Talent Isn’t Enough

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Recently watched the documentary Pearl Jam 20by Cameron Crowe (I love you Cameron Crowe!), and I thought it had a ton of lessons for church planters. Here’s one…

 

Andrew Wood (singer for Mother Love Bone, which later kind of morphed into Pearl Jam) and Chris Cornel (singer for Soundgarden, and later Audioslave, and who has a voice straight from God) lived together when they were first starting out, and each wrote and recorded a song every single day, which they would then play for each other. Like workaholic singer/songwriter accountability.

The idea exists that some singers just have this innate talent and jump on a stage and get discovered. The reality is that even talented people have to work their butts off if they want to succeed.

Why do some guys start churches that thrive, while others start churches that don’t even survive? There are all kinds of factors, but one of them is hard work. Some people might say I’m smart or gifted, but I don’t know about that. I think what God has used in me is hard work. You can get a lot of ministry done when you put in 65 to 80 hours a week, every week.

And you know what? If you write enough songs you keep getting better at it, and some of the songs end up working. And if you do enough ministry you keep getting better at it, and some of the ministries in your church end up working.

Talent isn’t enough. It takes hard work. Lots of hard work.

So … if you’re a church planter, or thinking about starting a church, how hard are you really willing to work?

3 Habits for Raising Your Cultural IQ

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We don’t live in an Acts 2 environment – where you can stand in the public forum and say, “Repent and be baptized” and assume everyone will know what they are repenting from or understand the symbolism of baptism.

 

We live in an Acts 17 environment where effectively communicating the gospel requires building a bridge to what people already know like Paul did when he used an altar “to an unknown God” to introduce his audience to creator of the universe.  If that is our context, where do you find the idols and poets like Paul did?

Here are some suggestions for raising your Cultural IQ to become a better bridge builder and communicator to an Acts 17 audience.

Listen to the Music of your Culture:

  • Find out what the 3 most popular radio stations are in your area and listen to each once a week while driving.
  • Use iTunes or Spotify to listen to the top 20 songs once a month.
  • If you live in a place where live music is more than 8 people at the bowling alley singing karoke, make a commitment to hear local artists 4-6 times a year.
  • You can’t watch ‘em all, so know what the hottest shows are and watch one a week.  Don’t think paying for premium cable is a good use of God’s money, then learn how to use free sources to watch online.
  • You can’t go to ‘em all, so know whats raking in the money at the box office and get out once a month to see it.

Watch the TV and Movies of Your Culture:

(The great part of these activities is you can leverage them to build relationships too.  Don’t watch alone.  Invite your friends, neighbors and co-workers to watch with you – then ask them what they think and feel about what you just experienced together.)

Read the Opinions of Your Culture:

Since you’re reading this, you’re online and you’re a blog reader – why not set up Google Reader to sync your blog subscriptions so you can read on the run when you have a few minutes of down time or waiting.  While your adding this blog to your reader, think about adding these too:

News blogs:

Hit and Run – http://www.reason.com/blog/

Michelle Malkin – http://michellemalkin.com/

America Blog – http://www.americablog.com/

Daily Kos – http://www.dailykos.com/

Pop Culture blogs:

Gawker – http://gawker.com/

Pop Candy - http://content.usatoday.com/communities/popcandy/index

Men’s/Women’s blog:

Divine Caroline – http://www.divinecaroline.com/

Feministing – http://feministing.com/

GQ Blog – http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q

I can promise if you do all three of these things you will at some point be offended, hopefully heartbroken and ultimately better equipped to build a bridge to the good news about Jesus.

West E. Free Church Planting

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“There has to be more to life then this…Simply going to work, coming home,
and doing the same thing all over again!”
That’s the statement a neighbor of mine made as we sat on his back porch having burgers together. There are hundreds of thousands of people asking the same question, right here in Wichita, Kansas.

That’s why at West E. Free Church, our calling is to “multiply churches that multiply more churches to reach our county for Christ!”

Some might wonder if Wichita needs new churches. They ask questions like, “Isn’t Wichita in the Bible belt?” or “Aren’t there enough churches in Wichita already?” While Wichita is officially part of the Bible belt and there are lots of churches, there are still many people like my neighbor who don’t know Jesus. If you lived in Wichita and looked around at coworkers or neighbors you have relationships with, you would find most are far away from God. This is why we want to focus on our city as a place to plant churches.

There are contexts ranging from small towns, urban and suburban in Wichita and we are developing a strategy that addresses the needs for each unique cultural demographic. Our dream would be to plant at least one church a year over the next 20 years that is leading people far from God to a life of faith and spiritual transformation.

We are launching this initiative by offering a 1-year, pre launch residency for Church Planters. During this time, there would be partnership, training, salary, and core team development assistance on starting and multiplying a church that focuses on reaching people far from God.

If you might be interested in our initiative, please email your resume to churchplantingkansas@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and see how we might partner in the future to plant the gospel in Wichita.

You can check out what we are doing in depth at www.westefc.org/cp

We’re Hiring

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We are looking for someone who can help us change the world. You’re emails will say “Executive Assistant.” We’ll call you “the one who makes us all look brilliant.”
Specifically…

 
 

 

  1. You love Jesus and live your life loving the people Jesus loved.
    ELI is all about mobilizing people into Jesus mission. If you’re not already one of those people, you’re just not going to get who we are or what we do.
  2. You get stuff done at the speed of now.
    Superman was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. You get stuff done so fast people think you have superpowers too.
  3. You are a person people want to talk to.
    This is a fast paced, get things done, all about people kind of gig. That means when you answer the phone, people are glad to hear your voice and when you call people, they want to call you back.
  4. You are a digital native.
    We’re not talking you live in your parents basement and spend 18 hours a day on Facebook (see number 1). You simply live in a world where there is no physical and virtual because it’s all one and the same.
  5. You are sock drawer sick organized.
    You will know how to keep us organized because the books on your shelf are categorized and alphabetized, your bills are stacked in the order their due and your sock drawer, well… its sorted and stacked too.
  6. You know how to use our tools.
    There are lots of ways to work. We use Google, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Webex, WordPress and whole bunch of other web powered tools. The more of these you already know how to use the better.
  7. You can work virtually.
    We don’t have an office and we won’t be providing you with one. You will be part of a virtual team that works anywhere anytime, which means you can live anywhere in the continental US as long as you have a fast and reliable connection.
  8. You have 5- hours of your day to focus on this.
    The rest of your day might be devoted to your family, your ministry, school or even another job. That’s ok. We need 5-6 hours of your day when you think about nothing but helping us change the world.

Interested? Send an email introducing yourself to jointheteam@elichurchplanting.com. Please attach a pdf of your resume.