Ralph Moore is one of my favorite church planting authors. His common sense advice to church planters come straight from the Bible. He speaks from experience not theory. He has planted two churches in Hawaii. From those two churches there have been over 700 new churches started. Ralph Moore understands church multiplication, reproduction, discipleship and church movements. I just finished his most recent book, “How to Multiply Your Church.” The book is inspiring and provides a clear vision for how God grow the church. If you want to see a movement of churches explode, read this book and apply what Ralph says to your ministry. You can buy it on Amazon or if you don’t have time to read, take a look at my notes.
November 2, 2009
Vision Icons
When I see the McDonald’s arches, I think of French Fries. When I see the Red cross logo, I think of giving blood and saving lives. When I see the cross of Christ, I think of God’s generous love for humanity and God’s sacrifice of Jesus for our sins. Icons are powerful symbols that remind us of a greater truth. Mission statements are great, but what is even better is an image that paints a mental image of the vision.
I can’t tell you Apple’s motto or mission statement, but when I see that silver apple with a bite out of it, I know the vision to make elegant, innovative computers that just work. What are your vision icons? What images do people see and instantly know the vision of your the church?
September 16, 2009
Fundraising – Turn a No into a Yes
I hear this all the time working with church planters, “I talked to that church today and they said they didn’t have money to support us.” Well of course they said that. What church, especially in this economy, is going to say, “Oh, thank you for calling. We’ve been wondering what we were going to do with that extra $50,000.” Instead they look at their bank account and say no. Most church planters give up or that point or just wait until later and ask again and get told no again. That’s the definition of insanity by the way: doing the same thing and expecting different results. Instead church planters need to learn to turn a no into a yes. When they say no, ask them if they would be willing to donate a few man hours to the project. They’ll say yes. They’d sound kind of jerky if they said no, so even if they don’t mean it they’ll say yes. Then hit them with this. Can you help me organize a fund raising event in your community? Perhaps a golf tournament, maybe an eBay sale, the possibilities are endless. The money is there they just need to spend a few man hours to get it.
August 27, 2009
Vision: Get One on One
Typically when we think about casting vision, we think about speaking to a group of a people. Before vision is cast to the group, a leader should cast the vision to key leaders and those with influence. These leaders will help sharpen the vision and help you understand better how to communicate to the group. They will also alert you to potential obstacles people will have to hearing the vision. When you have key leaders on board with the vision, they will become your biggest cheerleaders when you communicate the vision to the larger group.
August 17, 2009
Vision Sacrificed on the Altar of Methods
I was a part of one of the most frustrating meetings of my life last night. I sat by and watched a volunteer team literally fight over methodology. The details don’t matter. Here’s what was sad. Vision for the ministry had leaked so bad over the years that no one knew why the ministry existed anymore. As a general rule, anytime there is a lack of a vision, or the why behind what we do, people will latch on to a method or the how we do it. This is how sacred cows develop, disunity is fostered and traction is lost. What once was a very effective method has now become a destructive cancer.
As much as we want to lay blame on volunteers who just don’t get it, it is the responsibility of the leadership to cast vision and align ministry teams with the vision. As leaders, we must cast vision with everything we do. We must so saturate our people with the vision that they drip with it. When a team latches on to a method, whether successful or not, we need point them back to the vision and do it quickly. The thing about cancer is that it just grows until it kills what it infects. I’m hoping this particular cancer isn’t terminal. I’m doing everything I can to pump life giving vision into both sides. But it sure would have been easier to have had leaders before me that had continually cast the vision as more important than the methods. People want to know the vision. But when they don’t, vision will always be sacrificed on the altar of methods.
Stay tuned for some practical tips on communicating vision.
Proverbs 28:19 “Where there is no vision the people will perish.”
July 28, 2009
Spirituality for the Rest of Us – Book Review
I just finished Spirituality for the Rest of Us by Larry Osborne and can honestly say I’m thankful for having read it. I first heard Larry speak at Exponential 09. I blogged my notes from his session. Larry said some things in that session that compelled me to pick up his book. What I enjoyed is that the book takes aim at many of our cultural assumptions about spirituality. Larry unpacks many familiar verses and stories, strips away American culture and gets back to the historical understanding of the stories. Doing this sheds new light on many American church religious assumptions. The book just makes sense and articulates many things you probably have thought about but never vocalized. The book is an easy read and worth the price of admission. If you don’t have time to read it, here is my summary.
July 23, 2009
Would You Attend a Video Church?
Videoteaching.com has officially released. It’s a site full of video based sermons. The idea is that churches can download videos of high quality speakers and play them on Sunday morning at church (or any other venue). Personally I love this idea. I blogged about the need for last year in this post. I think this opens the door for an entirely new model of church planting. Here’s why:
- It opens the door to a different profile of leader. The typical church planter profile is a highly driven, influential person. Those who aren’t the life of the party or in your face person need not apply. This opens the door for normal people to plant churches. Sorry church planters, let’s face it your a unique breed. Video content allows for a highly relational person who may not be the most exciting speaker to start a church.
- It opens the door to bio-vocational ministry. Fundraising is tough in a new church. Staffing takes the biggest slice of the budget early on. Without the need for a weekly message it becomes possible to plant a church biovocationally drastically reducing the cost to start the church.
- Better messages. I love to preach. But I’m far from being as effective of a communicator as Wayne Cordeiro, Craig Groeschel or Marc Batterson. With the ability to choose from the best of the best, you can have a home run message every week. This doesn’t mean the local pastor never delivers a message, it just means that when he does he can have time to make it good.
- Better attention spans. We are trained to look at a screen. American’s spend endlesss hours in front of screens. Why not communicate God’s truth on a screen? It seems like the most relevant thing to do.
- Variety. Even the best speakers get boring after hearing them week after week. I love podcasts for this reason. I’ve listened to Rob Bell for the last few years. He’s an amazing speaker. But after three years it was time for a change. I still listen to Rob occassionaly, but now I listen primarily to Matt Chandler. Variety is a good thing and helps people learn a wider scope of God’s truth. It also helps people stay awake.
So what do you think? Would you go to a church that had a video speaker? Is this a brilliant idea? Lazy? Or the next thing that will destroy the Church?
July 22, 2009
Missional Church Marries Attractional Church
I love all the chatter in the blog world about missional churches and attractional churches. A good healthy debate is always fun. My opinion is it takes both to reach different types of people. But what would happen if a missional church and an attractional church came together and started having kids (planting churches). I had a conversation with Ron Klabunde a couple of weeks ago that birthed this idea.
1. Small groups would become house churches. Small groups would become more than just home group bible studies. They would evolve into missional communities. These missional communities would live the Christian life together and would focus spreading the gospel of Christ by serving their neighbors and living their faith out loud where they live. Missional church gatherings would be the core experience of the church rather than large group corporate worship on Sundays.
2. There would still be large group worship on Sundays. The attractional DNA would kick in to recognize that the best way to engage non-Christians is through the Sunday morning worship experience. This large group gathering would be a non-threatening place to bring your friends to church. After all its a bit awkward to invite your non-Christian friends to your home church. Seems a little cultish to culture at large. Those who called the church home would come to serve on Sunday. The target audience of the Sunday corporate gathering would be pre-Christians and those not yet connected to a missional community. Thus as the church grows, it is completely feasible to be a church of 2000 connected in missional communities with only 200-300 in attendance at weekend services. It would also be likely that once a month or so the entire church would gather for a large corporate gathering of all the believers where the focus of the service was on Christians.
3. Less building and staff would be needed to run this church, thus allowing the church to unleash more people and money on serving community needs, planting more churches and worldwide missions.
I walked away from this conversation thinking that maybe missional and attractional churches should stop debate each other and start birthing churches together. I could get really excited about that. How about you?
