By RJ Walters, Editor
Sixty-dollar jeans bagged? Check.
Over-priced food court meal finished? Of course.
Finger muscles sore from texting? The norm.
Stopped by that kiosk where God is alive and working like it’s a 21st century Zion?
I-75 is Michael Sawicki’s road to Jerusalem and Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw is his pulpit, where he is proving taking risks to save souls isn’t so radical, and giving away peanut M&M’s is never a bad choice.
The head pastor of FaithWay Church — a new faith community of the UMC in the Great Lakes Bay region — is living out his call to discipleship in what might be considered a less-than traditional fashion, but one he calls essential.
Instead of spending money on ad space in local newspapers and trying to run around from one social hotspot to the next, Sawicki decided that being a couple hundred feet from Macy’s was the perfect spot to begin his new ministry.
Sawicki uprooted his family (wife Patty Sawicki and their two children) from the comforts of Piegeon, Mich. where he was the pastor at a thriving church, but he believes the road less traveled is the trail once blazed by Jesus.
The transition has not been easy and a process that began more than two years ago was almost derailed more than once.
Nonetheless, the fruits of the Sawicki family’s labor and willingness to respond to God’s call has already prompted four preview services in a strip mall storefront, and 35 people attended the March 28 service, six months before the church is set for its’ “grand opening” on Oct. 10.
Called out
Michael Sawicki heard his calling loud and clear a few years ago —in his car on the way to a church conference.
“My wife and another passenger were in the car, and I’m on I-75 and I hear the Lord tell me there was a church that should be planted there,” he said. “And I said, ‘OK, God,’ and just chuckled. I knew one needed to be planted, I just thought maybe I’d leave it to somebody else.”
Roughly a month later he opened a letter from Eugene Blair — the current Flint District Superintendent, who was the Director of Congregational Development at the time — and in the envelope was an invitation to be the driving force behind a new church.
Upon reading that letter on Easter morning 2008 Sawicki knew his experience behind the wheel was not just a nudge, it was a full-out push.
It wasn’t an elementary kind of change though.
Patty Sawicki said she did not feel called to the new ministry and plenty of Michael’s friends shared their reservations about relocation.
Sawicki said he was well aware of the statistics behind what planting a new church can do to relationships and the challenges it can pose in a marriage, but he was not deterred.
He even said it felt like he went from being “a part of a supportive faith community to a ‘predator,’” but patience was a virtue that bred a clear vision in the end.
During the Exponential Conference in Orlanda, Fla., the largest gathering of church planters in the world, Patty heard the soft whisper in her heart and the couple proceeded into the unknown.
Be not afraid
At first the unknown was simply knocking on doors and seeking out new ministry avenues, but by December 2009, five months after the Sawicki family moved to Saginaw, the evangelical center of this new church was the mall.
While it is illegal to recruit and campaign under the title of consumer or mall wanderer, a business or organization can do whatever it pleases once it signs a lease — including proselytize and share the Gospel.
At the FaithWay booth are free snacks, T-shirts, mugs, registration cards and a big-screen HDTV with an engaging video on life’s biggest questions.
It’s not the type of stale production that society has seemingly come to expect from religious types.
The video shows a clip from “Tommy Boy,” utilizes penguins as a way to describe FaithWay’s dress code and isn’t afraid to be simple and profound in the same breath.
Sawicki usually makes conversation with 20-35 people a day at the mall, right in line with the expectations of the planning committee for new churches.
What makes this ministry so exciting to him is his constant contact with the un-churched.
Sawicki said it’s normal for a stranger to stop by with prayer requests and just last month he talked with a fellow mall employee who had just lost a friend to suicide, but felt like a “church outsider” because of some of his/her own life choices.
“Sure I deal with some belligerent people and I’ve been called names, but I want to engage in relationships with people,” Sawicki said. “I look to Jesus for my guidance and I want to offer empowerment, acceptance and forgiveness.”
By his own estimate Sawicki thinks more church leaders need to simply open their ears and hearts to the call of Jesus, instead of focusing on numbers, traditions and issues that get blown out of proportion by contemporary culture.
“He’s not interested in maintaining a church or keeping the status quo, he wants to do what scripture calls him to do — make new disciples,” Blair said.
Give the people significance
FaithWay is the first new United Methodist church start in the Detroit Conference in 13 years, and there is plenty of work to still be done.
Sawicki said he wad working to hire paid nursery help, and needs to get a solid children’s ministry curriculum up and running, and solidify music for church services before a six-week “exhibition” phase that includes the grand opening. In the meantime he is finding ways for FaithWay to host special events and get small groups together.
He said the main demographic at the preview services is the 26-40 year old sector, and families with kids. No matter what the age is, Sawicki said many people aren’t searching just for a place of worship, but for significance.
“The willingness to take risks, it calls to the desire to make a difference with your life,” he said. “Your people want to live before they die.”
Blair said congregations and believers should look at FaithWay’s model of outreach as new and vital, instead of quirky and atypical.
“I always use the kind of absurd example of if you went to McDonald’s and they didn’t have any French fries, (or) you went to Pizza Hut and they said, ‘Well, we don’t have any pizzas,’ — that would be absurd. It’s just as absurd for the church not to be making disciples and starting new churches and reaching new people.”
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