An Open Letter to Church Planting Pastors

Ever wonder what it's like to be married to a church planter? Christine really hit the nail on the head with this post about priorities in planting. My wife would wholeheartedly resonate with the warning to pastors within this letter. Here's a quote:

Church planting is difficult work because it's all-encompassing. The lines between home and ministry are so blurred that it's easy to lose sight of what appropriate boundaries are and what emotional and physical health looks like. Church planters, not a wife in that room cried because we don't understand the pressure you are under or because we have unrealistic expectations of you. We feel the pressure, albeit different pressure, as much as you, and we care about your success probably more than you do.
We love you, we respect you, and we sincerely want to be a help to you. Although we are not a resource just to be used to further your ministry, we are your best resource for life, family, and ministry.

We are your helper, yes, but we need your help, too. We need your understanding and listening ear. 

Read the rest here and revisit the principle frequently.

Acts 19 Strategy

One of the goals of the new vision statement being considered by the EFCA is a call to develop 100 Acts 19 cities. The idea revolves around what happened as the Gospel spread to Ephesus in Acts 19. The strategy being to infiltrate 100 urban centers here and around the world with an aggressive plan for ministry, evangelism, and cultural transformation.

At our recent vision summit at the EFCA headquarters in Minneapolis, the presentation on this strategy was somewhat unclear. Fortunately, I found this document which brought much more clarity. My first take is that this is an exciting God-sized vision. I am hopeful it will motivate us to get involved in the cause of God's missional vision for our cities, nation, and world.

Jesus Has Come to Confound You

The most humbling thing I ever did was plant a church. The early days of planting carried with it a degree of doubt and insecurity that was unparalleled in my previous 15 years as a pastor. Ironically, I hope I never forget those days. The desperation and dependance I felt was beautiful. My inability to bear fruit and need for God's help was ever before me. In this spirit, I was recently humbled and encouraged by Zack Eswine's words from his new book Sensing Jesus.

Those of you searching for something larger, faster, and more significant, who feel that if you could just be somewhere else doing something else as somebody else, then you life would really matter- Jesus has come to confound you. I'm not referring to those who need to flee to somewhere else for safety's sake. I am referring to the discontented who have not yet learned what it means that Jesus is our portion and and that he is enough for us. You have wandered far from home. You cannot glorify God by trying to become him… He may just decide to pick you up and carry you to somewhere sexy in order to undo you! He may call you to courageously prize what is overlooked and mundane among those whose cravings for the next and the now might cause them to soon overlook you for another more hip pastor. Or he may call you to nowhere sexy so that you can learn that you can make a difference in Jesus even if you are somewhere forgotten by the world.

Oh that we would always remain humble, no matter our position or authority… content, no matter our calling or abilities. May Jesus be our portion and hope… our life lived for His glory alone.

Church Planting: The Most Impactful Strategy

Here is a classic quote from Dr. Tim Keller from his paper Why Plant Churches written in 2002. I couldn't agree more.

The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else--not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes--will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow raising statement. But to those who have done any study at all, it is not even controversial.

How to Cultivate Meaningful Relationships in Small Groups

As we planted The Vine three years ago, we desired for it to be a place where honest and authentic community was happening in individual relationships and in our groups. This video reminded me how important it is for those of us who are leaders to set that tone for our groups and churches. If we have any hope of seeing honest and meaningful relationships become a common characteristic in our churches, we have to lead the way.

The Process for Planters

One of my goals over the next 6 months is to work with a task force to fully develop a process for church planters and churches to engage in multiplication within the Forest Lakes District of the EFCA. My progress in that goal will be evident in a growing website dedicated to district multiplication. This week I've added the following information regarding the process for planters desiring to engage in the district. Please feel free to participate by providing feedback. You can read the entire section on the website here.

THE FOUR-STEP PLANTING PROCESS

1. Application and Assessment: This phase includes a preliminary application, the completion of several assessment tools, an interview with a pre-assessment team, and final recommendations from the team regarding your calling and the training conditions necessary for final assessment.

2. Training: The training phase will look different for every prospective planter based upon the recommendations of the pre-assessment team. For some, the training phase could include a residency or internship, for others the reading of books and attending a boot-camp, yet for others it could include specific training in bi-vocational or rural planting methods.

3. Final Assessment: Once the training phase is completed the prospective planter will go through a final assessment process including several surveys and an interview with an assessment team. This phase will provide a final confirmation for the planter candidate, indicating that the training process has been completed and that the specific vision for planting is sound and a good reflection of the leader's gifts and calling.

4. Planting and Coaching: Once the candidate receives final approval he will become an official planter within the EFCA and begin the transition phase into planting. In the first 2-3 years of planting each planter will work with an oversight team and coach in order to provide the support, encouragement, and accountability necessary for successful planting.

Preaching To Non-Believers

I'm not sure how I missed this post back in January when it was originally posted, but this is a really helpful article on how to better engage with non-believers through preaching. The four steps are listed below and the entire article is here.

1. Acknowledge and welcome the non-believers in attendance.
2. Assume the non-believers in attendance need help in approaching the Bible. 
3. Challenge non-believers to engage the Bible by acknowledging the oddity of Christian belief and practice.
4. Use cultural commonalities to point out worldview inconsistencies.

What Color is Your Church Logo?

One of the steps very early in the life of a church plant involves developing a logo. I found this post by Lawrance Chan very interesting when it comes to what your colors communicate about your "brand". Some good food for thought as you make this important decision early in the life of your church plant.

Six Challenges of Church Planting

In this article Darryl Dash gives us six challenges of church planting as a follow-up to his previous post on the six blessings of church planting. Both helpful for present and prospective church planters.

Church Planting IS a Gospel Initiative

Steve Timmis, the Director of the Acts 29 Network in Western Europe, reminds us in this video of the root initiative that leads us to plant churches.

Ask Steve: Why is it important to see church planting as a gospel-initiative? from Acts 29 Europe on Vimeo.

We Multiply Churches Website Online

Today I worked on stripping down our district planting website to the bare bones and began the rebuilding process. I am looking forward to this site growing to become front door resource for people interested in planting within the district and churches learning how better to participate in the cause of church multiplication. Stay tuned for ongoing updates at www.wemultiplychurches.org.

A Heart for Mission Here and Now

If you're a Christian you've likely experienced a feeling of urgency for the cause of global mission and a sense of apathy in your own life when it comes to being a light of the Gospel in your work, home, and neighborhood. Though we should be passionate for God's global work, we need to also recognize the significant need that is right before us. Now more than ever, we need to adapt a missionary mentality if we have any hopes of making an influence in our present culture. In his book SoulTsunami Leonard Sweet writes:

Only two countries have more non-believers than the US: India and China. The US is the third largest mission field in the world. Unfortunately, our efforts at evangelizing the unchurched have all the pace of a southern summer. Few believers have relationships, much less friendships with non-believers.

Living as a Christian in Culture

If we are faithful in mission as Christians, we are forced to wrestle with what it means to be in the world and yet also distinctly Christian. Our tendency is to live in dualism,"This is my church life and this is my work life." In contrast to this, the Gospel of Jesus should saturate every aspect of how we view and interact with others in our places of work and life in general. Here are some thoughts from Mason King at The Village blog:

The Christian lives under a tension of duality, looking to participate in and benefit from secular culture while simultaneously being called to live according to God’s ways. The common inclination is to keep the two separate.... The believer’s call is to realize that God is at work in culture through common grace, using all things to carry forth His purposes. This changes the triumphant desire to redeem and restore culture through our own efforts to a gospel-centered response to grace. It sends the Christian into the culture to live, as Timothy Keller puts it, “with Christian distinctiveness,” intentionally walking out the implications of the gospel in each arena or role in life.

A call to excellence alone would fall short—many people are excellent at what they do but are driven by motives other than the glory of God. Some Christians pursue success in God’s Name and for His glory but trample the tenets of the gospel in their pursuit instead of displaying thoughtful and articulate application of the gospel to their work. The Christian strives to contribute excellence to the culture through a life marked by Christian distinctiveness. This changes the way we interact with our waiter, our co-workers, our boss and our spouse. It changes the motives of our heart from self-centered indulging or protecting actions to God-focused response and praise.

Walking out the implications of the gospel in your daily life takes thoughtful consideration of how the gospel applies to your work, talents, neighborhood and home. Believing lawyers, teachers, artists, nurses and parents exhibit Christian distinctiveness differently due to the inherent nature of their vocation.... Thoughtfulness of action and speech are the fruits of a heart changed by the grace of God in Christ. This heart sees no divide between a secular and sacred world but sees God’s creation that He is working to redeem. This empowers the imagination of a believer to see God’s design for their work and to strive toward its intended beauty in society. When this is the lens of the heart’s vision, we see opportunities to align our lives to God’s ways at every turn. Our behavior shines like the light it is in the dark world around it.

For the whole article click here.

National Multiplication Director Announced

Jeff Sorvik was just announced the new national Director of Church Multiplication for the Evangelical Free Church of America. Looking forward to working with you Jeff!

Driscoll on Growing Your Church

Here's a good reminder for existing churches on how to grow your churches influence in the lives of more people by Mark Driscoll, Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. In it he is referring to "new branches" as people who are new converts or visitors and "old branches" as existing or seasoned members and attenders. The illustration breaks down if you take it too far, but as usual, his thoughts are helpful, especially for pastors who tend to get distracted by managing existing people and problems. One main take away is that it's important to give a portion of our ministry time to build relationships with people who don't know Christ or are newly growing in Him. 

Leave room in your schedule to meet with new people and new converts. When you meet folks ask them where they live and if they are at another church just visiting or considering your church. Don’t meet with folks who live elsewhere or are in another church. Do meet with folks in your area who are new to your church. Don’t hand off the visitor assimilation so far down the food chain that you don’t know the new branches and fruit. If you want, tell folks from the front where you will be after church and that you want to meet the new people and give them a gift of a free book. Tell everyone else where to go for prayer and to connect with the old branches. You go somewhere else. Welcome new folks joyfully, have a gift, and get their information then so you can follow up. Even if you close 1 family a Sunday you grow by a few hundred in a year. And, new people bring new people. if you are feeling real crazy, do a monthly new people dessert meet the pastor and his wife in your home. Larry Osborne still does this at 8000 and gets to scout new leaders and people firsthand so he keeps doing it.

The Meaning Behind Harry Potter

This video isn't new. It was released by Jerram Barrs at Covenant Seminary in 2011; however, it has new meaning to me because last night my family just finished the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We'd held off this long because the younger kids weren't quite ready for it at Christmas.

What was so satisfying, beyond viewing the final movie in this series, was following it up with the 6 minute video by Jerram where he unpacks his observations regarding the Christian symbolism within. In light of the popularity of this movie series, we'd be remiss to not see the platform it presents for the Gospel as we discuss with with our friends and acquaintances.

Why Millenials are Leaving the Church

Though there must be Biblical practices and convictions that never change in our churches, there are a myriad of practices and strategies that should often change as we seek to contextualize our message to the culture in which we live. This is why I find Rachel Held Evans recent interview on CNN.com so interesting. Though I don't agree with some of her theological or social perspectives, in this article she shares some interesting thoughts regarding why millennials (I believe this age range includes those in their 20-30s) are leaving the church. As a pastor in a church that is largely millennial, many of her statements are consistent with what I've observed. Below is a portion of the article and you can read the entire thing here. 

But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances. In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular. Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against. We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers. We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.... We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.

You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.

Three Things That Will Kill Your Church Plant in the First Year

A good post sent to me by Zach Nielsen from Michael Lukaszewski on some basic land mines every church planter should try to avoid including...

1. Launching too many ministries
2. Being sidetracked by difficult people
3. Working in it, not on it

For the full post, go here.

Do Numbers Matter?

In this blog post my colleague Zach Nielsen features a couple opposing views on the value of numerics in churches. This is an issue that deserves a balanced perspective, especially when church leaders and denominations base their success and strategies on numeric growth... an important yet not always helpful measure of success.

Church Planting Churches Flourish

Jeffrey C. Farmers Ph.D. dissertation, "Church Planting Sponsorship" at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 2007 found that over 300 churches who sponsored church plants flourished in the wake of their commitment. In the first five years after beginning a planting sponsorship worship attendance increased 22%, financial giving increased 48%, and designations toward areas such as foreign missions increased 77%.

Bottom line, healthy and growing churches are committed to multiplying churches!