Community Christian Church

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Church Ranks High On List

Naperville Church Rates in Non-Catholic Survey

Published July 26, 2007 - The Daily Herald

By Rupa Shenoy

In a teleconference each week, Community Christian Church pastor Dave Ferguson and the leaders of eight branch churches throughout the Chicago area decide on a single message for their collective sermons. The point, Ferguson says, is to make sure everyone stays on message and provides a single idea for their large church community to think about. It’s part of a relatively new and creative approach that has the Naperville congregation ranked among the 50 most influential non-Catholic churches in the nation for the second year in a row, according to a survey released this month.

Ferguson’s church is 19th on this year’s list — down from 13th a year ago. Willow Creek Church in South Barrington continues to hold the top spot. “I’m not sure what it means,” Ferguson said Wednesday. “Our leadership team is trying to use the gifts God gave us.” The Church Report, a monthly magazine for pastors and Christians, has published the list for three years. To develop the rankings, researcher John N. Vaughan of Church Growth Today, a research center, surveys 2,000 churches across the country.College Church in Wheaton dropped off the list this year after making an appearance at No. 37 in 2006. But such a slide is “statistically insignificant,” Vaughan said. “These are churches that pastors feel have influenced them, have impacted culture in general,” he said. “They are churches that tend to be very creative.”

Community Christian holds several conferences a year to train other churches to sprout branches while maintaining a single message throughout the whole community. Representatives of more than 1,000 churches have attended, Ferguson said.  By developing branches, a congregation can grow larger while each individual church remains relatively small and close to its neighborhood, he said. From those neighborhood meetings to the sermons, Community Christian concentrates on one idea each week, communicated in children’s groups, adult groups, and small and large groups at all eight locations. “It creates alignment and allows us to make a greater impact,” Ferguson said. Over the past year, the church opened a new location in Pilsen, a mainly Latino Chicago neighborhood, where the same single weekly message is communicated in English and Spanish.

Looking toward the future, Ferguson is planning for each parish to concentrate on one community project a year. He’s also thinking of new ways to deliver the church’s message, such as small groups led by lay people that meet in places like coffee houses. “A third of the population right now would probably not go to the churches that are out there,” Ferguson said. “We need new and creative ways to call people into the community.”  He isn’t going to focus on staying on anybody’s list of top churches. Instead, Ferguson said, he’s concentrating on Community Christian’s ultimate goal: 200 branch locations in the Chicago area and, eventually, a worldwide presence.