Coaching--Getting There Faster

I am going to have the privilege this week of spending some time with leaders at Purdue University who will gathering to develop their coaching skills. It's always a joy to be around people who are passionate about helping other people reach their potential and make progress in the pursuit of their dreams. That's what coaching is all about--coming alongside someone and helping them move forward in their journey where ever they may be heading. Coaching helps people define the destination and then helps them to map out an individualized plan to get to their articulated destination.

Andy Stanley said "you will get farther faster" when you have have someone coaching you. I whole heartedly agree with his assessment. Progress is accelerated when you have a partner assisting you in creating a plan, providing a level of accountability to following the plan and cheering you on and celebrating your progress.

In my own life I have made significant forward progress as a result of the assistance of a couple of coaches who came alongside of me. I probably would have gotten where I wanted to be without them but I am convinced that I got there faster and acutally further than I anticipated with their partnership. I'll be forever grateful for their input and partnership in my development.

It has been a great privilege of mine to provide the same service to many others over the past decade. Watching people have those "aha" moments when the revelation of the next critical step unfolds for them is energizing to me. What a joy it is to celebrate the progress they make as they take steps from their own self discovery. I love coaching others. Helping other people struggle to succeed is energizing for me.

Helping others--that's what I'm about and that's what coaching is about.

So I have two questions for you--who is helping you and who are you helping?

Roger Stacy

The Importance of Relationships--Social Networks

This past week I had the wonderful privilege of attending Dave Williams' Church Planting School in St. Pete Beach, Florida. It was an informative and fun week. It was also a joy to develop some new strategic relationships. Participants from six states and Jamaica joined together for a time of inspiration, preparation and impartation. It was also a great time of connected with some existing friends and creating some new friendships.

I was again reminded how important relationships are to the advancement of the kingdom. In fact relationships are all that the kingdom of God is about. Jesus said everything of importance is summed up in a relational context. He said right relationship with God and with others is what everything thing else of importance hinges upon. Relationships are vital to life and ministry. Our relationship with God, our relationship with the people of God and our partners in ministry as well as our relationship with our pre-Chrisitan contacts is what's ultimately important.

"If you want to have friends, show yourself friendly." Friendship with God and others--that's what I am tyring to stay focused on.


Successful church planting is about developing friendships and helping people build a relationship with the friend of all friends who will "stick closer than a brother." So the questions I want to ask are: Who are the new people who have recently been added to your friend list? Which of them have you facilitated becoming a part of your friend's friends list? Who have you had the privilege of introducing to your most important friend--Jesus?



Roger Stacy

Funding Church Plants

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a friend regarding the relationship between the amount of funding for new church plants and the success rates of those new church plants. There seems to be a balance point at which a church plant can be overfunded as well as underfunded. Where do you think the balance point is? What are your thoughts?

The Edge in Winona

Last night was an incredible evening for 21 young men and women. 20 Winona State University students along with our church planter's daughter were baptised in water. It was extremely inspiring to listen to each individual share their testimony of the transforming power that comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ. Their testimonies were so compelling that six other people made a decision to adjust their relationship with Jesus Christ. I was reminded again why we plant churches. I saw 21 reasons last night!

More committed than ever.

Roger Stacy

church Planting Fellowship

Well sorry we didn't have more time to pick apart what Amy, TJ and Bryce were saying a little more, hopefully we will be able to work through some of the topics over the next couple of months. I will be starting a resource page on our mnaog.org page that we will link to from here as well that we will have the resources available to you. I wanted to recap a little what was said some of which will be on the twitter update that we did.

Some big take-aways from Amy Clausen was to evaluate whether or not your public presence ie. website, mailer or any promotional materials portrays effectively who the church is. Always ask yourself who what where when and why. Amy briefly touched on this why point but I think it bears further discussion. You need to communicate to your "audience" why they need to come to your event, or ministry. Really try to think of your advertisement the same way your target community would. This is where the contextualism comes into play. What are you trying to say in the context of your community.
As a side note, you have to be very selective about what you are going to put on your mailer especially because it will quickly go in the trash if you don't grab their attention and when you overload you flier with all of your information then people will get bored with it faster and throw it out. A helpful idea for a mailer is to get them interested by designing it to communicate effectively but be simple with the necessary information but then you can point them to a website that they can interact with. Remember you want to give them the necessary info in the mailer the who, what ,where, why.

Bryce gave us a lot of jargon pertaining to web development along with a handout that explains most of it. I would suggest you use that as a cheat sheet when you need it. I will break some of that down in another post and where those terms come into play as you develop your web presence.

Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time for TJ to talk to us, but one thing that he tried to be clear about is that this really is important. You really need to set aside some budget to develop your web presence and marketing materials. Here is what I got. First get some people together and write the "end users" story think about who you are trying to reach and write their story, what do they need, what are they looking for and create your strategy around that. Then find someone, if possible to help you develop your web site or marketing materials. As a pastor keep a handle on the big picture, but allow the designer to design and don't try to do everything yourself.

Those are some of the take aways that I got from our presenters. Let me know what you came away with.

Church Planter Meeting

We are having a Church Planter's Fellowship meeting today and we will be talking about web development and marketing. One of our web developers gave me some files that he wanted you to have so here they are.

Church Planter Fellowship Meeting

Church Planters!

We will be having a Church Planter's meeting on Tuesday April 21, 2009 at Cedar Valley. The meeting will begin at 12:00 and lunch will be provided.

We know that getting ready for your sermons, developing the leaders in your church, and connecting with people can take up a lot of your time who has time to deal with web presence or marketing. But the reality is that many people will make conclusions regarding your church by the look and feel of the materials they see on the web or in their mailbox. However, developing these tools that can grab their attention can be a little intimidating. At our meeting we will be joined by some web and graphic designers to talk about marketing, web development and developing continuity between your print materials and web presence and throughout your organization. They will be discussing tools that are available and how to leverage them to grab the attention of the people in your community. There will be a lot of practical information that will help break down the process. We will also have a time of Q&A.

We will also be joined by Steve Pike the National Director of the Church Multiplication Network who will be giving an update on developing resources that will be available to you through CMN.

You won't want to miss this!

Please RSVP as soon as possible to reserve your spot by calling the Home Missions Office at 612.332.2400 or by emailing mdwyer@mnaog.org

We will also be handing our a free copy of "The Up The Middle Church" by Matt Keller