This fall, Mars Hill Shoreline is sending Pastor Mark Bergin and a few members to plant The Painted Door—a new church in the heart of Chicago. Here's part one of a three-part interview with Pastor Bergin (read parts two and three)...

Tell us a little about your story. In particular, how did God lead you from regular guy at Mars Hill Church, into eldership, into leaving Mars Hill to start a new church?

MB: I came to Mars Hill just a couple years into being a Christian and started serving wherever there were needs. I helped out in children’s ministry and got tapped as children’s ministry director when we launched the Shoreline campus. I jumped into a community group and got introduced to a regular preaching opportunity at Seattle’s homeless shelters. From there, it was community group leadership, then coaching, then deaconship, then founding a preaching ministry, and finally eldership. Simultaneous to going through the eldership process, I got accepted into the Pastors Training Program. For a year, I got to hang out with a dozen church planters from around the country. It only took a few months together before I got horribly infected with the church-planting bug.

Why Chicago?

MB: The short answer is hotdogs (check out our introductory video). But beyond that critical component are several others, including:

• My wife Acacia’s burning desire to move to a major urban center
• The absence of Acts 29 churches in Chicago’s urban core
• The city’s strategic position as a culture-making center
• A God-birthed love for a place where evangelicals make up less than 7 percent of the population

What are you most apprehensive about?

MB: I’m most apprehensive about gathering the right people in our launch team. To accomplish our vision for ethnic diversity, I’ll need to connect with leaders who look very different than me. That’ll be a huge challenge.

How is God maturing you and changing you in that apprehension?

MB: I’m convicted that our functional evangelical definition of what constitutes community is a joke. We tend to think that if we get people together who all look and act and think the same in one room then we’ve achieved community. I’m prone to that, because it’s easy and comfortable. Of course, that’s no more miraculous than a frat house. The only way that people with varying ethnic sensibilities can find true community is if the gospel has penetrated so deep that it transcends every other affinity. Learn more about The Painted Door over dessert at the Shoreline campus. Monday, August 3, from 7–8:30 PM.