Our Story
Early 2000s:
Uncommon Grounds Cafe
For some of us, our story in Aliquippa begins when the legacy Community of Celebration invited an evangelist from Australia to come to our community. John Stanley moved to our city with a prophetic message about Jesus and his mission. He brought churches together - even churches that had abandoned Aliquippa long ago - and Uncommon Grounds Cafe was born. Uncommon Grounds is still walking with people from isolation to community over a good cup of coffee, gourmet food, and often good music. The Cafe’s story inspired the foundations of how we see ministry and city-building. So we honor this ministry!
2005:
Aliquippa Impact
In 2005, some college students initiated a summer day camp program in the Linmar Terrace neighborhood, and Aliquippa Impact was born to provide tangible hope for a purposeful future for young people in the community. Some of these students moved in with the legacy Community of Celebration after college graduation, and a movement of prayer began among them. Aliquippa Impact became a training ground for incarnational living, answered prayer, service in the community, and learning to work in ministry teams.
2008:
The Gospel Tabernacle & City Group
Some of the relocating college students and other relocating families began to integrate into a nearly 100+ year old congregation called The Gospel Tabernacle in Aliquippa. Some of them also gathered in an initial missional community called City Group which often meet at The Community of Celebration. These leaders became freshly acquainted with the work and ministry of The Holy Spirit and life on mission. The church experienced a thorough renewal, and in the following years the seeds of the Greenhouse Network and Celebration House of Prayer began to grow.
2010:
New Missional Outposts
In the following years as fervency in prayer continued to grow, a small constellation of new Kingdom expressions was birthed. Some leaders from Mt. Carmel Presbyterian Church initiated Communicycle, using bikes to maximize the opportunity for real and lasting change in the lives of individuals and communities. Likewise, a socially conscious business was started on Franklin Avenue called eQuip Books bringing an expression of hope to a disinvested business corridor. A gym called The Foundry was also started on Franklin Avenue. New missional communities and projects were initiated in Aliquippa in addition to historic churches such as Deliverance Temple who had been laboring in the community for decades. It felt like something was happening. In these years, the Community of Celebration approached some of our leaders to begin dreaming about future transfer and continuation of their legacy.
2018:
The Greenhouse Lab
In 2018, after being introduced to the Tampa Underground Network, some of our leaders had new eyes to see the distributed, released way God had been working in our community for some time. We formed into a Network, articulated our values, and began a social incubator organization called The Greenhouse Lab. After the Lab opened, we experienced a season of quick growth, and missional outposts and leaders began to multiply outside of the City of Aliquippa into the wider region. The Network emerged beyond The Gospel Tabernacle as a diverse, inter-denominational association of leaders.
2020:
Pandemic
The onset of the global pandemic proved to be an energizing and clarifying time for our Network, even in the midst of the widespread difficulties. We discovered the power of being a family of distributed missionaries, each in their own tribe with contextual insight into how to best respond to the pandemic’s unique challenges. It solidified our broader vision for the church, and we began to build structures that could better facilitate the work God was doing regionally.
2023:
Multiplication, Regionalization, & Generational Transfer
In the season after the pandemic, some us began to hear the Lord say it was a time of multiplication, regionalization, and generational transfer. We saw the development of new leaders and missional outposts extending from Ohio to east of Pittsburgh. At the core of our Network’s expression, we saw a new generation of younger leaders begin to lead, create, and influence. The Community of Celebration signed a memorandum of understanding with us to steward their legacy into the future at the relational center of our Network.