FEATURE: DEVELOPING YOUR VOLUNTEERS
Earning
Influence
in Your
Community
By Gene Roncone
Our church in Aurora, Colorado, was right in
the middle of a building program when the
2009 recession hit. What looked to be a triumph
turned to disaster. We lost our financing,
unemployment disrupted giving, the hospital
that was buying land from us went under, and we
were forced to move out of our existing building
and start meeting in a local school. Attendance
plummeted from 1,000 to 240 people. Our
dreams for the future seemed shattered.
But God was taking us on a journey to learn
what community influence really is—and how
different it is than we thought.
40
Phase One: Brokenness
Sadly, in my first eight years as pastor of
Highpoint Church, my motive was to grow a
large church. We built great programs and
were one of the strongest churches in the
nation in our denomination in giving to foreign
missions. Ironically, while strongly supporting
overseas missions, I didn’t even know many of
the neighborhoods in my own city. Outside of
financing in-house ministries, we were spending
very little on missions in the United States and
nothing in our own city.