Leadership Summit Recap: Harvey Carey Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote some thoughts about Harvey Carey, who I saw at last week's Leadership Summit, hosted by Willow Creek Association. Today, I continue with some of the thoughts I picked up from Harvey during his session then, and a follow up webinar held yesterday by Willow Creek.

To refresh your memory, Harvey left a well-paid staff position at a large church in Chicago to start Citadel of Faith Covenant Church in Detroit. The church sits in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Because of the poverty, the neighborhood is filled with crack houses and violence. The church has taken upon itself the duty to change their neighborhood for Jesus, and the incorporate some out-of-the-box ideas that are worthy of our attention.

• When you are attacked for the cause of Christ, you're on the right track.
• When leaders realize it's their duty to equip the church, they become ferocious to equip.
• Members must take ownership of the work. You cannot let them off the hook.
• Harvey was the only full time staff member for a long time. This forced the church to rely on volunteers.
• God has called us to play the game, not to huddle. By this, we're not supposed to just hear the Word or give lip service to issues. We're supposed to get involved.
• Most leaders have the paralysis of analysis. They think too much.
• We tend to put a cap on what we can do based on our budgets.
• One random Sunday per quarter, Citadel of Faith replaces their church service with community service.
• To get people on board with the neighborhood outreach, they start new people off with just praying in the church parking lot. After that, they expand outside of the church property. This helps ease any tension or internal fear a person might have for outreach.
• Citadel of Faith built into it's core the idea of "what do we do with this?"
• They operate on the Four R's: Reverencing God, Raising Christians, Reaching People & Releasing Leaders.
• The dynamics of small groups in suburban areas verses urban areas are completely different. In urban settings, meeting places are hard to come by, parking is very limited, so the urban church must try different things. For Citadel, their primary discipleship tool is Sunday School, because the church has the only space in the neighborhood to adequately facilite it.
• Their strategy for shutting down crack houses consists of getting a group of men from the church to camp out across the street from the drug dealer. The men will pray and worship God in song until the location shuts down.
• There is danger involved, and each man going camping knows the danger.
• Every church in every location can tackle the problems in their community. They may not be crack houses, but there are pockets of trouble that the church should address.