In this episode we talk with Chris Moerman who pastors Grace Capital City in Washington D. C. The church was planted 2015 and has done amazingly well since the launch. They have successfully attracted young working professionals in one of the busiest cities in America.
Church Website: https://www.gracecapitalcity.com/
TranscriptionJosh: [0:23] Welcome to the Church Planting Podcast. My name is Josh Turansky, and I'll be your host for this episode. I'm excited to introduce you to Chris Moermon of Grace Capital City. He's led grace capital city to be one of the fastest growing churches in Washington DC. They planted the church in 2015. And he's seen God bless them with amazing growth since that time, Chris shares a bunch of helpful tips about creating culture and embracing millennials, young working professionals in his church. I think there's a lot that you can take away from this. And also stay posted for some follow up commentary after the interview is over.
Josh: [1:12] So you pastor a church that's related to other churches that are in Atlanta, and it's
called Grace, is it Grace Church or Grace Fellowship?
Chris: [1:25] So our church is called Grace Capital City up here in Washington, DC. We call the
family of churches, the grace family of churches, there are seven Grace churches, and it started in the suburbs of Atlanta. Do you want me to give you kind of a quick family story? Right, yeah, it was started by a man named Buddy Hoffman. And I think it was 1983. He planted in a suburb called Snellville, which is a little bit of an unfortunate name, but it's a great place, good people in Soho. And it was just kind of a local church, it grew quite a lot to two, three thousand people. And then they started really starting to explore church planting that the first plant church, first church they planted was in 2006, and it was in downtown Atlanta, Grace and Midtown. And that's the church I pastored at, for about seven years. It's a, it was an old dying Baptist Church, invited Buddy Hoffman and some of the elders and leaders to come down and really revitalize and they ended up kind of really breathing some energy into it. It's located near bunch of the big universities downtown. It was located near the largest mosque in the southeast. So huge Muslim population, which is real close to Buddy's heart, to be able to share the gospel with Muslims. And they just recognize the strategic importance of the location in Lydia, what we're doing. So 2006 is a group of about twenty of them, a worship leader named Aaron keys, who was Buddy's kind of worship guy, they would come down to gather lead worship, and it just kind of slowly grew that, really focused on discipleship and worship and the church now, you know, they're about 1500 or so. They run on a Sunday. And so since then, there's now seven Grace churches, we were the seventh one, six of them, either the Georgia area, and then we the only one that's outside of Georgia. And so we relate as we call them, churches, not campuses intentionally, because there is a certain level of autonomy between the churches. We share a lot of common DNA in terms of theology and mission. And we do share some resources as well. But we also allow each church to kind of really incarnate into the emotional space. So, you know, a church in Washington DC is going to look very different to a church in Monroe, Georgia, or Athens, or Snowbird. Yeah. And it shouldn't look different as well, because you reach people. So there are some key similarities amongst the churches, but you know, in all seven of them would feel, you know, pretty different, as well. In each of them raw.
Josh: [4:12] Okay. And so pastoring in Atlanta for seven years, and then moving up here. What
led you to make that change?
Chris: [4:24] Yeah, I mean, short answer, Holy Spirit, longer outs. You know, I was the associate
pastor there for about seven years of that and is a great what, you know, just a beautiful season of our life, my wife was doing her doctorate at Georgia Tech. And they had a sense that we were going to be in a city where both of our careers and ministries could thrive. So she really sees science as a real ministry or real mission field. And so she's getting to the end of that doctorate, and realizing that in Atlanta, they want a lot of opportunities for and some opportunities that are popping up in the scene. So that was kind of our first sense to start praying about, well, we've always had this vision of grace to plant churches and some of the big international cities around the United States, what it would be the ones that do it. And to be completely honest with you, I was that guy that I was like, "Man, I will, I will cheer people on to go and do it. And I will even give my money, and my time and my prayer, my encouragement, but I do not want to be the guy that's leading a team up into DC." And so when we started praying, I was very resistant. But God really did a work in my heart. You know, I often say I was like Gideon, in a sense that I had to pull the fleece out multiple times for God to really speak again and again. And we came up to DC and just started to get a sense of energy around the place and a sense of what God wanted to do. And the kind of church we felt called upon. And so it really was twelve months of discernment, and prayer and, you know, trusted counsel and visiting DC. And before we finally said, 'Yes' to doing that, and so Grace Midtown was, it was our sending church, real Grace churches, but specifically grace Midtown. And we left great Midtown with a team of about fifteen people from that church who came with us to help plant a new church in DC. So I mean, those men and women were my absolute and still are my absolute heroes, you know, they leveraged everything to choose, you know, the kingdom of God over their own comfort and convenience. And over what you know, it's more comfortable to live in Atlanta, a lot of the times, certainly cheaper, a lot of family and things that they were operating. But they said we want to help be a part of getting this new thing going. And so when we started meeting as a launch team in DC, there are eleven of us in a living, the first time we met and, you know, by God's grace, we kind of grew from there. So it was it was a long journey, in some ways. And not a journey that I didn't really, I am honest didn't run from at different times. But God, I experienced the patience of God.
Josh: [7:21] Okay, so you were pastoring, or you're participating in this other church for seven
years, you're resisting this. Or questioning this idea of going to a major city and you being the one to lead that. And yet, from everything I've heard, you're one of the fastest growing or the fastest growing church in DC. You've experienced a lot of fruitfulness. And how long ago did you guys plant the church?
Chris: [7:53] Yeah, so we had a launch in September 2016. So a little over two years ago.
Josh: [7:59] Wow. And so what were some of the things that, you brought fifteen people with
you. What were some of the other strategic things that you did? Like, how long did when you moved? How long from when you moved up and relocated to when you launched? What kind of launch did you have?
Chris: [8:19] Yeah, um, let's see, we, I mean, we had about a year we moved up in August 2015,
launched September 2016. You know, I think our strategy was to focus on the majors, and try not to get too caught up in kind of other things, like, really good things, you know, extra ministry that we could stop it to really focus hard on the thing that we want it to be really central to our church, and to kind of start to build culture through that. And so we have three core values Worship, Family Justice, and we wanted our church to be a really vibrant worshipping community. And so you know, right from the beginning, we're trying to create avenues and vehicles and expressions of worship, places for people to worship, just to let people know, as they were coming in to the launch team, and the launch team was growing, like this is who we are, this is one of our values, we launched, what we call house churches, essentially, in missional communities is another that people use for him. But kind of mid-sized communities, we decided initially not to do smaller discipleship groups, but to go slightly big. And so we launched three of those about six months into our launch team. And I think that was kind of catalytic in growing, because what it did is it all of a sudden raised up another level of leader, it kind of like another tier of leaders in the community, who weren't just showing up to the launch team to figure out how they could, you know, give them money and stack chairs. But they were like, "Hey, I'm getting a vision for a house church that I'm launching in the Capitol Hill area. I've got friends that I can invite to that." And when, with increased ownership, you get increased course happens every time, if we can figure out a way to help people really walk in the priesthood of all believers, then there's going to pull more into it than they would if they just feel like they just, you know, carrying out someone else's steps. And then so we tried to give people a vision for that, and then to also give them permission to start to vision for their own community. So we launched three house churches in June of 2016. I think it was, I think that was really important. The other thing that we did that I think was really helpful. It was stressful at the time, and I look back and I'm like, "Man, would I do it again that way or not." But I do think it was part of the reason we grew is, we had a few practices come up really early. And they were basically apprenticing for a church that didn't even fully exist yet. So we're still in the kind of launch team phase. And we have five of the young men and women, all of them had come from Grace Midtown. So there was something about the flavor of Grace Midtown that we were like, "I want to be this kind of church, I want to be a vibrant, worshipping community, I want to have a missionary edge and culture. And I want to be teaching through the Scriptures faithfully, for revelation and for discipleship." So a lot of the kinds of intangibles you feel in a community, you can't teach someone, what I've experienced is you have to find people who carry it intuitively. And then let them infiltrate in your community. And so we had these five apprentices come up and talk their job assignment was like, just be like, the best versions of yourself in the community. And I know that sounds like "What does that even mean? It's so intangible." you know, but what I what I knew was, especially without team was only, you know, thirty people, or twenty people, or forty people, or fifty people, you know, you put five really active attractive guys and girls in there, by attractive, I don't mean physically, I just mean like people that are like, "Hey, I want to be around these guys and girls." you know, they're going to draw people to themselves, that they're going to start community, they're going to start infiltrating the culture and creating the culture that you want. I mean, they are literally culture carriers. And so those five were really important, I think, in launching the church the way we wanted it to launch. And once you get some momentum, then other people start to catch up of like, "Oh, this is who, this is what Grace Capital City is about, this is the kind of place it wants to be. And I can get on board with that." So I think that was really important. Sharing leadership, sharing ownership, maybe it's a different way to say it, while still maintaining a clear sense of vision and direction value. And then also allowing people who carry the culture intuitively to really infiltrate influence your community, those are the big things.
Josh: [12:59] That's really good, can I go back to the house churches, you said that these three
house churches that through that people took on a sense of ownership. Can you explain that better? or What did that look like? How did you start those groups? are you leading them? How did how did ownership go from yours? And like the few people that came with you over two people in the house church?
Chris: [13:23] Yeah, good question. And this is a similar model, when I was leading the college
ministry, Grace Midtown, which is, you know, we had ministry that about seven or eight different campuses in the Atlanta area. And we realize, when students lead the ministries, they will way more likely to invest in it in a deep level than if they were just coming to an event that you put on for them. And you got to be careful with that. Because that's, it can be messy, it can be inconsistent, you have to disciple and shepherd and bring accountability. But the fruit of it is that instead of just raising up consumers, you are the leaders, right? You raise up people who know how to like execute a vision, who know how to evangelize and invite their friends. And that's a vision for a community, take responsibility for it, you know, you really raise the bar. And so similar kind of model, we were working at least at that stage with college students, but you know, mainly kind of young adults and millennials is halfway through, we were essentially operating as one house church. And we kind of thought, well, rather than staying this way, let's make our start to make our Sunday gatherings which was still watching at that stage, but start to make them feel more like a service like a teaching and worship and that stuff at all, and should find leaders that have a vision to reach other people in their in their communities. And so, you know, you gotta, it's got to be high character people, you know, you can't just give away ownership and vision to anyone. There are people you trust, people who are willing to come out of the spiritual covering the church, people who are open to accountability. Yeah, you know, it's gonna be some of your best you know, but when you do that, you want to see things happen for the church, that you have nothing to do it. I remember the day, I realized there was a group of young adults at a church, this is maybe eight or nine months in, and they were like party going on, I think it was a Halloween party or something like that. And they organized it. And they were inviting plenty of people, and all their friends from work and all their friends from church and all the friends. And I looked at and I didn't think I was even invited. But I had not only not only did I have nothing to do with organizing it, I wasn't even invited. And I didn't feel offended. I felt ecstatic. I was like, "This thing is growing beyond me because they feel like they own it. So they go invest in it." you know? And that's what you want it when it's at that stage where you have to run everything, you know, your church is never going to grow beyond fifty, or sixty, or seventy. So I think, yeah, giving away what I want to shift for them to do offering heavy accountability is really important.
Josh: [16:03] Awesome. Okay, so I'm just comparing what you're saying to my own setting. And
I've got, I've got, I'm just like, right there. I feel like I was just talking with some of my team. They're young adults. They're doing their own hangout time. I'm realizing after the fact that they hung out that they're integrated. And.
Chris: [16:25] Great sign man, it's a great sign.
Josh: [16:27] Yeah, it's encouraging to me, where are you taking and molding or shaping or
pushing towards mission? Or are you just like, letting it go organically and just seeing kind of where it ends up? Because you've got obviously a house church sounds organized and in a direction? So kind of like, how much of a hand do you have in giving input to these attractive people that are moving on their own organically with the work?
Chris: [16:55] Yeah, What's that, quote, 'If you give someone a, teach them to love the sea.' like,
'If you want someone to build a boat, like don't teach them about the wood and the math and the plans, like, teach them to love the sea, and they'll figure out how to build a boat.' You know, I know I'm absolutely botching the quote. But you know, the one I mean, the whole idea is like with people, you don't necessarily need to a lot of the time teach them step by step, what you want to do is inspire them with the narrative and the grander picture of what you're inviting them into. Awesome, and people smarter than you think, young adults know how to reach young adults better than you do. And it doesn't mean they don't need shepherding guidance along the way. But I think in churches, a lot of the time we kill the creative energy out of people, because we feel like we have to control it step by step. And a lot of the time, we think we have to control it. Because we're afraid of mess, you know, or we're afraid something's going to happen at a house church meeting that's out of line or, you know, cross the boundaries, like that stuff's going to happen. And I'm not saying that's okay. You have to address things, you have to offer accountability. But, man, usually there's no masters in my life. And if you have a bit of mass at a healthy level, it's a good sign that symbol life into managing a church and young adults, Millennials will mess it up. Absolutely, like all of us will. But man, if they get a vision for that, they'll really go after it. So yeah, I mean, so the most of the best young adult coming, pastors leaders, we have been young people, millennials, you know,
Josh: [18:33] Wow, that's beautiful. So you're just giving permission, and then casting a vision,
telling a grand story, that they find a place.
Chris: [18:43] And then consistent coaching along the way is important. And coaching, you realize
coaching doesn't need to look like step by step, here's exactly what you need to do. Although sometimes that might be helpful. coaching, usually, it's more about support and helping them arrive at the conclusion that's best for that house church. So they're trying to think through what could mission look like for my community, you're not telling "Hey, here's five things that mission needs to look like to your community." what you do is you're helping flesh out "Who is your community? Who are the people you try to reach? Where are those people? What are the natural rhythms?" you know, that mean? You're asking the right questions, to help them arrive at a place where they still feel like, "Hey, I, we created this, we have a plan for the next six months, we've got some rhythms for our community that are going to be engaging, we can involve non Christians do it." You know, we can kind of do that up in and out stuff. And, but you're not just like laying it out to them step by step, you're helping them arrive at those conclusions.
Josh: [19:46] Wow, So in your work with in the DC area, with millennials, young working
professionals, what are those rhythms? like what does it look like for them to come to Christ? What what's touching their heart, I guess, in drawing them to be a part of the church. And then what is discipleship look like for them?
Chris: [20:15] I mean, the reasons for people to stay in church, you know, pretty, varied. There's
various people. I think there's a profound sense of loneliness in DC, I think people come and they experience a pace in life and a hunger for power and ambition, things like that, that can be off putting, and can be very isolating. And so I think a lot of people end up connecting with house churches or with the church in general, simply because they're looking for friends and they're looking for, like, you know, some people that will see them as more than just like, how can I use this person to network further ahead of them like that. So that's why reason, I think, like anything like when people experience like the brokenness of the world, and they're more likely to further their own search for purpose and meaning, which is such a ideal time for the gospel in effect, right? When someone's realizing like, "Hey, I cannot do some I own and I got to DC, I thought that when I became this person or got this promotion, then I'd be satisfied. And then I'm experiencing that that's not the case. Where do I find purpose? Where do I find meaning?" I think that's been a place of seeing a lot of fruit where you can actually speak a great sense of purpose and meaning into them. In regards to discipleship, you know, that's something was still kind of figuring out I mean, I think truly exciting things that happen in our church, we lack older generation people, which is something we're praying about, we're praying for more spiritual mothers and fathers. And so I think we've had to redefine discipleship for a lot of people. Because we have this ideal situation where it's like, "Oh, I'm going to find an older woman or an older man, mentor, and they're going to walk with me consistently for the next two years of my life. And it's going to be this ideal thing I'll learn from this stage of the faith." You know, and then you get to a church with like, hundreds of millennials and college students, and only a handful of families, and you realize, like the ones, the older people that are there, discount is get filled up pretty quick. So we've had to talk a lot more about peer to peer discipleship, as well, and what accountability and mentoring can look like in that space. And I think there is, you know, I think there's real growth and fruit that can come out of that model. I think the other thing we've realized with discipleship is that in a city that's as busy and as transient as DC is, the more programmatic you can make your discipleship pathways, the better. I think there's always this ideal scenario with the suction, super organic, and it's just life on life, and we're just getting coffee, or we have a standing breakfast day, you know, once every two weeks for like now until Jesus come back. And in DC, that's just not going to happen. For the most part, like people here for a year, they hit that three years, or they're working eighty hours a week, you know, and so you got to be like, all right, if you want to grow your opportunity to be shaped, be challenged spiritual formation, growth, like here it is, jump in, eight way turbo course, 6:30am, be there, if you mean it, be there and just let people then choose if they want to be part of it or not, you know, there's part of me that like, shies away from the programmatic but I think we've had to learn, actually, that's life giving in this kind of culture.
Josh: [23:36] Interesting. Okay, Alright, let's wind up. Just want to ask you one last question that
I'll ask you for your, also for your contact information that how people can kind of view what you're doing. But what resources have shaped you, and most influenced you?
Chris: [23:57] I mean, some of Tim Keller's stuff was huge. earlier on. [inaudible 00:24:02]
Center Church is the one we read together. Is that right. Peter [inaudible 00:24:09] because they're emotionally healthy church, it's huge, and then he has Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Both of those are really important. In terms of church planning, and trying to create culture, that's like giving. Personally, my theology, you know, be really shaped by like the writings of Dallas Willard, and the Divine Conspiracy, some of that stuff, some of that real like kingdom, Kingdom theology, and kind of shaping values for church around the present reality of the kingdom on trying to live into that, that future prophetic reality stuff. That's the kind of stuff you know that temporary.
Josh: [24:49] Yeah, that's great. How can people view what you're doing?
Chris: [24:53] Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, we have a church websites, most churches do.
greatcapitalcity.com, we spell capital with an aid in case you're wondering, the capital with an A refers to the capital, city, capital with an all refers to the capital building, just in case you ever wondering, the greatcapitalcity.com, we also, we recorded a worship album, released earlier this year. And so you can look up on YouTube, capital, city music, or on Spotify, capital city music. And there's a bunch of songs, a lot of them original people from our worship team, we recorded that and that we did that in a year this year, just kind of an expression of what God had done in the first year of our church, so yeah, we love you. Anyways, check us out.
Josh: [25:38] And you're on social media.
Chris: [25:39] Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff. Yeah, you can check it out there.
Josh: [25:44] We will link all that stuff up in the show notes. Thank you so much. I'd love to have
you back sometime in the future to talk about expressions of worship. You had mentioned that early on in your bio, that you want it to be a gathering or expressions of worship. And so hopefully, we can do that in the future. Talk more about what that looks like.
Chris: [26:02] Yeah, would love to be on it.
Josh: [26:04] Thank you, Chris.
Chris: [26:05] Thanks for having me Josh.
Josh: [26:10] Okay, Clint Clifton, we have listened to Chris Moermon, what were some of your
takeaways?
Clint: [26:15] Yeah, well, I mean, let's not overlook the accent. I mean, it's 50% of how cool he is.
I mean, I think if there's like, if I'm being tongue in cheek, and I'm like, the things that would really make your church plant take off. I mean, it was not a bad idea to invest in some accent work, you know, make sure you go live somewhere else for a while.
Josh: [26:38] 100%
Clint: [26:39] I'm just kidding. So yeah, I'm, you know, Chris emphasized a lot of the same things
that are emphasized in lots of planting circles, that I'm in, but he just voiced them in a way that was a little unique. An example of that would be, you talked about shepherding, and then we talked about caring for the people in your church and figuring out how to disciple them specifically. And he just voiced it in a way that was a little bit different. He was talking about how his congregation, the demographic of his congregation is young, because of that, he's got to figure out peer to peer discipleship in a way that normally, he wouldn't think about, and I was just challenged with, you know, by hearing him say, like, you know, essentially putting words in his mouth a little bit, he's figuring out, given his situation, given his context, what he's got to do, to make sure that people are being disciple, even the fact that he was, he talked about this sort of 6:30, discipleship intensive, as opposed to just saying, No, you know, saying to busy people, you need to prioritize discipleship. So that means you got to be here this time to say, Now I'm gonna build discipleship around them. Those are things that I've intuitively done in my context, because we have a transit, I'm going to transit in context, I'm going to military context. So those guys are up early. They're going to PT early in the morning, they're doing all of that. So if you're gonna disciple them, they're willing, some of them are willing, but you just gotta accommodate their schedule, or it's just almost impossible. It's like availability's such an issue. So for starters, practical,
Josh: [28:21] That was good. I liked the part where he says he found these twenty young adults,
and he's, like, just be the best.
Clint: [28:28] Version of you.
Josh: [28:29] Best version of you.
Clint: [28:30] Yeah, that was great, too. Yeah.
Josh: [28:32] Yeah. It reminded me of this. I have this friend named Brian Ode who's a church
planter. He's a marine and a church planter in North Carolina. And he talks about the diff in the military, as a military officer, you're trained in warfare, the different and they use this analogy of the difference between football, American football and football worldwide. Soccer essentially, right. So he talks about how an American football you know, what's the coach doing? Well, the coache's standing up with his clipboard, throwing it on the ground, screaming, "Run the play, run the play, run the play, I told you what to do. And you went out there and you didn't do it." You know, he's frustrated the whole time because of that. Where the soccer coach is kind of sitting down on the sidelines, he's sort of not paying attention, a whole lot periodical, you might get up and say something, but he's very relaxed, comparatively speaking. Why is he relaxed, well he's relaxed because all he did was teach fundamentals. If the play moves too fast. He can't tell the guy what to do on the field. So he can only teach fundamentals and hope for the best. So in Chris, when Chris was talking about that sort of ocean analogy that he couldn't, he couldn't quite put his finger on about. Don't teach a guy how to build a boat, teach them to love the ocean sort of thing. I was thinking of that. I think there's so much truth to that. I think if we spend our time in discipleship on working on the core stuff, that the combination of the Holy Spirit taking those things and manifesting themselves in the unique way that that believer might express it, is so much better than anything we could pre program or try to duplicate from our lives, the Spirit's work in our own lives. So I love that part. And just thought, Man, that is what's unique about Chris's ministry, because I have actually been to Grace Midtown. I saw Chris in action in Atlanta. And what's going on in DC? I remember walking out of there in Atlanta knowing Chris was coming to DC. And I basically thought to myself, 'That can't happen in DC.' And I think I was right. It hasn't happened in DC, but something really good about that, is existing in a DC version now. So. Yeah, I think I was thinking then more he's going to try to duplicate this. But fortunately, he took the good of that, the core of that, the kind of ethos of that and was smart enough to recognize that it's going to look different here.
Clint: [31:02] Great.
Josh: [31:05] Thanks for tuning into the church planting podcast. We'll be back next week with a
new episode.
