It really started that way I suppose, a Tale of Two Troys and the confluence of two movements and the churches God has planted. Kensington Community Church is a large mega church, about 10,000 people in the Metro-Detroit area. Their campuses meet in multiple cities with a main campus in Troy, MI. Of course this was interesting when we held our church planters boot camp in Troy, NY last fall and Kensington brought a couple of pastors along with their church planting director.

The Michigan guys sat at the back table; seemed to be having a great time. The man that seemed to be captain in the group was named Nick Boring. The guy looked anything but. He had that look that let you know there’s probably a really interesting story to his life, 5’6”, long hair, Spanish goatee, pushing somewhere between 40 or early 50s.

At the end of the day, when the sessions were over and conference attendees began to hit Brown’s or Jose Malone’s for food and drinks, Nick and I tried to grab a beer, but other church planters attending the bootcamp kept interrupting. But it was hard to complain about it; after all, that’s who we were there for. Having had a brief chance to talk we realized there was a lot of commonality between us and it was one of those God connections that does not happen every day.

Kensington Church has a desire to reach people by planting new churches, and they’ve done so by planting dozens in their 17 year history. Vision 20/20 is the church planting network that was born out of Kensington Community Church. Each year they have a renewal retreat, which is for their leadership and church planters to be able to have a place to refresh. Nick asked me to speak there earlier this year. But he asked that I not speak on church planting but instead on a view of physical manhood that would make sense in the 21st century. So we spent three days out at some wilderness retreat in Michigan with about 20 church leaders. That group represented the core of Vision 20/20.

The whole idea of church planting is what brought us together. The idea of doing that with each other, that this is an experience that we go through that makes us more connected is something that Nick, Steve Andrews [Kensington’s Lead Pastor], and the rest of the leaders at Kensington brought about. Early on we received a very generous gift from them and subsequently they matched that with another but the fact that they consider us partners is what matters the most.

Scott and Phil and I, the pastors of Terra, went out to Kensington a couple of weeks ago at their invite to meet with their leadership and our pastoral counterparts and for me to speak at their new community service. Essentially the trip was to build a connection that was at first about common causes and city names but would become about common partnering. We are pleased and honored to say Tara Nova Church is being planted in partnership with two movements. While there have been additional churches and groups who have given gifts that are appreciated, the sustaining and enduring gifts have come from Vision 20/20 and Acts 29 and we want to be sure to connect our people at Terra to these groups in every way that we can. They’ve already connected to us in deeply meaningful ways.

Here are a few links to check out for more information::

Kensington Church
Vision 2020 Network
Acts 29 Network

I leave you with one image you may wish you never saw, on the way to the Detroit Airport to fly back to Albany we had a few hours to kill so we decided to stop off at the Henry Ford Museum. Here we are posed in front of an important tool of the American marketing machine.