God’s Timing in a Church Plant

As a project manager this is a difficult post to right.  I plan.  I LOVE plans.  Plans involve timing.  I intricately understand how the timing of one thing effects the next.  How the timing of when I topple this domino will impact when another falls.  As I plan out the details of a church planters vision, each element has a time associated with it. While I wallow in the minutia, church...
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Friday Church Planting Resource: YouCanSend.me

Fundraising is tough for most people, so I love it when I find tools that make it easier.  ChurchCrunch featured this resource and I think it will work great for church planters.  In about five minutes you can set up a site complete with your picture and your story.  The page will include a Donate Now button that ties directly to PayPal.  It also has easy ways for people to share the site...
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Value the Planning Time You Get in Pre-Launch. You Won’t Get It Back.

One thing I always tell church planters is that the pre-launch time while busy, is not nearly as busy as it will be after you start the church.  In doing an evaluation time with a planter who started this past Fall, I asked, “What do you know now that you wished you knew during pre-launch.”  He answered that he wished he had taken better advantage of the time he had during...
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Every Missional Church Planter Needs an Implementer

Missional church planters are great visionaries and have a unique capacity to imagine the church as something other than what it currently is.  Alan Hirsch talks about the importance of imagination in the missional church.  It is crucial that as church planters we don’t get trapped by the old modes of being the church.  To connect with the 60% of people who won’t be reached by...
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Do You Know Your Church’s Dot?

A few weeks ago, I spent a day with Jerry Harris from The Crossing.  One of my biggest takeaways was a concept that Jerry calls the Dot.  He uses it as a tool to assess how they are doing as a church.  Here’s how the Dot works.  Take the average age of all adults 18+ in the church.  That’s your dot.  This is the target demographic that you are reaching best.  Whether...
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Church Planting Gets Even Harder After Launch

In my work with Stadia, I primarily help church planters through the planning phases prior to the start of the church.  I take planters through a skeletal lists of 350 tasks.  As the plan develops the list grows.  Church planters have to work on things like fundraising and researching the community that they have likely never done before.  Many have to build a team from scratch in a community...
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