Church Planting

I picked up a copy of Dave and Jon Ferguson's book "Exponential" yesterday.  After reading the first fifty pages, my first question was: "Why didn't I buy this book five years ago?"  Then I realized it hadn't been written five years ago ... so I felt a bit less guilty. In 2001, when Tonya and I were leaving the Churches of Christ, I interviewed for the Senior Associate Pastor position with Dave and Jon's dad, Earl Ferguson.  The job went to the other candidate but I was honored to be considered.  A large part of the attraction for me was the opportunity to apprentice for two years with Earl.  Now, ten years later, I'm able to be a virtual apprentice to his sons through their writing. How cool is that!

Here are my notes from a church planting webinar I attended today: Lessons from the Trenches.  The host/leader was Andy Wood, senior pastor at South Bay Church in Silicon Valley.  It was fantastic! ******** Andy Woods - South Bay ChurchFebruary 2, 2012 Lessons from the Trenches 1.  The importance of giving the unreached a voice at the table. Typically there is no one in a decision making position that represents the lost.  How will this decision help us reach the unchurched person in our community? How hot is my passion for the lost? How are we doing making decisions with the lost in mind? 2.  There are two types of health indicators: leading and lagging. What do you measures? Lagging = Bodies.  Seats.  First-time guests.  Budget.  Baptisms. Leading = Are more people praying?  (What impacts the lagging indicators?). What stats are you giving attention to? What leading factors are contributing…

In some churches, breaking into leadership requires the blessing of Moses or an act of God -- or both. Older churches may be unknowingly restricting their leadership pipeline.  If you require new leaders to work within existing confines, you are restricting the type of leader who will step forward to lead.  Existing churches often need to create new outlets in order to develop new leaders.  However, the cost and challenge of doing so may prove to be too difficult. New churches, however, need new leaders.  These potential leaders are often drawn to the risk involved.  One reason why new churches create new ideas and new methods is that they attract entrepreneurial people. If we want to increase the number of kingdom leaders, we need to increase the number of kingdom opportunities.

One of the best ways to learn is to alternate between lecture and lab.  Unfortunately, when it comes to reaching people for Jesus, many churches are too heavy on lecture and light on lab. Older, existing churches are tempted to create committees to study the subject of evangelism.  New churches must evangelize or starve. Enduring companies understand the importance of research and development.  R&D is what brings new products to market and serves as the catalyst for technological breakthroughs.  Often R&D efforts will result in companies finding outliers -- products they weren't looking for but that surfaced as the result of experimentation. New churches serves as the research and development arm of the larger church community.  New churches are young, flexible, and able to change (and change again) quickly.  Since they deal primarily with unchurched people, they have a good sense of what questions they are asking. Here's how existing…