3 Blogging Series for Church Planters

This is just another friendly reminder that this blog has moved and can now be found at www.churchplanting.org.  I have 3 blogging series going on there.

  1. Church Planting is Hard.  This series focuses on the difficulties many church planters face when planting a church.
  2. Legal Wednesdays.  This series covers a to z everything a church planter needs to do to legally establish the church.
  3. Resource Fridays.  This series highlights a different church planting resource each week.

I hope you find these posts helpful as you go about the kingdom work of starting new churches.

2010
06/15
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Is God working in spite of the church?

Don’t forget this blog has moved to www.plantingchurches.org. If you want to read the post head over there or http://bit.ly/cEYKfd.

2010
05/24
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Church Planting: Is it Reproduction or Cloning?

This blog has moved to www.plantingchurches.org.  Click here to view this post and don’t forget to subscribe to the new site if you want to keep getting updates.

2010
05/17
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Moving to www.plantingchurches.org

This blog is officially moving.  The new address is www.plantingchurches.org. Please update your email subscriptions and RSS feeds.  Big thanks to Josh Starr of Solid Giant who designed the new blog.

2010
05/15
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I Don’t Like My Church Plant: The Need for Contextualization

I spent a year in Northern Virginia at New Life Christian Church.  The church planter, Brett Andrews, told me something that has always stuck in my memory.  He said, “I don’t like my church plant.”  This of course let to a befuddled reply of, “What do you mean, you don’t like your church plant.”  Brett replied, “If I had planted this church for me we would all where formal attire on Sunday and sing hymns.  I just don’t like the loud music, video clips and dress down attire.  But, I didn’t plant this church for myself.  I planted it for the people of Northern Virginia and after learning about them we determined that this style was the best way to communicate the gospel.”

Wow!  I love that story.  How many church planters can say that?  That is the story of a missionary.  Contextualization is important work for a church planter.  One of the unique facets of the gospel is that it is not contained within a particular culture.  If a person is a Gentile, they don’t need to first become a Jew to access God.  Remember that story?  The first thing a church planter needs to do once they are on the ground is what Alan Hirsch calls missional listening.  Church planters are typically highly driven individuals who want to hit the ground running.  Too often they assume they understand the culture and begin planning for church services.  When this happens, I guarantee you are planting a church for yourself and not the culture you are in.

What did you do / are you doing to missionally listen before you start planning for church services?  Here are a couple of examples from planters I’ve worked with.

1.  Worked at Starbucks for two years in the planting community before drawing a salary from the church plant. Result: started a ministry to mom’s providing them a place to hang out while their kids played.  The facility served as a Third Place in the community as well space for the children’s ministry on Sundays.

2.  Conducted a community needs assessment interviewing 100 community leaders, and surveying over 300 people.  Result: Discovered that community needs were being met by existing organizations.  Rather than starting another one, the church was started with a DNA of generosity and gives several man hours a month to community organizations as well as organizing drives to gather the resources they need.

3.  Began serving door to door by raking leaves and shoveling snow with his family.  As the team grew, they organized volunteers and took on community projects the city couldn’t pull off alone.  Result: The city has asked the pastor to develop a youth program for the entire city (20,000 students) and will be funding it too.   There is not restriction on sharing the gospel through the program.  The chief of police asked the pastor to be the chaplain for the city fire and police stations.

The cool thing is that God is already active in the places we are planting churches.  Sometimes we just need to slow down long enough to listen.  When we do, not only will we learn how to contextualize church in the community, but we might also learn what God is already doing and partner together with Him.

2010
05/10
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Pastoring the Prayer Team

One of the early milestones that any church planter must accomplish is developing a prayer support team.  I’ve seen hundreds of prayer updates over the years from church planters.  The majority of them all sound about the same.  Most include prayer for more funding, the right facility, an upcoming event and prayers for people to come.  Notice a theme?  The prayers are primarily self-centered and focused on what the church planter needs to succeed.  Most church planters naturally look at these prayer updates as ways to get people to pray for their needs.  Now I know church planters pray better than that.  I spend time in prayer with them and they pray for things like specific people coming to know Jesus, praise for God’s work in the city the church is being planted in, prayers for wisdom and discernment, etc.  These prayer just don’t often make it into the prayer update.  Church planters generally don’t stop to consider how significant and influential it is for a supporter to receive prayer updates.

Most people never get an intimate look at the prayer life of a pastor.  By receiving updates and prayers, supporters can see how the church planter’s  faith handles difficult obstacles, takes on the impossible, perseveres, and trusts God.  That open window into your life will help stretch their faith and serve as a model for how they approach God.  Essentially the prayer updates will serve as discipleship tools to your supporters.  As the church planter shares stories about lost people coming to know Jesus, supporters will be inspired to reignite their passion to reach out the lost in their midst.

So the next time you realize its been over a month since your last prayer update, don’t dread it.  Take it as an opportunity to teach and inspire the people who are making a sacrifice of time and money so that this new work of God can exist.

2010
05/04
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The Outsourced Church

Outsourcing is a very popular business model that companies use to cut costs and streamline work flows.  But the idea of outsourcing isn’t new.  The church has been doing it for centuries.  Back in the late 1700′s and early 1800′s, there was a movement to form missionary societies.  For example, the Baptist Missionary Society was formed in 1792.  These societies assumed the role of sending missionaries out into unreached areas.  From an institutional standpoint, this makes a lot of sense.  You can organize on a large scale and ensure that work isn’t being duplicated.  I believe the long term effect has been that today’s church is not as engaged in mission.  On the local church level the result is that missions simply becomes check writing.  Rather than each Christian being called at baptism to the Great Commission, they become an economic engine to support others doing mission.  In a Christian culture, the impact is minimal.  But in today’s post-Christian Western culture the impact is devastating.  Each Christian no longer understands that their baptism is also a calling to the Great Commission.  Thus, the unchurched among us are no longer reached.

The early 1900′s saw the even more outsourcing in the Church with the rise of parachurch organizations.  Today, parachurch organizations exist for almost every imaginable ministry.  While there is nothing inherently wrong with parachurch organizations (I work for one), the result in the Church in the West is the sense that mission is again not the business of the local church.  The local church simply serves as check writers, the economic engine of the parachurch movement.

The missional shift we are in the midst of is a needed correction of this outsourcing.  Once again, churches are rallying behind the Great Commission and bringing these essential elements of missions back into the local church.  Churches are begining to serve their communities, raise up pastors from within, send out church planters and missionaries, and see themselves as the primary catalyst of God’s mission within their locale.

With all the debate about missional churches and what they are and are not, I believe the local church embracing the Great Commission is the greatest benefit of this movement.  I believe this missional movement will require parachurch organizations and missionary societies to reorganize as partners who help the local church become the hands and feet of God’s mission rather than doing it for them.

2010
04/28
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What Does it Cost to Be on the Launch Team

In the early days of Christianity, it was tough being a Christian.  It wasn’t a decision you made lightly.  It was a decision that could easily cost your life.  As a result, the early Christians developed catechisms.  This was essentially a personal test to see if you were worthy of being a Christian.  The early Christians set the bar for discipleship pretty high.  That has significantly changed in today’s Christian communities.  Many have difficulty telling the difference in lifestyle between Christians and non-Christians.  The bar for entry into the Christian community is quite low.  In an episode of Lost, “Fire and Water”, Claire asks the question “What is baptism?”  John Locke calls baptism “spiritual insurance” to insure you go to heaven.  For many, Christianity is just that “spiritual insurance”.  You might call attendance to church “paying your premiums”.  With such a low bar for entry into the Christian community, it is no wonder that there is little life transformation that happens.

Church planters struggle with this tension between high expectations and inclusiveness.  One of the processes I have each church planter walk through is to determine the process for accepting people on the launch team.  Frequently, this confuses planters.  Many struggle to build the team and take the attitude that all are welcome.  Many church planters also invite in outside teams to serve.  While there is much wisdom in this, there is also an inherent danger that the local congregation will not develop the DNA of serving.

I see this with giving as well.  Many church planters hesitate to ask the launch team to give.  There is an inherent fear that asking for money will drive people away.  But church planters have no problem with asking outside individuals and churches to give.  A planter recently told me that when asking a church for money, he was asked if everyone on the launch team was financially giving.  His answer was no.  The church said they wanted to help, but would not financially contribute until everyone on the launch team was giving.  Their concern was that if the launch team didn’t believe in the vision enough to give that they would not give either.

The consumer impulse is strong in the West and alive and well in the church.  As church planters, we want to create communities that are centered on Christ and not the economy.  The dangers of having outside groups serve and not asking the team to give is that we are feeding the consumer disease.  From day one, we are allowing the Christians under our leadership to sit back and consume while someone else serves and gives.  Later, we try to correct this problem by asking them to serve and give and its little wonder that a struggle results.  While it might take longer to build a launch team by setting a high bar for discipleship and inclusiveness in the community, the health that results is well worth the wait.

In my opinion, this is why membership is important.  We need to have communities where non-Christians and the spiritually misguided believers are welcome.  How else are they going to learn?  But membership in the community should be different.  Set the bar high.  If you want to belong, here is the litmus test or the catechism.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his classic work, “The Cost of Discipleship” talked about “cheap grace.” In Bonhoeffer’s words:

“cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline.  Communion without confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”

In the quest to build a team or in the quest to win someone to the Lord, don’t settle for cheap grace.

2010
04/15
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Tribal Church

I’ve been reading the Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch.  He does an excellent job of telling the history of the church and how the church evolved into an institution.  One of his points is that in a “Christian” culture, the institutional church is a natural evolution.  But the early church was not an institution.  It was much more a fringe movement on the edge of society.  Fast forward to today.  Hirsch says the the contemporary church growth movement is effective at reaching about 35% of the population.  Increasingly, how we “do church” is becoming less relevant to our culture.  Part of that is due to a tribalization of culture.  In the past, people identified with large groupings: Republican or Democrat, unions, etc.  Today, culture is much more fragmented.  People identify with much smaller tribes.  If you are fan of Seth Godin, this language will sound very familiar.  Seth has a great book, “Tribes”, that explains this phenomenon and how it relates to marketing.

I’d take this a step further and say that people belong to multiple tribes.  I’m in the church planting tribe, the Fighting Illini tribe, Mac tribe (also know as the cult of Mac), and to a lesser degree a cycling tribe.  In the church growth model, we tend convert people not only to Christianity but to our tribe.  Let me use a sports analogy.  People in Ohio may or may not be Ohio State fans.  Because they live in Ohio they are prime candidates for conversion to the Ohio State tribe.  This is the 35% of people in America whom Hirsch says can be reached by the church growth model.  Michigan fans are from a completely different tribe.  In fact, they don’t like the Ohio State tribe at all.  Trying to reach the other 65% of the population with the church growth model, is like trying to convert a Michigan fan to be an Ohio State fan.  It’s just not going to happen.

Let me draw one more conclusion.  In the church growth model, we tend to draw people out of their current tribes and into the “church” tribe.  This is actually counter to the Great Commission.  If we were to truly adopt a missional stance, we would leave people in their current tribes as a missionary.  The Church needs to adopt this missionary stance if we are to reach the other 65% of American population.  So let me get real practical.  What tribes are you a part of?  How can you become a missionary within that tribe?

I think that as the missional church movement and the church growth movement collide and influence each other, we could see a beautiful wedding.  Imagine a church where the DNA for every member is that they are a missionary sent into the tribes they love and live in.  With this missional stance, every Christian becomes a church planter.  Rather than asking people to invite their friends to the existing church, you are asking people to be the church within their tribe.  It completely redefines the definition of pastor, and releases ministry out of the hands of clergy and into the hands of the average Christian.  Rather than a church designed to reach 35% of the population, a church would be born that can reach 100% of the population.  The modes of church may be different for each tribe, but the essential elements of church would exist within each.  A truly indigenous multi-site church would be birthed.  Such as shift would be on part with the Reformation when the Bible was taken out of the hands of the clergy and given to the average Christian.  It’s time to realize a truth we have all taught, but not lived.  We are a priesthood of all believers.

2010
04/08
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Build Your Band with Craigslist

A couple weeks ago I blogged about advertising on Craigslist to build your band and find a local worship pastor: Artists Wanted. Sean Olson, who is planting The Mill in Owings Mill, MD, took me up on the idea.  He placed an ad on Craigslist that said the following:

“Looking for a top-notch musician who can play, develop and train band members. We are a new church plant in Owings Mills that will be edgy in our music. Position will be paid in part. Email me and I will treat to lunch for a chat.”

Within a week 7 people had responded to the ad.  3 of the 7 were Christians living in the area.  After hearing about the new church only 1 was interested.  Though he wasn’t a fit for the job, he was still interested in playing in the band and serving on the launch team.  The other 4 were all non-Christians.  It’s surprising to me that non-Christians responded, but equally exciting.  All 4 non-Christians though not a fit for the job, were interested in being a part of the band and intrigued by the vision for the church.  Awesome!

The ad was free and probably only took Sean about 5 -10 minutes to post.  If all he gets out of the ad is a chance to share the vision of the church and the gospel with 4 non-Christians it was worth it.  But Sean now has 5 legitimate leads on band members and 5 new people interested in joining the launch team of the church.  Are you using Craigslist or other free online tools to connect with non-Christians and build the launch team?  If so, let’s hear your stories.

2010
04/06
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