About Us
Our Vision:
Leading our neighbors into life changing relationships with Jesus Christ.
Our Core Values:
- People matter to God - We value people for how God sees, loves and accepts them.
- Every member is a minister - We value every person's calling from Christ.
- Worship brings us into the presence of God - We value building a community that seeks God at its center.
- Teaching is for life change - We value growing by applying God's Word to our lives.
- We must grow larger and smaller at the same time - We value meaningful and contagious community.
- Changing methods... Unchanging message - We value relevance, creativity and innovation in accomplishing our mission.
- God is honored in excellence - We value doing the very best we can with what we have.
- Focus on the mission that unites, not details that divide - We value unity and diversity.
- Harmony with one another and creation - We value responsible living.
Or to put it another way...
Jacob’s Well is under construction and always will be, both as individuals and as a community. That’s how faith works. We started in September of 2006 and are ‘re-inventing church for people who don’t like church.’ We will be discovering what that means and how to do it forever.
At Jacob's Well faith is a wrestling match. We are uncompromising about the fact that we follow Jesus by loving God with all our heart, soul and mind and loving our neighbors as ourselves. But we know that takes radical openness and honesty. Doubts and questions are good things at Jacob's Well; they can help us grow when we explore them instead of hiding them. We'd rather have hard questions than easy answers.
We also know that while many people are uninterested and even turned-off by organized religion, a vague, disconnected and undisciplined faith doesn’t get anyone anywhere. We grow spiritually when we are focused, connected and committed.
Jacob’s Well also seeks to be the kind of church people are, not have. That’s why we don’t own a building, and we challenge ourselves every week to practice what God is showing us.
We believe in taking risks too. There are many ways to grow in relationship with God and each other. So we try to be creative and not get stuck on one formula for worship. We love to experiment and learn from what works and what doesn’t. And besides, whoever thought church needed to be boring?
Finally we know that God loves you enough to accept you just the way you are, but too much to leave you that way! The same for goes for each of us.
Learn more about us and our history here.
Learn more about Pastor Greg Meyer here. And at his blogsite www.precariouspastor.net
Staff
Feel free to contact our staff by clicking their name and completing the 'Contact Us' form. Staff stories can be found below the contact links by clicking on each person's name. We are eager to hear what you have to say...
Pastor - Greg Meyer
greg@jacobs-well.net
Want to know what he's thinking about? Check his
blog at www.precariouspastor.net
Intern Pastor - Dawn Fuglestad
dawn@jacobs-well.net
She goes by many names - "the intern" at
Jacob's Well, "Mom" in the presence of three brilliant children and "Can you help me, Ma'am?" at the front desk of Abbott. Any other names must go entirely unnamed at this time. Dawn is thrilled to be
a part of Jacob's Well and is having a ball getting to know everyone.
Heidi dresses like this everyday
H2O Children's Ministry Leader - Heidi Esposito
heidi@jacobs-well.net
Worship/Music Leader - Nate Bergengren
nate@jacobs-well.net
This picture make you worry too?
Yeah, well he got married and so we think he'll make it.
If you'd like to take a deeper peek at Nate, check out MySpace
Administration/Community - Melissa Lock
melissa@jacobs-well.net
No need to worry about Melissa. She's married to Wonder Joe!
Gina's story
Gina came to Jacob's Well from the corporate world. She used to use her exceptional skills to launch stores and initiatives for Best Buy, but decided working just as hard to launch a church for God and not getting paid as much was a better option. Crazy... like everyone God gets ahold of.
Gina and her husband James live in the neighborhood and are waiting their first child any day now.
Greg's story
Greetings! I'm Greg Meyer. The one God started working on first to try to start a new kind of church. One that people wouldn't have, but that people were. Since then the vision has become the vision of hundreds of others.
I've lived in south Minneapolis for 15 years now, so my roots are deep enough to make me a little skeptical when someone new comes to town and tries to try to tell us who we ought to be. If you are wondering about Jacob's Well, and who I am to think we need another church in south Minneapolis when there is already one on nearly every block, well... read on.
First, who am I?
I grew up in Wisconsin (being next to WI is one of the best things that ever happened to MN, by the way!)
I am a St. Olaf ParaCollege grad in sociology, anthropology and religion.
Master of Divinty from Yale University.
Post-grad work at Luther Seminary in St. Paul.
I spent my early years as a pastor in Papua New Guinea (PNG) where my wife, Kris, and I started our family. I had been there in college doing research. Kris had lived and studied in France, so going overseas was a natural. In PNG I worked for the indigenous church supporting local leaders, helping with development projects, and generally encouraging them to put the brakes on 'western Christianity' so that they could figure out what Jesus looked like in Papua New Guinean clothing. I spent about 7 years there.
In recent years I've been Executive Pastor at Bethlehem Lutheran (41st & Lyndale). Read my blog "What is this new church?"
My passion is and always has been leading journeys of discovery. I believe discovering what God has to do with our lives is the greatest and most significant journey we ever get the privilege to be on. Leading journeys of discovery through Jacob's Well is a big risk. Afterall, I'm leaving a large, growing, established church to start from scratch, but I can't imagine anything more important, worthwhile or exciting.
What else... Kris and I have 4 kids who have grown up in the Mpls Public School system, we live in the Jacob's Well neighborhood.
I hate easy answers, or actually answers at all. I live for insights and better and better questions that move us - and God - out of the box. I think our job as followers of Christ is to spend our lives discovering just how big God really is. That's what Jesus did. That's who Jesus was.
I love to sail, play basketball, run around the lakes, spend time with Kris and my kids, read, write, drink really good coffee (it should always be too thick to stir but too thin to plow) and... why kid myself, I don't have time for half the stuff I listed already.
What I really look forward to is meeting you. I hope to talk to you and hear your story at Jacob's Well some day.
Peace,
Greg
Oh yes, why start a church in south Minneapolis when there are so many already? That's easy, we don't need another church, but we desperately need a new kind of church. I bet you agree.
Heidi's story
Heidi on Tuesdays and ThursdaysHeidi loves kids and knows how to lead them to love God. From work with youth to managing Club Kid to developing early childhood ministry at a large Minneapolis congregation, she too decided it was time for something new. Really new. Her passion to not only help kids grow in faith but for families to grow in faith together has shaped Jacob's Well as much as anything else. Just stop in for one week at H2O (the name of our children's ministry) and you'll agree that not only is this program as fun and effective as any in the city, but it is not just Sunday School, it is worship - kid style!
Heidi and her husband Bob are life long Minneapolis people. Their children are active in everything.
And no, she doesn't really wear the bee costume everyday [just Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays ;)]
Melissa's story
Melissa...is thrilled to be part of a church that keeps it so real. She works part time at Jacob's Well - supporting the many volunteers who make Jacob's Well happen and doing her best to keep up with administrative details! All of the time she is a mom of 3-year-old Andrew and wife of handsome Wonder Joe.
Nate's story
We are so glad to have Nate on staff with us. He is a joy...
Read his MySpace page and hear samples of his music here
Nate grew up in two places: Chula Vista, CA (until he was 11) and Cambridge, MN (where his parents still live today). He graduated from Cambridge-Isanti high school in '99, then went to Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, where he failed miserably in his biochemistry major, so he switched to religion the second semster of his Junior year and finished with a degree in religious studies in '03. He likes studying people, their context, and why they believe what they believe rather than the biological processes going on underneath their skin.
After Gustavus, Nate tried his hand at being a youth director at a church in Brooklyn Center, but was called out of that into worship leading after 2.5 years of youth ministry. He worked on a contract basis with a number of different churches, where he honed his skills and made many contacts that brought him to us, here at Jacob's Well. Nate has been involved with several different recording projects, has played with numerous bands, and has ridden a horse from Custer, SD to the boarder of Oregon.
Among many things, Nate enjoys singing/songwriting/performing, playing racquetball with his roommate, Eric (who also plays keyboard for the JW band), throwing a frisbee around, playing soccer, working out/running, watching Kung-Fu movies, having a glass of wine in the "blue room" at his house, eating Buffalo Wild Wings on Tuesday-Thursday nights (that is when the deals are).
Nate is married to Audrey Christine and they live in South Minneapolis. No kids, yet:)
Style
Everyone wants to know this, and it is the hardest question to answer. We are a reinvented urban community. We have eclectic tastes, and want our worship to have quality, integrity, energy and a beat that engages an audience so they become participants.
Nate Bergengren, our lead musician, collects top notch musicians that make a great rock band. But that doesn't keep us from exploring jazz, blues and whatever might make worship really work on a particular day.
We want people to be able to "come as they are." That means leave your suit at home. Jeans, shorts, t-shirts, whatever is comfortable is okay with us.
Our Sunday gatherings will be real, relevant and refreshing. We won't have a formula or one "liturgy" we follow. Our goal in worshipping is to bring people into the presence of God, both personally and as a community. We will be using the Bible, but exploring it, not hitting you over the head with it. We will also use different media and experiences to make the message stick, and enjoyable at the same time. We figure that if church is boring, someone is doing something wrong.
The Children's Ministry will use that same multi-sensory and creative format. See the page on 'H2O Kids.'
Background
Jacob's Well is a place where people gather, share the stuff of life, recognize that it is all a gift from God, and take it to their lives, their worlds. If that's what a church is, then we are a church.
We are a new church for a new generation of people who have given up on the church. We are a church with God at its center, Jesus in its heart, but not 'managed' or contained. Jacob's Well is meant to be the power of God unleashed in the lives of people. That's you! And me. When Jesus said his last words to his followers - at least that are recorded in the Bible - he said, "Go, make disciples of all nations." But that doesn't just mean go be a missionary in some far away place. Jesus just wants us to "Go." Take what we have received, and live it. That's Jacob's Well.
You may be thinking, "That's great, but Jacob's Well came from somewhere, and is part of something, isn't it?" And we did and we are - and proud to be. We begin in September of 2006 and are a Lutheran Church, part of the ELCA, in fact (www.elca.org - check 'em out, but you won't find us listed there yet.) We are a gift of Bethlehem Lutheran Church on 4100 Lyndale Ave S, right here in our own neighborhood (www.bethlehem-church.org). Bethlehem is a great church. Growing, vibrant, traditional.
That's where Jacob's Well comes in, Bethlehem is a traditional, established church. It is a reflection of how healthy they are that Bethlehem realized that they aren't and can't be the right kind of church for everyone. They share our vision of helping people discover lifegiving relationships with God, but know that some people need a different form of the church than they can offer. Bethlehem gave birth to Spirit Garage about 9 years ago (www.spiritgarage.org) a great avant garde congregation focused on the uptown crowd - and now they've birthed us. And maybe, you!
Here's the skinny. Jacob's Well is a new kind of church. One that wants to be all about the movement of God's grace that we see through Jesus' love in our world. We want to be about that, not the institution. That's why no building. We are willing to be portable and on the move when we need to be to make it clear to us, to you, and to God that it's not about the building, but about the people. Our theology is the grace-filled, inclusiveness that the ELCA (that's Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) embraces, but freed up from the traditions that have - I hate to say it, but here goes - become obstacles for more people than they have become bridges for. I like to say that we are part of the ELCA-U. That's the ELCA-Unleashed. I'm proud to be part of a church body that is doing as much good in the world as the Lutheran Church is, and that is willing to take risks like Jacob's Well in order to discover what the church of the 21st century might look like.
Our office is at 48th & Chicago across from Turtle Bread, and we worship Sunday mornings @ 10:30 a.m. & 6 p.m. at Field Middle School, 4645 4th Ave S.
We have incredible children's ministry because they are as important as anyone. The children's ministry (The Pond 6 months-2 years, Splashville 2 & 3 year olds, H2O for 4-10 years old) is at the time as the gathering for youth and adults (Children are welcome in the adult gathering, by the way) because we know they need to worship and learn in ways that are age appropriate for them. We also know that many parents simply can't worship when they are busy managing their small kids. We periodically worship 'all together' as well.
Find Us
Home: South Minneapolis. Hey, we are cool being on the move when we need to. It isn't about property or buildings, but what God is doing among, through and around us.
- Our office is at 4751 Chicago Ave S.
- Our Sunday Morning space is at Field Middle School, 4645 4th Ave. S. Map
Join us there for services at 10:30 AM or 6:00 PM on Sundays!