A Church of Substance
Sound Church is a new church plant coming to the Northwest in 2010. We will be planting our church with the assistance and guidance of the Association of Related Churches (otherwise called “ARC”). Part of our process is to get to know how ARC is different by visiting other ARC churches. We had the privilege of visiting Substance Church in the Minneapolis area this past weekend!
Substance Church meets at Fridley High school
The short story is that Substance seems to be what we desire to become… but we did not know church like that existed yet! We came away encouraged because we know it is possible! Substance Church is a Hybrid of many “models” in church planting, taking the strengths of each and minimizing their weaknesses. Pastor Peter Haas has written a book on church government and I have to admit, what they are doing is working to see many come to Jesus in authentic faith!
Something we have said for a long time is that the successful church of the future needs to be Hyper-Transparent! As we attended Substance’s 101 class, they handed each person a folder with all their financials! They were not afraid of anyone seeing their books, because they had nothing to hide! They operate the Church on a margin of 40-60% of the income, using the rest for missions and church-planting! We believe Pastors Peter and Carolyn Haas will be key relationships for us personally as well as in ministry! What an example!
Why can’t Church Be Different? Another thing we loved was how they major on the majors and minor on the minors. The saying goes, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Well I would say these guys have a great balance of loving people first and allowing the Holy Spirit to convict. You see, truth is truth, and people need to know it. But the rest of us need to know when we should not say things as much as when we should. We see a church full of sinners coming to Jesus! For this to happen, we need to welcome sinners to the church!
The Haas Family
Pastors Peter and Carolyn shared so much of themselves with us in 6 hours! by now, i feel like they have been in our lives for years! And they really believe in us and our calling, willing to help in any way, and even put their money where their mouth is!
If you are in the North or central Twin Cities, you have got to check out Substance!
