By TheChurch.Digital:

Of course COVID caused a radical shift for churches. I think it’s important to notice that, even for the guys doing Online Ministry for years COVID brought a change. For this conversation, we’re bringing in Saddleback’s Online Campus Pastor, Jay Kranda. Jay’s been doing online ministry for a decade now, and over the years he’s seen lots of changes (including while under the pressure cooker of COVID.)

How has ministry changed and how can we as digital pastors, church staff and volunteers manage the tension? Let’s find out.

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ON THE SHOW

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Guest: Jay Kranda
Saddleback
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Host: Jeff Reed
THECHURCH.DIGITAL
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Co-Host: Rey DeArmas
Christ Fellowship Miami Online
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RESOURCES

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Feedback on the podcast is vital as well. Leave comments on the podcast, or comment on this post! I’d love to know your thoughts and how we can serve your church better.

Love you all! Praying for your Churches and your Ministry Online.

Jeff Reed
THECHURCH.DIGITAL

Home > Blog > My Top Six Mistakes as a Church Planter

My Top Six Mistakes as a Church Planter

By Mark Dance

My first two churches would be considered replants by today’s definition. Although both started and ended well, I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Most people will forget about your ministry mistakes over time because love really does cover a multitude of sins. But sometimes our failures help us—and others—to grow, which is why I wrote this post for you.

Here are the six mistakes I regret the most.

1. I stole other members’ ministries. 

I am ashamed to say that in my enthusiasm to plant successfully, I outright stole other members’ ministries by doing too much of it myself. Church planters are notoriously hands-on entrepreneurs. We like to be in the middle of the action and are often tempted into thinking that the success of our ministry revolves around us. A pastor’s job is not to perform all of the ministry, but rather train “the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:12).

A maturing pastor will equip people instead of enabling them.

2. I hogged the pulpit.

I think my reluctance to share my pulpit was rooted in secret insecurities. I loved to preach, which is good, but it would have been better to have raised up other preachers. “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2

Another bonus to shared preaching is freshness. Literally half of my time was spent preparing messages for four services each week, which was neither necessary nor biblical. Although today’s church planters are much less likely to prepare three messages, they are tempted to make themselves the star of the show by convincing themselves that it won’t go on without them.

3. I cast vision inconsistently.

My church plant was technically a replant, since there were eight remaining members left in the ashes of a struggling church which eventually called it quits. These survivors were joined by eight families who created a core team which relaunched as a completely different church with a new name.

One dirty little secret of church planting is that most of the founding members are former members of other churches. They may have taken a break to shop around, but that does not qualify these shoppers as “unchurched.”

Regardless of what your people’s church background it, most will start day one with a preconception of what church should look like. Church planters need to cast a compelling vision so consistently that the members are able and willing to communicate it conversationally to new people as they arrive.

4. I did not pursue a mentor.

In my first decade of ministry, I had plenty of ministry peers, and mentees, but cannot think of one mentor who I reached out to. The initiative for mentoring starts with the mentee not the mentor, and I made the arrogant rookie mistake of not pursuing this important relationship earlier.

5. I focused too much on buildings.

My formative years were the late 1980s, when churches believed that, “If you build it, they will come.” We spent a lot of time, energy, and money building and remodeling facilities. I have no regrets about any of those  buildings, although I do regret investing so much personal time on those projects.

Church planters need to see themselves as Ezras (priests), not Nehemiahs (builders). If you don’t have a trusted layperson to lead that charge, wait until you find one before you move forward.

6. I neglected personal evangelism.

My first two churches exceeded everyone’s expectations for conversion growth, including my own. Our sense of urgency was fueled by prayer and vision, but after a few years of fruitful growth, we became comfortably stable. Also my heart grew uncomfortably cold after the initial buzz wore off. All three churches I have served wasted too many years on the treadmill of transfer growth, which was primarily my mistake. These seasons were temporary, but they cannot be reclaimed.

These are not the only mistakes I made in my early years of church planting and replanting, but they are the ones I regret the most. What are some of the mistakes you made in your first decade of ministry?

By Daniel Im: We need to be teaching younger generations the truths that will last. Research studies show that teenagers are enjoying church and like the traditions of church but are unable to explain basic teachings of the Bible. Their belief system is “moral therapeutic deism.” Younger generations grasp the basic concepts but not the teachings. 

Church is an emotional journey for this demographic, and they go in order to feel good about themselves. Possibly most disheartening, their view of God is similar to a belief in Santa Claus. They know something is out there but only pray to God when they need something. These beliefs are far from orthodox truths of Christianity. In order to realign these views to build a next generation team, here is a five-step process to help your transition. 

1. Conviction and Dissatisfaction

You can’t continue to attract young people to your church events and opportunities without going back to the principle truths. God placed the church and the home in a strategic way to work together. These two institutions are to be conduits for the gospel. We want church and home to reinforce and strengthen each other, so that they become strong entities in the lives of young people. 

2. The Challenges the Church Leadership Gave Us

The journey to next generation ministry can start in student ministry and challenge adults to be involved in the lives of young people. It’s important to invest and mentor younger generations to help them identify their gifts and grow their relationships with God. 

A few challenges occur in most churches. You must get out of our individual ministry silos and start together working on the same team. You also must equip and engage parents in discipleship in the home. Church members, on average only get one to two hours of spiritual instruction at the church. However, we have 3,000 hours in the home. There is a huge opportunity to disciple and develop younger generations.

To read the remainder of this article, and to watch the entire video training with Jay Strother, click here for the full video and post.

These videos are part of Plus Membership. To get full access to them, and much more, I encourage you to become a Plus Member. Click here to see all the benefits of becoming a Plus Member.

By Shelley G. Trebesch: Two to four years into a church plant? How do you know the church is making a difference? Courageous enough to seriously ask?

How do we know our ministries, whether preaching, outreach, serving the poor, children’s programs, or life groups, make a difference? Measuring impact tends to be elusive and often downright avoided, especially in Christian circles. However, I offer a fun and insightful method for discerning impact called the Most Significant Change (MSC).[1]

MSC is a qualitative, monitoring and evaluation methodology centered around asking people the question “What is the most significant change that has taken place as a result of …” and then asking them to tell a story that illustrates the change. MSC allows respondents to share freely and results in many stories exemplifying personal, relational, and/or leadership changes in people’s journey with God, family, workplace, community, and so on. Indeed, the range of life-change themes for effective programs can be vast and unexpectedly surprising.

This process works best in an interview setting where the interviewer asks two questions then captures a story.

1. What have been the three most important benefits of ________to you?
2. What has been the most significant change in your life (or your colleagues’ lives or your family member’s lives) as a result of this _____ ?
3. Please share a story that illustrates this change in your life (or your colleagues’ lives or your family member’s lives).

To conduct an evaluation, select a team of people who will interview and collect stories. For a small program, endeavor to collect stories from all participants. For a larger program or church, collect at least 10 percent of participants’ stories. Make sure the stories are told in personal ways, using pronouns such as “I” and “we.” Either take notes while listening, record the conversation, or have the person write the story.

Once the team collects the stories, have members read the stories individually and select the most important stories to them. Then, gather as a team and read the selected stories out loud. As a team, make a list of the emerging themes and how often they occur—repeated themes demonstrate significance. Select stories that represent the most themes i.e. the most significant themes. I find it helpful to use a spreadsheet to correlate how many stories have the same or differing themes. For example, if five out of ten persons reveal in their story that they practice reconciliation as a result of conflict management training, that theme occurs in 50 percent of the stories.

Different sets of eyes may notice new themes, potentially because of their relative importance to another team. Send the above, along with the list of themes, to the leadership team. The leadership team then reads the stories and captures the themes they see. A third group, say program directors, may capture other themes. Then create a spreadsheet that shows the three teams’ (columns) and their selected themes from highest (occurs in more individual stories) to lowest percentages and observe what can be learned from the three columns. What is important to whom?

In my experience with MSC, individual stories often reflect multiple themes that are important markers of the change process. This allows a church to understand their change theory—what activities, programs, practices, etc. actually instigate change?

Although MSC is a qualitative technique, given a sufficient number of stories, it is possible to conduct some quantitative analysis. For example, the percentages of the most common themes, as well as differences in themes that emerge in different contexts or as the result of different participant characteristics. One may notice the frequency and difference of themes amongst men and women or age categories or ethnicities or marital status, etc. This analysis enables leaders to plumb the depths of what activates change for certain groups, as they compare the themes to elements of the program.

Give it a try and discover the impact of your church!

[1] See mande.co.uk for a guide to MSC. Wikipedia also has a reasonable summary of the methodology at wikipedia.org.