Barrio Dream Weaver - Christianity Today

What Pete Scazzero heard made his eyes bulge.

“This same marketing program launched a number of highly successful churches in Southern California,” the denominational executive enthused. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about their success. We’ll loan you $5,000 to participate in this program. You’ll mail out 20,000 letters and should get 200 people to jump-start your church.”

Wow, 200 people! Pete thought. This mailing is just what I need. It will force our Bible study group to pick a date to start the church.

Pete dreamed of planting a multi-ethnic church in a poor barrio of Queens, New York. He had never planted–or pastored–a church before. Nor had he taken any classes in seminary on church planting. But what he lacked in experience, he made up for in verve. So he jumped at the chance to start a church, and on Easter 1987, Pete’s dream opened its doors for worship.

A few weeks later, however, Pete was both broke and broken. The marketing scheme was a bust. The few the mailing had attracted were not emotionally, much less spiritually, stable enough to launch a church. Within weeks, it was clear the promised masses would not be showing up anytime soon. Neither would their help to pay for the meeting space.

On the church’s sixth Sunday, five minutes before worship, the 554-seat school auditorium was empty. That is, except for Pete, his wife, Geri, and their toddler. A few minutes later, fifteen people straggled in off the dingy streets of Queens. Worship began.

So this is it, Pete thought, my vision to reach the lost of New York City. I’ve spent three years in seminary and two years studying Spanish for this? Why, God, did you lead me on this suicide mission?

Confused, exhausted, a little angry, Pete stood up to preach.

And then it happened–something Pete can describe only as “an event for which I have no theological categories.” Pete had been listlessly expounding some point in his sermon when, abruptly, God’s presence flooded his senses. Pete felt God delivered what seemed to be a clear promise: “Everything I said to you I will perform.” Pete stepped away from the pulpit with his sagging vision for New York City reinflated.

But within weeks, Pete mercifully shut the church doors, the mistakes made in planting it too numerous to salvage. God’s promise would be fulfilled, it appeared, in his next decision to start over. In September 1987, New Life Fellowship of Queens, New York, was born.

VISION AND REALITY

Pete has always had plenty of vision; he traces its motherlode to his final year of seminary. One morning while praying in his basement about his future in ministry, Pete believes he received from God two clear directives: “Go learn Spanish” and “Come back to New York.” It wasn’t a lot to go on, but the experience lit a fire deep within him. He began investigating avenues to learn Spanish and toyed with the idea of moving to Puerto Rico.

Shortly thereafter, a man Pete barely knew from the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination fortuitously made an offer Pete and his wife of five months couldn’t refuse: $8,000 to go learn Spanish in Costa Rica. So after graduation, while their friends launched promising careers in suburban churches, Pete and Geri packed up and headed south.

They moved in with a Costa Rican family with ten children, none of whom spoke English. Pete and Geri didn’t speak Spanish. Their only private moments were shared in a tiny room above a carpentry shop, whose employees went to work at 6 A.M. Sawdust particles would rise through the holes in their floor and blanket their belongings. To top it off, a week after arriving there, Geri delivered to Pete news that often brings an amalgam of fear and joy to husbands: “I think I’m pregnant.”

“I had a great sense of God’s leading,” Pete says, “but it was the worst year of our lives.”

After a grinding year in Costa Rica, Pete felt his Spanish skills needed more honing. Speaking in Spanish was one thing; preaching was quite another. So the Scazzeros moved to a Hispanic neighborhood in Queens, New York. It seemed like the right decision, especially in light of Pete’s two-part vision. Thanks again to their benefactor who had funded the year in Costa Rica, the Scazzeros had another year’s salary.

Pete volunteered that year in a congregation in which 80 percent of the people were illegal immigrants from Latin America. He preached and also taught theology in a local Spanish seminary. While in prayer, Pete again sensed direction from God: to plant a church built on cell (small) groups. But not just any church–a multi-ethnic church for the poor, both English and Spanish, that would eventually plant other churches throughout neighborhoods in New York City.

Pete began to analyze New York City’s demographics and fell in love with its diversity and people. He finally elected a neighborhood in Queens: the area was multi-ethnic, poor, and close to Manhattan by car or train. Queens seemed to face the world.

But his vision had one small problem: reality. Pete was alone, had little denominational support, no staff, no money, and no experience.

“I had never pastored a church before,” Pete says. “My way of starting a church was to go out in the street and start sharing the gospel, trying to gather a core group of people.”

So that’s what he did. And that’s when he invested in the church marketing strategy. The false start, though, would give Pete what he needed most–experience. His first lesson was as hard as it was necessary: the ‘burbs of Southern California are not the barrios of New York City.

STREET EDUCATION

Shortly before Pete closed the church, he bumped into Fuller Seminary professor Peter Wagner at a nearby college. When Pete relayed to him his story, Wagner said, “You’ve done everything wrong.”

“I know I did everything wrong,” Pete replied. “What am I supposed to do right?”

“For starters,” Wagner said, “if God has called you to plant a church, he’s got a place for you on Sunday mornings.”

Pete’s church had met for worship on Sunday evenings.

“You don’t start a church in the inner city on Sunday nights,” Wagner continued, “not in a location as dangerous as yours. People get robbed at night.”

Pete had not thought of that. He soaked up Wagner’s sagacity and began planning for his second church.

When 33 people showed up for New Life Fellowship’s debut, Pete was ecstatic. In its first year, New Life Fellowship grew to a hundred strong. The church offered two programs: cell groups during the week and a celebration service on Sunday morning.

“I had a broad-stroke vision of what I believed God wanted us to accomplish,” Pete says, “but I didn’t know how to achieve it. After a year, I realized I needed mentoring to understand just what a cellgroup church was.”

Pete came in contact with church consultant Carl George, who was researching the large churches of Korea organized around the cell group. George took an interest in Pete’s vision for the inner city and mentored him on the theory behind the cellchurch philosophy.

Not everything that worked on paper worked on the street, however. Neither Peter Wagner nor Carl George could save Pete from one of the more effective techniques of church planting: trial and error.

Conventional wisdom said that the average suburban Christian, for example, could lead a cell group of ten people; all they needed was a little on-the-job training. So Pete, desperate for leaders to harness the church’s growth, recruited anyone with a willing heart. Cell groups multiplied like rabbits.

And then came the plague. One leader had an agenda to start his own church. Once he secured a cell group, he and the group seceded from the union. Other leaders handed out bizarre tracts in their cell groups as discipleship resources. Still others fixated on end-times theology.

Any church-growth principles imported from other settings, Pete learned again, would have to be tailored to the streets of New York City. New Life’s cell-group leaders needed to be highly trained to handle the complexities of shepherding the broken people of urban America.

It’s a good thing that, as Pete says, “I’m a super optimist. I can see potential in a frog.”

FEET ON THE GROUND

While the past seven years have tempered Pete’s enthusiasm, the hard knocks have not battered his vision. Perhaps only someone bursting with so much vision can stand fast amid such overwhelming odds.

“One of my primary contributions to this church,” Pete says, “is my calling to keep the vision alive and clear. No one else can do that. But I’m learning to keep my feet on the ground. My greatest struggle has never been vision but methodology and timing. I’m always running out ahead of God.”

Recently, when New Life Fellowship outgrew its rented facility, Pete was pushed to hunt for a new church home. The local Elks Club was available, but it would cost $1,000 per week to rent. When Pete tried to assess the church’s finances to see if they could swing the rent, he couldn’t even find out how much money the church had in the bank. The proper financial reporting structures hadn’t been developed.

Not long after that, a pastor-friend said to Pete, “You’re responsible for any financial scandal at New Life Fellowship. You know that, don’t you?”

“I needed to hear that,” Pete says. “I needed to be shaken up. I was launching ministries left and right, but we had no internal structure to care for the people leading those ministries, and no system to keep things running efficiently. I spent much of my time stamping out fires.”

So Pete slowed down to concentrate on an area he admits he knows nearly nothing about: church infrastructure. One suburban church sent a lawyer to point out New Life Fellowship’s code violations and now loans their associate pastor to New Life for two days a week. In addition, someone donated money so New Life could hire a director of community development.

“We’ve got to slow this whole thing down,” Pete now says, “and build this church right.” That’s not easy for visionaries. But those are the words of a now older, and much wiser, Pete Scazzero.

Enormous challenges still confront New Life Fellowship, which has grown to almost 800 people since 1987. But its vision is clear: “to nurture a multi-congregational, multi-ethnic, bilingual church in New York City that will plant churches in other large urban centers, both in the United States and around the world.”

That’s a lot of vision. But if the past seven years are any proof, what God promises, he performs