Tips on church planting
Church planting without a mentor, someone you talk to most days, not just once a week, is a terrible idea.
Gotta get organised. Read GTD.
Should know a bit about everything. Just so you can get how things work and can integrate everything within the church.
One of the best things you can do in a team environment is critique everything. Get used to criticism, learn the difference between fair and unfair criticism and helps you prepare for personal attacks.
Simple Church by Thom Rainer.
Even if you can't have a church building, try to have a church office. Helps people if there's a hub, people drop in and help, serve, etc.
Put your best people on welcoming.
Try to have the best kids ministry in town, including the kids talks.
Have decent music
Welcome transfer growth. Lots of the transfers are people who might not get the gospel.
Be wary of transfer growth. Can't assume they're on board or get or own the vision.
Don't change things to make people happy.
The big idea isn't just for the sermon but for the whole meeting. So the newcomer as well as the regulars get the message.
Link the Bible studies with the preaching roster. Then, if you don't have a heap of really qualified Bible study leaders you're making it a bit easier, helping things stay on track more.
Communicate through every means possible.
Use special Sundays. They have a Celebration Sunday and a Vision Sunday near the end of the year to set things for the next year.
Don't just pick the best person for any particular ministry but someone who can train others. Gotta think about what it will look like in a few years time.
Theology of teams
Largely, teams are known for being dysfunctional. Patrick Lencioni writes some great books on teams (check it).
Not lots of data in the Bible on church goverment, teams stuff. Doesn't give us a blueprint.
Evangelicals tend to think of it in terms of offices. But Luke's punchline in Acts 6 isn't 'and thus the diaconate was established'.
Charismatics tend to think of gifts more, word gifts, service gifts.
There's another category: fellow workers, the ones at the end of Paul's letters.
We don't get told about their gifts or offices (mostly) but the big thing is that they're driving the mission forward. Relational way of thinking about teams.
Helps think about recruiting. Homegrown peeps work well. Healthy conflict only happens where there's trust.
Helps think about theological education, not everyone needs to be theologically educated. Teams can have only one or two preachers but a bunch of other complimentary people.
Keeping the vision alive. They keep the vision of the church alive by:
-Newcomers' supper
-New members lunch
-AGM to reset the vision, they get about 80% of the church to the meeting
-Aimed to grow by 30% each year. People expect growth.
-Aim to plant a new church, it was always on the agenda so that when the time came it was no shock or pain. People knew that this is what the church is doing, it's what they were always going to do.
-Flagging change as early as possible is important, do it as soon as you know where you're going.
-Aim to employ one pastor and one MTS trainee for every 100 adults or part thereof. This means that when they got to 210 people they knew it was time for the 3rd pastor and MTS trainee. No big deal, it's what we were always going to do.
Failure is crucial. We mustn't be frightened of failing.
- They're great at performing to an audience, teaching and persuading, gathering a group, and convincing and converting - moving people along from entry to commitment. We mustn't bag them out without reason because they're doing a good job.
- They're great at understanding sociology, getting the atmosphere right, creating expectation of hearing from God.
- People from Hillsong tend to be really positive and gracious, generous. Australians are a bit stoic, sarcastic, but Hillsong creates an environment where you can be a bit more positive.
- The majority of new people come from other churches.
- Hillsong people are very highly committed, people tend to leave because they're working really hard but not getting fed, get exhausted.
- Many evangelical churches have no sense of anticipation, eagerness. People don't tend to come expecting anything awesome. They do at Hillsong.
- They've done a great job of contextualisation and of moving people from checking things out to committing and serving.
- Preaching is really direct, people leave knowing what to do, how to live.
If you don't visit people, hang around with them, the church plant doesn't workAnd Archie's take on the homogeneous unit principle:
-You need to give not an hour to people but a day, a week
-Not just a cultural thing, valid across the board
-Time is a commodity, it's the valuable thing you have to give as a planter
-Failure to give time is why Archie's Italian ministry failed
-Anglos don't expect you to give them much time, that's why you can get away with it with them
-Others do expect it and you won't get anywhere if you don't give it to them
-People are the greatest resource, invest in them, expect great things from them
Homogeneous unit principle - like attracts like
-But you can't predict how it will work beforehand, often ends up going in unexpected directions
-For Archie's Greek church it wasn't 'Greek attracts Greek' but 'wog attracts wog'
-Got all kinds of others coming as well as Greeks.
Intensive discipling is the key to church planting, especially in x-cultural contextsRichard also spoke heaps about and really hammered the idea that we must work hard to figure out what Christianity will look like in other cultures rather than imposing our view of what it looks like for us.
-needs to be highly relational, spending hours and hours together
-in the Bible but also doing all the other stuff, eating, talking, etc
-think about how people make decisions, learn, interact
-honour the way their culture works, family relationships
How do you turn pastors into leaders?
-They need to know where they're going and sell their vision to others.
-Leadership is about taking people somewhere.
-Ultimately leadership is a spiritual issue.
-You need to be so gripped by the gospel that you can feel the flames and taste heaven.
-You need to be able to think about what your vision looks like and how to put it into practice.
-Need a passion for seeing people saved.
-So that your sermon on Sunday is not just a matter of exegesis but of leadership, where are you taking people?
Vision and mission statements are great but they are really just communication tools. If you don't have that vision burning inside you the statement will just stay in a drawer gathering dust.
Need to have thought about where you're going. Be able to articulate it to others.
- We desperately need to revitalise churches as well as planting new ones.
- The biggest single human factor in church planting is leadership
- Ministers are busy with stupid things, people in the congregations are often just sitting on their hands. We need to ditch lots of the stuff that's taking up our time.
- Where you've got people deliberately spending time with non-Xns things happen.
- We're often apologetic for exercising leadership.
- Often the preaching in churches fails to reach the men.
- We don't tend to support the really gifted leaders amongst us. As denominations we haven't been deliberate either at supporting good guys, putting good guys in the right places, getting the wrong guys out of places where they outghtn't be.
- They develop specific and thoughtful people profiles as well as city profiles. They took their time, did it with humility, without demonising. Understood that the relationship between Redeemer and NY had to be a reciprocal one. Gotta pound the streets for 2 years before you really get a feel for the city.
- They promote a love for the city. Love their place and the people in it. Fuels church planting and evangelism because you're driven by the love you have for people. Get a guidebook (or a guide) and explore places you haven't been in the city. Ghostface Keller is an apologist for living in the city.
- They engage in non-adversarial apologetics. Don't attack straw-men but seek to understand and paint your opponents in the best light possible. Every non-Xn culture has a set of beliefs that rule out Christianity (defeater beliefs), Ghostface seeks to treat each of these systematically and generously.
- They endorse and empower workers in their workplace. Need to talk to workers as workers. We capture peoples' minds up to 25yo but lose them till 40. We're good with high school students, university students who are thinking about the big things. Then we lose them till they're 40 when they have kids and want to teach them.
- They develop mercy ministries in a way that maintains (or comes out of) the gospel. Make it a thing you do, not the thing you do.
- They think about how people change. People do want to change, they buy self-help stuff.
- They have developed a rationale for church planting. Not just 'let's do it' but deliberately thinking about why do it as opposed to other things.
The better you can explain sin the better the conversations about Jesus you'll have.
- When you're re-potting, love and respect the pre-existing people.
- If you're shutting a service down let the timeslot lay fallow for 6 months. It helps disconnect from the past and show that the re-pot is something new, get out of old habits and change the community's perception of the church.
- Just do it. Can't wait for the denomination to come up with ideas or support.
Things to expect from your denominations:
1. Expect the denomination to serve you but know that if you want to make it happen you'll have to manage up. You'll work within the system and processes to make it happen and put it on the agenda.
2. Expect the denomination to give you a solid reputation but know that your reputation rises and falls with what the denomination does. When people hear about your denomination they'll think of your church.
3. Expect your denomination to talk about church planting but know that progress will be slow. You'll have to go and get on with it.
4. Expect re-potting to be the most viable option if you want to keep working within the denomination and expect trouble if you try anything else.
5. Expect denominations to get either the most institutionally minded guys involved or the best guys to work for the institution. Either way the potential for church planting will be reduced.
6. Expect your denomination to do little or nothing about ineffective ministers and ministries.
A movement is where church reproduction, rapid or spontaneous planting is the norm.Tim Sheuer has been implementing the T4T stuff in Airds. It's exciting to hear how it's been going. I really dig it, it's so nimble and simple. I really recommend you read the updates I linked to up the top.
John Chen is a church planting strategy coordinator in China. His reflection was that there was 'so much need we can't afford to do things slowly but we don't know how to do things differently'. Needed to train more planters.
How do you determine who will be an effective church planter? John's answer was to train everyone, the ones who implement it will be your planters, the rest wont be.
They started the training and they experienced massive growth.
A church planting movement needs to deal with 5 issues.
1. Figure out a reproducing entry strategy. How do you get into a new area?
2. A reproducing gospel presentation.
3. Reproducing discipleship.
4. Reproducing church formation.
5. Reproducing leadership training.
John Chen developed T4T (linked from Steve Addison's blog), training for trainers.
In T4T, each new believer witnesses to 5 people each week and then teach each new convert to do the same.
1. Sadness of separation. They're friends and it is hard to say goodbye.
2. Conflicting expectations from denomination. Want to see the new church constituted as a Presbyterian church while the plant isn't so interested in that. Concern about having ordained leaders and eldership sorted, management committee, etc while the plant isn't interested.
3. Conflicting expectations from mother church. Mother church wants to maintain warm and close relationships but the reality of things is that this isn't likely. As new people come to the plant they don't know about/care about the mother church and don't get why they should go to events run by the mother church or give money to it. The independence of the daughter church is often a painful thing for the mother church.
4. We must decrease so that they can increase. The more we seed and revitalise the less area we have to work in.
5. How many to send? MPC sent 30-40 people to start a new plant and it took lots of the momentum out of the church. Cost key people, thinkers, servants, etc. You can't make it the same at it was, the mother church becomes something different. Difficult and painful.
6. Lost momentum. The mother congregation gets the impression that all the exciting action is happening elsewhere.
Raising the core teamI think Paul's stuff is so impressive because he really seems to be good at freeing people to use their gifts and trusts them to do their thing.
Look for people who are obviously 'gripped by grace', who love God, striving to obey him. They don't need to be very experienced but have to have that passion.
Look for reliable people who are able to train others
-They are responsible for raising and training their team
-Need to be able to get people to succeed them
Need to spend serious amounts of time with them
-Need to ask them about the details of their lives
-There are plenty of people who are capable but not godly, don't touch them
Look for people who have the ability/willingness to leave a congregation
-Relationally
-Criticism from people who stay behind
-Able to handle discouragement
People who'll respect your leadership, follow you
-Don't just choose your mates
-Fnd people who are different from you
Give people specific roles and clear areas of responsibility
-Welcoming, publicity, finance, social action, evangelism, etc.
-Paul then asked them 'You have a blank sheet, what do you want to do?'
-Then he met with them and they tried to make their ideas happen
Meet with them, socialise with them
-List 30 things you want to see in a new church
At this point they didn't have any specifics like location, etc, locked down
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