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While sitting in the food court of The Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem, NH, two church leaders meet to share their similar backgrounds, ministries, and love for the churches they serve. These two church leaders are Tom Gerdts (left), lead minister at Rockingham Christian Church (RCC) in Salem, NH, and Ron Kastens (right), lead minister at CrossWay Christian Church in Nashua, NH. Not only do their personal stories share paralleling milestones, but so do their churches. |
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Both of you worked full time at well-established churches before moving to New Hampshire. Tell us about those churches.
Ron: CrossWay is the second church where I worked full-time, the first being Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY. I started serving at Northeast in May of ‘89 and it was running about 325 on a Sunday. Over the course of almost 13 years, they grew to 2,100 people on any given Sunday. When most people graduate from college to do ministry, they generally have to go to different churches to experience the various opportunities that ministry has to offer. Due to the growth of Northeast, I was able to stay in one place and have five different job descriptions in 12 ½ years.
Tom: Karen and I were at Lincoln Christian Church (LCC) in Lincoln, IL, for almost 20 years. I was the preaching minister for about 15 of those years and then I moved into adult discipleship. After preaching for more than a decade, I started thinking about moving to a smaller church environment for a number of different reasons. At that point, the elders realized it would be good for me to take a sabbatical, and I did. During my sabbatical, I still had some assignments to do, but for the most part it was an extended vacation. When I returned from my time off, the church tweaked my job description. Even after the change in my job description, I did a fair amount of preaching. I also became responsible for small groups and starting some ministries that the church had dreamed of starting and I had a passion to start.
Ron: You are probably one of the few people who have transitioned from being a preaching minister to working in an adult discipleship role.
Tom: I had never thought about that before, but it is probably rare. It came pretty naturally to me. We were in an environment where there were a lot of good preachers, and LCC found a man who filled the pulpit and did a lot of the preaching for five years. He has since moved on as well. Lincoln is not Louisville. It is a very small, conservative town located in a classic, traditional setting. LCC was not in a high-growth situation, but it was in a high-health situation. It was a very healthy church with healthy elders and it had a lot of opportunity to do different kinds of ministries. It was a very mission-oriented church and it was a launching pad for many, many missions including New England. When we ended up moving to New England from Lincoln, it felt pretty natural, almost seamless, because the church totally supported that mission.
Ron: When you moved to New England, you came to do what you had helped other people do for over 20 years.
Tom: Yes, that was a big part of it. We had sent and sent and sent and then it was time for us to say, “We’ll go too.”
Why did you decide to move to New England to be the lead minister of your church?
Tom: We had known the Clymers for many years—they were our neighbors, friends, and colleagues. Basically, Karen and I followed their story. When they moved to New England, they stayed in touch, of course, and from time to time Dan and Linda would talk to us about churches in New England—either a new church plant, or an established church. Early on, we told them that my profile, personality, and giftedness are not those of a church planter. I could do it, but it’s not my strength. However, I also told them that if there is a young, established church that could use an established person to help take it to the next level, we could do that. RCC opened right around the same time our youngest graduated high school, which was perfect timing. He graduated in ’05, and we moved to New Hampshire in November of ‘05. Our first Sunday at RCC was actually the day the church celebrated its fourth birthday.
Ron: I was working at Northeast as the Adult Ministry Department team leader. I loved the church, I loved the city, and I loved the golf courses because they were really inexpensive [laughs]. At that point, it didn’t look like we were going anywhere. In April ‘01, I got a call from a church that had an opening for a senior minister. They asked me if I was interested. The more I thought about it, the more I was intrigued by the possibility, but I knew the church was not a good fit for me. Both my senior minister at the time and my wife (on different occasions) told me they could see me planting a church before moving onto an older one. Their thoughts stayed with me. In June of ‘01, I traveled to the North American Christian Convention, where I met Dave Smith. During my conversation with Dave, he told me about a church in Nashua, NH, that was an established church looking for a senior minister. That was the first time I heard of CrossWay. Later, I talked to my wife and said, “If we’re supposed to plant a church we’re years away because I don’t know anything about church planting, but there’s this church in Nashua, NH, that is running around 350, which is the same size as Northeast when I first started there.” I went on to say that I could handle that type of situation because I understood it. By August, we had visited CrossWay twice and I was offered the position. Both my wife and I felt like God wanted us at CrossWay, so I accepted the position. Then we moved to New Hampshire in October, which was the month CrossWay celebrated its sixth birthday. So, we moved up during the church’s birthday month, like you [Tom].
Tom: I think RCC started a few weeks later.
Ron: I moved to New Hampshire at the end of October, and during the first three or four weeks, a lot of CrossWay’s key people were gone, because they were over at RCC doing children’s ministry. I was like, “What is this? I show up and people bail.” That was a cool thing for us to be apart of.
Tom: It’s a little bit late, but thank you.
What was the appeal about working at a newer church?
Ron: My wife and I really felt that New England was a mission field. I remember talking to my wife and saying, “People will be willing to go to Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, but who’s going to go to a place like New England?” When we came to the interview, there wasn’t a Rockingham in Salem, Oasis in Concord, Eastpointe in Portland, or Reunion in Boston. Only Manchester Christian Church, Riverside, Harbor of Hope, and CrossWay were in the immediate area. I felt like if we came up here and gave 20 years of our lives to make the soil a little more ready for the next guy, then so be it.
Tom: New England gradually grew on us over a period of several years, because we knew the Clymers, the Nordhielms, and Mike Shryock. We also vacationed in New England and visited the people we knew. However, we did have pivotal moments during our trip to New England to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. During the trip, Dan [Clymer] asked us if we would meet with five couples from RCC. We had a good experience with those couples, and we quickly learned to love them. On the flight back home, Karen said, “If we leave Lincoln, there are literally 30 different people in that church who could stand up and preach on any given Sunday and do a great job, but who’s going to go to RCC if we don’t?” It truly is a mission field. We were 90% of the way there anyway, and that trip sealed it.
Since both of you have worked for a well-established church and a newer church that is becoming more established, tell us about the similarities and differences between these two types of churches?
Tom: The big change for me was change. The pace of change at a newer church is faster; it’s more dynamic. People are more open to it. A new church is more agile, and I love that. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with that. Since coming to RCC, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about change, how to adapt to it, instigate it, and how to really enjoy it.
Ron: When I came to CrossWay, it had a location, a name, and enough income so I didn’t have to raise support. However, CrossWay had not transitioned into eldership yet, so I had a hand in shaping that. I also had a hand in shaping the style and culture of the church, which I loved. I got the best of both worlds. The hard part for me was going from an extremely large church to a small church. I got spoiled at Northeast. For example, at Northeast, when I had a problem with my computer, I called IT [information technology], the IT guy would come over, and within 30 minutes my problem was solved. When I first came to CrossWay, it was a nightmare when I had trouble with my computer, because I would have to wait two to three weeks to get IT help from a volunteer. Basically, I loved being at a newer church, but it was hard being a smaller church.
What challenges did you encounter moving from a well-established church to a newer church?
Tom: During our move to New Hampshire, RCC signed the lease for the first ever 24/7 property. So, when we moved in, we came into a really intense renovation. That was the biggest challenge. We spent our first four or five months completely transforming 8,400 square feet of industrial space. For me, it was a God-given opportunity to get my hands dirty and to show this young church that I was willing to invest myself. It was an exciting time and an exhausting time. They learned pretty quickly that Karen and I were here to work. I’m thankful for that experience.
Ron: Just like in August when football teams do two-a-days and experience a trying, exhausting time with their team members, you got a chance to go through a trying, exhausting time with your church members. It shapes you, molds you, and unites you as a team. Then you are really willing to sacrifice for each other because of what you went through together.
Tom: I never thought about that analogy before, but it was like a boot camp.
Ron: That probably accelerated your sense of belonging to the people within your church. What you achieved in those five or six months might have taken you two years to build if you hadn’t worked beside each other during the renovation. That’s cool. Well, in my case, the church had about 14 or 15 months of interim between the previous lead minister and myself. That is a long interim period. During that time, the church held on like crazy, and the staff took turns preaching. Before the previous lead minister left, the church looked at property and church eldership, and after he left, everything was put on a shelf. When I came along, it was really hard to get everything moving again and to rebuild momentum. Also, due to his somewhat quick departure from the church, some people within the church became skeptical about how long I would stay. The other challenge was that when I was hired, there were three others on staff. During the interview process, I learned that two of the three staff members were planning on leaving within two years. It was difficult to set a vision with a staff that was leaving. I also didn’t realize how hard it would be to find new staff members. I ended up hiring from within, and that has worked out really well.
How did you deal with moving away from your church family and friends in Illinois and Kentucky?
Tom: My three oldest kids were grown and gone. My two youngest kids were 18 and 19. It was a harder adjustment for them, but they handled it well. As far as family is concerned, that was the biggest thing holding us back from moving to this area sooner and it was the one thing that could have kept us from moving here at all. The jumping off point for me was when I realized (looking at the profile of our five grown kids) that they were never going to live anywhere near us anyway. They are going to be all over the country and possibly the world. Karen and I both knew that we needed to be in New Hampshire because we felt that God wanted us to be here. I had a peace about it from that point on, and so did Karen. We are a ministry family, and our kids get it—God comes first. Really, in this day and age, it is a lot easier than it was a few decades ago to keep in touch with family members who live far away. Communication makes it so much easier.
Ron: When we first moved to Louisville in ‘89, none of our family lived there. By the time we left in ‘01, my parents, sisters, and brother were living in Louisville, so it was hard for us to move. However, we were convinced that it was a God thing. My parents and brother, being in ministry, understood why we were moving. Of course, my parents didn’t like me taking their grandchildren 18 hours away by car, but they understood. It was hard for us. We made a significant sacrifice to come, and I think that tells people something. It tells them that we are serious about doing ministry at CrossWay.
Tell us about RCC and CrossWay.
Tom: I think our mission statement, which says, “meeting people where they are and helping them follow Jesus” has served us well and I think RCC really lives it out. The people in our church are accepting, unselfish, community-minded, and non-judgmental (I hear that one a lot). They really understand what it means to meet people where they are to help them follow Jesus. RCC has a community-oriented atmosphere, which is evident in our outreach events. There could be more tangibles in terms of our facilities, numbers, and money, but the intangibles are really positive. I love going to work, and I love the people I work with, I really do. I always tell guests who come in that we have to love each other because Jesus said so, but we really like each other too. Going back to the tangibles, when I first arrived at RCC, we had around 125 people on a Sunday. Now, RCC runs between 275-290 people on a Sunday, and we are currently trying to grow our infrastructure. I always feel like we are a step and a half behind CrossWay. We have benefited from watching them over the years.
Ron: Well, we have to learn from each other. When I first came to CrossWay, we were running in the low 300s on a Sunday and now we run between 500 to 550. We have 200 adults in small groups, and we have a great children’s ministry and youth ministry. I really love the culture of our church. CrossWay has a big heart for the homeless, disabled, and the marginalized. We financially support Care Net Pregnancy Center and a homeless ministry in Nashua. Plus, we are not just financially supporting them, but we also have people who serve as volunteers in those places, and that is their ministry. CrossWay has also adopted Kiandururu (village 2) in the Mathare Valley slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya rocks!
In five years, how do you envision your church?
Tom: I see RCC transforming the spiritual landscape all over the town and our community. We should be a church of 500 plus, and we should be meeting at the Community Center for the Arts at 15 E. Broadway in Salem, which will also be RCC’s home base. The main thing that I would like to see radically different in five years is our focus on global ministries. I would like to see a personal investment in global ministries. We need to be there soon, but five years from now, we should definitely be there.
Ron: In five years, we will have two other locations besides our current location. The old cliché is that as we grow larger, we also want to grow smaller. We are also trying to figure out how to get people more involved in the community during the week. We want to see more people baptizing those they lead to Christ.
How are RCC and CrossWay similar?
Tom: Both churches inherited a lead minister early on in the process, and they were both started with a plant team.
Ron: Our churches have fairly contemporary worship styles and a laid back, comfortable atmosphere.
Tom: Both churches started with multiple services.
Ron: RCC and CrossWay are looking for unique ways to creatively be the Church in their cultural context. They are non-traditional churches, but not anti-traditional.
For more information about CrossWay, go to www.crosswaycc.org.
For more information about Rockingham, go to www.rccsalem.com.
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