conVerge Church

conVege Church is a church plant starting here in Lynchburg, VA.  Anyone from here in Lynchburg will more than likely be thinking “Another Church in Lynchburg” but understand that there was a large amount of thought and especially prayer before the decision to plant here in Lynchburg was made.  We believe that the churches here in the United States, for the most part, are not fulfilling The Mission of Christ.  What I mean by that is we have separated evangelism and discipleship as two different callings.

Each church has either become devoted to evangelism, sacrificing deeper teaching for bringing people to christ, or discipleship, focusing more on developing more mature believers and not as much on bringing people into the church.  However these ideas are never seen separated in scripture.  In fact Matthew 28:18-20(which is the final commandment Christ gave us as He was leaving this earth) tells us that we are to “make disciples” of all the nation not just make believers.  What this means is that yes we are to bring new believers into the church but we need to be bringing them in and discipling them.  Just going out handing out tracks or going on a one week evangelistic missions trip are not ways to fulfill the Mission.

We need to be redeeming the relationships we already have and developing new ones in order to bring more people into the church.  We need to focus everything in our lives around the glorification of Christ.  We need to develop deeper relationships with people in order to bring them into the church rather than just forcing the Gospel on people the first time we meet them.  This is the purpose of conVerge Church.

Our purpose in conVerge is not to become some mega church.  In fact if we get to that point we have lost the Mission.  Our focus in conVerge is to be planting more churches.  We are in the process of planting another church in Richmond and that launch is already underway.  Our whole goal is that once we get to a certain size (depending on the area and who is involved) to launch a new church somewhere else.

Each launch will consist of not just a “pastoral planting team” but rather a group of believers relocating to a new area and beginning a new church.  We will in essence be taking a full working church body to a new area and planting an extension of conVerge there.  Already several men and women from conVerge Lynchburg have moved to Richmond and started a second church plant there.

If you are in Lynchburg or Richmond (or really anywhere but these are the only two locations where we have conVerge at this point) and you would like more information about conVerge Church you can either click on any of the conVerge links on this site or email me at bstafford@convergechurch.org .