3 questions with Phil

Back up to New York State (Troy, NY to be exact) for a visit with Phil Taylor, Executive Pastor of Terra Nova Church. Phil is a family man... husband of straight-shooter (her best trait) Aimee... and loving father of Lily, Eve and baby #3 (who's on the way). Phil is a conservative, normal, Canadian-born (yes there are normal Canadians), pastor's kid ... who is following in his dad's footsteps and finds himself called to this artsy, eclectic, missional church.

Phil candidly describes his role at Terra as organizer/ manager/ preacher/ teacher/ counselor/ shepherd/ systems analyst/ vision implementer. His pet project is Theology at the Taproom, where members meet monthy to discuss Theology at a local bar. In his bio Phil confesses to having 2 life principals which drive him:

(1) Life is about the journey—not the destination. Stagnation is nothing more than the beginning of death.

(2) Life and faith must be lived in the context of community. This is where we learn and love and know and discover and fail and hurt and ultimately, it’s where we will spend eternity.

I've never seen a place like Terra Nova up close, so I'm excited to get onto the questions:

Q: Phil how would you describe Terra Nova?
A: Terra Nova Church is a growing community of historically informed Christ followers intent on discovering fresh ground together. Our goal is to share the ancient truths of Christ in a culturally relevant way through teaching, music, art and media.

Q: In general how do you like to describe the church?
A: As a self replicating network of incarnational access points. Say what? Okay let me explain. Self replicating means that things should grow virally in the church, rather than building a system that constantly requires one-figurehead lead or start every new thing. For example, we tell our New Tribes (small groups) that it is their job to find someone in their group to train up and send out. Every group identifies 1 new leader to develop and send out in 10 months. We as pastors can’t go out and train everyone up… the network needs to be growing it self from the inside.

Incarnational access points means that I incarnate Christ in the place I live Christ. I become an access point to Christ where I do life. The incarnation is Christ being lived out through you. Just like when Jesus took human form.. He incarnated God to humanity in the form of a man so that we could look at Him and touch Him. We are called to live our lives as a sacrifice just as Christ lived as a sacrifice. We are doing what Christ did as he lived on the earth.

We see ourselves as monastics and missionaries. Sunday morning is monastic time. Sunday morning is a time for Christians. It is time for the monastery to come together to be fed, trained and to worship. Sometimes non-Christians are there witnessing out worship. We welcome them as guests and acknowledge them... but we don’t design Sunday with the non-Christian in mind. Then we go out as missionaries. We are the church... we are Christ at the at the local art conference, at the soccer game, etc. We take the church out into our community.

Q: What is the biggest challenge your church leadership is facing in LEADING that type of church?
A: Balancing the wonderfully organic free-for-all with some guidelines for the direction and nature of replication. The great thing about a self-replicating network is that people really latch onto the idea that fulfilling the mission is in their hands. But it is dangerous too because people come up with some really crazy ideas on their own… and they want the Terra Nova stamp of approval on every idea they come up with.

Some things are just too weird and others are not strategically aligned how we feel called to extend our missional footprint. So here are some guidelines we've adopted. We try to affirm individual missional expressions, mobilize corporate mission, and resource strategic mission. By affirming individual mission we are supporting the work of God in the individuals life without dilluting our local impact. By mobilizing and resourcing strategic missions we focus our resources and can really make an impact in a few areas.

Q: What is the biggest challenge your church is facing in BEING that type of church?
A: Raising up network administrators (small group leaders etc.). Training leaders is a challenge. But we don't just want to traing leaders... we want to train leaders who train leaders. One of the big mistakes we made early on was that we didn’t train leaders to train leaders. So we went back and had to re-train. The self-replicating part has been the challenge.

Q: What is this I hear about you having an art gallery.
A: That's right... Terra Nova Gallery is probably our biggest incarnational access point. Our office space is in a pretty hip part of town, so it doubles doubles as an art gallery. We let all sorts of artists put their stuff in there. We have new art ever 30 days. It is also where we have our kids classes and stuff... since we rent a space 100 feet away at Revolution Hall for our Sunday worship.

Here's the cool thing. On the last Friday of every month is Troy Night Out. It is a gallery hop event where hundreds of people who don’t come to our church come in to our gallery. We have wine & cheese and music playing. This gallery is part of who we are... it's part of our DNA. We knew that no in the area was reaching the art crowd and we are the art crowd. So the gallery is just a natural thing for us.

Phil good luck with baby #3 on the way.... eh. And thanks for sharing from some of the lessons you've learned.