I’m gathering thoughts, ideas, insights and stories on contextualization in ministry. Nelson Searcy shared some thoughts in THIS article recently. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what this means to you where you serve. Please comment!
Today and tomorrow, I’ll be attending the Velocity ChurchPlanters.com conference in Cumming, GA at Mountain Lake Church. Speakers include Rick Warren, Steven Furtick and Dave Gibbons! If you’re there, I’d love to meet you. Should be fun. You can follow the action on Twitter.
I came across this blog post by David Putman and Shawn Lovejoy on Pastors.com. I thought it was worth re-posting:
It happened again! Another one bites the dust! Each year thousands of new churches are planted across the United States, and each year hundreds – if not thousands – close. When this happens the fallout can be great for the church planter, his family, and those who attend.
It’s hard to know how many church plants don’t make it each year. Some organizations suggest as many as 80 percent fail. One is too many. Avoiding common mistakes can improve the survival rate of new churches. Here are some common mistakes to avoid.
Rushing ahead
Most of us quick-start church-planter types are driven by the urgency of the calendar. We tend to focus on a launch date, and regardless if we are ready or not, we launch. Instead of being driven by the calendar, it would serve us well to be driven by milestones. Milestones focus on the accomplishment of strategic actions.
Here are some to consider:
This list is not intended to be comprehensive, but to get you thinking. Failure to reach critical milestones prior launch is a key reason churches plateau or decline early in their life cycle.
Underestimating the cost
If you haven’t planted a church, you can count on three things: It’s going to take longer, require more money, and be harder than you imagined! As church planters, we are often guilty of getting “drunk on vision.” We’re so “intoxicated” with the desire to plant that it clouds our good judgment. When we’re intoxicated, we fail to listen to others, think clearly, and make wise decisions. Jesus tells us to count the cost. It always pays to listen to him.
Violating the Sabbath
Planting a church comes with a high price. First of all, let’s dispel the myth that you can plant a church without paying the price. Because of this you have to make taking care of yourself a high priority. A church planter must nurture his vitality. This requires taking regular time to refuel your emotional, relational, physical, and relational vitality. Paying close attention to these gauges can add longevity and impact to your life and ministry.
For the last 10 years, we have been part of a church plant that has grown from a vision to over 2000 in regular attendance. Unfortunately we are just learning to pay attention to our own gauges. Fortunately our wives have been incredibly patient and honest with us. We are yet to find a church planter worth their salt who doesn’t have to work hard at this. As church planters, we’ve got to embrace what the Scriptures teach us about our time. There’s a time to work. Work hard! However, there’s also a set aside time to rest. Rest hard! As a leader, if you don’t nurture your own vitality and monitor your own pace, no one else will.
Hanging on too long
When you give birth to a new church, it’s your baby. The church you planted begins with the vision God put in your heart. When you first plant, everything begins with you. You have to do everything. However, as the church begins to grow, the longer you hold on to everything, the more you become the bottleneck. There simply comes a time when we must let go and empower others.
Church planters who don’t develop the skill of empowering others seldom grow beyond 75 to 125 people. You may launch your church. You may reach people; but you usually end up stuck. The most effective church planters understand the importance of raising up leaders and building teams.
Not having a coach
Church planting is the R&D department of ministry. Planters understand that we learn our way into the future. As we move forward, we assess our failures and successes and we build off of them. Like Churchill, we understand that “success is moving from failure to failure without losing momentum.” Church planters surround themselves with other leaders and learners. I was reminded of this when Will Henderson, our Australian church planter, returned from an ACTS 29 learning experience where they advocated that every church planter needs a minimum of five coaches in their lives. Those who grow in their leadership surround themselves with coaches.
As church planters we’re going to make mistakes. No one gets it right all the time. We can avoid many of these if we’re willing to be teachable and surround ourselves with people who have been where we are going.
To learn more about church planting, join us February 22-23, 2010, for our Velocity Churchplanters.com Conference.
*** I (Greg) will be at the Velocity Churchplanters.com conference. I hope to see you there!
Two people that I greatly respect and follow are pastors James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll. Both have recently returned from Haiti after seeing on the ground and up-close and personal what’s going on. They are working on a new project called http://churcheshelpingchurches.com/ and are helping to rebuild the Church in Haiti.
I encourage you to follow them on Twitter (see their names above) and check out THIS website and see how you and your church can get involved. Be sure to watch the videos on their website. You can only see them there.
Tomorrow I leave for San Diego. I’ll be speaking for the first time at the National Outreach Convention. I’m really looking forward to it as I’ll be able to see many great friends, leaders I respect and hopefully meet some people for the first time. I’ll be speaking four times. Here’s where you can catch me if you’re attending:
Church Planters Roundtables or (CPRs) rock. I’ve been to a live one and I watch another one nightly as I work with a video editor on the upcoming CPR Online project that ARC will unveil in the new year. For now, you can still catch a CPR on the west and east coasts. Here’s what’s coming up through the end of the year with ARC:
or
In the last couple of months I’ve talked with several churches that are interested in bringing me in for a secret shopper/mystery worshiper visit, but don’t have it in this year’s budget. They are setting aside money in their 2010 budget to bring me in.
I bring this up for you to consider. Maybe you’d like to arrange a secret shopper visit. I’d encourage you to budget/plan for it now and you’re working on next year’s budget. Plan on $2000 or less for the visit (that includes all my travel expenses).
If you’d like to schedule a 2010 visit, contact me and let’s begin to look at the calendar. It’s a wise investment. You can go here for more information and to read endorsements of my ministry.
The other day I wrote about what magazines I had read lately. I mentioned that I wanted to come back and talk about Outreach Magazine. This issue was their 100 Largest and Fastest-Growing Churches in America edition.
There is a great interview in the magazine with pastors Rick Bezet and Chris Hodges – pastors of the fastest growing church in America (‘09 & ‘08). It’s a great interview and knowing how humble and sincere both pastors are, I thought it gave glory where glory is due – to God.
An interesting thing though that many may not realize is that not only are Rick and Chris (and their churches) ARC churches, they both serve on the board of ARC (Association of Related Churches). Not only that, Rick and Chris’ churches were the first 2 churches that ARC planted 8 years ago when ARC was birthed.
So ARC launched 8 years ago with Church of the Highlands (Chris Hodges) and New Life Church (Rick Bezet) and then fast-forward: Church of the Highlands is the fastest growing church in the US in 2008 and New Life Church is the fastest growing church in 2009.
I point this out because I believe in ARC and think they do a good job planting churches. It’s worth noting that this year’s and last year’s fastest growing churches are both ARC churches. I wrote THIS blog post a while back and mentioned all the great churches that you may not realize are ARC churches. If you didn’t read it, it’s worth checking out. You’d be amazed at how many great churches and pastors you’ve heard of are ARC churches.
Why do I do a blog post on “ARC and Church Growth”? Because as an ARC coach of church planters, I can personally tell you how much I talk about the importance of prayer in leading and growing/strengthening your church. I’ve met with church planters and pastors and begged them to make prayer a priority. I’ve begged them to gather on Saturday to pray for Sunday (like Chris Hodges has always done). I’ve begged pastors to begin an intercessory prayer ministry that prays throughout their morning worship services.
Fortunately, I’ve had the privilege of hearing both Rick and Chris teach on the importance and power of prayer. The very first thing ARC teaches at their CPR’s (Church Planters Roundtable) is that you must “win the war in the spiritual”. As Billy Hornsby says, “Prayer is a non-negotiable”. I heard Chris Hodges once say, “You can’t delegate prayer.”
I write this blog post because every “fastest-growing” list that comes out has a story behind the names on the list. There are some amazing churches listed on this year’s list. I know most of the churches. My word to you is that knowing these leaders, I know they wouldn’t point to a cool technology or church growth fad, but to the power and presence of our Almighty God.
God is using ARC in a mighty way and I’m thrilled to be a small part of it and not only contribute and consult, but I grow and learn all the time by hanging out and talking with the ARC team. Billy Hornsby is a new mentor in my life and I appreciate the investment he’s making in my life.
My encouragement to you is for YOU to get to know the ARC as well. If you’re a future church planter, look into planting through ARC. Contact me and I’ll get you started down the path. If you’re an already existing church, you can join ARC (like Craig Groeschel and LifeChurch.tv and Mark Batterson and National Community Church) and begin to see your missions budget go straight to planting churches here in the United States. I’d be glad to talk with you about how your church can join the ARC and begin actively supporting church planting.
All Glory to God!
As you know, I spend a lot of time coaching church planters. Some launched earlier this year, some are launching this Fall and some will launch in 2010.
One thing I love telling my church planters about is Casey Graham and the services of The Change Group. Now whether you’re a brand new church or an established, older church, Casey’s team can be a huge blessing to you. As he always says, “What you stay awake worrying about, we wake up thinking about!”
Casey and his team can do: quarterly CFO consulting, build monthly financial dashboards, and provide weekly bookkeeping for less than it cost to hire a part time staff member! I’d encourage you to get to know them. I’ve invited Casey to do a guest post on here.
Guest Post by Casey Graham:
Life Giving Finances
My name is Casey Graham and I am one of the Co-Founders of The Change Group. Over the past year we have worked with so many churches to help them increase their operational revenue and manage their finances. I believe everything we do should be LIFE GIVING (John 10:10) and that goes with our finances as well. I just wanted to take a minute and talk about three things every church can do today that will make a big difference tomorrow.
1. Personal Generosity
Nothing will increase your passion for helping people find life through generosity more than you modeling it. Developing a culture is not rocket science! Who you are is who your people will become.
2. Life Giving Offerings
When you stand up to talk about the offering, don’t “beg” for dollars. Help people understand that every dollar they give goes to change lives! Help people connect their money to the different ministries. People will want to give to that.
3. Appreciate People
One of the most life giving things you can do financially is say thank you. When it comes to the area of money in church we can’t show favoritism but we can appreciate what people do. Have dinner night at your home and invite your top twenty donors to your home. Give to them, cook for them, love on them and really believe in them. Also, you can thank you first time givers with a hand written thank you card. Appreciate anything and everything that people give! You can’t do what you do without them!
*** Be sure to check out their free offer: http://thechangegroup.tv/freeoffer.html
I had a great Secret Shopper visit yesterday with a local church plant in the DFW area. I look forward to sharing my notes with their senior pastor. I was reminded of how even young church plants can quickly lose their new eyes and start to miss things that are obvious to a newcomer like me.
I came across some good words on Mike Holmes’ blog that I’d like to share with you. He mentioned that a secret shopper or mystery worshipper can do a few things:
He also shares the story of his experiment as a secret shopper, which is convicting and inspiring. He goes on to share signs you need a secret shopper or mystery worshipper:
I would add an eye for excellence and an attempt to be better at your “main thing” (Sunday) – as Nancy Beach shares in her book “An Hour on Sunday“. It’s always healthy to look at your Sunday morning experience through the eyes of a newcomer and especially the eyes of a lost person. You may get only one chance to make a positive impression on them.
Mike also cites an article in the Wall Street Journal on secret shoppers and I think it’s worth a read. As the article states: “Department stores hire mystery shoppers. Restaurant chains bring in undercover diners to rate their food and service.” Isn’t what we do on Sundays as Church leaders more important than department stores and restaurants? Seriously, isn’t it???
September is slammed full – right now I’m booking Secret Shopper visits for October and November. I’d love for you to start a conversation with me about visiting your church. I promise: it’s worth the investment. Go HERE for more information and to read endorsements of my ministry.
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