Pastor Otto has been an ordained and licensed minister for 46 years. He graduated from CBC and most recently was the pastor of Highway Tabernacle in Center City, Philadelphia. He pastored in New Jersey for 11 years and was at the richest church in the district. From the time he proposed to his now wife he knew that he would pastor in a city and that this was ultimately what he was going to do. The church was anything but urban yet the people who lived there all worked in the city and had a great understanding of how the city worked. This is the reason he felt that he served in the church in New Jersey was to learn about the city because he didn’t know anything about what it meant to serve in the city. When he told people that he was going to move into the city people wanted to send him to Emerge, which is a psychological center of the AG. They couldn’t understand why he would leave this church and make a terrible career move.
When he left the church they started planting churches and used college seniors and juniors to plant these churches. The students would be coached 6 months at a time. None of the students were urban young people and knew nothing about city life. They would mentor these students and would equip them to serve in these capacities. They would simply experiment with what to do in places they wanted to plant churches.
He started using core values and wanted people to learn them and repeat them. One of those core values was that when I work I work. When I pray God works. He had many different prayer meetings at the church. He says “all language is learned by hearing language” meaning that how can people learn how to pray if they do not hear others praying. He learned by listening to his parents praying. He says that churches who don’t have prayer meetings aren’t teaching prayer.
A quote he shared with us in class is that Christians must give or they cease being Christian. We need to give even before we can give. If you want the church to balance the budget the be the lead giver. If you want the church to be a missionary church then give to missions. He said that we teach what we believe and we reproduce who we are.
When it comes to fundraising the biggest hurdle is to overcome the resistance to ask. If you do not ask then you effectively are saying no. We need to know who we are asking and ask for what that person can give us. One of the most effective ways is to break down the large sum into smaller parts. It is more than asking for the money. It is something that people can become engaged in that will last much longer than what that money can buy. Something that he knew in theory but learned in practice is that God’s true people will stagger you with their generosity.
Education has played a big role in his model for discipling the people in the city. The city is different in the respect that the problems and challenges of the city will be everywhere and tend to radiate outward. A study was done and all of the issues that center city was dealing with 20 years ago is now being dealt with in Upper Darby. This is the first ring outside of the city is where this problem first affects the suburbs. If a child doesn’t learn how to read by 9 years old they will be illiterate. The church can not be so narrowly spiritual that they do not give to justice then what are they doing. Pastor Otto said that Jesus didn’t die so that we had something to do on Sunday morning. Jesus died so that people could be whole.
They have an equation at the church that said responsibility + accountability equals maturity.
Almost anybody can count the amount of seeds in an apple. But we get to know a God who knows how many apples will come out of every seed. Do not spend time counting seeds. Spend time getting to know the God who makes seeds grow. God will lead us to the most potent seeds.
Pastor Otto Wegner defined disciple makers as people who spend time with people and answer questions. Nothing more complicated than that. It is just being real.
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