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What are the implications for Church Planters?

Last week I visited a new church in Detroit. They had about 50 ethnically and economically diverse people in attendance. They have baptized 21 adults in their 18 months of existence…not launch but existence. Three weeks ago, the church planter who is also an entrepreneur, launched a third-wave coffee house. Her church plant rents a space in the facility.

In terms of the church plant the thing that strikes me is how evangelism is at the heart of this new church. There are churches that launch with no converts. Zero.

The services themselves are not refined, polished, or excellent. They are something far superior to that. They are real, accessible, raw…probably right for a community of that size.

Several months ago, I visited a high impact church plant outside of Detroit. The first Sunday was amazing, and they maintained the energy and enthusiasm. They were able to attract people who did not know Christ and are doing a “back to back baptism bash”. Nice.

In looking at church plants, I often wonder what the teams believe their product to be. Is it the service? Is it relationships? Is it healing? Evangelism? Is it education? Empowerment? Entertainment? “Jesus”? Discipleship?
All of the above?

Whatever your case, pick your product and run it through both strategies above.

STRATEGY 1

If you launch early, do you iterate often?

Iteration means the act of doing something again but not merely for the sake of doing it again. Iteration means to do something again for the purposes of moving the process or product towards the desired goal or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an “iteration,” and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.

STRATEGY 2

If you field test a product before release, what are you picking as the product?

• Is it the services–as in having preview services? Is the technology glitch free? Is the music hot enough? Are the graphics and video live enough? Is what happens on the stage dynamic enough.
• Is it evangelism? I tweeted a while back, “How would what we do change if we could only launch new churches with converts?” Are you meeting people who do not know Christ and helping them find their way to faith?
• Is it your assimilation processes? Are you ready to help people move from strangers to friends? Is your small group infrastructure ready to scale to accommodate explosive growth?

HYBRIDS

Most church planters do a hybrid of the two strategies, but with a belief that

• what they do
• the way they do it
• is exactly what is needed
• even if they don’t meet their goals nor achieve the results they want

The thing the two strategies have in common are:

Iterate.
Test.

The first iterates after the release or launch. The second strategy tests before releasing or launching the product.

Either way, the common element is that they put their product up against their desired audience and get a read on how their doing. Are they meeting their goals? Are they getting the desired response?

Who is your audience?

• Other Christians?
• Worship music fans?
• Fans of relevant preaching?

It’s essential for a church plant to get this one right. Luke, the writer from the New testament, indicates that the rise of new communities of faith followed the proclamation of the gospel among those who did not yet know it. So, whatever your strategy, don’t leave behind the essentials.

One way to think about the (essential) desired result is this: have we made a disciple of a nonbeliever?

Iterate and test until that begins to happen.

When you do this you are contributing to the most important work on planet Earth.

What do you think?

—————————–

IMN Resources
Missional Part 1:
Discipleship in the Way of Jesus by Alex McManus
$3.00
Purchase Now

M is created by the International M network.
For more information about future M events …

Twitter: @theimn
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And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter.

It used to be that young church planters talked about starting a new churches. If they were ambitious, and they all were, they wanted it to grow and grow big, grow mega.

M is a 2-day gathering of Christ-following leaders.

Created by the International M Network (See below), M is a positive, future-oriented experience designed to expand the iMagination, Mobilize for Mission, and to Make the world more huMan. Presenters for 2011 include…

======================================

Day 1

Wednesday, September 28
8.45 AM – 4.45 PM
The Methods, Motivations, and Madness of Starting New High Impact Churches and Campuses

Wednesday Evening Networking Soiree ($30.00)
6PM – 9PM

Day 2

Thursday, September 29
8.45 AM – 5.45 PM
Primal, Barbaric, Apostolic, and Instinctual Movement

*Speaker times will not be released to prevent flash mobs of non-registrants.*

==========================================

Registration Opens on March 1
$199.00 after August 25
$109.00 first 100 registrants (or before April 1 whichever comes first)
$129.00 second 100 registrants (or before May 1 whichever comes first)
$159.00 before August 25

Click Here to Register for M now

=============================================
WHO IS BEHIND THE iMN? The international M Network is a network of cyber-connected, globally engaged, and locally invested social entrepreneurs that we call “M” or “M Operatives”. At the senior level, we are a future-oriented, action-based network of friends. The iMN (aka M) was founded by Alex McManus in Los Angeles, California, as an extension of his service with Mosaic.

WHAT DO WE DO? The training opportunities that we offer begin with our action-oriented, field-based experiments. Our field-based discoveries are processed through the iMN Think Tank, a cadre of IMN creatives, thinkers, and practitioners, then filtered back to serve you, the Christ following leader. As a result, the iMN is a dynamic blend of field-based research, cyber-seminary, Idea Studio, and Life and Mission Mentoring team.

Where is the iMn? The iMN has fluid concentrations or centers in Canada, the UK, South Africa, and in the USA. In order to understand the iMN (and where it is) better, it is important to understand that the iMN is an open set of friendships. Our centers are located either wherever our Senior M Operatives are or wherever our focal points of experimentation are located. So to truly understand where the iMN is, you must ask, Who is the M?

Stay connected? Join the M social network, M.

Register Now.

Nick Boring
National Church Planting Catalyst for Vision 360

M
September 28-29
Detroit area

Erwin McManus
Author/ Film maker/
Cultural Architect of Mosaic

M
September 28-29
Detroit area

====================

Dave Nelson
Founding Pastor of the High-Impact Church, K2
Salt Lake City, Utah

M
September 28-29
Detroit area

Steve Andrews
Pastor and Apostolic Leader
Kensington Community Church

M
September 28-29
Detroit area

Is it okay if I tell you a little about this? It’s a really intriguing kind of thing that can emerge in a denominational church from time to time.

Holiness and Risk is being promoted as an exploration of discipleship and vocation, but I think it can be so much more.  I mention it because it’s one of those things that opens up new ways in the most unlikely of places.  I see it connecting with the ideas being explored in the other world I live in – that of The International Mentoring Network.

In many ways, these really are different worlds – denominationalism and M – that’s why we’re calling this series Navigating the Maelstrom.  However, I see real traction here for missional thinking and living, made possible by what Alex McManus has dubbed God’s twin trajectories towards the human event – what I also want to call the purpose of God.

Here’s an overview of these trajectories:

The source of the first is found in Genesis 1:26-27 where we witness God’s creation of  human beings as bearers of his image: ‘“Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness … “.  So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’

In this line from Psalm 139 we hear the words of a person who gets this, as they declare back to God: ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; you works are wonderful, I know that full well’ (verse 14).

The source of the second trajectory is found in Genesis 12:1-3 where we find God calling Abram and Sarai to take a risky journey, as the first generation of those who will be a people of blessing to all the people groups on earth: ‘The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing … and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”’

We catch the most complete expression of this risky journey when Paul includes these words in Philippians 2 about Jesus Christ: ‘Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage; rather, he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross’ (verses 6-8).

I believe that whatever we are about must lie along these trajectories, and if it is not, we are in danger of misrepresenting the purpose of God as something less than it ought to be – like making Christians or opening churches.

I see in the heritage of my denomination many facets of these important trajectories, espoused as personal and social holiness – now being re-explored.  But I think I’m most grateful for how Scottish Methodism’s Holiness and Risk initiative is free to find expression in different ways.  So, I’m wanting to suggest that holiness is not about becoming better Christians but is the aligning of human lives with the first trajectory: holiness is about becoming fully human as we were intended, bearers of God’s image, fully expressed by Jesus.

This opens the need for the second trajectory, understanding that we are not the special ones, but that we have found a special message that every human needs to see and hear.

So risk is about leaving what we know and feel comfortable with in order to share what we are discovering with others, wherever they are less than human.  (Through this lens I have come to see that some of the least human environments can be religious ones.)  Risk is the journey Jesus Christ took in order to become fully human, the most complete and potent expression of which is servant-hood.  It has also been said that the apostles didn’t intend planting churches in the cities they went to, so much as to take good news.

I share these things because I believe it’s upon these trajectories that all manner of churches and communities of faith can meet and mutually support one another, even though, on the surface these might look as if they come from different worlds.  Also, there might just be more hope than we often imagine in traditional churches and denominations for rediscovering the movement of God’s purpose through history.  Thirdly, I have found it so important to immerse myself in the company of others whose ideas enlarge my experience and understanding of God and his ways among humans.

If you are some kind of traditional church leader, where do the twin trajectories connect or bear up what your church is about?

If you are in no way connected with a traditional expression of church, then how we can share these things together in ways that provide the necessary human momentum to the trajectories?

This is a very vulnerable thing; there is so much more that needs to happen.

One day, though, the train breaks down and the commuters have to disembark by a yellow house with a stain on the wall. They had seen it before as it rushed past their windows, but now they see it for the first time as a three-dimensional object in its own right, rather then simply part of a blurred landscape. The owner of the house appears from within, offering to show one of the commuters around the place he built and telling many stories. He goes on to offer a ride to the commuter’s destination. Percy calls this a “crossing point” from one world into another.

I tell this story because for all the years I’ve known it, I have imagined myself to be the builder of the yellow house, inviting others to come and share in its stories. But one morning last week I woke up with the thought that I may actually share more in common with the commuter; intrigued by the yellow house and its life-story.

I think this breakthrough thought occurred to me because I was meeting with my community of knowing, the cohort of The International Mentoring Network, and just the day before we had been discussing the incarnational and attractional properties of churches. Things happen when we make this journey with God in his world with others.

In Navigating the Maelstrom I am exploring what happens to me as I make the journey from the center of a denomination to the edges of culture, where, like the commuter leaving his train, I am moving to investigate the lives of other denominations from a new perspective.

Since returning from the cohort, as if to underline this breakthrough thought, I happen to have read the following from Hal Miller, quoted in Frank Viola’s book, Reimagining Church:
‘Institutional churches are a lot like trains … it just follows its tracks. … Organic churches … are not trains, but groups of people out for a walk … they can be genuinely attentive to their world, to their Lord and to each other.’

Whilst it’s important to attract people it’s even more important to be attracted to people.

I know that while I remain in my traditional denomination I cannot remain alone: I need to belong to a community of knowing, a group of people who are also making this kind of journey. For me this means the IMN. One of the things we explored this last week, together with Alex McManus, was how, on the width of human consciousness, we are all born into a context, culture, and community, and that we can widen these to include other contexts, cultures, and communities. Again, I realize how much I need a community or company (literally a group of people who share bread) of knowing in order to do this.

The people who make up this company are my companions: those who share bread together – or we might say, those who feed one-another. We each know how we need to keep moving on with each other, to take our thinking and our activity further as we feed on knowledge, as Brian McLaren has his character, Neo, share in his book, The Last Word:
“I’ve found that I can only know so much until I find a community that shares my knowing. If I begin growing very far beyond what my community allows me to know, I need to persuade my community to think with me or else find or form a new community.”

Who are your companions of knowing?

Another concept shared by McLaren in this book is deep ecclesiology; don’t ask me why, but this made me think of the three-dimensional chess-set in the original Star Trek series: just google it and you’ll find that you can even get hold of one and the rules of how to play. But the thing that this emphasizes for me is that we are all connected to one another (beyond the simple locale and genre) and are more able than ever to express this amazing reality. So if you’re looking for a community of knowing, we can certainly be one of them.

At the end of the week my companions each offered a “whisper” thought so that I might better navigate the maelstrom.

Not bad at all.

Together, the journey continues.