Church planting a growing practice nationwide

"Church planting has grown in its scope, diversity and impact," says Ed Stetzer, director of research for Lifeway Research and leader of the study. "North American churches, networks and denominations are making church planting a growing priority. "Such emphases push the church closer toward a movement--where churches plant churches that plant churches across North America and the world."

Leadership Network has a new study on the practice of church planting; very encouraging to us in the field!

GTD for Church Planters: Part 1: The ordinary chaos of church planting

Church planters are among the busiest people I know. They are spiritual guides, entrepreneurs, ministers, recruiters, fundraisers, shepherds, evangelists, marketing managers, preachers, and financial administrators. And that's before lunch on Monday. Add to this the responsibilities of family life and just enough sleep to keep us alive, church planters quickly realize they must approach their time like a bowhunter stalking an angry bear.

My own experience in church planting has been a continual re-appraisal of time management strategies. I had learned much about structuring my day and ordering priorities in my previous life as a product manager for WebTrends. At that time, the company actually paid to send me to a two-day seminar on time management, a very helpful thing for a 24-year old product manager in way over his head.

When I began church planting, things moved slowly at the beginning. I had to work hard at making good use of my time, since there wasn't much happening around me that I wasn't personally initiating: 501c3 applications, meeting and talking with potential team members, reading, communicating with supporters, meeting people in the community, refining our ministry plan. But as things got rolling and more and more people got involved, I began to see more and more demands on my time. Delegation seemed like the natural thing, but I quickly learned that while delegation is critical to building a team and sharing vision, it actually takes more time away from you than actually doing the work yourself. And with each passing week, more and more ministry systems came online that required at least my cursory attention.

Then Melissa and I had our first baby. Then we launched public services. Then we began hosting large events for the community. People called the church and visited the website. Prayer meetings and Bible studies spontaneously appeared. Community leaders wanted my time. Worship leaders needed guidance. Crises erupted in people's lives. Equipment needed to be purchased. Bills needed to be paid. Newsletters needed writing. On and on; and while I learned to trust the others around me and to delegate more and more, my schedule continued to be more and more pressed.

This is simply normal for church planting. It is a material reality that there is more to do than the available time and energy will allow. Theologically, we know that time is a gift from God, marked out in clear rhythms in the fabric of creation itself. Genesis 1 with its cadences of clearly marked days, punctuated by a holy time of rest, reveals time as a gift intended for our good. Time is the holy stage upon which we act out our purposes in God: just enough for us to complete the tasks given us, to enjoy the gifts of creation, and to rest, knowing God is with us. If we are lax with our time or frivolous with our setting of priorities, we profane time by taking it for ourselves. And if we overtax ourselves, acting as if we are the only ones God can use to accomplish His purposes, we profane time by taking it for ourselves.

This is a clear and continuous call to humility and faithfulness in our living in time. We are to be faithful in our calling, striving with all that we are to accomplish those things without overreaching, thinking that our strength or wisdom is sufficient for any good thing of God. This is a large part prioritization: knowing who we are and what we are called to do, and then working toward that goal, doing what we can and trusting the rest to God. This sort of Christ-like focus is clearly evident in Luke 4:42-43: "At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. But he said, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." There will always be more tasks, more people to help, more ministry to be done. But what am I called to do?

In my search for faithfulness in my own calling as a church planter, I have often sought out ways of growing in the area of time management, focus, and productivity. I am not by nature a structured person and church planting has had a way of challenging me to grow in that area. I frequently find myself falling to either extreme: being too lax with my time or frantically running myself into the ground with tasks. My greatest find so far in faithfully using my time has been the practice of GTD, which stands for "Getting Things Done", a productivity system based on a book written by David Allen. It is sort of the iPhone of productivity systems, having a large cult following and a thousand enthusiasts posting information about it on their blogs. GTD helps you think clearly about all of the incoming demands for your time and do the things that need doing. The rest will be waiting for you when (and if) you have the time. In a series of posts, we'll explore some of the ways GTD can be applied to a church planter's approach to time and task.

But for now, let it suffice to say church planters are called to faithfulness in their stewardship of time and energy. A frazzled world is looking to us as witnesses to God's restoring work in Christ. If we are lazy and disorganized with our time, or if we are frazzled and overworked, we miss the chance to demonstrate God's redeeming power in time itself. Let us lead those entrusted to us toward faithfulness in God's gift of time.

Preparing for church planting in year 2: Imagining the perfect training event

In conversations with other church planters and with our assisting organization Kairos, it is becoming increasingly apparent that what the church planter does in the second year is very different from his tasks in pre-launch or his first year.

I recently attended a Stadia conference entitled "Church Planting at the Next Level" which aimed its content at addressing the the concerns of the church planter in years 2-10. It was a comprehensive lecture-style event, two and half days long. Stadia brought in a world-class group of speakers to talk about the various concerns: developing leadership, handling conflict, beginning a building or capital campaign, clearly communicating the vision, and others. Breakfast and lunch were provided on-site; in the evenings, we went to a baseball game or to a local church for a BBQ dinner. I came away with a lot of information about tackling the challenges I am facing at Cascade Hills, thankful for the insights I gained from seasoned men and women who have faced and overcome similar challenges.

Along the way, I got to thinking, if Kairos ever hosted an event like this, what would we want to do with the same allotment of time? What ideas would we take from the Stadia event? What content areas would we expand? What other objectives would we set for the event besides delivery of information and what methods would we want to use to accomplish those objectives?

First, we'd need to think through what overall model for the event would best accomplish the task of preparing church planters for their second year and beyond. Would the model be a conference? Workshop? Retreat? Each of these imply certain methods and concerns. Conference implies information delivery; workshop implies something to be accomplished while the attendees are present, allowing their specific concerns to inform the agenda; and retreat implies aspects of healing, worship, restoration, and reflection. While all of these models are important, my preference would be for a workshop approach, while allowing generous time for content delivery, worship, and reflection.

In terms of content areas to be addressed, here is a short list derived both from my own concerns as a church planter in my second year as well as from the content I found most helpful from the Stadia conference:

• Leadership: building teams; creating a shared ownership of vision and mission; developing leaders and coaching skills; leading in a determined pursuit of the vision; handling leadership backlash and overcoming resistance; the changing nature of leadership in a church plant in its second year; preparing for a future team of elders; the continuous process of revisiting, refining, and re-communicating vision and mission; managing drift between stated vision/mission and actual behavior; discerning, surfacing, and shaping valuesbrought by new people into the church
• Discipleship and spiritual formation: creating and maintaining community in a growing church; creating a culture of obedience to the Lordship of Christ; creating places for people to learn, fail, and try again in their steps of discipleship; assimilating people into communal processes of discipleship and service; mobilizing disciple-makers
  
• Financial concerns: strategies for increasing offerings; transitions from outside support to congregational support; capital campaigns; the changing nature of managing the finances of a growing congregation, staff, and leadership team
  
• Evangelism, marketing, and reach: creating a culture in which evangelism is the norm; training a leadership team for outward focus; strategies for creating and sustaining visibility in a local neighborhood or region
  
• Pastoral ministry and conflict resolution: normalizing conflict and a grace-filled, cross-centered response to it; mobilizing teams for pastoral ministry; methods for handling the most common pastoral concerns; tools for handling large-scale conflict

For the workshop format to be most effective, it would need to be organized in such a way so as to provide enough time for the church planters and any team members with them to interact with and understand the content, think through the specifics of their own context, and then prepare an action plan with which to return to their church and implement the new concepts and behaviors. Here is a possible schedule:

• Monday/travel day: critical to provide enough time for all attendees to arrive.
• Travel all day, settle into accomodations
• Evening: meet and greet session, some worship and spiritual preparation for workshop

• Tuesday/first workshop day
• 7:30-8:00 breakfast
• 8:00-8:30 morning devotions
• 9:00-12:00 Leadership workshop session
• 12:00-1:00 lunch
• 1:00-2:00 reflection, "sabbath", and prayer time
• 2:00-5:00 Discipleship/spiritual formation workshop session
  
• 5:00-6:30 dinner
• 6:30-9:00 fellowship time, optional fun event planned
• 9:00-10:00 evening worship (focused on healing, restoration, and peace)

• Wednesday/second workshop day
• 7:30-8:00 breakfast
• 8:00-8:30 morning devotions
• 9:00-12:00 Financial workshop session
• 12:00-1:00 lunch
• 1:00-2:00 reflection and prayer time
• 2:00-5:00 Evangelism/reach workshop session
• 5:00-6:30 dinner
• 6:30-9:00 fellowship time, optional fun event planned
• 9:00-10:00 evening worship (focused on inspiring, encouraging, and sending)

• Thursday/half day and travel
• 7:30-8:00 breakfast
• 8:00-8:30 morning devotions
• 9:00-12:00 Pastoral ministry/conflict resolution workshop session
• 12:00-1:00 lunch and sending devotional/ceremony
  
• 1:00 release for travel
  

And lastly, the individual 3-hour workshop sessions might be structured thus:

• First hour: 45 minutes lecture-style content delivery, media rich with all detailed content already prepared in written form for reference, followed by 15 minute Q&A and a short break
  
• Second hour: retire to small group tables each with a trained coach who knows the content well; the format is each person sharing with the group thoughts of how these concepts fit each person's individual context; the goal is to explore possibilities and share stories; short break
• Third hour: development of specific goals and objectives along with a written action plan with the help of the table coach

Having come from an excellent conference dealing with these issues, I know how valuable such a sustained time of reflection can be for a busy church planter. These thoughts represent my initial brainstorm on the sort of event Kairos might host in the future for church planters in their second year. I'd love to hear your thoughts on other ways such an event might be structured, leave them in the comments!

Churches of Christ and church planting

Dr. Stan Granberg has some great insights on the state of church planting in our country over at the Kairos blog:

There is a new receptivity developing in at least parts of the US. The west coast, for example, is an amazing area of new church planting activity. We are finding people open for spiritual conversations. It does take them time to develop faith. The concept of believing in God is not familiar to them. They often ease into the idea that they are believers.