Homemissions.com

Coaching--Getting There Faster

2009-06-22T09:42:00.005-05:00

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

2009-06-15T09:13:00.015-05:00

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

2009-06-02T15:26:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-27T16:15:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-21T23:26:00.004-05:00

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

2009-04-21T09:44:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-01T14:16:00.003-05:00

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

Cohort Meeting

2009-04-01T14:04:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone,

I wanted to remind all of our Cohort Members that we will be having a meeting on Monday April 20th at Cedar Valley Church. The meeting will begin at 11:00 and lunch will be provided.

We will be hosting a team from Eagle Brook Church who will be discussing their video venue satellite campuses. We know that this has been a topic of interest for many of you so RSVP as soon as possible because space is limited. They will talk about their decision to use video venues and the journey they went through as they developed their process. They will also talk about the technology that is available at different levels and what is realistic as you look into the possibility of establishing your own video venue. Their will also be a time of Q&A.

We will also be handing out a free copy of a new book by Scott McConnell
Multi-Site Churches: Guidance for the Movement's Next Generation

It's gonna be alright

2009-04-01T08:50:00.004-05:00

Psalm 37:1-9
"Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land."

In staff devotions Eunice Djerf spoke from this passage of scripture and I was reminded how many times I forget about God's faithfulness and I concentrate on all the things that aren't happening in the ways that I want in the timing that I have set. But the psalmist reminds us that when things aren't going the way that we would have them to go it is the perfect time to be still before the Lord and wait patiently before Him. Church Planting is a great adventure but it can also challenge our faith. We can find ourselves doubting our ability to serve and sometimes doubting whether or not we heard His voice correctly telling us to do what we are doing. But be encouraged that when you delight in the Lord He will give you the desires of your heart. It may seem like nothing is happening and no one is listening. But trust in Him remember what it says in Isaiah 55:11 "so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Blessings to all of you.

Mac

New Projects

2009-03-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

Pastor Gia Lee has announced the start of Light In Christ AG, a new Hmong church in St. Paul. The church will be pastored by Joua Pao Her.

What's happening in MN

2009-03-30T08:40:00.003-05:00

The Edge Church in Winona (Pastors Chuck and Stephanie Peterson)
Celebrated their public launch on Sunday March 15, 2009 with over 100
people in attendance. The opening was spotlighted by the Winona Daily
News. Congratulations to Chuck and Stephanie and the congregation of
The Edge in Winona!

2009 MN Church Planting/Church Health BootCamp
On March 2-6 our District hosted a Church Planting/Church Health BootCamp at North Central University. The BootCamp was attended by 13 students from North Central, 26 Church Planters, 7 Church Health attendees and 7 facilitators and staff. All totalled 61 people attended the week-long intensive training program.

Upcoming Events

Parent Church Cohort Meeting
Parent Church Cohort Meeting (April 20, 2009: 11:00-12:30)
We will be having a Parent Church Cohort Meeting before District Council at Cedar Valley Church in Bloomington, MN. We will be sending out more details soon.
Church Planter’s Fellowship (April 21, 2009: 12:00-2:00)

Church Planting Fellowship
We will be hosting a Church Planter’s Fellowship meeting at Cedar Valley Church on Tuesday April 21, 2009. We will be discussing Branding/Marketing and Web Development. You will have the opportunity to hear from several professionals in marketing and web development, as well as a Q&A time and peer development. Lunch will be provided and space is limited, so please RSVP by April 16, 2009 by calling Mac Dwyer in the Home Missions Department at 612-332-2400 or by emailing mdwyer@mnaog.org

blog name change.

2009-03-30T08:33:00.002-05:00

We changed the name of our blog to homemissions.com or homemissions.org. Now all you need to type in is one of those domain names and they will bring you right here.

Parent Church Cohort what is going on

2009-02-02T13:46:00.002-06:00

We are at the Parent Church Cohort in Alexandria, MN check out the updates from twitter on the right hand side of the blog page.

Church Planting Helps

2008-11-18T14:24:00.004-06:00

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

2008-10-30T16:06:00.003-05:00

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

2008-10-29T08:38:00.001-05:00

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

2008-10-28T23:13:00.004-05:00

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

2008-10-28T23:03:00.003-05:00

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

2008-10-27T11:08:00.001-05:00

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

Back again

2008-09-11T14:41:00.002-05:00

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

2008-04-28T16:16:00.002-05:00

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

2008-04-22T19:40:00.001-05:00

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

2008-04-22T19:34:00.000-05:00

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

2008-04-22T15:18:00.002-05:00

- 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

2008-04-22T15:07:00.002-05:00

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

2008-01-25T09:44:00.000-06:00

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

Church Planting Fellowship

2007-12-18T10:21:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-29T17:36:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-29T17:27:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-02T11:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-18T12:54:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-21T14:17:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-19T15:07:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-17T15:34:00.001-05:00

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

2007-09-17T14:37:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-17T14:30:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-17T14:13:00.001-05:00

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

The Waters Church

2007-09-17T13:59:00.000-05:00

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

Chort Meeting Starts

2007-09-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-14T14:38:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-01T10:49:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-28T00:59:00.001-05:00

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

2007-06-27T18:49:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

MN Church Planting: Prayer Request from Gia Tou Lee

Prayer Request from Gia Tou Lee

2007-06-13T11:27:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-06-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-12T13:09:00.000-05:00

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

2007 Parent Church Planter's Cohort

2007-06-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

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!!!!!

2007-06-08T21:18:00.000-05:00

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

Church Planting Leadership Summit

2006-12-04T13:43:00.000-06:00

Well we came back to the cold. When I left San Diego it was in the upper 50’s lower 60’s at 6:30 in the morning, when I departed the plain Minneapolis welcomed me with a cutting 10 degrees. Along with the great weather was a great summit. Since most of you out there were not able to come I am going to recap the event over the next few days. Please feel free to post any comments and let me know if you have any questions. I will be making numerous posts over the next couple of days so keep checking back, or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed.

As I mentioned in the on site blog, the first session was great. We had an opportunity to listen to some successful church planters. I have already touched on one of the topics. But I would like to bring up a couple of other topics that were touched on during our first session together.

Mark Batterson brought up some interesting points during his talk and I want to briefly touch on one of them and I would love to hear your thoughts. Mark believes that God is calling the Church out of the church and into the Marketplace. I think we can all agree that God doesn’t want the church to be locked up behind the four walls of its buildings but Mark feels that instead of drawing people to the building and the programs that it houses, rather God is drawing the people out of the building and developing programs and ministries that are in the Marketplace. This is a different mind-set from the church that I grew up in. In my church our senior pastor always made the comment that if we would just get our friends to the church, he would present the gospel and get them saved. Now that may have been an inappropriately extreme statement, but I think at some point we not only need to discuss the extent to which we are to take on this “market place” thinking (some call it missional) but we should also discuss the innovative and creative ways in which we can bring the Church to the community rather than the community to the church. What do you think?

Peace
Mac

By the way, we will have some pictures up on the home missions website at www.mnaog.org. Enjoy!!!

Live from San Diego

2006-11-30T16:13:00.000-06:00

Well since many of our Church Planting family were not able to come to the National Church Planting Leadership Summit we want to bring as much of it as we can to you. So here we go with the first post. First of all regardless of how cold they say it is here, 60 something is way better than 20 something. That aside, things are just getting started here at the summit. I am sitting in the first general session and we are hearing from successful church planters, Lee McFarland, Mark Batterson, and Scott Bruegman. Each of them sharing their stories and some key things that they have learned along the way. One key principle is to always put your family first. We always hear from successful and unsuccessful pastors to always put your family first. It seems as if the issue always comes up. As we "do it all for Jesus" our families can be left in the dust. It may seem a little silly but if anyone has any ideas on how to be intentional about making our families a priority.

More Soon
mac

What's The Problem?

2006-10-25T08:51:00.000-05:00

Whenever I see one of our Minnesota church planters I always try and make it a point to ask them if there is anything that they need. Without hesitation an overwhelming majority of them say money, and understandably so. I am assuming this is because the tithe coming in is not supporting the ministry dreams of the your staff. I must believe this is not a problem with all of our churches and I know that some of you have been very successful in reaching your communities in very innovative ways. I am sure that many of our other church planters would like to know: WHAT IS THE SECRET! I would like to know about some innovative ways that you have been successful in using to reach your communities.

Check this out

2006-09-22T08:43:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,
Abundant Life in Blaine has 250 designer stackable chairs for sale. The fabric is flora crimson and the frames are antiqued silver - they are in great condition. They would like to sell them for $10 each. If you know of a church that might be interested, please have them call Bruce at 763-754-1011.

Priorities

2006-09-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

Andy Stanley makes an interesting point in his September Catalyst article, "War of Two Worlds." He comments on the struggle we face to balance our work and our families. He states that it is even more difficult for ministers because they also feel “called” to the work that they do. Stanley goes on to state that many people in the ministry often times feel like they need to build the church that they are “called” to. However, it is God, and God, alone who will build the church. Now, I know that what most pastors are talking about is the organization of the church, i.e. staff, service planning, vision casting and all the other things that go with the leading of an organization. I also know that most of us don’t believe that we alone can build the church. However, we do tend to take on sole responsibility for our faith community and while we must be the pastor we must also understand that most of what we do can be done by someone else. It has even been said that you have not been a successful leader if you haven't duplicated yourself. Your church has (or should have) other leaders that can see to the day-to-day or even the service details. But your wife has only one husband and your children have only one dad. You are the ONLY one who can fill that position. Christ said that He would build His church, but commanded us to love our wives. So many times we (at heart) try to build the church and ask God to take care of our families. Here is what Andy says:

"It is interesting that nowhere in the New Testament are we commanded to build the church. Jesus said He'd do that. (Matthew 16:18) But husbands are commanded to love their wives like Christ loved the church. (Ephesians 5:25) When we reverse this-love our ministries or our careers, and ask God to take care of our loved ones-we violate an important principle. Ironically, we ask God to bless our ministry endeavors while we are violating His principles."

It is true that we can't neglect the ministry that God has called us to. However, Andy says, and I agree, that people who choose to prioritize in favor of their families are more capable of meeting the responsibilities of their work. But, people who prioritize their work over their families tend to suffer in both. I know I have found this to be true in my own life.

Here is a link to the article. Read it and tell us what you think. http://www.injoy.com/Newsletters/catalyst/Full/default.aspx?article_id=66

Here are some questions:

1. Who is receiving more attention: your work or your family?
2. If something were to happen to you would the ministry be able to continue or would it fall apart?
3. What can you do to start “raising up” leaders around you who can work with you and share the load?

Update on Moroma

2006-09-13T13:06:00.000-05:00

Things are progressing well for Moroma. He is more responsive and is healing nicely. He still does not have the use of his right arm, but the doctors are working on it. Thank you all again for your prayers and support. In other good news, Hannah gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Solomon was born over the weekend. He weighed 6 pounds 6 oz and was 19 inches long. Both Solomon and Hannah are doing fine.

Upadate on Omot and Hannah Aganya

2006-09-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

Moroma is now awake. He is responding to questions and is finally speaking. He is experiencing some memory loss and does not have the use of his right hand, but the doctors say he is recovering. The swelling in his brain has gone down and he is eating. He has come a long way but still has far to go. The doctors are saying that he will be in the hospital until the end of October. This has been a very overwhelming time for the family and they greatly appreciate your prayers and support. However as medical bills pile up they are faced with more concerns. As some of you may know Hannah is pregnant and in her third tri-mester. At her last visit (36 weeks) Omot and Hannah were told that the baby has not turned yet. Please pray that the pregnancy would continue without any complications and that the baby would turn to the correct position. We are so thankful for Omot and Hannah's faith in a loving and caring God through this time. Many people would be upset with God for allowing this family to go through all of this. However, Omot and Hannah continually thank Him for His goodness and faithfulness through this difficult time. They have glorified Him through a life of praise and thanksgiving. As they face these difficulties they continually remind us that regardless of circumstances, God is still faithful and He is still worthy to praised. Thank you Omot and Hannah for all you are doing for His kingdom and His glory. Our prayers and support are with you and your entire family.

Update on Omot and Hannah Aganya

2006-08-31T08:36:00.000-05:00

We've recieved word that Omot and Hannah's son, Moroma, went into surgery to repair his leg. The surgery went well and the Doctors are optomistic about his recovery. The bleeding in his brain and his stomach has stopped and he has been in and out of consciousness. Please continue to pray for the family and Moroma's recovery.

Omot and Hannah Aganya

2006-08-23T10:43:00.000-05:00

Moroma Onok, the 12 year old son of Omot and Hannah Aganya was tragically struck by a car this past weekend. He is currently in the ICU at St. Mary's in Rochester. We will be posting updates as soon as we recieve them. Please pray for the family in this very difficult time.

A couple of resources for you to look at

2006-08-16T10:42:00.000-05:00

One of our Church Planting family members sent us an email recommending this conference. We thought you might want to check it out. Thanks to Tim Decker for the recommendation. Check them out and let us know what you think.

http://www.desiringgod.org/news_events/dgm_national/2006/index.html

there are some videos regarding the event and the speakers at this link

http://www.desiringgod.org/news_events/dgm_national/2006/videos.html

Who Makes A Good Church Planter?

2006-07-18T14:16:00.000-05:00

Many times I am questioned about what I am looking for in a church planter. Identifying, assessing and recruiting potential church planters is a challenging task. For me the process is both intuitive and objective. I believe it is reasonable to assess people intuitively especially when that intuition is subjected to the discernment of the Holy Spirit and validated by objective data. The objective component is often determined by behavioral interviews that are built around the assumption that past behavior is a good indicator of future performance.

ChristianityToday.com recently conducted on online survey that I found very interesting in light of the behavioral activities that can be assessed in potential church planters. The survey question was, “when planting a church the most important quality in potential leaders is?” Here are the survey results:

Passion for the unchurched and the lost: 26%
Vision: 24%
Ability to build relationships: 18%
Active Faith: 18%
Motivation: 4%
Resilience: 4%
Ownership of ministry: 2%
Community awareness: 2%
Ability to build group cohesiveness: 2%

It’s obvious from the survey results that when assessing potential church planters there are at least four qualities that cannot be overlooked. First, an incredible passion to see pre-Christian people introduced to Christ in a redemptive way. Secondly, they must have the ability to cast (articulate) a compelling and magnetic vision. Thirdly they need to have an ability to model how to build healthy relationships with others and empower others to do likewise. And last, an unwavering faith in God’s calling, God’s plan and in God’s provision for the creation of a new faith community is vital. I would add my affirmation and be in agreement that these are necessary characteristics of an effective church planter. And these are the kind of people we are looking for. Are you one?

His servant and yours,

Roger Stacy

Roger Stacy is a Leadership Coach and the Director of Home Missions and Ministerial Enrichment for the MN District Council of the Assemblies of God.

The Power of Coaching

2006-05-30T14:03:00.000-05:00

This past week I had the wonderful privilege and opportunity again to invest in the lives of new church planters and potential coaches at the Louisiana District A/G Church Planters Boot Camp. What an awesome and exciting week it was.

During the coaches training as I was modeling coaching by coaching one of the students we addressed his agenda of church growth and what it would take for him to break the next growth barrier in his church. During those few moments he came to the following assessment. In order for his church to continue to grow he needed to address four issues. He was going to have to adjust his staffing, address facility deficiencies, expand his infrastructure and personally he was going to have to change how he worked and what he gave his time to. Before the role play was over he had created a plan to address one of these four key issues and was well his way to moving forward to focusing in on the other issues.

During this exercise I celebrated with him over his recognition of key inhibitors to growth. He knew the keys. He knew that building and empowering a strong team, expanding and upgrading facilities, making appropriate organizational structural changes and growing and changing as the leader are all vital components to sustaining organizational growth. He had found the keys!

In those moments I was again reminded of the power of coaching and was reminded how beneficial it is to have someone invest in our lives and help us reach our goals. Andy Stanley has said that we will go farther, faster with a coach in our lives. It is so true. Now I am sure my new ministry friend eventually would have figured out what needed to be done and would have addressed those issues. But having the chance to experience a coaching moment provided for him the opportunity and impetus to accelerate towards accomplishing those goals. That is the power of coaching.

I’m grateful for the coaches that have blessed my life and value every opportunity given to me to invest in others through my coaching ministry. I am committed to building the kingdom and equipping the kingdom builders.

His servant and yours
Roger

Welcome to the MN Church Planting Brain Trust

2006-05-23T09:26:00.000-05:00

We are all aware of the unique difficulties that we all face as church planters. How do we break the 50, 100, 150, 200 person barriers? How can we inspire our people to invest more in the ministry of our church? How do we find those key people who will help us turn our church into a thriving healthy community that will make an impact in our respective areas? All of our successes and setbacks create an incredible journey that helps us realize God’s faithfulness to us and our need of Him. Our passion in the Church Planting Department is to help all of you make that journey with as much support and resource as we can provide. So, here is one of the tools that we are going to place at your disposal. This is the pilot program for a web-based resource for all of our church planters to learn, teach, share, and thrive. Each of you have unique experiences that can help the rest of us grow. We invite you to make comments and post questions, exchange ideas and create community.

First Test

2006-05-18T16:29:00.000-05:00

Here is where all your God inspired dreams can come true.