Church Planting Helps

Here is a post from Tory Farina about some practical advice for church planters. Let us know what you think.

Mac

FREE FREE FREE, do I have your attention

Hey everyone,

I have a few free resources for you, 2 of which I have previously mentioned. The first one was told to me by Scott Lahmann our IT specialist at the District Office. He told me about a great accountability software to use and hey it's FREE!!!!! Many of us use Covenant Eyes and it has been great, the only problem is that there is a fee attached. The is a bare-bones piece of software called x3 watch that you can install on all the computers in your organization and choose up to 3 emails for your accountability partners. I downloaded it on my computer today and entered in my accountability people and they were notified, so it looks as if all is well. There are upgrades available with more options but you have to pay. I will post a review of the software on our Home Missions Page on the district office website, so check it out.

The second piece of software I wrote about a while ago. It is called opensong.org. After spending some time with the software I can say it really works. It isn't the best on the market, but it is leaps and bounds beyond powerpoint. So, if you are still using powerpoint to display your lyrics you really should check this out. It also has a chord chart manager that allows you to enter in chord charts and change the keys. You can print them out, and I think you can report to CCLI as well. For the new church planter starting out and for the church that laughs at the thought of a media budget, I highly recommend this piece of software. In fact, any church that doesn't utilize a lot of video should really think about using it. Great Job all of you over at opensong.org. PS it's FREE!!!!!!

The third piece of software isn't software really it is lifechurch.tv these guys hold a very special place in my heart. They really do good stuff over there and guess what, yep, they give it away. A church after my own heart. You can download there promo materials to use for your church, as well as video loops, roll ins and small group studies. This is the church behind youversion.com and churchmetrics.com, which you should check out as well. If any of you have other opensource software or solutions that you want to share comment on this post. I am still trying to find an opensource worship leader who loves youth ministry and is independently wealthy, but I haven't found them yet, until then, take joy in what God gives you.

Mac

Orange correction

In the last post I gave you a url for the orange conference. You can get information about the conference at that link but you can find out more about the group behind it at rethinkgroup.org

Resources

Many people talked about finding ways to meet the needs in you community here are some things that they mentioned
-Talk to people who are currently involved in meeting the needs and find out how you can partner with them.
-Join community groups
-Join community sports and recreation groups/teams
-Adopt a neighborhood or adopt a school
-Do community events and don't charge.
-Look for ways in doing business to bless your community rather looking for freebies (Doug mentioned this in his talk)
-ruralcompassion.org
-internation team (iteams) you can google them. They work with immigrants in Minneapolis

Books
-Simple Church
-Peptalk
-Fusion and Activate (Searcy) books about assimilation and small groups
-Black Book of Connectionshttp:

Misc
-Use the local paper they are looking for stories
-Start a daycare
-Leverage paying events to pay for other outreach events at the church
-Add a service (provides more options for people)
teer opportunities in the community

Communication
icontact.com
constantcontact.com
blogger.com
twitter.com

More stuff
youversion.com (online bible)
churchmetrics.com(tracking web tool)
epodunk.com

istockphotos.com
lifechurch.tv-website from life church (craig groeschel) they give away everything and they have a very talented team working for them. Great tools for just about anything. FYI they created youversion.com and churchmetrics.com
theorangeconference.org-great youth and kids programs

Leadership Development Grant-let us know at the district office, what we can do to help.

Get someone who isn't a believer to help you design your promo.

That is it for now, we will work on getting these up on our mnaog.org site as well. If there are any more resources that might help your fellow planters let us know.

Talk to you soon but until then

His servant and yours,

mac

CPF meeting recap

What an incredible time we had in Zimmerman. The church is doing very well and we were humbled and honored to be so warmly welcomed and hosted by one of our new church plants. They have done a wonderful job with the build out and are seeing many people from their community finding a place where they can be accepted and surrounded by loving people who demonstrate the love of Christ. Thanks Wendy, Russ, Ron and Becky for all of your hard work!!!

Doug Vagle did an incredible job relating many incredible stories of lives being changed as God connected Doug and his church to the people that they met while they lived out lives of compassion and opened themselves up to God connecting them to people throughout the day. It certainly gave me a new insight into those "divine appointments" that God has arranged for us. I don't know about you, but I get so busy sometimes that I can't see what God has for me to do. My music pastor growing up told me once, "Mac remember to walk slowly through the crowd", take the time to allow God to connect you with the lives of those you serve in the Kingdom. Isn't that an essential part of it anyway? Enough of my commentary. Doug thanks for your insights, passion and challenge to intentionally allow ourselves to be used by God in our everyday lives to impact our communities.

I will post the list of resources on the next post and put them up in the homemissions page on mnaog.org. Until then,

His servant and yours,

mac

CPF meeting in Zimmerman

check out the Twitter updates for the CPF meeting in Zimmerman.

Back again

It has been a while since we have utilized the blog area. Hopefully that will not happen again. Our Parent Church cohort has been mobilized and we are seeing some great things happening. It has been two years since we made the shift from our sectional teams being the catalyst for church multiplication to individual churches providing that catalyst. We have a number of projects in the works and have already seen a number of launches. So far we have launched 8 or 9 churches in the cohort and are looking at several more. Roger (District Church Planting Director) has just completed the first go around with meeting most of the Cohort pastors in small groups and will meet individually with those who could not attend the other meetings. There have been some bumps along the way as we try and navigate through these waters, but for the most part we are pleased with the amount of ownership many of our pastors are taking. The whole idea of every church can be a church planting church is taking hold and many of our pastors and congregations are accepting the challenge. One of our goals was to take as much of the restraints off of people to free them to plant a church according to how God was telling them, but at the same time providing a platform of resources and training that would give them the greatest amount of success. One way to do that is our Leadership Development Grant. We will not generally pay for the rent, or any other bills but we will pay to train the leadership of the church to do the work God has called them to do. So we decided a couple of years ago that we would allot 2500 for the first 4 years of the plant that includes $2500 for prelaunch training and $2500 for each of the first 3 years after launch for leadership development and ministry training for the lead pastor and their team. We of course, don't know yet what the outcome of all of these changes will be, but we are seeing great things so far.

Stay tuned there is more to come on this journey.

Mac

Main Track Session Alan Hirsch Day 2

Here are some of the notes for Alan Hirsch. Most of it unpacks what he says in Forgotten Ways so if any of this peaks your interest, get the book. You can also see an interview of him at www.scotthodge.org

Day 2
Main Track Session 2
Alan Hirsch

Missio Dei
Deep within the person of God is the reality that He is a redeemer it is the very being of God it is in is on nature to be missionary

David Bosch
We need to understand that it isn't so much that the church has a mission but rather that the mission has a church. God has a mission that the church joins into

If God is wooing all people all the time then he is in less than desirable places where we feel we shouldn't be, then isn't it okay to go there as well and join with Him in that place as well.
_______

Mission should be your organizing principle (the very center of the focus of your church)
Are spending a majority of money and time on ministry or mission. Are you inward focused (centered around the church) or are you outward (focused on those that God is wooing)

Engage Culture

Forming Community

Create groups

In order to create a missional focus you can go backwards as well. If you already have a congregation you need to evaluate whether your people are actually in community. If they are or if they can be then in the formation of community groups they will naturally engage community.

Main Track Session 1

Jim Putman
Alignment

In order to have a healthy church your people must be in alignment spiritually and philosophically and organizationally.

We need to understand that organized religion isn't bad it was God's creation after all he gave gifts of administration to the church. The problem is that much of what is organized is not feeding and fueling the value system of the church

Now as we consider organizing ourselves around something understand that it isn't to grow our churches but rather to build disciples.

Do we build disciples as we build them a building

Create bridges where your people can interact with the needs of the community and those will earn you the right to speak into the community and invite them to your church.

Every road at his church leads to small groups because discipleship does not happen in a large environment but rather in personal relationships

Regardless of your stance on an issue (non-salvation issues) make it clear to your people what you believe, because if you don't then they will.

how do you maintain the discipleship relationship when you break for the summer
do you

Pass out training materials when you can because when you train them you should try to train them at times when it doesn't compete with their family.

You should mobilize your leaders to keep track of the people that attend the services because the real discipleship happens in those small groups.

Remember God told us to make disciples so you are leading a disciple-making organization

Even God said that God is not enough, when He made man He said it isn't good for man to be alone (but God was there with man)
Each of us (everyone in the world) has a need and a desire to be in relationships they just try to do it in the wrong way.

Main Session Andy Stanley

Andy Stanley
Your vision for your church or organization
Making Vision Stick
Mental Picture of what could be fueled by passion of what should be
-it begins with a burden
-the challenge for those of us in leadership is what is clear in your head has to be clear to everyone else
- they have to know what the win looks like
- they have to know what success looks like in your vision
1. State it simply
- can you state it quickly and memorable
What is the one sentence job description that explains your church
2. Cast it convincingly (nehemiah 2)
define the problem
offer a solution
and explain why now
(if people don't feel the weight of the problem they will never buy into the solution)
What would go undone if your church ceased to exist
3. Repeat it regularly
Find out what the rhythm of your church (when do the most people come) and tell them the vision of your church ALL THE TIME (Vision doesn't stick, it leaks)
4. Celebrate it systematically
- put people in front of the congregation that demonstrate and embody that vision (testimonies)
5. Embrace it personally and publicly

Panel Discussion Session 1

- We need to look across the sea to get our examples from church planting movements since it isn't happening here. This will help us to detach from systems that aren't working to ones that are.

statistics have shown Coaches network lead to more rapidly growing healthy churches (Ed Stetzer)

Regardless of the quality of services and music your churches will be judged by the quality of it's disciples. You have to have quality training

disciple making- church planting is nothing more than making disciples and that is the most important thing. You have to make disciples who make disciples and so on.

Do not do church planting alone- please please please network with other people because you cannot do it alone

Question
* As a parent church pastor is it beneficial for your staff to be multiplication minded and how do you involve them in the reproduction process.

Exponential Church Conference

Session 1

Ed Stetzer and Panel
Session 1

Here are some highlights for Ed's talk the notes will be available on line at edstetzer.com
I will also post some pics later.

Trends in church planting

It is clear that the energy of successful church planting is moving from districts offices to the local church

Church plants that grow rapidly are typically resourced and staffed better than those who aren't

Funding is shifting from national or regional to local church

There is a correlation between the amount of funding that a national agency gives and the amount of parent churches in that organization
more funds=less parents

Parent churches are planting churches like themselves

Funding
reproducing churches
- expect new planters to raise 50-80% of their budget

-the more money they put into a church plant the fewer churches they plant

-aggressive churches budge 10% to church planting


We will see a rise in networks to help church planting efforts

churches 200 or less are 4 times more likely to plant a church than larger churches

Recruitment
aggressive churches viewed assessment and strategic planting as more important than financial resourcing

Parents view their role as to prepare the church planter

A shared trait is very important between the parent and the plant

Success is conveyed in terms of personal involvement

Training, Training Training -the word is training. Aggressive churches view training as the most important resource for a successful church plant.

presentation software

Well I said that I was going to put some information up on the website regarding presentation software. As culture evolves we find ourselves looking for new an innovative ways of ministering the Gospel of Christ. That has led many of our congregations to incorporate video into their worship services. And for many of us navigating the waters of live media can be a little intimidating. So, what started out as a simple post with some links on it, I thought that I would give some thoughts and insights into what many of us are looking for in a video set up and give you an idea of what it might cost to get up and running. Also, since many of us don't have thousands of dollars to budget towards video, I think we will go ahead and throw in some freebie information as well.

Let's get started.

Normally I would start with projectors, but since some of you may be waiting for it let's dive into software first. The options are extensive when it comes to presentation software. It wasn't that long ago that people made the switch from overheads to powerpoint. Since then, we have seen a sweeping move across our churches towards using not only projected words, but video, effects, sermon graphics, and video in worship. With all of the options it is hard to know what programs will accomplish what you want them to accomplish. I am going to try to sift through many of the options out there and let you know the pros and cons to some of the ones that I have used. Admittingly, I have not used all of the programs that are on the market, but that is why you all can make comments and respond.

Before we dig into the actual programs, let's discuss what you are looking for. Take a few moments and jot down what you are looking for in a presentation program. If you know that you are not going to use actual video then look for something that will just do lyric. If you are not much of a pre-planner when it comes to picking the music for your worship services, you are going to want a software that makes it easy to enter in lyrics. If you want to notify parents of unhappy children in the nursery, you will want something that will let you put the information up on the fly without occupying too much of your time. So take a few moments, talk to your staff and brainstorm. Figure out what you are looking for. Remember we are not trying to be cool just to be cool with technology. We are looking for ways to effectively do what we are called to do and create an atmosphere where people will more effectively communicate with their Creator. We don't what to take attention away from that, we want to support that.
The first option is one that many of you are familiar with and probably still use. PowerPoint is Microsoft's presentation software. While PowerPoint is good at projecting some of the points of the sermon as well as bookmarking and showing video clips, it is rather tedious using the program for displaying lyric. And while you can show video on a screen it is less than ideal using the program to display lyric over a moving background. Most of the presentation software on the market plays well with PowerPoint, so you can import slides that you have already created. PowerPoint is fine when you don't have any other options. However, you do have other options, so take at look at them and graduate from PowerPoint. You will save a massive amount of time in your setup of the songs and your tech crew will have an easier time following the worship leader. Just think, less blank screens because your tech member has gotten lost again.

Well, so there are options, but you don't have the budget to blow on software that will throw lyrics on the screen. This is no longer a problem, and hasn't been for a while now. Let me introduce to you opensong. Open Song is a free software (although you could donate to the cause if you want) that was created in response to a churches search for presentation software that they could afford. Essentially, opensong combines your ability to manage your chord charts with putting the lyrics on the screen. After trying it briefly, I must give this program 4 out of 5 stars. It doesn't have as many features as some of your more pro software such as liveworship or propresenter, but especially for free software it is a wonderful upgrade from powerpoint. You will have a little better look than PowerPoint and a much better user experience when running the software. It does have a bit of a learning curve so you won't be able to just sit down and start typing to get the full benefit, but it is certainly worth the effort. As far as I can tell, the software doesn't support lyric over video, but it does do images or solid color screens. It has a Bible Reader as well but only has KJV at the moment. Here is the beauty of this program. It integrates the chord charts with the presentation slides. If you take the time to learn the "language" of the program you can create you chord chart and it will pull the presentation slides from that. You can print out the charts for your band and even transpose them within the program. This is a great program for music pastors or worship leaders who are responsible for everything that has to do with the worship service. If you are using PowerPoint to display your lyric. STOP RIGHT NOW go to www.opensong.org and give this program a try. Again, it is not as robust as other programs especially if you want to control and manage video. But if you are just starting out, this is a great program to get you feet wet, Plus it has a killer app.. in the Chord Chart manager. It is a cross platform program so it works on Windows, OSX, AND LINUX! Have fun and let us know what you think. There are more programs to review, but this has been a long post. I will be right back with some more reviews as we continue our media/technology series.

Peace
maC