Restorative Work

The elders’ full statement regarding the failure in leadership last fall was sent to the congregation on October 29, 2024 and remains available to those of the CityChurch community upon request.

We are working together to foster healing and reconciliation for those in our church body affected by these events, to continue the ministry of the gospel in our community, and to guard against future failures among church leadership and staff.

While this sin itself initially caused significant hurt within the body of the church, our efforts to heal and move forward from it have uncovered preexisting differences of understanding about our identity and direction as a church that were previously unrealized. As these differences have arisen, the work of plotting steps forward has proven more difficult than we first anticipated, and yet it also provides us the opportunity grow together in our understanding of who we are as a church and what God is calling us do in our community. We recognize the difficulty this work will entail as it requires us to be gracious and patient, to deny ourselves as we submit to one another in love. And yet at the same time we are hopeful and excited for the ways God will use this work to glorify Jesus among his church and advance the mission of his Kingdom here in our city.

Work with IBL

In February and March of 2025, CityChurch partnered with the Institute of Biblical Leadership to conduct a congregational survey to help aid in our restorative work following the moral failure within church leadership. The survey sought to identify shared values, diverse perspectives, areas of strength, and areas of concern in order to aid us as we seek a path forward for CityChurch into the future.

The full report of the data from the survey is available to the church through the link below. IBL presented these findings along with suggested next steps for CityChurch in a congregational meeting on May 17, 2025. A recording of the meeting can be viewed through the link below along with a PDF of the presentation slides. In order to keep these items amongst the CityChurch community, a ChurchCenter login is required to access them.

We are grateful to Joel and Dave and the team at IBL for their help in ministering to our church in this way, and we are excited for the ways the Lord will use their work to help us to facilitate communication, reach mutual understanding, and foster unity among our congregation as we seek his will and mission for our church.

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Steps Forward

From their insights gained from the survey, IBL has outlined recommended actions for us take as we continue to pursue healing and unity and discern together the identity and mission God desires for CityChurch. Here are the steps as IBL presented them at the congregational meeting on May 17:

  1. Reconciliation: Each of us must engage in self-reflection to see the ways we each have contributed to the present conflict, confessing to God in repentance, and confessing to those we have offended, asking their forgiveness.

  2. Elder Communication Plan: The elders must over-communicate with the congregation, establishing an ongoing strategy for two-way engagement and speaking broadly on all matters where confidentiality is not explicitly needed, especially regarding these recommendations, decisions concerning them, their ongoing status or implementation, and any similar strategic matters.

  3. Vision and Values: CityChurch needs to be able to identify who we are? What and who is God leading us to do and be. The church leadership should gather a group of leaders and seek to determine what is the vision (purpose) and what are the values (character) of City Church.

  4. Ecclesiastical Identity: Based upon these values and vision, we should then be able to identify and partner with an ecclesiastical group with which we align in theology and values in order to accomplish our mission.

  5. Elder Training: It is necessary that the elders of City Church engage in ongoing training/coaching in order to know how to effectively lead the church including practical aspects of eldership as well as team norms and practices on how to lead the team. This training could also extend to other leadership such as deacons and other ministry leaders.

  6. Organizational Leadership Planning: This will help to identify the organizational structure of CityChurch and ensure that the right people are in the right places. This will then allow the church to have clearer communication with one another and a better understanding of who is responsible for what actions.

  7. Strategic Initiatives: Based on the vision and values that God leads us to have during the vision and values exercise, CityChurch needs to be able to identify what we are going to do. What will be the impact of the church moving forward?

We are currently evaluating these steps in prayerfully consideration of how to best implement them including the possibility of continuing to utilize IBL’s assistance in the future. We ask you to join us in prayer for this work as we seek God’s will and mission for our congregation.

As we work out a timeline for many of these steps, we are already working to carry out the reconciliation and communication of steps 1 and 2. We invite you to join us in this, seeking reconciliation together as the Holy Spirit reveals where it is needed. This page serves as part of our effort to facilitate communication among our body, and we will keep it up to date as this restorative work progresses. But we need your help to facilitate ongoing, two-way communication in order to foster harmony and unity as we navigate this work together. The elders desire to be available to any and all who have questions or concerns in these matters, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Leadership

In the fall of 2024, the elders called Taylor Whitson to the role of interim pastor. Taylor has since been affirmed by the congregation and ordained to the office of elder. As Taylor continues to lead and assist our musicians in the work of leading worship and planning liturgy, we are grateful for the opportunity for others from within our congregation and from other churches to share periodically in the work of preaching and teaching

We recognize CityChurch’s need for leaders of more diverse experience and stages of life, and we continue to seek additional candidates for eldership accordingly. With the help of materials from other churches and sessions, we are working to create a clear process for identified elder candidates to be trained and equipped for the work of leadership and ministry.

As we engage in the work of discerning God’s mission and vision for our congregation, we expect that the specific needs for pastoral positions and other church staffing will become clear along the way.

Mission & Vision Workshop

Sign up to let us know if you would like to be considered to participate in the upcoming Mission & Vision Workshop.Space will be limited, and we hope to gather a group that is representative of the whole congregation. For these reasons, we hope to 

The workshop will have 2-3 weekly evening meetings leading up to a weekend of meetings on a Friday and Saturday. We aim to start in August, but specific dates are still to be determined.

While we understand that this is no small time commitment, it is important that participants are able to attend as many of these meetings as possible, ideally all of them. We intend to provide childcare for all workshop meetings.

Mission, Vision, & Values

One of the key needs identified through our work with IBL is the need for clarity about our identity as a church and the trajectory of where we’re going together. Many of us have become aware over the last several months that there are more differences in perspectives and ideas among us than we might have realized in the past, and yet we are certain that these differences are not irreconcilable. We can have unity as we worship and serve God together even despite our different perspectives. This is more than possible, because the gospel of Jesus brings together people from every walk of life, from every kind of lived experience, and every corner of the world into one people and one body, united in him who is our Head by his Holy Spirit. There are no differences that cannot be bridged by the love of Jesus.

In the coming weeks we’ll be gathering a group of church members to work alongside the elders as we consider the work to which God is calling us here in Bristol. Frederick Buechner has said, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” As we think about who and what God is calling us to be and do, we’ll start with the mission of God and his design for his Church as we find it in Scripture. But then we’ll start to look for those two things, the world’s deep hunger, the hungers and needs of our community here in Bristol; and then our deep gladness, the particular giftings and passions of our congregation. And where those three things intersect is where we expect that the Holy Spirit will show us what we’re here for, what God has kept us around to be doing. Because we believe he’s kept us here for something.

We are currently working to plan how we may best facilitate this conversation. Ideally, we hope to spend the better part of a weekend together, first praying for our church and for our community, and then discussing how our gospel ministry can meet the needs we see around us. We may look for the chance to have a few mid-week meetings leading up that weekend, but we’re still working out the details.

In the meantime, we ask that you would be praying for this process. Pray that the Holy Spirit would move among us and make clear to us the deep hungers of our community and the deep gladness we find as we worship and serve together. Pray that we would come together in humility, prepared to disagree, and yet ready to do so with grace and love for one another as we follow Jesus together. Pray about whether the Holy Spirit is leading you to participate in this work of discerning the mission and vision of our church together.

Our aim for this group is similar that of the group that participated in the survey with IBL earlier this year. We pray that God will raise up a group of devoted church members who reflect the diversity of backgrounds and life experience present within our congregation. If you are interested participating in this group, let us know you would like to be considered here, or through the link above. We’ll take the list of those interested and narrow it down as space allows into group that can be representative of our whole congregation.

What about our current mission and vision statements?

Our efforts to reconsider our church’s mission and vision should not be understood as a rejection of CityChurch’s past mission and vision statements. It’s normal for churches to re-evaluate mission and vision periodically in order to refocus on the needs of their communities and congregations, especially after seasons of significant change. Our expectation is that the new mission and vision statements will not be radically different from the old ones, though we hope for them to be a little more focused and a little more contextual to the specific needs of our community here in Bristol. We have no desire to fundamentally change who we are as a church or what we value here, only to define these things in a way that will allow us to come together, understand one another and our community better, and sort through some of our differences along the way. Most of all, we’re hoping for this process to be way for us to rally together around God’s will for our congregation and to devote ourselves more fully to preaching and living the gospel in our communities.