Boston-New York- Washington
Tony Osimo has gone through his fair share of change in the last two decades. The former factory foreman and print shop press operator has put aside secular employment to wear the hat of pastor-church planter.
Now as campus pastor of a congregation in suburban Philadelphia, he’s part of an effort that seeks to plant Grace Brethren churches in the region from Boston to Washington, D.C., known as the “Bosnywash” corridor.
“We are at the start of what could become a movement,” says Larry Orme, executive pastor of the Penn Valley Church, a Grace Brethren church in Telford, Pa.
It was a drive to better understand the Bible that originally drew Osimo to the Penn Valley Church.
“I had a love for the Lord, but I didn’t know His Word that well. I realized that there was a lot that I was missing,” he recalls. Ultimately, he joined others who were bent on not only studying God’s Word, but motivating a church environment that thrived on its commands.
Through the pilot group and surrounded by leaders who were passionate about the gospel, Osimo started to see his faith in a new light. “I began to understand evangelism at a deeper level,” he says. “God began to show me what the church was.”
A movement was underway.
Named Impact XXI for the year in which Penn Valley hopes to achieve its goals, the strategic vision focuses on seeing the Bosnywash region lit up with churches that are gospel-centered and inherently reproductive. Bent on fulfilling the Great Commission, this group of mission strategists and pastors wants to “facilitate an aggressive church-planting movement,” according to a portion of their strategic initiative. Through goals of evangelism, discipleship training, church planting, and partnerships, Penn
Valley wants to make a powerful impact on its own community and the world.
Orme likens it to a strawberry patch. “We are hoping to litter the landscape, the Bosnywash corridor, with new churches that may look different in style or form, but are connected at a very core level,” he explains.
Penn Valley’s answer to a spreading church is their present, multi-site model – a group of four different church campuses in Telford
and surrounding suburban Philadelphia. This unique model has aspects of both outgrowth and community. Though the goal of creating different campuses is to “litter the landscape” with churches, as Orme says, working together is a vital part of making that core connection.
“We work together through the text,” says Orme, part of the group of pastors who prepare weekly sermons to be preached at each
of the campuses.
Orme notes that this is not the sole manner in which the staff at the multi-site church prepares their messages, as individual pastors
may handcraft their own. However, the group usually puts together the core as a unit.
“It helps develop men and it also pools the wisdom gathered in the network,” he says.
Giving Birth
“Our desire at Penn Valley has been to give birth to as many church plants as possible,” says Tim Boal, who served the church 18
years as the lead pastor and is now executive director of Go2 Church Planting.
Like so many other men involved in the church planting effort at Penn Valley, Boal understands not only the pains of volatility
that pastors and church planters face, but also the remedy.
“Ministry is not easy, and circumstances often change, but we are called to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” he reflects.
“I have a love for the church, a love for people, and a love of sharing the gospel,” says Osimo.
For Osimo, who has taken a group of people from a traditional church building in Hatboro, Pa., to meeting in a local middle school, his growth-minded thinking sustains the core of Penn Valley’s vision: education, not just participation.
“Church-based theological training is essential,” reflects Orme. To ensure that quality training is implemented in every aspect of their ministry, Penn Valley has partnered with BILD International, an organization that seeks to educate networks of leaders around the globe.
But BILD is just one part of the array of educational programs that make up Penn Valley’s strategy to train and send out leaders. The Cradle-to-Grave training initiative plays a major role in the education of the believer from childhood through the rest of his or her life.
“Cradle-to-Grave learning starts at the youngest ages and seeks to create a clear developmental pathway as a disciple matures,” Orme says.
The Antioch School of Church Planting and Leadership Development, a BILD-based program, is yet another tool that Penn Valley is using to ensure leadership education within its campuses. The Antioch program is essentially a church-based school that focuses on training future leaders: a seminary at home in the church.
Education and training are, in the minds of church planting leaders like Orme and Boal, essential tools that will ensure a reproductive church. Orme emphasizes the importance of leaders, both voluntary and selected, who will continue the cyclical church planting process.
“We are aggressively looking for new interns and apprenticeship opportunities for the next wave of leaders. This is an ongoing process,” he says.
Displaying God’s Wisdom
“We can be tempted to think of the church as a building and try to build it,'” says Osimo, “but that’s not how it should be,” he admits. “The church is God’s way of displaying His manifold wisdom,” adding that the church is an outworking of disciples, an incubator, a movement, not just another building.
Osimo is hopeful for what God has in store for Penn Valley, Impact XXI, and church planting in the Bosnywash corridor.
“In five years I hope to have established a church that has established leaders that are making disciples and, eventually, other churches,” he says.
“Churches have a life cycle,” stresses Orme. “When they cease to reproduce they will not sustain a movement of anything. If they are not reproducing leadership and [other] churches they too will cease to exist.”
Boal, in agreement with Orme, knows that behind Penn Valley’s vision is a purpose to which churches are called. “We believe we can serve more local communities in our context than if we were to simply build one larger congregation,” he says.
So with a plan, a team of leaders, multiple allies in organizations who are eager to see the church grow in North America, and a reliance on God, Penn Valley presses forward. It started with people like Osimo who said, as he accepted the challenge to lead his current campus, “You know what Lord, I’m 46 years old; I want to do something for You.”
Osimo looks at people like Orme, Boal, and others who have given of themselves to see the gospel spread, churches grow, and lives impacted.
“I just look back at these guys in the trenches and I am encouraged,” he concludes.
Andrew Jones was an editorial intern with the Brethren Missionary Herald Company. He is a junior at Grace College where he is majoring in English and Journalism.