! May God bless this beyond the vision and dreams that He has revealed and do something so much bigger and amazing than I can fathom. Let the journey begin.

Tracy and I have packed everything we own (and what we didn’t give away) into a tiny little pod (8′ deep, 5′ wide and 7′ tall) that is making its way across country to San Francisco at this very moment. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be to get rid of all of our furniture, and a tremendous amount of our possessions and it was actually very liberating and freeing! When we arrive, in early August to San Francisco, we’ll have very little to unpack and situate and hopefully a much more open and uncluttered home than in the past.

We said goodbye to many of our friends in Chicago-land over the course of the past month and hopped into the car Saturday afternoon to drive to St. Louis to spend time with family and some much needed rest and relaxation. It’s been a hectic past couple of months full of travel to San Francisco for housing and job interviews (for Tracy), trips downstate to meet with churches, and the craziness of packing and loading and wrapping up loose ends. This week will hopefully prove to be much different… restful is the key phrase.

We’ll be enjoying lazy, quiet mornings in the St. Louis countryside where my parents live and enjoy the sites and sounds of the city in the afternoons. I’m looking forward to unwinding, loosening up a bit, and preparing/restoring myself mentally, spiritually and emotionally for our next chapter in San Francisco.