People’s Church
Everyone’s welcome, anyone can change
By Kirk Noonan
It’s been said that the 11 o’clock hour on Sunday is the
most segregated hour of the week. That’s not the case at People’s Church in
Oklahoma City. There, blacks, whites, Hispanics and American Indians join
together each Sunday to worship.
“We’re all part of one big family,” Jerome Bryson, a
35-year-old salesman who attends the church, says. “As our pastor always tells
us: We are a big family, and the best is yet to come.”
More than 2,000 people attend the seven-year-old church,
which is nearing the end of a massive building project that will boost the
ministry center’s square footage by nearly 45,000 square feet and includes an
1,800-seat sanctuary.
But Herbert Cooper, People’s Church lead pastor, is not
content to rest on a prodigious past or their present distinction as one of the
United States’ fastest-growing congregations. Instead, he’s bent on rallying
his people to reach even more of their community with Christ’s message of love
and redemption. Fulfilling that mission, he says without hesitation or a hint
of boasting, is simply what the church does.
“From Day 1 people getting saved each Sunday has been a part
of our DNA,” he says. “That’s the nature of this church and what drives us.”
Day 1 for People’s Church was Mother’s Day 2002. It included
65 people, a young pastor (Cooper) who had never been on a church staff, and a
harsh reality — the encroaching summer season was no time to try to
multiply, or even add to,
a congregation.
“Our planning wasn’t perfect,” Cooper admits. “Despite our
missteps, we believed the Lord had told us to plant a multicultural church. We
obeyed, and He’s been blessing the church ever since.”
By the end of December that year, 150 worshippers were
coming regularly. A year later, more than 400 people were in attendance. A few
months later, People’s Church bought 50 acres in northeast Oklahoma City. A
building campaign ensued, and in 2006 a 17,500-square-foot church was built.
Within two years of moving in, the congregation swelled to nearly 2,000
worshippers.
Extra chairs were brought into the sanctuary, additional
services were added to the Sunday morning lineup, and laypeople were recruited
to volunteer in the parking lot, nursery and hospitality ministries to deal
with the influx.
Cooper feels blessed that the congregation has grown and has
embraced two building campaigns. He has also enjoyed the thrill that comes with
starting a church from scratch. And he loves the fact that unchurched people
feel drawn to and accepted at People’s Church.
But for Cooper and his congregation none of that compares to
the thrill of seeing individuals experience life change after embracing a relationship
with Jesus Christ. To understand why this is so, one need only look at where
Cooper came from.
Transformation
Wewoka, Okla., is a small town with a few thousand
residents. Unemployment is high, wages are low, and there aren’t too many
things a kid can do except go to school, play sports or get into trouble.
Cooper realized this early on and decided to excel at school and sports. A
football scholarship, he figured, was equivalent to a ticket out of town.
During his senior year in high school his prowess on the
football field caught the attention of college recruiters from around the
nation. A recruiter from Brown University scheduled an evening visit, but the
day he was to arrive he called and postponed the meeting.
Instead of being schmoozed by a recruiter, Cooper went to a
Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting where he heard free pizza was offered.
As Cooper ate pizza and listened to a former Oklahoma Sooners football player
share his faith in Christ, he realized his need for a Savior. With a
tear-streaked face he raised his hand in the high school locker room and
committed his life to Jesus.
The decision forever changed Cooper, and he determined to
point as many people as he could to the same life-transforming experience with
Christ.
“I started carrying my Bible to school every day and
speaking to youth groups,” he recalls. “It was a radical turn because I had
lived a wild life.”
The following year he went to a college in Arkansas on a
full-ride football scholarship. At the end of his freshman year he felt called
to the ministry. He transferred to Oral Roberts University and then to Evangel
University in Springfield, Mo., where he received another football scholarship.
Though athletic and a natural leader, Cooper preferred
preaching to football. When he had free weekends or breaks from school, he
traveled around the nation preaching to teenagers at churches and camps.
After he graduated from Evangel in 1997, Cooper married
Tiffany Rust, who also attended Evangel. Cooper continued to travel the world
as an evangelist, speaking throughout the United States and in far-flung places
such as Ukraine, Malawi and Uganda. But after preaching a youth revival in
Tulsa, Okla., his ministry plans suddenly changed.
“I had no intentions of planting a church,” he says. “But
the Lord told me to plant a multicultural church. Where? I didn’t know.”
He and Tiffany prayed and began researching cities where
they might plant a church. Minneapolis, Phoenix, St. Louis and Kansas City were
all possibilities, but for reasons they couldn’t pinpoint, no city felt right
until a friend pointed them toward Oklahoma City.
“When we visited Oklahoma City my wife said, ‘This is it!’ ”
Cooper recalls. “Immediately, I felt the same way.”
A little more than a year later People’s Church held its
first service. Looking back now, Cooper wishes he had done a few things
differently — like attending the Assemblies of God’s boot camp for church
planters before he started the church.
“The day after we launched People’s Church, I went to boot
camp,” he laments. “I learned a lot of things there I wished I had known before
starting the church. It would’ve made the first few months a lot easier.”
Studies show that churches planted using a proven and
intentional system have a 90 percent survival rate after five years. Boot camps
are part of that intentional system. So is a partnership with what is known as
a mother church that helps with finances, mentoring, and moral support, and
sends volunteers as needed.
Because Cooper had struck out on his own, he had to raise
his own finances and rely on the goodwill of friends who believed in the power
of planting churches.
“Starting a new church is all about taking calculated risks
for God,” Cooper says. “Starting a multicultural church can be even riskier.
But we wanted a church that was for everyone — rich, poor, black, white,
Hispanic, Indian, Asian. That’s why we named it People’s Church.”
Life change
Shelby Johnson, a former alcoholic and drug addict, came to
People’s Church the day it opened.
“Cooper was at the door,” recalls Johnson, who now serves on
the leadership team at the church. “I didn’t know he was the pastor because he
was so young. But when he cast his vision for the church, I caught it. This was
a church that was all about reaching prostitutes, drug addicts and alcoholics
— the kind of people who were struggling with the same things I struggled
with before I became a Christian.”
Run-of-the-mill unchurched people are also the focus of the
church’s ministries.
Chrissy Duncan grew up attending church every now and then,
but when her 9-year-old daughter started peppering her with questions about
God, faith and religion she sought out People’s Church with the hope that it
had the answers both of them needed.
“I didn’t want my daughter to think that a relationship with
Christ was something that was not needed,” she says. “We’ve been coming for a
year now. This church is comfortable, very friendly, and the pastor doesn’t
talk down to you.”
Johnson and others say the church’s ability to meet people
where they are at was birthed during the church’s early days. Back then, Cooper
recruited AIM teams to partner with the burgeoning congregation to canvass
neighborhoods. They invited residents to church and held carnival-like
outreaches where food, games and giveaways were the order of the day. Teams
were also regularly dispatched into the community to paint and fix rundown
schools and to distribute food to the impoverished.
“We were highly aggressive in our efforts, and people from
the neighborhoods we visited started coming to our church,” Cooper says. “Our
goal was to create an environment where unchurched people felt welcome and
comfortable. Then we let God change them.”
Brian Rush, programming director at the church and one of
its founders, concurs.
“We knew if we would invite people regardless of where they
were from, what they had done, or how they looked, that God could change their
lives,” he says. “We’ve seen that happen many times over.”
Vision
In August, Cooper will speak at General Council in Orlando,
Fla. He is not yet sure exactly what he will speak about. But if his life is
any template for his sermon, he’ll likely include points on dreaming big dreams
for God, embracing God-given visions with reckless abandon, the value of planting
churches in urban areas, and loving people unconditionally so that they come
into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
After all, those things are just a part of his and his
church’s DNA.
Visit Herbert Cooper’s blog at www.herbertcooper.com, or the
church’s Web site at www.peopleschurch.tv for more information.
KIRK NOONAN is managing editor of Today’s Pentecostal
Evangel and blogs at Simple Plan (knoonan.agblogger.org).
E-mail your comments to tpe@ag.org.
