Church Planting for the Rest of Us

We are in the process of retooling things at our church to get parents more involved in the spiritual formation of their children.

In the process, Steve Hudson, our CrossingKIDS director ran across this site that is FILLED with helpful items we plan on adapting to fit our needs.

Granted, like anything else, you may not agree with everything you read, but I trust that many of you would be able to greatly benefit from these resources as we already are.

Check them out HERE.

P.S. For those of you who haven’t planted yet, I would have given a limb to be able to had these kinds of materials before I planted.

P.P.S. Most of them are free!

A few months ago, I sat down with Jeff Vandersteldt, Acts 29 Western Vice President, and talked about the “missional community” church model. As you would expect, Jeff shares his unique and challenging perspective on this topic and offers some sound counsel for both established and new church pastors considering this model.

Listen. Learn. Tweet.

A couple of weeks ago, I began a series involving what I think it takes to be a successful church planter with a post entitled “Are You a Planter or a Poser?” Apparently, it struck a chord with quite a few folks. If you missed it, you can catch it HERE.

Today, I want to continue that series with a few thoughts and musings I have gathered along the way from various sources on the topic of VISION. I will give credit to those I remember…the ones I forget, I will chalk up to the Fall’s effects on my memory.

Let’s start with a simple definition I think I got from Andy Stanley.

A Vision is a picture of what COULD BE with the conviction that it SHOULD BE.

Needless to say, I really like that definition since I chose it as the one I am choosing to share with you. In fact, though I don’t agree with Andy on a variety of topics, I believe that he is one of the BEST teachers on this topic and I highly recommend his Leadership Podcast . You can listen to a short talk he gives on vision once you subscribe in iTunes. I also really like his books Making Vision Stick and Visioneering on this topic as well.

So, now that we know what Vision is, where do we get one?

Well, since I am most interested in planting churches, “the Bible” and “Jesus” are good choices for answers.

I mean “The Bible” in the sense of “God wants to expand His Kingdom through the local church and He has plenty to say about what that looks like…” more than I do “I found this obscure verse that now means I should move my wife and kids over there and start a church…” though I do believe there should be  a very spiritual component involved which we will eventually discuss but not today. That would be my “Jesus” portion.

As we read Scripture and figure out what a church is, why churches matter, who should lead them, etc., we are then ready to do the hard work of “contextualization”  homework to figure out how to best plant one of God’s churches in a given community and ask ourselves if we are, indeed, the men for the job. Again, other posts for other times.

A biblical vision for planting a church starts with the Scriptures and should be informed by its context. It will include a “mission statement” and some handles to make it “memorable and portable” and should be easy to remember and share. It should create passion in its hearers and inspire then to commitment and sacrifice. Like it or not, it is one of the most important elements of an effective local church. 

Once you establish that vision clearly, it can serve you in so many ways. Here’s just a few:

1. Gives you goals to pray and work toward.
2. Lets you know what success and failure look like.
3. Gives you a filter to run all of your decisions through (e.g. Does “this” help us accomplish our goal? If so, we will consider it. If not, no thanks.)
4. Gives you something to call your people to.
5. Lets your team do all the things I just mentioned as well.

Listen. Learn. Tweet.

I am very thankful for much of the dialogue that has been happening recently around the role of the Gospel in Sanctification.

I believe it has been needful and helpful and should continue as its implications are vast.

Like many of you, I tried to follow some of the dialogue but amidst all of the “point counterpoint” and the rest of my priorities in life, I  just simply got overwhelmed in all the posts and had to stop.

My assistant, Tyler Miller (shout out!) however has come to the rescue!

He has taken ALL of the posts that Justin Taylor recently pointed too in a “summary post” and copied and pasted them into a PDF (complete with citations) that I (and you) can now read on the treadmill.

All 47 pages of them.

So, I will tell Tyler you said “thank you” and we would appreciate it if you  retweet and link to this so we don’t feel like we wasted our time ; )

Seriously, we hope it helps.

Click below to get it.

Law and Gospel Info

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Casey Cease, Acts 29 Pastor and President of 29 Coffee – a great company that is doing business with a great “Kingdom mindset.” They sell great coffee (our church uses it so we know…) and half of the profits go to planting Gospel-centered churches. For example, for every $10 bag of coffee, $5 goes to support church planting. What an awesome idea!

In this 2:40 video, Casey explains the process and how you can get involved in the Mission as an individual or a church. They can even ship it to your house or where your church meets.

These are good guys doing a good work a good way and we would love to have you join us.

Just click their ad at the left or THIS LINK for more info.

A few months ago, I sat down with Burk Parsons, Lead Editor of Table Talk Magazine, and fellow pastor alongside Dr. R.C. Sproul.

Burk paints a poignant picture of God’s grace in what it is like to serve alongside R.C. and also some great wisdom that all of us could benefit from hearing.

Listen. Learn. Tweet.

Check it out. I think you will dig it. Pass it on if you do.

Click HERE to read it if you haven’t yesterday’s post. If you have, keep reading.

This post is primarily for 2 groups of people:

1. Those of you who may have been leaning toward planting and you are now concerned that maybe you shouldn’t be.

2. Those who may be already a short distance into a plant and beginning to ask some hard questions that maybe should have been asked up front.

Like yesterday, I’m not trying to create discord or angst where there shouldn’t be, but rather trying to save men who shouldn’t be trying to plant churches (at least at this time), their families and their churches a world of hurt. I want to attempt to do so by providing a few questions that I believe could stir up some solid reflection.

1. Who “on earth” has told you that planting a church is a good idea?

Many of us sense a “call from God” (and I think you SHOULD BTW), but at the end of the day, since this is more subjective, we could, in deed, be mistaken. There have been a number of things over the years I felt the Lord might be leading me into that He just wasn’t. That’s why I am a BIG FAN of assessment processes. Granted, some are better than others, and I am biased toward the Acts 29 assessment (which I regularly conduct), but somebody (pref. a group of somebodies) needs to be on the record saying they think this is a good idea for you and your family. I can’t underscore the importance of this enough.

2. What does your current local church think?

Listen, I know some churches are healthier than others and some Senior Pastors are not “safe” to share your idea with and so on. I get it. But what about the people who know you best? Would they come to your church? Would they follow you as their pastor/leader? What do they think of your preaching? Seriously? Asking these questions, even if it may hurt a little in the short run can hurt a lot less than a failed church plant in the long run. ASK THEM. And be honest about the answers.

3. What does your wife think?

I know women don’t see things the way that guys do. PRAISE THE LORD for that! They see things we don’t see. They know things we don’t know. Does your share your burden? Can she get behind your calling? Does she think this is the right place/time/fit for your family? Does she know it probably means a fair degree of financial risk and uncertainty? Find out what she really thinks asap and if she is not on board DON’T DO IT! At least not until you work through this issue, perhaps even with some outside help.

4. What have you started and sustained?

This may be the one you like the least but it may be one of the most important questions to ask. I meet guys all the time who will make great PASTORS but TERRIBLE PLANTERS. Seriously. The “entrepreneurial bent” (or whatever you want to call it) really is a distinguishing factor for me in whether or not I would approve a guy to plant. And listen, if you aren’t cut out to be a planter, it doesn’t mean you are any less of a man, any less called to ministry, etc. Get over that foolish idea as soon as you can. Planting may just not be for you and that is ok.

So, those are some quick thoughts.

What else would you add?

Anybody who tried to plant a church (and probably shouldn’t have) want to tell a quick story about what you’ve learned?

In the meantime, here’s one quick story of a guy who did just that I posted a while back.

When I was in junior high I was a skater.

Well, sort of.

I wasn’t very good, but I had skate clothes, a good board, and was eventually able to go up on a quarter pipe, turn around and come down without killing myself. I wasn’t Tony Hawk but I was better than your grandma so I felt reasonably legit.

One of the other things I also remember from my skating days was a term used for folks that weren’t so legit–the kids wore the clothes and talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk.

They were called– posers.

Due to it’s recent rise in popularity, I fear that church planting may have it’s share of posers today as well.

Let me be clear.

I am not trying to be shocking, provocative, disrespectful, or discouraging. Instead, my hope here is to spur some needful conversation about who should and shouldn’t be planting churches today. And from my own experience in planting and as a pastor who runs a church planter residency in a context with many men who want to plant churches, let me say that it takes more than some youthful angst, black framed glasses, a MacBook and a moleskine to successfully plant a church. It takes a lot of a lot of things, actually.

Obviously, I can’t list everything that it takes to succeed in church planting in a single post, but I would like to offer the following list to give you some handles to think through it:

1. A close walk with Jesus.

2. An ability to meet the biblical qualifications for pastors (1 Tim. 3, Titus 1).

3. A strong marriage and family life.

4. A sound doctrinal foundation.

5. An internal call from God.

6. An external call from God’s people.

7. A proper understanding of your planting context.

8. A compelling vision for a new church in that context and a good strategy to plant a church there.

9. A plan for financing that vision and strategy.

10. The ability to start something from nothing and form and lead a team.

And that’s just the beginning of my list.

In the coming weeks, I hope to begin talking a little bit about these and other topics related to this larger idea.

In the meantime, I hope that this serves as somewhat of a conversation starter that causes you to do some prayerful reflection and perhaps even ask a question or two.

If you are considering church planting, in light of this list, are you a planter, poser, or something else?