Who are you starting a new church for?

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One of the most eye opening books in our Cultivate reading list is I Once Was Lost by Don Everts and Doug Schuapp. They write about their experience as campus staff with Intervarsity,

“We came up with our evangelism strategy while we were alone in a room together with a bunch of Christians. Not once in our brainstorming and planning did we ask where are our non-Christian fellow students were coming from. Not once did we try to find out what they might need to take a step toward Jesus. We were mostly coming up with something we wanted to do, not something that would be actually helpful to those unsuspecting sunbathers in the quad.”

Watch the video and then ask yourself, “what kind of new church would help Ben find faith in Jesus?”

Using Technology for Discipleship

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One way to build relational bonds with the people who volunteer in your area, or the people that you are intentionally developing spiritually is using technology. I personally feel that the best discipleship environment is a small group or 3-4 running partners. That way, if the right culture is created in the group, the members of the group spur one another on even more than the leader could do alone. I find you really can’t spiritually develop people without face to face contact at least every couple of weeks. But Technology can significantly help bridge the gap relationally. Even as I was typing this, I got a prompting to shoot a text of encouragement to a guy I’m building into–it’s easy. But a lot of daily touches through text, email, skype, facetime can significantly increase your relational impact in people’s lives.

Get in the habit of regular daily Tech-touches with the 10 or so people who volunteer around you, or who you are trying to disciple or lead to faith. Here are some ideas, but get creative:
Text – Text a prayer you’re asking on their behalf. Cut and paste a verse from YouVersion and tell them it encouraged you and you wanted to share it with them. Let them know if God puts them on your mind to pray for them. See if anything in particular is up.
Email – Some people monitor email all day at work, if so, cut and paste a verse from Biblegateway.com with a short paragraph of your thoughts and note of encouragement. Email a weekly devotional thought to all your group, and find ways for them to do the same. You may want to set up a google group so that any email goes to all recipients. I have this with several boards and teams.
Skype / Facetime – I’m just amazed at how relational technology can be. We hold monthly ELI board meetings with multiple people on WebEx. I’ve done one-to-one counseling appointments on Skype.
Phone – Let’s not forget the simplicity of just a call or voicemail to see how they are doing.

We have options that we may not be using effectively to increase the relational depth of impact. Think about ways you can encourage, build up, spiritually shepherd those around you who volunteer or need spiritual input, and get creative with technology! It will never replace a small group or face to face meeting, but it does allow for increased touch.

The Most Important Person to Lead is Yourself

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Having been in church planting for 28 years I have not only shot myself in the foot numerous times, but also watched other perfectly competent leaders do the same. While I don’t know who came up with the title for today’s blog, I do know that it is true.
Here are four ways we can lead ourselves:

* Lead yourself in the ways of God. As one recent church planting leader said, “If I don’t have my relationship with God right, nothing else will be right.” You would think that we would learn this lesson early on, but the number of 50 year old pastors who are still struggling with this leads me to conclude that it is a lifelong battle to be fought.

o Make a leadership choice to connect more fully to Jesus today.

* Lead yourself in overcoming fears. When we get scared we have three typical responses—Fight, flight or freeze. It takes careful leadership to have a thoughtful, prayerful response to a frightening set of circumstances. Saying, “I will walk by faith in my God in this instance” requires a leadership choice.

o Make a leadership choice to confront that situation that is causing your fear this week.

* Lead yourself in breaking new ground. The default mode of human nature is to walk by sight- to return to the safe place. But just like the church that says, “We’ve never done it that way before” so a leader who always returns to what has worked in the past without considering the future has limited the reach of his leadership.

o Make a leadership choice to try one new thing in the next thirty days.

* Lead yourself into replenishment. Often as leaders we think that green pastures and still waters are for those we preach to, but they will never make it there if we don’t model what that looks like. If the leader sets the standard of workaholism—read skips her day off, the all who follow or report to that leader will do the same. Taking a Sabbath day, affirms our belief that God is in control of our church plant and that He is Lord.

o Make a leadership choice to take care of yourself better (rest, exercise, or vacation) this year.

Your spiritual, mental and physical health as a leader will determine your effectiveness. The better you lead yourself the more effective you will be in leading others God has placed in your sphere of influence. Go ahead, lead! Lead yourself, lead your family, lead your church plant. Lead, because God cares what you do.

This post originally appeared on www.churchplanting.com.

 

Two Keys to Relational Momentum

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In my experience, one of the Holy Grails of church planting is relational momentum – more people bringing more people who bring more people. In the end it’s not about more people, it’s about more and better disciples, but you can’t really get there without relational momentum.

 

How do you get it?
First, build relationships. This doesn’t happen by accident, especially in a culture of isolation. Building relationships requires intentionality. It’s not enough to hang out at the coffee shop, or in the neighborhood, or at the gym. You have to do these things in a way that results in relationships not just a random encounters.

  • Go to the same coffee shop at the same day and time.
  • Learn when people in your neighborhood our outside and be outside at that time.
  • Don’t just go to the gym, invite people around to you to work out together.
  • Teach and train the people on mission with you to do the same.
  • Second, create communities. A community is just a group of people in relationship with each other.
  • It could be really small, like 4 people who play tennis together once a week.
  • It could be bigger like 30 people who get together every week to grill meat and watch the football game.
  • You can build communities around common interests, missional causes, or spiritual practices.

Here is the key, if you want to see relational momentum, you must do both. You must build relationships and create communities. If all you do is build relationships you will quickly run out of relational capacity. If all you do is create communities you’ll just keep the same people so busy doing stuff they won’t have time to build relationships. Do them both and you can create relational momentum that fuels more people becoming better disciples.