Bobby Williams Live

As a new church plant in Oak Ridge Tennessee, we get lots and lots of first time guests with us each Sunday morning.  Some come in and love it, and others come and think we are a cult.  It’s ok, I get it.   But since we’re not a cult, I thought it would be a good thing to answer some FAQ’s about The Ridge Community Church.

• What denomination are you?
• We get this one the most.  We are a true, non-denominational church.  All this means is that we have no particular denominational affiliation.  I grew up Southern Baptist, so if it matters to you, there you go.  To some people, this means you don’t believe in the bible, you handle snakes and you teach reincarnation. False.  Yes, we preach the bible and only the bible, we believe Jesus died on a cross for all sins and unfortunately, we don’t handle snakes or pass out Kool Aid.  Although, the look on some people’s faces if we had a moving burlap bag on stage would be priceless!
•  Do you or will you ever have your own building?
• I hope not.  But to be honest, I don’t know because God hasn’t revealed that yet.  We love being a portable church.  It gives us the opportunity to do things with our money we couldn’t do if we had to pay for building up keep.  Being a portable church also makes for some interesting challenges as well.  But those are challenges we will gladly accept if it allows us to reach more people.
• How much money does the pastor and staff make?
• $00.00   True story.  Our staff and myself make zero doing this. So we’re not about making some cash as a side job.  Every staff member at our church has a M-F job that they work in addition to what they do for the church, and they do a lot.  We do however try and compensate them in special ways when we can, because we do want to honor them the best we can.  Why do we make zero?  We simply wanted our first months/year as a church to have maximum impact in the community and getting into the community takes money.  There will come a day when we pay our staff in the near future but I promise no one will get rich.
• Why plant a church in Oak Ridge Tennessee?
• Simply, Oak Ridge, like many southern towns is a city that has a ton of churches but so little Jesus; so many rules and regulations, but so little grace.  There are some great churches in Oak Ridge that are doing a great job and reaching and teaching people.  (So stop pharisee…I’m not bashing churches) There are around 52 churches in Oak Ridge.  If the avg stat of 24% (and that’s generous) of people attend church on a regular basis, that leaves about 23,000 people that DO NOT attend church.  That number alone was reason enough.
• What are your core values?
• Chances are, most people don’t care about what you state as core values until they see them action.  We are currently going through a series at The Ridge where we are not only talking about our core values, but putting an action with them.  
• Let God Be Big
• People Matter
• Engage the Culture with Generosity
• Love Loudly
• Deliver Wow
• Irrelevance is Irreverance
• Embrace the Unembraced
• You can check previous posts of this blog to see more about each core value.