church plant model Archives - Passion for Planting

Fresh Expressions – Cultivate: Coffee and Tea

Sean Cronin — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:00:14 +0000

by Healthy Growing Churches: In July, we introduced a new series called Fresh Expressions of the Church. Since that time, we have talked with some incredible, visionary leaders who are thinking outside the box with regards to “church.” Today, I’m excited to introduce you to Matt Chesney from Eagle Ridge Church of God in Midland, Michigan. But this story is not about Eagle Ridge per se, but about a mission and vision given to Matt and his Senior Pastor, Bill Greiner, that is impacting people daily.

The Calling

The moment Matt became a Christian, he began to hear these little whispers saying, “You need to be a pastor.” Over and over again, the Voice would call, and Matt would push it away, believing he already had his dream job as a teacher, school builder, and principal. What more would he want?

While at church one Sunday morning, Matt heard this really loud voice that said, “You need to quit your job and become a teacher for Me.” Matt doesn’t remember the message given by the pastor that morning, but he knew he could no longer ignore this calling. While loading up their four children after church that morning, Matt looked at his wife and told her they needed to talk about this clear message he’d received from God. Melissa responded with, “Yeah, me too!” Matt asked his wife to share first, hoping what she heard might be different, but as it turns out, God had spoken the exact same words to her.

Eagle Ridge Church of God

This time Matt listened to and obeyed what God was saying. He was able to continue to work as a teacher while pursuing a ministry degree, knowing that God was calling him to become a youth pastor. He was later hired by Eagle Ridge Church of God.

At the time, Eagle Ridge Pastor Bill Greiner and his wife, Robin, were living through every parent’s worse nightmare. Their son, a sophomore in college who was a bright light in the community with a promising future, was tragically killed by a drunk driver. This unspeakable tragedy caused Bill to question the direction of his life and the church.

While in such a huge painful season of grieving, the Holy Spirit impressed upon Bill’s heart that it was time to start trusting in Him instead of consistently worrying about the future. It was time for Bill, his staff and leadership, and for Eagle Ridge Church to walk by faith, and they did just that when they hired Matt as the Students Pastor. Matt learned later on that the church didn’t actually have the budget to pay him, but they decided to move forward and start being the church God had called them to be anyway.

Eagle Ridge Church, whose focus pointed more inward, was headed for a significant turnaround, which included more devotion to the community in which they were called to serve. In hiring Matt, the church was looking to breathe new life into the student ministry, outreach, and discipleship, and they saw that Matt could be a huge catalyst for this change.

The Path to Something Different

With this transformation happening at Eagle Ridge, a strong vision developed to build something outside of Eagle Ridge that wouldn’t even necessarily point back to the church. They wanted something that would be a service to the community and a platform for building disciples.

They wanted something that would be a service to the community and a platform for building disciples.

Matt poured himself into building the student ministry that first year, as well as learning more about the Midland community. He began thinking and dreaming of ideas that fit the vision of outward focus and discipleship. Matt and Bill did lots of research, read lots of books, and went to several conferences. They listened to ideas presented by others, many of which were GREAT ideas. A coffee shop, however, was not one of them. In fact, neither Matt nor Bill drink or even like coffee.

Dead Ends and Closed Doors

Armed with so many great ideas, Matt battled through the discouragement of hitting dead ends and closed doors. Then, the idea came to, perhaps, plant another church. Maybe this one would be completely different from Eagle Ridge and within another part of town to reach a more significant landscape of the community. Matt got a map of Midland, which, to this day, remains behind his desk. On the map, he plotted out every Christian church in Midland to see if there was a particular area not being served by a local church. Matt found that Midland has a TON of churches. Did Midland really need one more church?

Looking more closely at the map, Matt noticed an area toward the top that was just empty space. Upon further research, that space was the Midland Mall, so it was no wonder that there was no church there. The idea came to open up a church in the mall. Surely this is what God was calling them to do! However, when Matt called the owners of the mall, prepped and ready to make his case, he was only able to get out the first sentence before the mall said, “No.” After all, how would a church encourage people to spend their money at the mall? The church would only be open on Sundays before the mall even opened. The mall needed something different, and perhaps, the community needed something different as well.

Cultivate

Armed with the understanding that the mall was looking for something that would increase foot traffic throughout the mall, the idea came to open up a coffee shop. The shop would be open throughout the week to everyone. Matt began to see that by selling coffee, they would be able to afford rent on a space in the mall, and they could even pay their employees. With his background in starting schools, Matt understood budgets, profit margins, and all that has to do with running a business.

Then, in a meeting between Bill and Matt, Bill drops the bomb. Let’s give the coffee away for free! The church had connections with people in parts of Guatemala, Panama, and Uganda, so as a side effect of opening a coffee shop, Bill and Matt knew they would want only to serve coffee that was ethically sourced. Then, the coffee communities would also be empowered and encouraged as they sold more of the fruits of their labor.

It ended up taking longer to open Cultivate than Matt originally wanted. Matt had a timeline of opening before the holidays of 2018, but Bill wanted things to move a little slower. Ultimately, Bill wanted Eagle Ridge to become more passionate about discipleship and community; however, Bill gave Matt full authority on when the shop would open. By the time legal stuff was done and the coffee shop was ready to launch, many months had passed, way more than what Matt anticipated. Cultivate opened in June 2019.

Miracles Along the Way

With an opening budget of about $60,000 and only $30,000 in the bank, Matt recalls sitting in his car prior to signing the lease on the space in the mall. How was it going to work? He stopped to pray before going in and decided to go in with an attitude of faith. At the start of his meeting, the manager asks him one more time if he wants to look at the space again. As the two were walking through the mall, the manager began pointing out other vacant retail locations and asking him to notice different furniture pieces in them. With $25,000 of $60,000 of the budget allocated for furniture, Matt saw that number go lower and lower as the manager began to offer up all of this furniture to him for free.

Matt says he doesn’t know how it all worked out, but with the $30,000 they had to start with, $12,000 was remaining after Cultivate was all set up and ready to open! There were all types of small blessings happening with each step, which altogether took the initial projected $60,000 start-up budget down to only $18,000.

Since the Opening

Cultivate: Coffee and Tea wanted to be known for its friendliness and service to the community. Matt and Bill went into it with the attitude of building genuine relationships with people, not just beating people over the heads with the Bible. And as is common when one begins to engage authentically with another person, it’s not so easy to get around the subject of faith when that is the center of who you are. Within the first months of starting up, Matt and other volunteers have had the opportunity to share the faith numerous times. Almost every time, it’s others who have brought up the subject of faith in Jesus.

Cultivate has 5-6 various volunteers who have never even attended a service at Eagle Ridge. These volunteers have either become Christians or renewed their commitment to Him during the first few months of the shop’s opening, and now they are serving and discipling others. The coffee shop has become a place where people’s stories get heard, where faith is shared, and disciples are made. And that is the whole purpose of it all!

One of the most significant takeaways from this story is that you have a church intentionally not looking to put their name on another ministry or location but to multiply by making disciples. They are not trying to build their own kingdom, but God’s. You will not find the coffee shop on Eagle Ridge’s website, nor will you see Eagle Ridge on Cultivate’s Facebook page. What you will find is evangelism through genuine relationship building, disciples making disciples, and ultimately, the Great Commission. That is something to support and celebrate!

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Source: Fresh Expressions – Cultivate: Coffee and Tea

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Church Multiplication, Church Planting & Multisite with Daniel Im

Sean Cronin — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 09:00:58 +0000

by unSeminary: Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This week we are joined by Daniel Im, an author and teaching pastor at the Fellowship Church in Nashville.

Daniel is from Canada, and he has traveled across the world to help plant churches. He has been in Nashville for the last four years and also works with LifeWay to help provide resources for church planters and multisite churches.

Daniel is with us today to talk about church planting, multisite creation, and what strategies work in different contexts.

Know your current context and what “normal” is. // Depending on where and whether or not you went to seminary or bible college, and which church circles or conferences you go to, you are going to be influenced (often on an unconscious level) either toward multisite or toward church planting. Both of these strategies are great. Some can work better in certain contexts than others. Consider who the people are that you look up to ministry-wise and what they advocate. A lot of times this dictates what that “normal” is for you. Church Plant vs Multisite. // We can think of church planters as entrepreneurial leaders who want to test a new approach or a new model that’s different than their sending church. By contrast, on the multisite side, leaders want to take the same model or a very similar model and transplant that into a new community. Multisite models can have a reputation of being primarily video-driven. But many multisite churches do live teaching or have some sort of hybrid model as well. If you are interested church planting, consider first learning in a campus pastor role at a multisite church. It is a good opportunity which allows you to gain experience, and you may discover that working in multisite is where you are called rather than planting a new church.Be competent in communication. // Campus pastors need to be extremely competent in communication. Part of this is public communication and can be via live preaching or as the primary communicator/host of the campus. When a church considers multisite vs church planting or a combination of the two, if you don’t have someone who can think like a supply chain manager and is passionate enough about communicating that they never get bored of saying the same thing over and over in different ways, then church planting might be a better option for you. Over-communication is necessary in a multisite context and as a result is not the best option for every church.Campus vs Original Site. // You can run in the same circles and speak the same words as someone else, but when it comes down to values and culture there can be a lot of disagreement. When values and culture differ from site to site within a multisite church, it will interfere with growth. Examine the communications, expectations and how the systems are working for the smaller campus vs the original site. Ask the lead pastor what was done to grow the church when it was the size of the smaller campuses. This will help the campus pastors have ideas on how to grow their campuses without trying to use strategies that only work for a much larger location.Resource for campus pastors. // LifeWay has a resource to help develop campus pastors. You can learn more and access it at newchurches.com/campuspastor.

You can learn more about Daniel and his work at danielim.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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Source: Church Multiplication, Church Planting & Multisite with Daniel Im

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Two Church Planting Startup Models

Patrick Bradley — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 09:00:20 +0000

By Ed Stetzer: It is important to remember that ‘missiology’ is not a thing. It is things.

Some people say, “We just have to think missiologically.” But, they need to know that a missiology of a tribal people group in Papau New Guinea is very different than a missiology of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

As such, when we think missiologically, there is not one right way to plant a church, so it is worth looking at how churches are planted.

Let’s face it: sometimes, there is arrogance among church planters. Not you, but some of the others!

Often, this is just part of the entrepreneurial spirit that often accompanies people who start new things. Many times, new projects are started in order to ‘do right’ what previous starters ‘did wrong’.

In fact, you will find that frustration coupled with attempts to rebuild a broken structure often erupt into a drive to build something completely new. Building something new is good. But it isn’t good to plant a church for the wrong reasons, or to plant a church to show the world how it should be done right.

Today, church plants are everywhere, and cover a multitude of expressions and tracks. Let me share just two and talk a bit about the history that created the second.

Track 1: From a Home Bible Study Onward

Before the 1980s, people primarily planted churches along one track. You would start a home Bible study with a few people. It would grow for months, and then when you hit maybe 16-24 people, or a core of four or five families, you would move into the chapel stage.

This would include more traditional church elements. Then, whenever you had enough families to be self-supporting, and put people in place for leadership or church officers (depending on your denominational affiliation), you moved into the mission stage. You develop various ministries and outreach opportunities, and eventually you become an established church.

This is the way most churches where planted and what most groups taught.

Track 2: The Launch Model

Then, a conversation began in the late 1980s and early 1990s (which was greatly impacted by conversations at Fuller Theological Seminary) that would result in a major shift in church planting practices. Bob Logan developed a toolkit for church planters that was widely used (and is still on Amazon!). Kevin Mannoia wrote an interesting and helpful book about the history and development of this new phase of planting titled Church Planting – The Next Generation.

What grew out of the Fuller conversation was new and included varied ways to do something that already had a multitude of expressions for thousands of years around the world. Because we know that there is really nothing new under the sun, what happened was a revisiting of old ideas. Things that work in some areas, don’t work as well in others. Things that worked at certain times, don’t necessarily work well every time.

Missiology that marks your area and time is not necessarily the same missiology that should be engaged across the state or in 20 years.

One of the primary tracks that emerged from those conversations in the late 1980s to early 1990s was the launch model. The expression over the last 20 years looks something like this:

It begins with a team that has been built by a planter who went through an assessment and evaluation process. That planter often goes through some sort of church planter boot camp. The planter has been immersed in resources and understands the process. The person usually has some sort of financial support package that will diminish over time as the work becomes self-supporting.

The team meets regularly to prepare for the launch spiritually, emotionally, and strategically. Leading up to the launch, the team gets things in place. They secure a free or rented space and engage in a mass introduction to the people in their community or region through mailings, advertisements, social media, and other forms of technology.

This leads to a time where there may be a soft launch, practice services, and ultimately a launch service, which may have anywhere from several dozen to several hundred attendees. Because it is larger, it connects people to a larger group. To the guests, it looks like a church that is well established because the team and program work fairly smoothly and there are many people.

Is There a Preferred Way?

Each track takes dedication. Many people far from Jesus have been reached by both. Churches have both succeeded and failed in both models. There are other models as well. The key to all of this is listening to the voice of God, working for proper contextualizing in each context, and working within a framework you believe in.

However, we are now seeing a reengagmenet of the non-launch model. Sometimes it’s called different things, like missional incarnational. But, it is similar to what planters did 50 years ago—planting by relationship rather than launch.

Both matter. Both are being used today. But, the choice of which appoach should be shaped by the context.

In other words, the ‘how’ of church planting is, in many ways, determined by the who, when, and where of culture.

Source: Two Church Planting Startup Models

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