Church Planting Video

We took the crazy risk within the first 4 months of launching to purchase about $8,000's worth of video equipment (video and computer). I learned a something that seems funny for me to write on it because I don't know how helpful it is, but it might be so practical that somebody may need to hear it.

Make sure you purchase the right stuff. I know that sounds pretty silly simple, but let me explain. I wanted to purchase an Apple Mac G5. What else is there when it comes to video editing. I have confirm that God has an Apple. He calls us the Apple of His Eye. Anyways, the guy who was going to do the editing wanted a PC. Well, we bought a PC because of this guy and then he left 6 months later. Now I have a really expensive machine that is not being used. It's a slammin' barely been touched Dell computer with two monitors (anyone want to purchase?) and it hasn't been used much since. It only has the video software on it. Lesson: Buy the right stuff. People leave, but the equipment stays.

Well, I have been doing some video's for our sermon series (some of them have been short film's). I thought I would share. I would love to see some of your videos. You can find our video's at stonebridgechurchmc.

Thoughts When Moving Locations and During Transitions

Here are some things that I'm learning and that surprised me during our recent move from an elementary school to a theater:

THE PLAN IS ALREADY THERE!
God already had a plan; I just needed to listen and obey. It sounds obvious, but I think as leaders, we have a tendency to think that we've got to figure it all out and "make it happen". Or at least I do. But as we took steps to move to the new location, I found that the details and issues were already in place for us to move forward. Ex: I felt prompted in prayer and while jogging by a theater to pursue leasing it. An hour later I got a phone call from a guy in my church saying that he'd found a great location for us and that they were interested in leasing it- the same theater! That Sunday, we were notified by the school that they wanted us out in 2 months. You see what I mean!

BE BOLD!We've asked our landlord and others for crazy things. Don't be afraid to step out and ask. Ask business owners, a landlord, volunteers, etc. There are people that are as passionate as you to make it happen. Sometimes all they need is an opportunity or to be asked. Also, we have not because we ask not. Volunteers have worked harder than I expected. People have given more than I imagined. The landlords have given us more latitude and opportunity than we hope.

DON'T ASSUME ANYTHING! Just because you hope something will happen doesn't mean it will. Cross your "t"s with the lease, building codes, etc. It's our responsibility as the leaders to plan ahead, think through various options, and come in with an idea of where things are going. Have contingencies if something looks questionable.

DON'T TAKE SETBACKS AS SETBACKS! Challenges are blessings from God. Don't see conflict or difficulty as a problem but as a window for growth. Ex: We made our regional news for an outreach we did shortly after moving into the theater. Well, the commissioners noticed and pulled our permit records, but when they didn't find any, they told us we'd have to get building permits, etc. At first, we were frustrated, but decided this was for our best. It's turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We've built great relationships with the County and owners.

DON'T LET OTHER CHURCHES OR LEADERS DETERMINE YOUR VISION OR LOCATION! If you've heard from God, follow through on the plan He's given you. Simple example: when we began looking at the theater, I felt a lot of pressure to go nuts with lighting, sound system, etc. And this would have cost tens of thousands that we didn't have. We already are pretty edgy, and we decided we weren't ready for a ton more. When you stick with your vision/ passion, it'll pay off long term. Plus you won't have others constantly thinking that they can dictate the vision, style, location, etc.

Just some simple thoughts off the top of my head.

Moving into a New Building - 23 Questions

I thought this was good to file away. It's by Dan Reiland
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No matter how much planning, no matter how inspiring your vision, no matter how much you pray, the change connected to moving into a new church building is highly stressful on both the leaders and the congregation.

The leaders carry the weight of first adjusting to the change themselves and they must adjust quickly. The leaders must also inspire, prepare and encourage the people for the coming changes related to a new building.

The congregation, including your best and brightest volunteers, must wrestle through change. Typically, if you are moving into a new building, it is larger than the previous one (candidly, I can't think of a church that built a smaller worship auditorium for the primary campus). With a larger auditorium comes more parking, more class rooms for the kids, more offices, and more seats. The whole thing is bigger. When we opened our new building a couple of weeks ago I noticed dozens of people inside the Worship Experience Center on their cell phones. It was just before the service started and they were trying to find friends and family so they could sit together. This will pass as they learn their new rhythms and where they like to sit, but change is still change. Changing from a manual child check-in to a computerized check-in system is change. Changing from parking where you want to being directed to park in the next available spot is change. Even the way you "feel" worship inside the new auditorium is change.

There are some things that are almost impossible to anticipate, but you can plan and prepare for the vast majority of what you will face. If you do, you will have the margin you need to deal with the things that life throws your way before moving in and soon after moving into your new building.

After recently going through this process, and still learning, it seemed helpful to pass on to you the "23 Questions" that helped us prepare for this transition. These questions don't represent the more artful questions that require knowledge of your culture, but the practical ones that apply to all churches. I must say up front that we didn't nail every answer before we moved in, and some solutions are still morphing, but overall these questions will be very helpful to you when you are preparing to move into a new building or into a new campus.

I suggest starting the conversation with your staff and key leaders many months in advance of your move (at least 6). Begin the dialogue by asking: "What are you dreaming, praying and planning for?" I stated that this set of questions is practical in nature, but you need to begin at a heart level asking God to breathe life into your plans. Then ask the visionary question: "What will our experience be like soon after the move-in?" Throughout the months of asking and answering the following questions, keep these first two in mind.

There is no magic in the number of questions. You may have more or less. But failure to answer them will end in chaos... so here we go.

1. What will people love about it? Anticipate the things that your congregation will genuinely appreciate. What will they find helpful and be proud of in your new building. How will you leverage those things?
2. What will people complain about? There will be things the people don't like, so be ready for that. Among those you can anticipate, which ones should you solve, in what order, and which ones do you intentionally ignore?
3. What changes must not happen? What are the specific expressions of core values and culture that you and the church leaders must protect?
4. How / when do you cast vision for the coming changes? This is not exclusive to the general congregation, but relates to all levels and departments.
5. How will you market to the community prior to move-in? What is your plan for advertising? What is the budget? When do you start?
6. What sermons (series) are required before, during and after the move-in? This requires much thought and prayer to discern the balance of reaching both those who are far from God and those who are Christ-followers.
7. In what ways will the staff need to be different and function differently? This, of course, is a massive question. You may not be able to afford more staff upon move-in, but you should know who you want to hire next.
8. What will the new shape and expression of Spiritual Formation look like? How will the process function, including baptism, new Christians, volunteer service, and small groups, etc.?
9. How will you help people transition from the big experience to small group environments? How will you utilize mid-sized environments?
10. How will you leverage creative arts and evangelism in fresh and productive ways? How will you ensure that evangelism remains at the cutting edge?
11. What are your clear, fresh and creative plans to continue strong in building pledge monies? If your building isn't paid for, what is your plan to keep the revenue source alive after move-in?
12. How will you deepen and strengthen church-wide leadership development?
13. How will ministry programming be different? (What is cut, what is added?)
14. How will you respond to / communicate with first-time visitors?
15. How will you communicate your vision after move-in? What's your next hill to conquer? This is often where churches drop the ball. Once the building goes up and people move in, the vision dies down. Decide before you move in where you are headed after that day.
16. If you have a video venue or a satellite campus ministry, how are they affected by the opening of this new building?
17. Where and when do the sacraments fit in? Why?
18. What does community look like in the new building? Will you encourage community within the large building? Example, will you permit small groups to meet on campus? Why? How? Seating areas?
19. What is your strategic use, and implications of that use, of the building outside of your regular services and events? This relates to unique ministry ideas.
20. Is the building open to your community for outside events? (Concerts, Graduations, Weddings etc.) Will you charge a fee or grant usage at no charge?
21. What will a typical week of activities look like? (Small Groups, Support Groups, Student Ministries, Worship rehearsals. etc.)
22. Guest Services - how will you communicate events and opportunities with everyone considering multiple entry points to the building? (This relates more to larger buildings.)
23. What do you pray / want to accomplish in the first 30 days? First 3 months? In the first 6 months? In the 1st year?

Take these questions and add and delete as you see fit. Pray and plan much before you launch your transition.

this beautiful mess

Thanks to this book for the post title, but ministry really can be this sorta beautiful mess.

People are not always fun to deal with. Sometimes they seem to cause more frustration and problems than anything else.

We have this internal pressure and perceived (yet sometimes true) peer pressure to make progress and look really good with numbers, stats, marketing schemes, and sweet new events.

And just to pile more on top of all of that, we really just don’t always have the time, money, or overall resources to make so many of our ideas happen. [Sidebar-lack of resources is no excuse for not fulfilling God’s vision]

I think most of us have been in this place before, and especially applies in the arena of church planting. We just don't have a lot, but we have a big vision and know God wants to use us. I wanted to share a few thoughts from my experience in no particular order that I have learned about how to get big results with little resources. They aren't necessarily fool-proof, just thoughts I've learned.

1. Operate where you want to be, not where you currently are.

If you don’t first go there in how you operate, nothing and no one will ever follow. I love how Steven Furtick puts it, “Dress for the wedding.” It may look funny now, but it won’t when you get there. Don’t get embarrassed or impatient-go for it.

2. Don’t compare.

It only creates pride or jealousy. Plus, we should celebrate others success and assist others along. We are all on the same team.

3. Develop leaders and delegate authority.

They not only increase your ability to handle more people, but also allow you to perform ministry at a much higher level and focus on things that as the leader you alone can do.

4. Raise funds to increase ministry capability.

Ministry isn’t cheap. It takes money. Sometimes you just got to work to raise it. But money follows vision first, then it follows life changing stories of individuals. Share the vision and what God is doing through you to make their investment worthwhile.

5. Invest money into missional opportunities.

God is extremely honored by our sacrificial giving. We have a responsibility to invest in others around the world, even if it is a sacrificial gift. When you invest, you are partnering together to build the Kingdom and fulfill the mission of the church. And why would God bless us if we are greedy and selfish?

6. Dream big, and strategically cast the vision.

God gives the point leader the dreams and visions. You've got to dream it, discover it, and provide tangible direction at optimal times, so others can follow. Sir Francis Drake says it best, so why try anymore. "Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves. When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little. When we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord."

7. Build a relational culture.

All people (unchurched, dechurched, believers, poor, rich, middle class, African-American, Hispanic, Caucasian, Asian, Arab, etc) want relationships. As a church leader, we get to offer them two of the greatest relationships in the world-a relationship with God and a relationship with God’s family.

8. Celebrate moments of success.

The principle is true: what gets celebrated is often repeated. Commit to make consistent progress every week. Celebrate that progress publicly and privately. After one year that means you are at least 52% better.

9. Pray God-sized prayers.

If you don’t pray them, they will rarely happen. Plus, God loves the supernatural.

10. Stay focused on the vision and never quit.

It’s easy to be distracted, frustrated, or discouraged. God will always be faithful to finish what He has spoken though. Fight for the vision, work it, and trust God to be faithful. Don’t give up on God’s promises.

What are some things you have learned about getting results with little resources?

Originally posted at Dream the Journey.

virtual phone system

Just wanted to highlight a resource that could potentially be huge for church plants. It's a virtual phone system called GotVMail that helps creates a virtual office that connects callers to staff members wherever they are, on any type of phone - home, office, VoIP, or mobile - without any equipment to purchase or maintain... as well as provide some validity to phone callers.

In fact, The Crossing of Little Elm just signed up to use the system. If you want to check out GotVMail, visit their website or contact The Crossing's Lead Pastor Zach Miller.

What No One Told Me

As a church planter, here's some things I wish someone had told me before I began the process of planting a church:

1. Be Yourself: study, research, and learn as much as you can from others. Visit lots of other church plants, see how and why they do what they do. But at the end of the day, follow your call and be wholly authentic to who you are!
   
• Discover your own unique preaching style, because that's the most effective style at your church.
  
• Be real. If being real turns others off to you, then there are some flaws to work on. But there is enough of Jesus in you to change the world. People are looking for a living example, not for a charismatic spokesperson. They will learn as much from your flaws and failures as from your successes and strengths.
• Glean principles not methods- when evaluating other church plants, reading books, etc pull out the timeless principles and apply those. Use the methods sparingly.
  
• Don't replicate, reproduce- if your borrowing, copying it's going to look faded from the original. But if your reproducing something, it's life-giving.
2. Embrace the Process: most church planters want and expect results yesterday, like conceiving a child in the womb, but expecting an 18-year-old , independent adult.
• Church planting parallels natural development (kinda like the book). Enjoy and embrace the joys and challenges of gestating, birthing, nurturing, developing, training, and growing with this new church. Don't expect your six-month old to run and marathon, but don't excuse your 5-year-old for throwing a temper tantrum.
  
• There are seasons in church planting. Don't panic in the lows and don't start writing "the book" in the highs. There's a natural ebb and flow to this thing.
• Address the brutal facts the way a doctor would measure a child during a physical, looking for healthy measurements, and if somethings wrong, evaluate and offer clear solutions.
  
• What gets you to one level won't get you to the next. Things must change so enjoy the journey.
3. Grow Yourself: church planting has much more to do with you than the church. God will give me what I can handle.
• Jesus taught about stewardship, that if you're faithful with little, He'll entrust you with more.
  
• Must be faithful with 10 people and $1,000 before God will entrust you with 100 and $100,00 or 1,000 and millions.
  
• It's more about growing yourself then anything.
  
• Be honest about your weaknesses and grow your strengths.
• When others say, "if I can do, so can you" IT'S TRUE!! God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. All of us are just average, ordinary individuals who recklessly abandoned ourselves to God, and are personally amazed at what He does through us.
  

As a word of intro, launched Lifehouse Church in 04/05; spent 18 months building a launch team from 0 to 25 in Hagerstown, MD ( a suburb outside of DC- target area of about 60,000); grown from 25 to about 250. About 70% of our church was either un-churched or de-churched when they started coming, and in 2007 we had over 250 make a visible commitment to become a Jesus-follower.

church plant - week 2 update

Bracy asked me to post up a week 2 update, so as I venture in uncharted territory my hope is that those of you who get to discover the joy and adventure of planting might know what to expect. For those in front of me, please shed light on what we might encounter in the weeks to come. First, here are the brutal facts:

Week 1
attendance - 283
salvations - 29 adults
$3,412 - Missions (church plant in Tanzania)

Week 2
attendance - 164
salvations - 8 adults, 4 kids
$4,675.82
-$1,100 - designated from two friends to meet our $4,500 Tanzania church plant goal
-$3,286.57

Steve Pike was a prophet and suggested that anything over 170 would be above normal. We bounced back to 163 and it was discouraging to me no matter how I slice it. We still had a lot of guests and more commitments of families being part of our church family. 8 adults and four kids made decisions to follow Christ. Sunday afternoon, I felt the whisper of the Holy Spirit, "Take care of the ones I have trusted you with before I give you anymore." During our launch team prayer meeting and "staff" (we are all volunteers), this was the focus. We are currently coming up with a plan for new believers that will flesh out in meeting an hour before service for four weeks. A former baptist preacher, former presbyterian deacon, and a chi alpha missionary will be leading the class. I have a new believers bible that we are giving everyone, but taking a hard look at the steps program that Andy Stanley puts out. Any suggestions? We need something fast. Our team is praying for the prayer needs coming in, calling everyone who made decisions, calling people who had prayer needs, emailing people who have expressed interest in volunteering/water baptism/joining the church/fellowship teams/daily time with God/etc. People today expect going above and beyond because they are getting great customer service at McD's now. We say they matter, but we better follow up and make that connection. We are doing all kinds of relational events like a men's retreat at a ranch, mom's night out, bike group rides, race for the cure training, picnics, lunches after church.

From our surveys and communication cards are telling us, 65% of our people have not been in church the last 12 months. Because communion was a sacred moment, we did it yesterday and decided that the night before. During worship, we set up tables to the right for the "few" people who wanted to take communion. 85% of our crowd immediately went to the tables and left our core team waiting in their seats or up front to pray for people. They trampled over our core team and only two people came forward to pray with our prayer partners like I'm used to in other churches. I also received this email from one of our leaders, "I talked to a woman with a child in her arms on the way out to our car. She said," I liked the Mass." I asked her what she thought of SOAP. She said she had just bought a spiral notebook and now she knows what she is going to make it her journal." We live in a huge catholic community where people our age got bored a long time ago. We have to fight through the stereotype of church being boring and traditional. We have to respect their sacred traditions by building a bridge. Doing a corporate o.t. reading, reciting the lord's prayer/apostles creed, and doing communion every week with a modern worship experience including relevant music, drama, audio, faith stories, and a supernatural experience is a weird mix, and think it is working. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when we are asked to start sprinkling babies. Good thing I have some pastors on our team that don't have credentials with the A/G anymore. j/k Baptism is on week six and everything is pointing towards it. We borrowed a portable baptism tank from another church in a nearby city.

What got us this far was being fierce with our relationships...not using people, but genuinely loving and caring for people. They can tell a difference. They call my daughter the little chaplain at the Exxon gas station in town because she has memorized the staff's names and asks for prayer requests every time we go in. Its the little stuff that we do every day by everyone on our team that is breathing a refreshing spirit into our team. I'm a little jealous because most of the people on our team is getting more opportunities to creatively engage others. We hope this works out. We are just following the lead of Jesus, Philip the apostle, you veteran church planters, and Steve Pike.

BTW, anyone going to C3?

Check List #1 Evangelism

As I mentioned a few posts ago, research project commissioned by Leadership Network Church Planting Study, show dozens of studies on church plant health, survivability, and processes. Church plants were studied in order to discover what improves the strength and effectiveness of church plants. Fewer fail than we thought.

There were 13 factors that contributed to the health and survivability. I thought we would cover one every now and then and talk about it.

The first one was engaging in ministry evangelism (i.e., food banks, shelter, drug/alcohol recovery). We have done a few things a year that works for us:

Stonebridge Community Easter Egg Hunt – in partnership with Stonebridge HOA
Nesbitt Foundation Baseball Camp – for underprivileged children in McKinney –July
Kidfest – October
Valentine’s Dinner (Dance) - February
And a weekly New Resident Panera Bread Outreach

What do you do?

The Church Planting Check List

Ed Stetzer has some insightful things to share on his blog as well as what he brings to the table at Leadership Network

The church planting studies at Leadership Network Church Planting Study are pretty amazing as too. You can go there, but I would like to discuss the check list that they found "successful/effective" churches were doing.

Here's an excerpt from the study:

Many people have repeated the idea—which turns out to be a myth—that the vast majority of new churches fail with in their first two years. In fact, the opposite is true. In a research project commissioned by Leadership Network, dozens of studies on church plant health, survivability, and processes were studied in order to discover what improves the strength and effectiveness of church plants.

• September 2006 - 12 denominations in this study of more than 1,000 churches.
• 68% of church plants still exist four years after having been started.
• The typical church plant does not pass 100 in attendance after 4 years. Another indicator of new church health is evangelistic effectiveness. The number of baptisms or conversions has a strong correlation to the evangelistic effectiveness of new churches. The average number of baptisms or conversions is 10 the first year, 11 the second year, 13 the third year; and 14 the fourth year.

Certain factors, when present, correlate with higher baptisms. Over 100 factors were tested and the following were found to be statistically significant:

1. engaging in ministry evangelism (i.e., food banks, shelter, drug/alcohol recovery)
2. starting at least one daughter church within three years of the church plant
3. having a proactive stewardship development plan enabling the church to be financially self-sufficient
4. conducting a mid-week children’s program
5. conducting a children’s special event (i.e., Fall Festival, Easter Egg Hunt)
6. sending out mailers for invitation to services and church events
7. conducting a block party as an outreach activity
8. conducting a new member class for new church members
9. conducting leadership training for church members
10. receiving church-planting training in terms of a boot camp or basic training by the church planter
11. working full-time over part-time as the church planter
12. being assessed prior to the beginning of the church plant as the church planter
13. delegating leadership roles to church members

What do you think? Do you older church planters find this true? What did you not do out of the 13 things?

The Right Questions

Every time I have participated in the launch of a new church, the process began with asking the right questions. Here's some that I ask:

• Where is God at work already? In which communities? In which leader's lives?
• What is it the burden's God's heart about my region?
• Is my church in a state of health where it can truly reproduce right now?
• Has God revealed a place or a person to lead this effort?
• Is this a NOW prompting from God or just a really great desire?

There are probably others that you have asked as well. What questions launch direction for you in considering a new plant?

The Shift

First of all, let me say thank you to Bracy and Dallas for the invitation into this conversation. What a great tool you guys have put together here. I’m glad I get to be a part of it.

I have been thinking a lot lately about an inevitable day in every church planter’s life. At least let’s hope it is inevitable. It’s every church planter’s dream. It is the day you drive into the parking lot, walk to the stage, or start the staff meeting and realize- “HOLY COW, we’re a church!” (I’m keeping the language clean for those of you who maybe are a little more sensitive.) You have scraped, fought, cried, and sacrificed greatly for this day. There are now ministries to maintain, volunteers to manage, and a budget that must be adhered to. It’s awesome, you have done it! You are now a church! Everything gets easier now, right?

I’m not so sure that is the case. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m living the dream or enduring a nightmare. For those of you who don’t know my sense of humor, don’t take me wrong, I love Life Fellowship and what I get to be a part of each day. I’m being a little extreme to make a point. The point is there are a whole new set of challenges at every stage of the life cycle in a church. Everything you do sets precedent and encodes DNA into the culture of your church. That becomes painfully clear when you realize your dealing with an obstacle of your own making. I believe preparation is the best method of prevention. If we can learn from each other’s process maybe we can avoid encoding errors and therefore future obstacles.

I would be interested to hear from some of you concerning the shifts that took place as you transitioned from church plant to existing church and how you navigated that change. In particular, I would like to know how you protect the missional culture that is inherent in a church plant verses the consumer culture that is pervasive in many modern churches. Also, how do you navigate your transitioning role as the point leader as you move from small church to larger church?

Others may want to add more questions.

The Church Multiplication Network idea

Bracy, thanks for the invitation to contribute to this blog. I thought I’d start by sharing the text of a presentation I was asked to prepare for General Council, but was never given the opportunity to present. It was supposed to be given on Thursday afternoon, but all of the voting and very passionate deliberations that took place knocked me off the docket. If the opportunity had been afforded me, this is what I planned to say. Please read it and share your thoughts. By the way, the first MX9 church launched last Sunday (September 16, 2007) with 125 people!

I’m Steve Pike, Director of the Assemblies of God Church Multiplication Network and Administrator of US Missions.

In 1989 while serving as senior high pastor at Calvary Church in Naperville, Illinois, God used the “Decade of Harvest” initiative to place the seed of church planting in my heart. I had never previously considered church planting as an option, but the idea and excitement that surrounded the Decade of Harvest initiative motivated me to ask the Lord, “As a participant in this fellowship of churches, how should I be involved in planting?” For my wife and me God’s answer was to send us to Utah, the state with the nation’s lowest percentage of Christians. God called us to plant a church. 10 years later, I stood on an Easter Sunday morning surrounded by 638 people that had been reached by the ministries of the church God had planted through us. Our new church had also partnered with or parented 5 other new churches in Utah during the decade of the 90’s. The way I thought about church, life, evangelism and ministry in general was changed forever.

I’ve heard people call the “Decade of Harvest” a failure. Well don’t say that to me. And don’t say that to the thousands of people whose destinies have been altered for eternity because the leadership of this movement cared enough to challenge their churches and leaders to go where they had never gone before. For me and for thousands of others, the Decade of Harvest was a potent seed planted in our hearts that is still bearing fruit today.

The Decade of Harvest moved me out of my comfort zone into an incredible adventure of faith. It taught me that national initiatives can and do make a big difference. That’s why I am proud to be a part of a new initiative that is informed by the past but built for the future. It’s called the Church Multiplication Network. It’s based on a simple idea. Let’s all use everything that God has given us to help each other plant as many churches as we possibly can. The Church Multiplication Network is built around a ministry plan that has been carefully crafted and reviewed by leaders from all perspectives across national regions, networks and cultures. It’s designed to leverage our collective resources to maximize our cumulative effectiveness. It is laser focused on delivering resources and assistance to local churches and leaders to reach their utmost potential for multiplying the presence of God’s Kingdom in the communities in which they serve. It is an idea whose time has come.

America needs this church to rise up in the anointing of the Holy Spirit and reach lost people. The need is astounding. As Americans, we’ve been lulled to sleep by a false sense of security regarding the spiritual condition of our nation. Some pollsters have indicated that 43% of Americans regularly attend church. Their figures are based on conventional polling techniques that involve contacting a sample number of people and asking about their church attendance habits. One researcher wondered if that number indicated what people are actually doing. So he acquired the reported attendance figures from the national offices of all of the major and minor American church organizations. His research includes Pentecostal, evangelical, mainline, orthodox and catholic. He found that on any given Sunday only 17.5% of Americans are actually in church. That means that on average 82.5% of Americans are not connecting with a worshipping community of believers on a regular basis. That’s not OK with me. I don’t think that’s OK with us! Somebody’s got to do something. We’ve got to do something. It’s got to be blessed with God’s anointing and it’s got to be different than what we’ve been doing! That is what the Church Multiplication Network is all about. Together we can reach America!

The idea of the Network was born in a moment of visitation during a meeting of the Executive Presbytery in January of this year. God spoke through Brother Nam Soo Kim and our key leaders were anointed with a fresh passion for reaching the lost through the best known method of evangelism…planting churches. Brother Trask and the Executive Presbytery not only expressed their passion for planting in words, but they have now indicated their strong endorsement of this Network by investing $2 million in seed money to provide for a healthy launch of this collaborative effort. US Missions and the Reach America Coalition are active sponsors as well. Our target is MX9. We believe that together we can plant or commit to plant 1000 churches over the next two years. It’s a God-sized dream. But I am firmly convinced that God has called us out for this moment to be part of an unprecedented surge of birthing new communities of faith all over the place.

In the coming years the Church Multiplication Network plan gives us a way to work together to catalyze the planting of thousands of new harvest focused churches all over this nation. I invite you to offer what you’ve got and work together to reach this needy nation. We need prayer partners, financial investors, partner churches, parent churches, church planters, church planting team members to say yes to God. We will help you connect what you’ve got with the resources of others so that new life giving churches can be birthed everywhere. I invite you to visit the new "www.churchmultiplicationnetwork.org" website and discover the details of how you and your church can benefit from and participate in this emerging Network. It’s not like anything else we’ve ever done. God is calling us to go where we’ve never gone before. I invite you to join with me and do what I did nearly 20 years ago. Ask the Lord to help you know how you can be involved in planting a church! We are a movement that highly values the empowerment of God’s Holy Spirit! It’s time for our actions to line up with our affirmations! If we really want to reach America, let’s plant thousands of Spirit empowered churches strategically structured to reach the lost and see God change the lives of millions of people! God bless you and thank you for allowing me to share my heart with you today.

Share the Wealth!

I have the incredible privilege of talking with Church Planters on a regular basis. I am amazed at the creativity and resourcefulness of these people.

For example, Rick Thompson did a great job with the creative use of MySpace. Rick developed this in the pre-launch phase of Lifepoint and used it to build relationships with people in the target area. I am sure that this idea has a potential application regardless of the ministry's developmental level. Share the wealth, Rick! Send us a link to the site. Tell everyone what you learned and how we could all effectively use it.

Just about every week, a Church Planter will ask me for resources. I think that this forum could serve as a great idea/resource exchange.

Question:

What resources do you use to get information about the demographics and trends in your community? Share the Wealth!

Church Planting Student Ministry

We've all heard and read about Church Planting, but there isn't much out there concerning Church Planting Student Ministry. I am a year and a half into it, and I know I still have so much to learn. My blog is more a question than it is a statement of how to do it right. My plan is to summarize my timeline and strategy and then hear back from you on how you did it, what worked, and what you would never do again.

What is your story?
What has worked for you?
What resources have you found?
What would you never do again?

Upon my arrival I asked my pastor what we had on hand for the student ministry. He told me the only resource they had at the time were a few students and volunteers. I thought to myself, "well that is a great place to start." My primary ministry background is in small groups. So it should come as no surprise I began there. Small groups are great and easy. They don't require setup, a band, or sound system. Small groups only require community. We launched in January of 2006. We started with one small group and multiplied five months later (fyi: In my opinion a normal, healthy small group consist of no more than fifth teen people). In May of 2006 we started fundraising for our service launch. On August 2, 2006 House Student Ministries was born. Initially we met for service on Wednesdays and small group on Sundays. But, we found our students and leaders had a hard time getting to service on time; let alone, early to help with setup and ministry. So, two months later we made a change: small groups on Wednesdays, and service on Sundays. Even when we get into a building I plan on keeping this schedule. More has definitely happened since then but that was for the most part our first year.