New church start Valley Church on its way to self-sufficiency in 2011

The Rev. Matt Bistayi (left) interacting with young adults at Valley Church.

By RJ Walters, Editor

The Rev. Matt Bistayi is the kind of guy who isn’t afraid to say he’s wrong and you’re right.

He’s the type of team player every coach would pick first.

And he’s thrilled to be spreading the gospel in a place where he finds people “searching for something more” as they endure the struggles of everyday life.

Based on the community being built at the Valley Church in Allendale less than 20 months into the new church start, the fruits of his engaging labor are evident.

The West Michigan Conference church plant is averaging 120-140 adults in worship each week, with 30-40 kids tagging along each Sunday.

Valley Church is comfortably meeting benchmarks set forth by the conference with the counsel of their Director of New Church Development Barb Flory and Bistayi said the church has high hopes of being self-sufficient and accommodating 150-200 regular worshippers by year’s end.

District Superintendent Laurie Haller said the 39-year old Bistayi not only has a certain “It” quality needed to succeed as a church planter, he is also extremely teachable.

“That is a great gift because if something doesn’t work Matt will try something else,” she said. “If I see something or Barb Flory sees something or (the Rev.) Brad Kalajainen (of Cornerstone Church) sees something that he’s not doing that maybe he should (Matt) isn’t defensive, he doesn’t say he knows it all and he’s very open.”

Haller said his out-going personality draws in young families and young adults and he is committed to studying new church techniques and taking risks.

Bistayi has leaned on the spiritual influence of small ‘house churches’ — groups of churchgoers who meet regularly and engage in service opportunities together — and he has attempted to cater to the college students at Grand Valley State, while trying to stay transparent about where the church is financially and what the future may hold.

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Hurdles to clear, a passion to share at Faithway Church

The Rev. Michael Sawicki has endured many changes at Faithway Church.

By RJ Walters, Editor

Michael Sawicki is the lead pastor of a of a congregation that meets at a resort, but that title might be a bit misleading to people unfamiliar with his story.

He leads worship at the Midland Resort and Convention Center, the home of Sunday services for the new church start Faithway Church, but the current location is just the latest remedy for yet another roadblock Sawicki has encountered.

In Saginaw, Sawicki started in a storefront that he called “relatively ineffective for ministry” before securing a building that was all but a done deal — until word arrived that “the township’s opinion was we could use it for anything except Sunday morning worship.”

Then he found a prime location at Delta College, but the Thursday before the first service was to be held the school’s board of directors told Sawicki the church couldn’t use it.

One transition led to another — with Sawicki losing several families along the way — and eventually a location nearly half an hour away with different demographics and new challenges was his landing spot.

Saginaw Bay District Superintendent Jeff Maxwell says the giving and ministry participation has exceeded the benchmarks for a church that has regular worship attendance of 55-60 people with roughly 85 people involved, but the worship attendance is far from the critical mass of 225-250 the Detroit Conference was hoping to see in the “post-launch” phase of ministry.

Sawicki likens the journey to a “rollercoaster.” He said it’s often difficult to balance the excitement of seeing new people serving the Lord and joining in Christian community with the reality that the church is “woefully inadequate to where I wanted to be at this point.”

“We’ve got a few small groups going and you’ve got people there who know nothing about the Bible, literally, and these are adults who are coming to their very first Bible study and exploring faith for the first time. They have so much enthusiasm, passion and excitement that they bring,” he said. “Yet on the other side of that there is the side of discouragement and just not being where I want to be. Psychologically it has much more to do with expectations over reality than it does reality.”

His ministry is 100 percent portable. Sawicki hauls a trailer to the resort each Sunday, setting up for worship starting at 8:45 a.m. and tearing equipment down roughly four hours later.

The Rev. Brad Kalajainen, lead pastor at Cornerstone Church in Caledonia, has been Sawicki’s coach through the ups and downs.

He said Sawicki is wonderful at networking — evident by his months spent engaging people at a kiosk at Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw — but there are a lot of variables that determine the success of a newly planted church.

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