A Modern Day Mountaintop

Jesus was a popular guy.  It tends to happen when you can perform miracles and people start calling you the Messiah.  The demands on his time were great. Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.  – Lk 5:15 The demands on a church planter, while not quite to this level, can feel the same.  Overwhelming....
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Friday Church Planting Resource: The Prayer Engine

I remember the good ole days when we had the church prayer chain.  A request was submitted and then each person called on the phone the next person on the chain to get the prayer team praying.  E-mail pretty well killed that method.  With the prayer engine, the email prayer group has gone the way of the dodo.  One of the key problems with traditional prayer team methods is that unless the...
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Church Planting is Hard: Spiritual Attack

Depending on your denominational flavor you may or may not have a good understanding of spiritual attack.  In our culture it’s not exactly something you talk about freely if you want to be thought of as sane.  Spiritual attack conjures up images of horror movies and psych wards.  A quick Google search revealed that while 70% of Americans believe Satan exists only 60% of Christians do. ...
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Pastoring the Prayer Team

One of the early milestones that any church planter must accomplish is developing a prayer support team.  I’ve seen hundreds of prayer updates over the years from church planters.  The majority of them all sound about the same.  Most include prayer for more funding, the right facility, an upcoming event and prayers for people to come.  Notice a theme?  The prayers are primarily...
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