George Stagg has a big vision for a big metropolitan area.
The twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul have a combined population of about 3.2 million residents-the 16th largest metro area in the nation. Stagg’s vision is to see tens of thousands of those individuals involved in a multi-site church family that combines lives transformed by the power of Christ with the strength of long-term relationships that demonstrate love, forgiveness, the bearing of burdens, and the building up of one another in all areas of life.
Bubbling with youthful enthusiasm as he describes his vision, Stagg, 36, is nursing a triple espresso at Barbette’s Cafe in the trendy Lake Calhoun/Uptown area of Minneapolis where he and his family began a church-planting effort in 2007.
Stagg points out that the first-century churches in cities like Rome, Corinth, or Ephesus would meet in public areas to worship and hear teaching from Scripture but then would meet weekly in homes to share meals, pray, interact, and to experience life together.
So he envisions a “church of house churches,” which he is calling Twin Cities Church, that would combine the best of the two formats. The first of these networks is now two house churches with more than 30 people meeting together Sundays at 6 p.m. for worship in a rented church facility in Uptown. The second effort, begun in June, follows the same model but in a remarkably different place, the ethnically diverse West Side in St. Paul.
A non-denominational church and a Spanish-speaking congregation have committed families to a church-plant that Stagg is beginning with a three-month study of BILD International’s book Seek the Welfare of the City. He hopes to equip this emerging family of churches through future leaders he is training, a significant portion who come from the Minnesota chapter of Teen Challenge, an effective national recovery ministry. Teen Challenge staff members have joined the church and are working with Stagg to equip these men for long-term local church ministry.
Stagg, a 2004 history graduate of Iowa State University, has wanted to plant churches since he was 19. A taped series of messages on Ephesians by Dr. Barry Leventhal convinced him of the biblical centrality of the church and motivated him to join Oakwood Road Church in Ames, Iowa, the headquarters church for BILD.
After completing BILD’s non-formal theological education program in the church, and serving as an associate on the staff of Oakwood Road Church for 10 years, he sensed the stirring of the Spirit to seek another direction for his life.
About the same time, Stagg spent a month with about 40 church leaders from India whom God used to prompt him to further action. “I wanted God to use me in the way they were being used,” he recalls. “I felt I’d grown comfortable.”
After that time with the India leaders, and in obedience to the Spirit’s promptings, Stagg began to pray intensely, which eventually brought him back to his earlier longing to plant churches.
Cities Affect the Culture
“I wanted to be in a city,” Stagg says, pointing out that he was greatly influenced by the works of Jeff Reed and author Tim Keller.
“If you’re going to affect a culture,” he observes, “you’ll need to affect cities.” He and his wife, Anna, knew about a dozen people in the Minneapolis area who wanted to be involved in something new, so they drove from Ames to the Twin Cities every week from January to July of 2007 to have Bible study, observe the Lord’s Supper, and engage in teaching and prayer with a group of believers. They would drive around Minneapolis and St. Paul, where they explored, prayed, and imagined what God may want to do there.
With the commendation of Oakwood Road Church, and with the encouragement of leaders including Tim Boal and Larry Orme of Penn Valley Church, a Grace Brethren church in Telford, Pa., George, Anna, and their four children (Andrew, now 12, Amanda, now 10, Alicia, now 5, and Gabriel, now 4) left Ames and moved into a rental home in South Minneapolis and set about the serious work of church planting.
Stagg credits Boal and Orme of Penn Valley and Go2Church Planting for introducing him to the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches (FGBC).
“I’d known Tim and Larry for about 10 years through BILD,” he recalls, expressing thanks to Boal, Orme, and the Grace Brethren for the encouragement, support, and resourcing that Go2 and the Iowa-Midlands District have provided him.
Stagg has connected well with other pastors and churches in the Iowa-Midlands district (IMD) of the FGBC, particularly with the district moderator, Pastor Randy Todd of the Dallas Center, Iowa, Grace Brethren Church. Stagg is now chair of the IMD missions committee and meets regularly with its ministerium. Twin Cities Church is one of three churches accepted in the Grace Brethren fellowship during the annual conference last August in Columbus, Ohio.
“George has a tremendous knowledge of Scripture and a gift for sharing it with those around him,” Todd says. “He has God-given insight . . . the Twin Cities work provides a model for us here in the Iowa-Midlands District that will certainly aid in our quest to plant many more churches.”
“George’s training and experience has, in fact, become a great asset for the IMD and acts as a conduit of personal inspiration for me to reach out to those people groups that are not reflected in Dallas Center,” he continues.
Todd calls Stagg a “young thinker” who produces in those he touches an introspection, which causes each to think culturally outside the box.
“I’m a better man and servant as a result of his influence and friendship,” Todd says. “I count it a great privilege and blessing to partner with him there in the Twin Cities and look forward to what the Lord will do through our partnership in the future.”
Tooling Around the Cities
“Let’s hop in the car,” Stagg exclaims, as he jumps up from the table at Barbette’s. But he first asks the server, Caroline, if there’s anything in her life he can pray about. He gets an enthusiastic response. As he drives, he tells the stories of several transformed lives which include a recently-saved young woman who will soon be giving her testimony in a TCC public meeting, a young single man who says the church “literally saved him,” and others.
Stagg tools around Minneapolis and St. Paul in his SUV, first stopping at a majestic stone church building where his groups meet Sunday evenings. Grace Trinity Church, at 1430 W. 28th Street in Minneapolis, hosts Stagg’s “Walking in Jesus” class every Sunday at 4:45 p.m., followed by “Word and Worship” at 6 p.m.
The building is a magnificent edifice with stained-glass windows, a gorgeous natural-wood sanctuary, and plenty of adjacent meeting rooms. Stagg unfolds a miraculous story of how the facility became available and the long-range prospect for an even more significant relationship with the owners of the building, a declining congregation with roots in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist denominations.
As the vehicle crosses into St. Paul and climbs into the west side neighborhood overlooking the state capitol dome and the river below, Stagg circles the Hispanic church where the next group of Twin Cities Church believers will meet. He contrasts the working-class neighborhood and significantly Hispanic demographics with the trendier population in Minneapolis. Then, on the drive through Midway back to Uptown, he excitedly talks about his Thursday afternoon leadership development classes with Teen Challenge men and other young men from Twin Cities Church.
Stagg’s commitment is long-term. Newcomers who commit to Twin Cities Church go through a year-long Membership and Covenant Process, which includes ten different study units spread over 52 weeks. His Vision and Plan for church development is an 11-page, single-spaced document with a clear articulation of the vision and mission, ministry model, current initiatives, networks and partnerships, and more.
Some Grace Brethren churches, including the Dallas Center church and New Beginnings Grace Brethren Church of Myerstown, Pa., have already assisted Stagg in various ways. He invites inquiries and, especially, prayer and financial commitments from churches and individuals whom God may move to join the expanded vision for church-planting in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
More information is available on the Twin Cities Church Web site at tccmn.org or by calling (612) 866-5848. Stagg’s e-mail address is george@tccmn.org. Information on BILD is available at bild.org.