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