Adventist Mission

Meet Andrew and Mayda Clark

Church planters in the U.S. city with
the absolute least Adventist presence of any
of the top 25 most populated metro areas in the U.S.

Destination, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

PASTOR ANDREW CLARK is the mission leader of the Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan Ministry for the Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Above his desk there is a small wooden plaque that reads: I choose to follow the road less traveled…Now where the heck am I? “I still crack up when I see that” says Clark “My wife knows me far too well.”

For Clark and his wife, Mayda, this road began with disaster. Hurricanes Francis and Ivan came through Metropolitan Pittsburgh back to back in September 2004. “Francis filled up the banks, Ivan was all overflow,” said one local Carnegie resident. Adventist Community Services Disaster response was called in by county and state EMS officials to help. They served over 400 individual households in two short months.

Then, the Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists saw this as an opportunity to begin a holistic, community-based ministry in a U.S. city with the absolute least Adventist presence of any of the top 25 most populated metro areas in the U.S. A call was extended to Pastor Andrew Clark, then 29, who had been working as a field coordinator for the Columbia Union Conference under the department of Creative Ministry as well as an associate director at the Center for Metropolitan Ministry at Columbia Union College under Dr. Gaspar Colon.

“I’ll never forget the call. I was set to accept a call to another conference when I received a phone call from President Hartwell. He asked me if God may be willing to call me to a full-time pastorate with no church…yet. To move to Pittsburgh and let God lead. My Job description would be three fold: 1) Follow God’s leading as laid out in Ministry of Healing page 143–"Christ’s Way of Reaching People" 2) Update the conference regularly and show them intentionality in giving people opportunity to know Christ. 3) Build a recognizable self-proclaimed Seventh-day Adventist group of people who wish to worship together and multiply themselves.

I was floored. I remember thinking this can’t be for real! What pastor wouldn’t jump all over this opportunity to work in the least penetrated city in the U.S. with no strings attached, full on gospel, God-led ministry!” Clark remembers, “I think I told him I had to pray about it, but I doubt God could have talked me out of it. I’m glad God and I were thinking the same thing on this one."

Pastor Clark and his wife Mayda arrived officially in January of 2005. “The road has been twisted,” says Mayda, “we have spent much time in prayer trying to figure out if we are to build an ACS Agency with a church ‘in it’ or to concentrate on Church planting with an ACS ‘on it’. How are we to do both? We were so frustrated that the answer did not seem to come to us, as hard as we were working. Only God knew it was to be neither!”

So where does the road less traveled lead?

“To go over our entire history (although it has been less than three years, and less than 1 since we opened our doors in a permanent location) would take too long," says Pastor Clark. "Suffice it to say, we have grown organically and feel we now have a firm structure from which to work to truly impact the Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan Region."

The Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan Ministry has three functions: 1) To resource, train and equip local churches and entities in how to initiate innovative community based ministry and learn together how to grow church from them. 2) Create GPMM innovative, community based ministries and utilize them as training grounds. 3) To grow churches out of GPMM community-based ministries.”

Adventist Community Services-Greater Pittsburgh
For the sake of name recognition and Public Relations, GPMM has utilized ACS as its face for developing Innovative ministry and creative outreach under the umbrella of GPMM. ACS-GP has developed greatly since the days of the flood. We offer emergency eviction prevention, utilities, and life-dependant drug assistance, home rehabilitations, referral services, community organizing/development, and many other services. We are also organically growing three more Ministries under the Umbrella of ACS-GP.

The Conscious Café was born in an attempt to help community development as well as help us meet more young adults our age. Interestingly enough, it was much more of a draw for the teen population. We continue to operate a café both in house and on-line specializing in used books and herbal teas.

The Upper Room was born out of a need to do something constructive with our growing teen population. We expanded into the second floor of our store front to help initiate a primarily youth-led program. The following is their vision for the Upper Room: The Upper Room is a fun, safe place for youth with opportunities to explore faith and help our community. We are so inspired by them!

infYOUsion is a newly birthed baby we are launching out of the need to organize all of our community volunteers.

PULSE (People United by LOVE to Serve and Empower) Seventh-day Adventist Community Fellowship is our first Church growth initiative! We meet in the Conscious Café for worship services on Sabbath afternoons and have grown out of couch space! We are currently raising money to build out another portion of our store-front to include a stage, sound-system, graphics capability, and street entrance to have a church right on main street in Carnegie!

So this is the Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan Ministry. During the next month, we plan on sharing our journey through roads less traveled with you. You will read personal testimonies, stories, and get more explanations from Pastor Clark as to the directions and entities within this exciting initiative. If you would like to know about a specific entity or aspect pertaining to GPMM or its affiliates, you can request specific information to be blogged by Pastor Clark and his staff by submitting your request to: adventistcommunityservices@gmail.com with the subject “AM Blog Request.”

Pastor Clark concludes, "I remember Dr. Colon asking me before I graduated from Columbia Union College, ‘Where do you think you will be 5 years from now?' My response was, hopefully, I will wake up in the morning and know I am doing God’s will.

"It is good to look back, stand tall, see the future and finally hear in still, small, faint whispers: 'This is where you are!''”

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