One City. One Church.

By Mitch J. — Communications Team

One City. One Church. 

I personally had the privilege to attend a worship night a few weeks ago where students from high schools and churches all across the Rockford area joined together and worshipped God. It was honestly one of the most powerful events I’ve ever been a part of.

Emily K., a Rock Valley student that attended One & One, told me that she “loved everything about the event, but especially liked that everyone worshipped in a different way.” She’s very passionate about churches not being in competition with each other, but rather all coming to Christ together. Even though she thought she would know everyone, from this event alone she’s made a lot of great new friends at Rock Valley.

Aria S., another student who attended One & One, told me that it was “really cool” for her to see other kids outside of the 4 walls of the church worshipping together. Going into it, she knew worship was going to be part of the event, but she “didn’t know it was going to be so powerful.” Plus, she said there weren’t any cliques, and the whole atmosphere was super inviting.

With all this buzz about One & One going on, I wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look at what drove this incredibly unique (and obviously successful) event to become a reality. Nathan Branam, the head of our High School ministry at Heartland, sat down with me and gave me the scoop on how One & One came to be.

So Nathan, tell me. Where did the idea of One & One start?

Like most great ideas, the idea of One & One started when several local youth pastors and I met over a cup of coffee. We started dreaming about coming together as one Church and instead of fighting each other, working together to build into our students… to give them the ability to connect to God and to each other. And to tear down the walls that sometimes separate us as churches.

We talked about launching One & One by hosting a Rockford-wide Worship and Prayer night. We liked the idea because first and foremost, we wanted to see kids from other churches worshipping God together. But we also wanted to group the students by their respective schools during prayer time. This way, kids could not only band together in prayer around their school, but they could also see other kids that they recognize, but maybe didn’t know were Christians. We were hoping to facilitate the conversation of “Oh hey, I know you from school! You’re a Christian, too?” Kind of get that connection of “Hey, we both love Jesus and we want to be a light on our campus. Let’s do this together. Let’s take our individual lights and put them together to shine brighter.”

We were amped about the idea and are still amped about it. One city and one church under God. Our hope is that One & One is something that becomes a catalyst for more and more students in our area to hear about Jesus. We want kids that come to One & One to be encouraged, connected, and passionate about then turning to their school to share the good news about Jesus.

Tell me more about the vision behind One & One.

This started because we wanted every single student in the Stateline area to hear the good new about Jesus. The best way for that to happen—both from a practical standpoint and from an impact standpoint—is through their relationships. As a ministry, we’re trying to figure out how to use relationships more and more as a transmission for the Gospel. Sure, there are relationships that we as staff and leaders have with students, but how can we help students use their relationships with each other to spread the Gospel?

Author and speaker Jim Collins encourages organizations to set “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (“BHAGs”) for themselves. For One & One, our BHAG was for every single student in the Stateline area to know the Gospel. One & One was a step in that direction: to bring students of all churches together and give them the vision of “God calls us to be one, but He also calls us to share the good news.” So we challenged them to do so, particularly in their schools.

How did One & One’s Worship Night go?

It was awesome. For me personally, I think of it as I do Night To Remember. Everyone who has been a part of NTR walks away thinking “that just felt like a little taste of heaven.” Obviously, it’s a different event and there’s a different emphasis, but I really did walk away thinking “that’s a little bit of what heaven feels like.” It still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.

I totally agree. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it was one of my favorite events I’ve been to all year! A lot of people have already asked me… are there any future plans for One & One?

The Worship Night will definitely be happening again next year. We haven’t picked an official date, but it’ll probably be around August. That way it will coincide with the start of school, and also give more room to all of our ministry kickoffs.

Other than that, we’ll have some youth pastor gatherings every other month with the agenda of praying for our students and praying for our city. We’re going to build friendships, and see what God sparks out of those friendships.

I’m curious. What churches are involved in One & One?

I purposefully want to be vague on that, because it’s never been about the churches. It’s been about coming together as one “big C” Church. We wanted it to start small so we could control the vision. Now as other youth pastors catch that vision and see “hey, this isn’t about our churches competing,” the hope is that they’ll come on board.

Even in contacting other churches, we intentionally didn’t say what church we were from. We didn’t even introduce our names when we were on stage at the actual event. We don’t want people to go down that track of it being a “Heartland” or any other church-specific thing… we want it to be as open and inclusive as possible to all the churches in the area.

If someone was interested in learning more about One & One, what could they do?

If you want to stay updated or see pictures from the event, go follow One & One’s social media pages:

facebook.com/OneandOnerkfd | twitter.com/OneandOnerkfd | instagram.com/OneandOnerkfd

Honestly, I already can’t wait for next year. The team did an amazing job putting this event together, and the energy (not to mention the Holy Spirit) that was present there was so real. In my opinion, this kind of event is exactly what the Rockford area needs. I love the unity going on, and encourage anyone reading this to build into that whenever and however they can.

As Nate suggested, go follow One & One’s social media to keep up-to-date on what’s happening next. You won’t want to miss out on the exciting things that are coming.