Church Planting Fellowship

I am very interested in knowing what everyone is using for video-presentation software for your services. Would you be so kind as to shoot me an email letting me know what you are using for putting your words on the screen, ie. presentation software and computer/projector information. You can either email me at mdwyer@mnaog.org or add your comment. We will post the results.

Mac

What is Church

One of the things that Alan Hirsch described in his session is our concept of what Church is. One of the common factor in most church movements is that their methods are able to be reproduced and are reproducing and most of what we see in America cannot be produced by every member of our congregations, therefore we encourage passivity in our congregations when each of them contains within themselves the potential to start a church. As a part of his point he said that the church in Asia has adopted the motto, every person and church planter and every church and church planting church. How does this reconcile with the concept that many of us believe you need a definite call to plant a church. Otherwise you could be a hinderance to what God is doing in that area. I would be interested to know where you fall on this issue and whether or not those two ideas can be reconciled.

Peace,

mac

2007 Church Planting Leadership Summit

What a great opening day so far. I am taking a break from the festivities to keep everyone up to date bout what has happened so far. No pictures so far, but hopefully that will change. I will try to give the gist of what was said, but I encourage you to take some time and talk to those of us who made it here and find out what their impressions were. I will let you know who is here to represent Minnesota later.

First Session
Alan Hirsch
Most people believe in God
Most would believe Jesus is one of the greatest people who ever lived
Most people would be opened to spirituality
But most people don’t like the church

In Australia the look and feel of the churches that are growing (CCGM) is the standard centered stage with fanned seating
- it is carrying the burden of mission

The problem is the people who enjoy that type of atmosphere consists of only 12-15% of the population.

The problem is the most you will ever reach is 40% of the population. When this becomes the only solution to the problem of lack of churches we will never reach any more than 40%. And the rest will never go.

Ed Stetzer

Acts 16:

Go over to Macedonia-Understand that we have an obligation to leave the culture that we are at (home) and plant a church in another culture (where are we sent)

Help-Evangelize them. This is the point of planting a church. It isn’t to gather in all the Christians in the community, it is to go out and gather in the lost. The “how” of your church plant is dependent on the people who need the help in your community.

When you are bringing the gospel to Atlanta with the same “help” or form as you did in Seattle you will be bringing the wrong “help” because it is specific to it’s people. It is the same gospel delivered in a way the is specific to the people you are reaching.

Steve Johnson

The lost are important, of course, but other than that you must focus on the family of the church planter, they are essential to the success of a church plant. And more specifically it is the children of the church planter.

Vision 360




Breakout Session
Alan Hirsch

When decline happens incrementally but grows exponentially. So it will sneak up on you fast but you won’t realize it until it is too late.

The church that we have had in the past will not be able to bring us into the future. And if we keep doing the same thing we will never be able to get out of the hole that we are in.

The idea of church has remained the same since constantine. As the AOG we must remember that we started out as a marginalized African Americans in LA. We must remain (or become) a people movement rather than an organizational movement.

It is Christology that will be the center of the renewal of the church. The person of Christ must be the defining center of the future of the church, not the Holy Spirit, the pastors, theologians etc.

X(Christ)=mission of the church=ecclesiology of the church

The church must always express itself within the context of the culture that they are in.

The subversion of Christianity

X+Y(Christianity) = religion

We must genuinely radicalize in order to missionalize

Recovery of Discipleship as our Core Task
In every world-changing movement discipleship is an obsession

Embodiment and transmission
Movements can grow only in proportion to their capacity to make disciples

Leadership is an extension of discipleship

Consumerism is killing us (from within)

Recover an Incarnational-Missional Impulse

Missional God
- David Bosch
In the past missiology has been an outcome of ecclesiology
David took it out from under the job of the church and placed it directly under the concept of who God is.

It isn’t so much that the church has a mission but that the mission has a church to carry itself out.

Incarnational God
- an infinite God came down and walked with us for 30 years and no one noticed
- If God is missional and incarnational he sends people out to live among us.

Our activities in the world must be incarnational (what is the good news to these people)

In 3-5 years after someone has become a Christian they will have no association with anyone from the environment they came from.

We need to recovery the ethos and methodology of the Apostolic Church
What we need are missionally responsive, culturally adaptive, organizationally agile, multiplication movements.

Movements
- mobilize the whole people of God
- Are reproducing and reproducing

Every believer a church planter and every church a church planting church

- What are the implications of starting a movement, doing church in a way that can reproduced by each member of the congregations.


These are the notes that I took they are a little rough and will expound on them later on but there you have it.

We also heard from Mark Batterson, Herbert Cooper and Nelson Searcy. Nelson's topics can be found online at Churchleaderinsights.com and I have logged the information on Herbert and Mark in the past.

That is it for now, and I will have more stuff in the near future.

Peace,

Mac

Update on Destiny Outreach Church

We've received an update on the new church in Hawley. It looks as if they have found a place that will work well for them. Here is the note that Blair sent to us the other day.

After a short board meeting today, and after a month discussion with our team we came to the agreement to lease
a facility at 219 6th Street in Hawley. This facility has 535 square feet and is in a building downtown Hawley.
This same building will house Jimmy's pizza that will open December 15th 2007. There will be plenty of traffic from the Community in this location and our church will be in the marketplace. Jodi and I owned a commercial espresso cart that we will be installing in our new church building. Early in the year we purchased a commercial grinder and espresso machine. From our espresso cart we can make almost any drink that you can get at Starbucks. Our church will seat up to 52 people, a small stage, video projector, screen, surround sound system, and full service espresso cart.
Or espresso relational church is becoming a reality. Our church will be signing a lease in a couple of days for 6 months. We will have the only place to get espresso drinks in Hawley. We plan on decorating the church to be really cool and welcoming...I have been collecting espresso equipment for quite some time waiting for God's times fulfill the vision! Now is the time!

More big news, God spoke to us a month ago to start Sunday Morning services. Starting November 4th 2007 we will discontinue our Sunday night services and start having Sunday services at 10:00 AM I am so happy no more setting up and tearing down the church. We will meet this Sunday November 4th (my birthday) at 10:00 Am in our new church building. Look for our Destiny Outreach maroon and gold sign at 219 6th Street Downtown Hawley . We should have the coffee house done in about 6 weeks.

Let's keep them in prayer as they continue on their journey. And if any of you have any ideas, they are in need of some worship teams. Right now they are using 4 different guest teams.

Peace
Mac

A couple new resources

Hey everyone, I came accross a couple of new resources over the last couple of days. One was given to me by someone at one of our church plants. For those of you who are still using powerpoint to display lyrics during your worship services, give opensong.org a shot. It is a free open source program that will allow you to display lyric as well as manage your chord charts. I am in the process of trying it out and will be putting up my own review on the homemissions website along with some other presentation programs. But, try it out and let me know how it works for you.

Also, lifechurch.tv has released a Beta version of an online bible resource and community called youversion.com. It is still in it's early stage but sign up and check it out. Let us know what you think.

That is it for now, but let us know if you have any new and innovative resources that you would be willing to share with everyone.

Peace
Mac

More Project Updates

With everything going on during our cohort meeting we failed to give more updates. Here is one on Barnesville

Barnesville: Dave have moved up to the community and are doing work on the pasonage. Barb is getting plugged into the community and they are praying for team members to help establish a spirit-filled, family-centered community of believers. Currently they are praying for a worship leader and children's leader for the church and would appreciate your prayers for God's direction.

Church Planting

Well we had a great time with many of our Cohort members. We will be offering the resources that Paul talked about soon, so let us know if you would be interested in any copies.

As we continue on this journey together I am often amazed at the different ways Parent churches approach supporting their church plants. Some open up the congregation and allow anyone to go with the church planters, other give a set amount of people and money, while others won't even entertain the idea of letting the key people go with the church planters. Paul touched on a point that I am noticing elsewhere in church planting around the nation. Church Planting is a great way to grow your church. It creates excitment and purpose to a congregation as well as releases something within the spiritual realm that seems to bring an increase within the giving congregation. I don't know where you fall on this topic but it is an issue that will come up in your church planting endevours. We will be giving all of you an opportunity to learn and discuss this issue at our next Parent Church Planter Cohort meeting on Monday January 07, 2008 at Craguns before the Minister/Spouse Seminar. We will be joined by Maury Davis, the pastor of Cornerstone Church in Nashville. His church has become a parent church and he has very specific guidelines for releasing his people. We are very excited by what we are seeing throughout the state and this is going to be an incredible meeting. Please start letting me know if you plan on being there.

Peace

More from Paul

Remember it is essential to educate and motivate people before you ask them to give.

Good book to give your people to motivate and educate them

"Lost in America" by Tom Clay

Another book "First Impressions"

Qustion and answer

When you provided the salary for the church planter for a year how did you handle them

- We handled them as a staff pastor and their church was a separate department

Funding Resource

Paul Hamelink discussed another funding option for our church planters.

He started talking about his experiences in church planting
God provided for the funding as he stepped out to do the plant
God brought in more people as they stepped out to the church plant
Planting a church will not hurt your church
God will provide the resources
Anyone can do it.

Here is the process

The goal was to get everyone to participate
He had to get his people motivated before the participated
Therefore he had to educate his people
But he had to investigate the process.

You have to be ready to answer peoples questions
You had better find out the demographics
You need a budget (clarify your vision)
You must educate your leadership
Identify you informal leadership and educate them as well
Identify the "blockers" in your church and sit down with them to educate them
Put the process in front of your people (messages on church planting, introducing the church planter, etc)
Preach on church planting (what is the church, why is the church here, and how do we fit into that plan)
His plan was to have everyone in his congregation to do three things for one year
1. Pray
2. Talk about it
3. Give something

If you really do your homework and take the time to educate your people you will be able to plant a church and fund that plant.

New Ulm Update

Doing summer outreaches in the Park all summer in New Ulm averaging about 40-50 people every time. The team will do the outreaches until mid Dec. They will move into a store-front property this coming Sunday and see what happens over the next couple of months.

Hawley Opening Day

We had an update on Hawley's opening day. Here is a picture

The Waters Church

Doug gave us an update for the Waters Church. Here is picture from their opening day.

Chort Meeting Starts

Roger opened with a welcome and prayer to everyone.
After some housekeeping.

Question #1
What have I done to move your church planting process forward?

T-Minus 3 days and counting until Cohort meeting

There are only 3 days left until our next Cohort meeting. We are so excited about what God is doing around the state. We are seeing an incredible wave of "church planting fever". We hope to see you there. For those of you who will not be able to make it, we will be providing a recap of the day.

Parent Church Planters Chohort

This is a reminder to everyone that the next Parent Church Planters Cohort will be on Monday September 16th at Lake Geneva Christian Center in Alexandria, MN. We will begin at 10:00 AM. Please contact Mac Dwyer at mdwyer@mnaog.org to register

Next Parent Church Cohort Meeting

Friends,

Greetings and blessings to you. I trust you are doing well and enjoying your summer.

I want to thank you for the great response and affirmation to our efforts to launch a new church multiplication/planting focus. I am extremely encouraged about our future because of your passion and your willingness to make church multiplication one of your main ministry priorities. I'm looking forward to working with you as you create your unique initial multiplication plans.

We are going to host our next cohort meeting on Monday, Sept. 17th at Lake Geneva Christian Center from 1:00-4:00 PM. This is just prior to our District Prayer and Fasting Retreat. Some key focuses for this meeting:

1. Paul Hamelink will be presenting another idea and passing out a resource regarding funding for church multiplication. Paul has a proven track record as a parent church pastor and church planter and I know he will be a blessing to us.

2. Most of you will want to stay for the Prayer and Fasting retreat and use that time to seek the Lord regarding the next developmental steps in your reproduction plan. This will be great time for us continue to do our best to insure our plans are being influenced and inspired by the Holy Spirit.

3. We will time to share some "progress reports" and celebrate with each other. There are a number of exciting projects that are already emerging from the cohort that you will want to hear about.

4. There will also be time built in for peer interaction/resourcing/networking.

Again, I want to thank you for your commitment to journey together in this effort. I trust you will do everything possible to attend this next meeting. Any questions please contact me.

Look forward to seeing you on the 17th.


Roger

Parent Church Planting Cohort

We had a great time at our first chort meeting the other day. I had blogged the event and gave some brief run-downs of what happened. But now I thought I would give you an update. We have around 40 of our leaders who have come on-board the cohort. We are very excited about what God is going to do over the next 3 years as we look to radically change the spiritual landscape of Minnesota. One of the questions that was asked at the Cohort meeting was "What/who would you like to be exposed to at the cohort meetings?" This can be a person, a topic, a training tool, anything that will help in your development as a parent church. Let us know and we will try to make it happen. Thanks for your help!!

Peace,

Mac

I need your help

I know this is a silly subject for some and highly over done for others but I was wondering if you could tell me what type of computer you are using. Are you a windows user or a Mac user and if you had a choice which would you choose and why. My point is not to start any arguments, this is an unofficial poll for some stuff that I am working on. So, let me know what you are using.

Thanks,

Mac

MN Church Planting: Prayer Request from Gia Tou Lee

MN Church Planting: Prayer Request from Gia Tou Lee

Prayer Request from Gia Tou Lee

Pastor Gia Tou Lee and requested prayer for General Vang Pao and the nine leaders who were recently charged with plotting to overthrow the government of Laos. Gia notes that Gerenal Vang Pao is the only prominent Hmong leader in the world. Pastor Gia writes:

Please take your time to fast and pray for our U.S. officials, judges, General Vang Pao, the other leaders and their families that God’s power and His fairness fall upon each and every one of them.

Also, we will be posting a debrief on the Parent Church Planter's Cohort meeting soon. So, keep watching or just subscribe to the blog.

Peace
Mac

Steve Pike cont.

After Steve wrote up the proposal it was approved with the executive presbyters approving 2 million to be given to church planting in several installments.

Once they receive the capital in the fund Steve wants to remove the $60,000 cap and say that as long as you give them a ministry proposal to qualify what you are asking for they want to be able to approve it.

There are some tentative caveats that they are working on and those will be made public once they are presented at General Council.

Q&A time

Steve Pike

We are skipping to Steve Pike for now and will go back and share a little more from Roger

Steve Pike (Church Planting Director, National Office)

Steve reviewed some statistics regarding the need for assessments, accountability and training. It was clear that church planters who are assessed, trained well, and are accountable to a parent church are more successful than those who are not.

He also mentioned that there is a new zeal for church planting in our National Leadership, so how can we facilitate the wave of church planting around the country

How can we fund it? Perhaps a large fund-matching pool.

What does it really take to get a church going?
- They figured that it would take (national average) $60,000

This is a part of an over-all plan to plant 1000 churches in the next 2 years

National office is raising 15 million dollar pool for matching funds to start churches
They ask every church that is planted to give 10% of their geneal funds to missions and 5% of that will go back into the fund.

Cohort meeting continue shortly

We will post again shortly with continued notes from Roger and Steve Pike

2007 Parent Church Planter's Cohort

Well it has been a great morning.
Roger opened up our session with some housekeeping issues and then introduced Pastor St. John (MN Dist. Superintendant)
Pastor St. John Welcomed everyone to the session and reinforced his support for Church Planting as well as the support of our District Leadership.

Roger came back and began to explain the jounrey that led him to create the cohort.

For a few years we have been in the process of funnelling the catalsyt for church planting in Minnesota
During the Decade of Harvest most of the thrust came from the General Council, then as a District we started to pick up the torch and become the primary catalyst for church planting in Minnesota. About 10 years ago we moved to a sectional structure and the sections were responsible for church planting throughout the state. Now we are in a transition to empower our individual churches to reproduce themselves. This could give us an incredible opportunity to dramatically increase our ability to plant thriving churches all accross the state.

We are back!!!!!

After some time off for review we are back on line! We are about to embark on an incredible journey with several of our church planting friends. We are begining a pilot group called the "Church Planting Cohort." You will find out more about this pilot program that will have a dynamic impact on our church planting efforts across Minnesota. For those who have registered for Cohort meeting #1, we will see you this coming Tuesday. For those of you who can't be there, we will be blogging live from the Cohort meeting. See you there!

FYI, here is the line up

Clarence St. John (MN Dist. Superintendant)
Roger Stacy (MN Dist. Home Missions Director and Leadership Coach)
Steve Pike (National Church Planting Director)


Peace
Mac