Interview w/ Pastor Brad House

I was blessed and fortunate enough to have a conversation this past Thursday afternoon with Pastor Brad House from Mars Hill Church - Seattle. He is the Lead Community Pastor up there and was gracious enough to give me 30 minutes, which was gone before it started in my opinion. Here are some of the highlights of that interview.

There were two things that intrigued me the most, the two things that resonated throughout every question I asked: The system is about pastoral care for every leader and every leader is essentially considered a pastor. It is easy to see how the Acts 29 Church Planting Network has effected the philosophy at Mars Hill, and I love it!

I asked Pastor Brad about identifying leaders to which his response was, "see them in action." He explained that they use apprenticeship and testing before they release leaders to have groups in their neighborhoods, a great leadership principle that I learn more & more almost everyday.

We talked about inspiring & encouraging those he works with to which he responded with Vision. Keep the vision in front of leaders as to why Community is so important, and with that give them ownership with their group or the leaders they work with. Cast Vision at a big level and let it trickle down, mingled with everything that you do then give leaders freedom to work it out where they are how they believe would be best for their group. Another leadership principle.

I could go on & on about this, the little details that plague my mind but I'm sure the 3 people that have read to this far are no where near as interested as I am. Hopefully you just want it to work, & that is what I want, for Community to be effective and life changing, drawing us closer together and closer to Christ.

Thing is, this is what I am passionate about (as if that is not incredibly obvious), I could talk about it all day and to have had the brief opportunity to talk with someone like Pastor Brad is a tremendous treat that needed to come out somehow - and these are my "Rambling Thoughts" so, there you go!