Category: Blog

Your Congregation as a Church Planting Network
by Ralph Moore: The Holy Spirit blesses church planting movements. While the twelve held council in Jerusalem, a bunch of un-named people planted churches in Cyprus, Cyrene and eventually in Antioch. From Antioch, the Spirit kicked off a church multiplication movement that would sketch the history of Europe and the Mediterranean. […]

When to Push Back Church Launch
by Patrick Bradley: Church planting never goes quite like you think it’s going to. Some things will go better than you’ve imagined. Other things will be harder. A few planters will have to decide whether to push back church launch. What I mean by pushing back launch is punting until […]

The Goal of Discipleship
by Craig Etheredge: Before I went to Israel, I had no idea what it would look like. I went with a group of people from our church studying the life of Christ. Our hope was that by walking in the footsteps of Jesus—literally—we would better understand being a disciple of Jesus. […]

The Value of Church Planter Assessment and Boot Camps
By Ed Stetzer: Planting a church is hard enough. It is more difficult when the planter doesn’t have solid support and resources. And we’re not talking about money here. Church planter development is a crucial element to giving new churches a real chance to succeed. I’m a big believer in facts […]

Why There Should Never Be Another Bored Christian
By Brandon A. Cox: Some of the best advice I received when we first started planting Grace Hills came from Todd West, who planted Oasis Church in North Little Rock. Todd said, “Don’t give people positions. Give them a project. Then, give them another project. If they’re faithful with enough projects, […]

How Do Great Churches Develop Their Leaders?
by Todd Rhoades: How do great churches develop their leaders? At Leadership Network, we hear this question all the time. Every growing church needs to constantly be identifying and training up leaders. But how? We asked 100 of the country’s largest churches this very question: How do you identify and train leaders? Last year’s […]

3 Reasons We Shouldn’t Copy Someone Else’s Vision
By Shawn Lovejoy: Do you know what a knockoff is? It’s an unauthorized copy or cheap imitation of the original. There’s only one Nike. There’s only one Gucci. There’s only one Rolex. There’s only one Montblanc. Their quality cannot be easily matched or imitated. That’s why these brand-name products are so […]

4 Lies that Cause Pastors to Neglect their Families
by Jaime Owens: The walls of our church’s nursery needed painting. So there I was, on my regular day off with a brush in my hand. A country song I’d never heard before—“The Dollar,” by Jamey Johnson—filled the room as I splashed the first coat of something called Polar Bear […]