Creating a Community of Relevance: Interview with Pastor Scott Veroneau
by Shawn & Mia Burke
Pastor Scott Veroneau sat down with BibleandPopCulture to discuss the fellowship built around Community Life Church in Gulf Breeze, Florida. He shares the elements that went into creating relevance for their community and local body of believers.
rel·e·vance /ˈreləv(ə)ns/
noun
The quality or state of being closely connected or appropriate.
"This community has contemporary relevance"
Is the church still relevant to our culture today?
The church as a whole is struggling with relevance; that’s why relevance is probably important, helping people find a way that they can connect. I think the bigger answer is that the church is struggling to find its place to connect to society. Which, to me, in my context, is found in relevance.
What does relevance mean in a church context?
Is what you learn on Sunday morning useful in life?
Is the Gospel message that we preach, is it effective in helping you face, or walkthrough, or deal with the challenges of life?
Does it help us, even more so than the self-help tips that you can get from anywhere else in the world?
So is there something that sets us apart?
The Gospel being relevant is found in those questions.
What is relevant when building a faith community?
A lot of what brings us to where we are has been accidental: trying to be effective, trying to see how to impact lives. You try a little bit of this, try a little bit of that. If that’s not working, then building a culture that allows you to change- which is, by the way, not something that happens a lot at church. Change does happen, but a lot of people don’t like it.
Some of the things that we’ve had to do is take some of those things that maybe we hold most sacred in the church and disarm them. Not disarm them in a way that diminishes their importance, like scripture. I think a lot of times, people struggle with the Bible because they have such a reverence with the Bible that they’re afraid to approach it. They don’t know how to divide it, or study it, or even to write a note in the page or do something because of we’ve been taught. And so it creates a barrier, or a set of barriers, that keeps us from studying the thing that makes our faith most relevant, which is the story of our faith.
One thing we’ve done, creating communities where people are free to talk about their experience, which requires building safe communities. Taking people’s experience and utilizing them to help others- so utilizing their faith and their journey and what they’ve learned to bring others along the way. It’s a form of relevance.
In the same way that the Bible is the story of our faith and we’ve used those stories to help us. If what we’ve studied in the Gospel message is true; it’s still unfolding. Those scriptures are still being written in our lives and the lives of those people in our community.
In what ways were you intentional when building the community here?
Having a multi-generational church, I don’t think that happens on accident. This church, in particular, and this could be just our context, was started as a “gift to the community.” We began as a campus launch of a larger church that was land-locked and decided eight miles down the road to build another campus. This was early when other churches weren’t really doing multi-site churches. As they looked at the demographics of the area, the demographics were a lot of young families. So they felt the best thing to do was build a gym facility and to start with recreation. So I think our first initial blush at starting this community was to reach out to those families. And so the church started and was successful in the beginning with a lot of young families. Being that it was a United Methodist Church, there is an older demographic that comes with it, and so the proximity to their homes also brought them in. So, from the start, there was a good, wide swath of age groups. But I do believe you have to be intentional.
I think this phrase has been overused, but this “cradle to the grave” approach to ministry, to me, is the most healthy approach. To figure out how to meet the needs of one generation, then go all the way through seems to be healthy. But in our context, we struggle with the college-age students because we don’t have a college within close proximity. There are going to always be gaps in any church, but as long as you’re intentional in trying to meet those needs, it creates a healthy approach.
We found that we had a congregation that had an older populace, and we’re an all contemporary style worship service. We are entertaining the idea of adding chapel space and doing a traditional worship service. No contemporary churches [is} adding that- most would think that’s backward. But to me, it’s honoring the people that have been here, and it also gives us space in our venues to allow others to come in. So, it’s taking care of all of the generations.
How do we stay relevant?
So there’s the challenge. Always staying in a state of change so that you can continue to meet the next generation without forgetting the generation that’s there. It remains to be seen, what we’re going to do, we don’t know, but we’re trying. Here’s my methodology in ministry: I surround myself with people who are a lot smarter than I am and make sure they have a voice at the table and also have the ability to push into conversations. So as we are considering multi-site. What is that going to look like? Is going to be lead by a group of people. Not lead by one group with a box mindset that’s going to go do “something,” but we’re going to look at our community and include all of those voices and engage them, and we’re going to go do “that.” If a group of folks came to me and said, “Hey, we’re going to go do this.” We’d find a way to empower them and mash them together with another group of folks and go do it.
So I think that the answer hasn’t been found yet as to what the next expression of what the church is going to be, but I think you have to be willing to allow in leadership those voices that will help to form it. And, part of the conversation we’re having now is about what’s of utmost importance? And I think for us the model of ministry has to change. It has to stay in a constant state of flux, not so much that you lose people, but the model of ministry is going to change, but the mission needs to stay the same. So, it doesn’t matter what service looks like today as long as we continue to try to reach and meet the needs of people. We’re never going to let go of the mission, so we’re not going to change what it is we’re saying, but how we say it.
How do we reach an unchurched generation?
You know, I think we’re always playing catch up. We’ll do a survey, it will tell us the buzz words, it will tell us why people are doing what they’re doing, but we’re always behind so we’re always playing catch up. But to me, if the Gospel remains true, so in Matthew 16 where Peter has this great revelation, and says, “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God.” And then Jesus says, “Wow, You are Peter, Petra, and on this rock,” and I don’t believe it’s Peter the rock but the rock of the revelation, “I will build my church.” That is the central focus of what we do; then there has to be the freedom to mold and shape around that.
So as we’re talking to people, keep the heart of that message the same. If we’re built on the foundation of Christ as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, then he the ability to mold and shape around that is ok. The generations that we’re asking the questions to now are also carrying the message and reaching out to their peers. So they have it within them to shape that. They just need the platform. I remember going through that, where just fighting for a voice, fighting for an opportunity to do what I felt it was in my heart to do. And then you get that opportunity, and you feel like you I have to do what everyone else did before me because I wasn’t always given the permission to do it in a [different] way. Maybe we can learn from that, empower people to make mistakes, and to learn and to grow. It’s gonna happen. I just want it to happen under our watch and with our group.
So someone’s going to figure it out. Does it matter the denomination…we can fight over all that stuff, the very central core, just about the only thing we can believe in is Jesus as the foundation. So if we can establish that, the model can change and can look so different. We’re all talking about storefronts and all that. Who knows what the next expression of the church is going to be.
What defines a successful community?
I think a successful community is a community that is willing to grow together, is willing to have healthy conversations, is willing to disagree and do it in such as way that it doesn’t explode the community. A healthy community is a community based on the Gospel message that is willing to not only to gather but is also willing to go out and gather. So I think a healthy community is going to represent what we learn about in Christ and how His life was on display for us: loving, caring for people. Even those that maybe the world doesn’t want to care for or even our faith says, “we don’t know what to do with that.” But figuring out how to lean into that, right or wrong, but we’re going to chose to love people.
My awareness of the Gospel says that the ones that Christ truly railed against were those that figured they had it all figured out. Right? So, if we just try to pattern to the best of our abilities, our lives and our ministries after the way Christ lived, and maybe that’s a cop-out answer, but I don’t know that it is, because we haven’t figured it out yet. Right? So a healthy community is that: based in truth, based on Christ, and just willing to launch out.
I still have to hold to the fact that we have a perfect Gospel in the hands of imperfect people. So we’re going to screw it up a lot. And we have to be willing to own that and do what we can to make those things right, But then, continue to lean forward. We’re all going to be relational, we’re still going to make mistakes, but it’s what we do.
The relevance of Christ in building a community.
The message of Christ is relevant. So if we think of God being set off on a cloud, which a lot of people have that image. And the world is imploding into chaos; we have to recognize that the Gospel message says to us that it was not ok. That God was not ok with that. That there was a plan and a design to be able to bring about hope in our lives, and he sent his Son Jesus.
So to me, that was the most relevant move ever. Because if you think of God as being sacred, Jesus being in the image of God that comes and dwells among us, made the sacred accessible. And that’s relevance. And he taught us along the way how to live. So in its strictest definition, that’s relevance. Christ, taking those first steps, coming our way, trying to remove as many of the boundaries and barriers as possible so that we could connect with him.
That’s the Gospel message.
Resources
We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.
The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.
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