Building community and offering leadership opportunities can be a challenging undertaking for newer organizations but one organization, Substance, is making great progress on both fronts. Substance has encouraged members to create countless subgroups, has moved from a single location to multi-site and has engaged thousands of young members primarily in their 20s & 30s. The amazing part of this story and the target demographics is that Substance is a Christian-based Church in the Twin Cities. Normally I don’t immediately think of churches and other religious organizations when discussing general community and leadership topics but what Substance is doing is quite amazing on both fronts.
Substance is officially five years old but it really has taken off in the last year. About a month ago they went multi-site by adding a 10:30 am service at Northwestern College in addition to their standard location at Fridley High School. In their first service at Northwestern they had 500 people in attendance and of those only about 100 had ever been to a Substance service prior. After 4 weeks the audience at Northwestern has grown to over 800.
I have attended a few different types of events over the last month and each have had a large turnout of members & visitors that show the same passion, friendship and commitment to building community that is quite impressive. The pastoral staff, led by Pastor Peter Haas, truly encourages everyone to step forward and be a leader. They have the support systems and training to help members be successful and lead. It is an amazing group to look at both from how to build a successful organization as well as develop the next generation of leaders.
Since first hearing about Substance I have started listening and am surprised how many times it has started to come up in conversations with other young professionals already involved in the Twin Cities community. It is gaining great momentum and overall membership is approaching 3,000. I encourage you to listen for others who mention Substance and check it out if you have an interest. You can find out more about their sub groups at http://www.beingsubstance.com or about the church itself at http://www.substancechurch.com. The website includes both video and podcasts of sermons as well as details on their next sermon series which starts this weekend – “When Life Gives You Lemons”
Featured Upcoming Events:
Torch Community Building
Wednesday, October 7th – 5:30 – 8:00 @ International Market Square ($25)
Torch Community is a new organization focused on connecting young and young thinking professionals into community around three values: career development, diversity and inclusion, and social responsibility.
Tim Huebsch: “Normally I don’t immediately think of churches and other religious organizations when discussing general community and leadership topics”
Thank you for the article! I think the quote above is a very interesting discussion topic. I think it depends on how you view or define “church”. Some of its definitions according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary are: “a building for public and especially Christian worship” and “a body or organization of religious believers”. I tend to think of a community rather than a building when I think of church.
As for leadership, there are definitely leaders (I think of a priest/pastor, a parish council, etc.). I don’t always think of being in control of a group or having a fancy title when I think of leadership. I think my church calls me to be a leader in whatever role, large or small. For example, helping to lead a fundraiser, or even to spend quality time with your kids by taking a leading role in developing a strong relationship with them and instilling values in them.
That’s my philosophical two cents!
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Charles Weatherhead
http://www.CharlesWeatherhead.com
http://twitter.com/cmweatherhead