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Church Planting links

On and off for the past 3 years, I’ve been thinking of pastoring / planting a church in Ann Arbor. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that we moved back to Ann Arbor. I feel that God has been laying this very heavily on my heart for the past year, working on me and molding me. What makes the decision to plant a church difficult is the fact that I have very few godly men close to me to provide direction, advice, and prayer about whether God has made me with the gifting and skills to plant vs. the gifting and skills to pastor. Those are definitely two different types of people and I want to seek God for His will for my life. Here are some helpful articles related to church planting.

From Scott Thomas, Director of Acts 29 Network

20 Characteristics of a Church Planter

  1. Am I a Christian? (John 3:16)
  2. Am I passionately in love with Jesus, and is He the Lord of every area of my life? (Personal spiritual dynamics is the second most important area.)
  3. Do I believe His word, and does it affect my life deeply?
  4. Am I Spirit-filled, Spirit-directed, Spirit-led, and Spirit-controlled? (Acts 1:8)
  5. Am I qualified as an Elder? (1 Timothy, Titus)
  6. Do I love the local church as the expression of a gospel community on mission? (Matthew 28:18-20)
  7. Am I a missionary to the city? Am I sent for the advancement of the gospel in the city? (John 20:21)
  8. Do I have a clear vision for this new work? (Nehemiah 1:3-4; 2:11-18)
  9. Am I willing to pour myself out in obedience to the vision? (Phil. 2, Romans 6)
  10. Am I healthy—physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually, relationally, maritally?
  11. Am I the kind of leader many people will follow? Have I served as a church leader successfully? (1 Tim. 5:22; 3:6)
  12. Can I preach effectively?
  13. Can I guard the doctrinal door with Biblical clarity and tenacious confidence?
  14. Can I architect a new work with entrepreneurial skill?
  15. Am I called to plant a church at this time and in this place? (Acts 17:26; 1 Peter 5:2)
  16. Have my church leaders commended me for this calling? (Acts 11:22-26; 13:1-4; 16:1-2)
  17. Am I a hard worker? Am I persevering? (2 Thes. 3:10; 1 Tim. 5:17-18; 2 Tim. 2:3-6)
  18. Am I adaptable to new people, places, and concepts?
  19. Can I raise the funds necessary for my family’s needs? (1 Tim. 5:8)
  20. Am I humble enough to learn from others—particularly those who have gone ahead of me in different areas?

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From Jonathan Dodson, posted at TheResurgence.com. He also blogs at Church Planting Novice

First Steps

Gary Rohrmayer has planted tons of churches and written a helpful course called First Steps: Missional Church Planting. First Steps is strong on the nuts and bolts and guides the planter through six stages of the first year of missional church planting.

These stages include:

  • Relating to God and Others
  • Networking and Gathering
  • Building a Launch Team
  • Designing Worship Services and Ministry Strategies
  • Launching Public Services
  • Establishing the New Community and its Ministries

Another one of its strengths is that it is principle-driven rather than model-driven. It accommodates a variety of models and encourages contextualization. Though the course is launch-focused, some of the templates for budgets, position descriptions, financial accountability, etc are helpful jumping-off points. You can also purchase a membership at CoachNet that allows electronic access to the entire workbook and PDFs and take the course.

Redeemer Planting Manual

Tim Keller’s Redeemer Church Planting Manual is incredibly strong on missiology and philosophy of ministry. If you really want to know how to become a lead missionary that cultivates a church of missionaries, follow Tim’s approach. At times, it is overwhelming (even to me, and I have a background in Anthropology!), but there are a lot of riches to be found in this manual.

Exploring the Land

Exploring the Land focuses on understanding your target people and culture. This book was written for reaching unreached peoples, which is why it is so helpful for domestic church planting. It forces us to ask questions that we think we already have answers for, forcing you to do the hard, loving work of contextualization.

The Church Planter’s Toolkit

Bob Logan’s Church Planter’s Toolkit is a standby that offers a lot of practical helps and is used by the Evangelical Free Church. Logan has actually transformed some of his personal convictions about methodology and is now planting more organically. He co-wrote an expensive book on this with Neil Cole called Beyond Church Planting.

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From Timmy Brister, blogging at Grace Planting Center

The church planting section of the Leadership Network has some helpful articles and resources to browse through. Be sure to check out their resources such as downloads, books, and podcasts. I should mention that I do not agree with some of the methodologies and approaches to church planting offered on LN; nevertheless, this is a good place to see where church planting has been, where it is going, and things we can learn (both how and how not to plant churches). Their four main article are worth downloading (PDF):

Church Planting Overview
Funding New Churches
Improving the Health and Survivability of New Churches
Who Starts New Churches?

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From the Acts 29 Network website , a summary of Mark Driscoll’s recent talk on the Mission and Vision of Acts 29 Network . You can listen to the talk here

Mission and Vision:

  1. Our first mandate is the Great Commission
    Our vision is to have 1000 churches with an average of 250 people each. That would be a quarter of a million people worshipping Jesus in A29 affiliated churches. This could be accomplished in under 7 years.
  2. Church: what is it?
    (from Vintage Church) “The local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord. In obedience to scripture, they organize under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the biblical sacraments of baptism & communion, are unified by the Spirit, are disciplined for holiness, scattered to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission as missionaries to the world for God’s glory and their joy.”

8 Marks of a Church:

  1. Regenerated church membership. Church planting is popular right now, but ironically regeneration is not. The point of every church plant is that people meet Jesus.
  2. Qualified leadership. Elders and deacons must meet the biblical criteria for leaders as outlined in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
  3. Gather for preaching and worship. Bible teaching is central and the Acts 29 churches generally have strong preaching.
  4. Communion/Baptism rightly administered. We regard baptism/communion adherence as close-handed. How a local church performs them is open-handed (we have Presbyterians and Baptists in the Acts 29 Network).
  5. Unified by the Holy Spirit. People work together for the cause of the gospel.
  6. Disciplined for holiness. Acts 29 churches practice discipline with their members. This is unusual in today’s churches – where people get to say and do all kinds of unbiblical things with no one to discipline them. The church should look differently from the world in behavior. Satan sends heretics/false teachers to break up church plants and without church discipline they’ll tear the church apart.
  7. Obey the great commandment to love. Biblical, Trinitarian community – the previous 6 marks enable this loving community to take place.
  8. Obey the Great Commission to make disciples. Acts 29 wants to plant churches that introduce unbelievers to Jesus.

Acts 29 as a Network

  1. We are churches that plant churches.
  2. We are not a denomination. We work together interdenominationally:
    For relationships (we like each other)
    For mission (we want people to meet Jesus)
    For theological cause (we have certain beliefs we hold dear)
    We believe we are stronger together than by ourselves so we work together.
  3. We invest in other churches financially to help new plants get started. Each of our local churches determine how much and to whom the finances are invested.
  4. We are not trying to build a centralized organization – we want church planting to be the responsibility of the local church.

Three distinctive characteristics of Acts 29:

  1. The Men
    Church planters have the gifts of an apostle (small a) – not just pastoral capacity. Additionally, he is a growing Christian, good husband and good father. Men who cannot love their wives first should not plant churches.
  2. The Mission
    Jesus was a missionary to the world. We both contend for the faith (Jude 3) and contextualize by becoming all things for all people (1 Cor. 9). We do this “for the sake of the gospel.”
  3. The Message
    Acts 29 is a Christian, Evangelical (original form), Missional and Reformed church planting network. These are in order of importance. Our theology is a home, not a prison. We read and listen outside of our theological leanings to humbly learn. We employ discernment when we do this. We can employ partnerships without compromising beliefs.

Characteristics of Movements:

  1. Young people are often at the center of the movement
  2. High conversion rate comes with a movement
  3. Church planting is at the forefront of a true movement of God. God loves the church; Jesus died for the church.
  4. Movements tend to be unaware of their external influence because they are busy doing what God’s given them to do.
  5. Supporting organizations come up – records made, books published, counseling ministries, etc.
  6. Movements often come with a transition in technology (Gutenberg press; Reformation). Today = internet.
  7. Visible movement leaders rise up. God puts his hand on certain people to lead.

Cycle of a movement

  1. Movement of God
  2. Institution
  3. Museum (what God used to do)

Final encouragements

  1. Make Jesus look good because he is. Your job is not to make yourself look good.
  2. Walk in the light. Come under the influence of a small group of older, wiser guys who can ask the hard questions.
  3. Pursue humility. Pride is the primary motivator for a guy to plant a church (I can do it better)
  4. Repent well. If you don’t model repentance, your church won’t repent.
  5. Turn your critics into coaches. Most criticism has some modicum of truth. Ignore garbage; receive truth.
  6. Choose to believe that God is both sovereign and good.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 6:28 am and is filed under Acts 29, Church Planting, Faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Church Planting links”

  1. Amy Schenkel Says:
    February 14th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    Dear Chris,
    I work for the Christian Reformed Church, recruiting and assessing new church planters. I found your blog because I was researching what is happening for church planting in the Ann Arbor area. I see that you are interested in planting, and that you are also reading something about John Calvin. Can you tell me a little more about yourself? Do you know anything about the Christian Reformed Church, or have any connections with it?
    Blessings,
    Amy Schenkel