Thankful to be a Part of Planting Churches
Director, Passion for Planting
We are incredibly blessed to play a small part in your calling to plant healthy, reproducing churches in all parts of the world! “I thank my God every time I remember you.” Philippians 1:3
Once a quarter at Passion for Planting, we hold a Church Planter Coaching Group for planters in the Washington DC region. We usually have about 25-30 in attendance and it’s always an encouraging time. At our last gathering on October 31st, I asked each planter to write down two things that, “Keep you up at night.” With so many details to attend to, demands for your time and attention, what do you find impossible to “turn off” at the end of a given day?
So, what does this have to do with our newsletter you ask? Well, our desire at Passion for Planting is to provide content in our newsletter that is timely and relevant for you. Over the coming months, we’ll be addressing some of these topics. If you have one of those “keep you up at night” topics, please click here and let us know.
Our mission and goal is to provide systems, tools, processes to help you plant healthy churches all over the world. Contact us here if we can help you on your journey!
–Dale Spaulding, Director
November 2016 – Contents
- Keeping You Up At Night?
- Generosity Feeds
- Coaches Corner: Is Balance Possible?
- Preaching in the New Church
Keeping You Up At Night?
Dear Church Planter, what keeps you up at night?
Good News: You’re not the only one that has trouble sleeping! The pre-launch phase of starting a new church can be stressful, exciting, stretching, demanding, etc. So much to do in what seems like so little time. If you were starting to plant a church 10 years ago, you might have thought you were the only one struggling with the following “keeps me up at night” issues. Fortunately, with the help of Exponential and many church planting organizations, you can reach out and discover others who have the same battles AND learn how they survived, even flourished, in the wake of the storm.
Check out these five “keep you up at night” topics:
- Raising financial support
- The heartache of close friends not coming with you to join the launch team and not taking it personally
- Meeting Space (launch location)
- Finding church staff that are passionate church planting (and the city) who can also raise a portion of their salary
- Am I using my time well? I have way too many meetings and I am not sure they are fruitful
We’ll be reaching out to our extended church planting family to give you some advice to minimize these concerns–minimize, not eliminate! These are all very real issues that challenge even the experienced planter. We hope to provide some useful guidance through posts on our site. Stay tuned!
Generosity Feeds
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Church planters are constantly looking for ways to serve their community. Like many challenges you face, it’s often quite effective to reach out to those who have already found where passion meets needs. That’s where Generosity Feeds was born. Check out their website and get involved. Generosity Feeds Website
There are many who have taken advantage of the system built by Generosity Feeds to reach out to their communities. It’s not unusual to hear about 10,000 meals provided in urban areas…you read that right ten thousand meals. It’s a great ministry! We asked Josh Burnett, for a few words about the benefits of partnering with this team.
We have used Generosity Feeds in the past and it has been an incredible tool not only to serve our community, but also for our church to invite their friends, neighbors, and family members to come to an event that they will be inspired by.
These events might also open doors to a conversation about Jesus in a way that people are not used to. Generosity Feeds does an excellent job of walking alongside your church team to help execute the event. The day of is the least of your worries. They spur you on to use this event as an opportunity to show people who Jesus really is.
Josh Burnett
Lead Pastor
Revolution Annapolis
@joshburnett
Coaches Corner: Is Balance Possible?
Are you successful by modern standards but lead an unfulfilled life?
In search of significance but trapped in the past?
FREE workbook help you see you are not alone in your trials–you can overcome any of life’s struggles
Get It Now.
I can’t begin to guess how many people have asked me to help them understand what they should be doing for God. These clients have difficulty in understanding God’s will and where their will ends and God’s will begins. Their questions go something like this:
- How do I know the best decision for my life?
- How do I choose between competing choices?
- Where am I to serve in the church?
- Can I relax and enjoy some form of entertainment or should I always be exercising spiritual disciplines?
- How do I determine if this thing is in God’s will for my life?
Certified Professional Coach
That’s why I created a workbook to help you navigate these questions. My hope is the workbook allows you to see that you are not alone and you can overcome any of life’s struggles. The interesting thing is stress can create fear, or push us to action; but how do we determine the action to take?
In the workbook I also introduce a concept I call Proximity Coaching. Using this methodology we look for what does and doesn’t fit. In other words, clarity is found by observing what appears to be chaos and discover the patterns that keep us stuck.
Preaching in the New Church
What preaching pathway works best for the early years of a church plant?
Tell your story then The Story and Believe for a solid foundation.
The goals of preaching in the early years of a church plant are to establish your church and establish your people. After a year of establishing your church, a good strategy for sermon preparation is to make use of customized preaching pathways to establish your people in their beliefs. Here is some sage advice from 3-time church planter, Jeff Gauss, who used The Story as a Bible overview and Believe to teach theology.
Use the first 3 years to establish your church and establish your people. Adopt flexible preaching pathways that free the pastor to lead.
This challenge is why every church planter should have an intentional preaching pathway to establish people in their beliefs. Read the full article here!
