Tag Archives: church planting

A Church Planters Job Description

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I think it is becoming more and more evident that school (undergraduate) does not really prepare you for any sort of career or job. I mean, maybe there are some fields where your undergrad studies actually prepare you for what you’re getting into, but more often than not it just gives you a platform big enough for you to jump into the abyss from. Within this framework I’ve been doing some thinking about everything I needed to learn in college in order to be prepared to be a church planter. Because the list can be enormous I will only focus on practical needs.

  1. Fund raising. I was never taught to ask for money, how to ask for money, or how to find success in asking for money. But the reality is that aside from prayer I think that fundraising is the single most crucial thing in getting and keeping church planters going.
  2. Database management. Try fundraising, sending out newsletters, etc. without some kind of working knowledge of how to organize contacts, keep track of the last time you contacted them, keep track of if you’ve written them a thank you note, keep track of whether or not they get your newsletter, support you, etc. I waste my time doing this stuff because I have no idea how to do it, but it’s a must!
  3. Written word. In seminary you get a class or two about how to preach, so in theory you’re completely prepared to be a weekly teacher (read in sarcasm here) but the written word is completely different. You’ve got to write newsletters, blog posts, and articles among other things.
  4. Graphic Design. Connected to number three, if you’re writing newsletters you had better make them look good. Also you probably don’t have money to pay someone to make your new churches website so you had better start figuring out a way to make your own website! You’ve got to make yourself some sort of church logo, design your own business cards, and create all those beautiful documents and posters that make any worship space a communication workhorse.
  5. Powerpoint. You should probably learn this in high school, but if you didn’t you’re in trouble ’cause any church planter without his powerpoint might as well be naked. Learn it, use it, custom animations, inserted video clips and sound, etc.
  6. Social networking. Yes, thats right, starting churches is actually all about people! So if you want to start a church you’ve got to know how to connect with people. What makes it even harder is that often you come out of a schooling context where your nose is stuck in a book (albeit, a good book) for 2-3 years. When you take your nose out of that book and look around at all the people it takes about three years for your eyes and nerves to adjust to human contact again!
  7. Social activist. Church planters must be connected in their neighborhood, in their community, schools, and the like. They attend the PTA meetings, the neighborhood watch meetings, chamber of commerce meetings, they serve at local schools, homeless shelters, and anything else that sends them to the community in love. Try learning that in seminary.
  8. Training leaders. One of the most important things you do as a leader is to train other leaders. Otherwise you’ll never create a sustained movement and your church will only go as far as your Superman-like shoulders will take it. How do you train a leader? Who do you train? Do you take them through a curriculum or just let them shadow you? Do you just look for those who already lead and tell them to keep doing it or do you plug in people where you think they’ll fit? Leadership development is important!
  9. Time Management. I know, I know, this is in no way unique to church planters…except for the fact that often you do not have an office when you start a new church. Which means that you’re working from home, from coffee shops, libraries, and anywhere else that has wifi. You had better learn to stay motivated and on task ’cause there are an innumerable amount of distractions around you.
  10. Finally (though I’m sure you could list more) your appearance. Can you grow a good goatee? Do you look good with a shaved head? Got plugs? How about a tattoo? Do you own a Moleskin? Have an iphone? Got good eyesight? If you have good eyesight you had better stab yourself in the eye ’cause you’ve got to have a pair of black framed glasses!

School cannot and will not ever prepare you for all that!  So what’s the answer? Obviously experience can never be replaced. But I would also suggest that reinventing how school and graduate work is done is vital (see Rochester College’s new Missional Leadership degree). But even more practically speaking we need more opportunities to watch, follow, be mentored, and learn from others’ mistakes. I get excited when I see groups like Kairos an Northwest Church Planting because they are beginning to offer these types of experiences.

Oh yeah, and I didn’t even get into the stuff that really makes a new church work. Stuff like prayer, listening to God, engaging the world, taking care of your family, theology…you know, all that stuff!

Worshiping on Saturday

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I worshiped last week with the Cascade Hills Church of Christ, a church plant that launched at the same time that we did almost five years ago. We drove down to Salem on Sunday morning to be with them. Jason, the leader there, referred to that day as their church Saturday. What he meant by this was that Jesus died on Friday and resurrected on Sunday, and on Saturday God was just…well…dead. Followers of Christ celebrate the backwards nature that God brings life out of death, and on that Sunday Cascade Hills was dying. They had not yet experienced the full reality of the life that would happen as a result of their death, and so they celebrated their “Saturday”. Jason said some powerful words that resonated with me. He listed some of the top things he had learned in planting Cascade Hills.

  1. Responsibility makes you old (makes you grow up)
  2. The best way to learn something is to teach it or do it
  3. There is more to do than we’ll ever be able to do
  4. When everything goes wrong…things then tend to be just about right
  5. In order to do church you’ve got to go where people are
  6. A few people can make a huge impact
  7. Prayer works
  8. Building faith takes time
  9. Failure and faithfulness often go hand in hand
  10. People make the church (not vision statements, strategies, buildings, programs, etc.)

Who do you look like?

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There’s a church planting couple here in the NW that came from a traditional church, had worked in established ministry for years, and felt “called” to work with people in downtown Portland. I do not know these people well so I cannot speak with much insight as to how their lives and hearts have changed over years of doing this ministry. But I can tell you that their appearance has changed. She has had dreads (and has since cut them off and started them again), they have many piercings, tattoos, and they dress the part too. It might be easy for us skeptical types to look at them and make jokes about how they’re trying to look cool or something of that nature. But concerning the way they look my wife heard the woman say that the two of them did not set out to look different and change their appearance. Instead, she said, the more time you spend with a people and the more you fall in love with a people the more you want to look like them and be like them.

As I processed this I remembered me and my other tall and skinny white friend who lived in Portugal together. We stood out. We looked different. We were loud when we road the bus. We wore t-shirts and baggy jeans. But by the time we left some things had changed. Without ever trying or even thinking about it we acted differently in public settings. We dressed differently (embarrassingly enough we began to wear tighter jeans). In many ways, small ways, we began to look more like the people we were with.

I’m intrigued by this idea in two ways.

  1. Are you loving the people around you to the extent that you might start looking like them?
  2. Is your Christian community living and loving in such a way that people who hang out with you are starting to look like you?

Sunday: Did we Find the Point?

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In my previous post “What’s the Point?” I asked some questions concerning what the point of the churches weekend worship gathering. I must clarify one thing first. I am not standing on the edge of a bridge ready to jump off, ready to quit church, and wipe my hands of it forever. On the contrary I see my future as starting new churches for people who will not walk into our current church doors. But as I’m working toward planting this church and as I’m making whole piles of mistakes planting the Renovatus church I’ve begun to notice that not only does most of society around us not think that church is important, but even a large number of Christ followers do not see the value in the churches long standing tradition of gathering on the weekend. I think this is a problem. And to even further the problem I look at what I spout off as my own answer to the question “what’s the point?” and I think that my answers do not resonate with either jaded Christians or unbelieving others.

Let me do my best in one short paragraph to summarize the discussion that happened in the comments of this blog (as it was cross-posted on Facebook)…There were many thoughts and ideas concerning whether or not there is any reason to gather on the weekend as the church is known to do. Some have done away with it and gathering with friends during the week instead. Others have done away with it in part due to the churches corruption. Still others have taken breaks from the gathering because of burn out or disagreements. All in all this aspect of the discussion was much less tidy, and for the most part reiterated the original question: is there any important reason to gather on Sundays? Some of the answers as to why we should gather or why it is important to gather together include that we gather together to be reminded that we’re not crazy, or if we are crazy at least we have other crazies in with us. Remembering we’re not alone is a big deal especially when you couch your understanding of Christianity within the idea of living out an alternative society in our world. Living alternatively just doesn’t work well unless you do it with others in community. We need to know that we have support, a safe place, and encouragement. In addition to being a transformed and unique community of people Scripture also talks about how in Christ we as individuals become a new creation. Could it be that the weekend gathering is a public and open way for us to express and profess this identity to ourselves, God, and others. In my smaller group of friends I generally (and naturally) am around people that I connect with more easily. In the larger weekend gatherings an odd smattering of people are brought together under one banner, for one purpose (ideally right?), all united even thought they are extremely different from each other. In that larger gathering our uniqueness, our oneness, our unity, our transformation is all being proclaimed. It must be noted, however, that all this cannot be said without identifying the fact that at different points in history the church has lost its voice, forgotten its unique calling, and has wandered into some fairly destructive behaviors. And while this is true and must be said, the underlying theme of this discussion is that there’s something broken (in either huge or subtle ways depending on your context) that needs renovation.

I personally do not have any sort of great exclamation point statements to add to the end of this discussion. I can, however, tell you some of the things I’m processing through. I think that it is essential to the Christians life to gather on Sundays. I’m not confident of why, and I’m not confident that the manner in which we do it fulfills this need, but I do believe that God has wired us in such a way to need that communal gathering. The people that talked about how worshiping together reminds them that they’re not alone might be enough to answer this question, though I’m still uncertain. I believe there is something crucially important to being a part of a bigger gathering that is not about “me” in particular but about the community calling out to God in one voice. In smaller groups and amongst close friends its generally always about me or you, but in those bigger gatherings it’s about us and Him. I think there’s something important to that. I think there’s something important about being challenged to live like Christ more deeply which often happens (or is intended to happen) through the teaching. While all teaching doesn’t match this, I think the idea behind the sermon/message is to equip you and challenge you to live differently. I’m sure this could be accomplished in different ways and through different mediums but I don’t think it happens very well unless its intentional. It is super rare for a group of friends who are hanging out to spontaneously open up the Bible in order to grapple with some of the deep theological ideas that might challenge our daily lives. Generally the only times those conversations “spontaneously” happen is when you’ve got a group of seminary students together.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I mean, I could throw some stuff up there about how God commands us to gather, but I think that’s a somewhat fruitless discussion. It’s like telling an alcoholic to “stop it”. Well duh! Of course he/she should stop drinking, if it were as easy as someone just saying “stop it. It’s bad for you.” then there would be very few alcoholics! It’s not just about what’s right or wrong, what we’re supposed to do and what we’re not supposed to do, it’s about the journey there, it’s about the purpose of it, it’s about the person behind the commands, etc. Also, there are many good practical or technical reasons why we should gather together as the church is known to do. It’s easier to gain momentum as a group, it’s easier to support mission work, ministries, and to help people. You can have a larger impact on a neighborhood or city as a larger group and can additionally be a place where people feel like they can visit without being known or whatever. But I consider all these technical/practical which are of great importance but by themselves do not resonate as much as the deeper theological and heart ideas that the two paragraphs above talk about.

How am I doing? Are we tracking? Do you disagree? Do I make sense? Can you teach me something?

Thanks for engaging in this dialog, may we all be sharpened and grow together!

peace.

Sunday: What's the Point?

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What’s the point of worshiping with the church on Sundays?

As I look at the world around me I see that question being asked by Christians and those who don’t call themselves followers of Christ. Maybe its not said like that, maybe its not said at all but is rather a lived out question. I’ve also observed that for Christians and “non-Christians” alike there is a general acceptance of the church when defined as a community of Christ followers. The idea of the church being a group of people journeying together in faith, trying their best to focus on Jesus, to die to self, and to live for the world is something most people can get behind. But I believe there has grown a disconnect between that idea and its Sunday expression.

So I ask again, what’s the point?

Let me tell you what the whole point cannot be. The point cannot be fellowship, because you can get that anywhere anytime. It cannot be anything technical like the music, because if we were honest we’d agree that music is nearly (and sadly) always better outside the church than inside. It can’t be anything connected to duty or obligation, because while those can serve a good purpose at times they are not the primary picture of discipleship that I see in Jesus’ life and ministry. Better descriptive words in Jesus’ ministry (than “duty” or “obligation”) are “invitation” “hope” and “opportunity” We get to go to church.

So let me rephrase the question: what happens on Sunday that is essential to the survival of a Christ follower?

OR

What does Sunday’s church expression offer what cannot be found anywhere else?

OR

How does the churches Sunday worship expression change the world?

SO…

…what’s the point?