India: Global Partnerships

While we were in India, we had the privilege of visiting some groups and organizations we’ve partnered with. We got to spend time with Jack Magruder from Granger Community Church, and their partner in India, Life Mission International. With the help of the One Prayer initiative, hundreds of churches have been planted there and tens of thousands of evangelistic contacts have been made.

It was a great reminder of the importance of churches and ministries working together to accomplish more than we could on our own. If we were truly united, I believe the Great Commission could be fulfilled within our lifetime. The Church has the resources and the connectivity to make that happen if we were all pulling together.

This is why we’re excited about the 3rd year of One Prayer coming up in June. If your church hasn’t signed up, we’d love to have you on board! You can learn more and register at http://oneprayer.com.

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Suggestions For My UMC Friends (Part 1)

A leader from the United Methodist Church asked me if I’d write a few suggestions for the denomination. I was very honored by his request and thought I’d share a few thoughts.

My family attended various Methodist Churches in Texas and Oklahoma. I did my undergraduate work at Oklahoma City University (a UMC school). After graduating from college, I entered ministry as an associate pastor of First United Methodist Church in downtown Oklahoma City.

Amy and I planned on serving God in the Methodist Church for our full ministry. After experiencing other styles of ministry, God gave us a vision to do church in a different way. We asked for permission to plant a new UMC church. Since I was only ordained as a “deacon” and not an “elder,” church planting, for us, was not an option as a UMC pastor.

Our burden to start a church became greater than our loyalty to a denomination. We left the UMC on good terms with fond memories and many great relationships.

This week, I’ll post six suggestions for my UMC friends. I offer them humbly and in love. I hope one or two ideas are helpful.

Let’s start with the use of Financial Resources. Not long ago, the UMC launched a $20 million advertising campaign called “Rethink Church.” While I wholeheartedly applaud the church’s aggressive efforts to reach people, I don’t think advertisements that promote a denomination are the best plan.

Today’s generation wants to join a cause, not an organization. I would have suggested investing $20,000 each into 1,000 UMC church plants across the United States. Starting new churches is easier than revitalizing old churches. Once a new movement begins, revitalizing the old becomes much more doable.

My thought on this: People are more likely to join a new mission rather than an old denomination.

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Church Planters

Today I’d love to hear from Church Planters.

I remember the early days of LifeChurch.tv. Even though I was often high with big faith in God, there were long seasons where I felt very low, lonely, tired and afraid.

Church Planters, teach us what you’re facing.

What are your biggest challenges? What is your biggest joy? How can we pray for you?

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Working With God’s Seasons

Proverbs 20:4 says, “If you are too lazy to plow in the right season, you will have no food at the harvest.”

In ministry it is so important to work with God’s seasons. Instead of always wishing for the next season, we should embrace the season we’re in.

Here are a few examples of how to work with the seasons:

• If you’re a church planter, you won’t be any more of a real church when you have a real building. Enjoy the ride in portable facilities. You’re in a special season.
• If you’re 50 years old and not naturally a cool person, you’ll look silly trying to act and dress 28. Embrace your season and be a mentor instead of a buddy to the next generation.
• If your church is debt free and strong, don’t pretend like everything you have is for you. During this season, your greatest calling might be to fund the next generation’s vision.
• If you had a singles ministry that worked for 9 years, but is no longer effective, celebrate the 9 years of success. Close it down and do something different. Don’t keep something on life support once its season has passed.

Because I was 28 years old when I started Life Church, I always felt like I was the young guy with everything in front of me. I’m not the young guy any more. (It happened so fast.) Now rather than just building our church, I embrace this season of lifting the next generation to do more than I’m able to do.

How can you better embrace this season?

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Your Turn: Hiring Staff

Thanks for all the great responses to yesterday’s question.

Continuing in the same line of thinking, imagine that the Spirit of God empowered you to build a great core group and God blessed your investment of resources.

Your new church plant now has about 400 people worshiping.

God has blessed you with the financial resources to hire 2.5 staff members. (You can hire any combination of half time or full time people.)

What roles would you fill and in what order?

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Are You Called to Plant a Church?

Two weeks ago, I announced that LifeChurch.tv joined the A.R.C. Next week, the A.R.C. is hosting a church planters round table. There are five spots left. If you’re interested in starting a church, you may want to check out the event.

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LifeChurch.tv Boards the A.R.C.

About two years ago, I met Chris Hodges from Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, and Rick Bezet from New Life Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. After an hour of conversations, it seemed like we’d been friends forever.

Chris and Rick introduced me to a group of churches that work together to start new churches called A.R.C. (Association of Related Churches). I discovered that Greg Surratt from Seacoast and Dino Rizzo from the Healing Place were a part of the A.R.C.

The leaders invited me to speak at a gathering for A.R.C. church planters. When I got there, I was shocked at the quality of the planting pastors. These young leaders were amazingly gifted.

I learned the A.R.C. had already planted over 50 churches across the U.S. Many of these church plants are growing big—fast.

The more I learned, the more intrigued I became. This is one of the best church planting groups I’ve observed:

• Their assessment is top-notch.
• Their training is incredible.
• Their financial plan is wise and generous.
• Their results are as good as I’ve seen.
• The pastors are very tight-knit and have a blast serving Christ together.

After meeting more A.R.C. pastors and praying for some time, I’m excited to share that LifeChurch.tv will be joining the A.R.C. I’m grateful to the leaders for allowing us to contribute financially, host round tables, mentor church planters, and share in the joy of starting churches.

We are praying that God would allow us to plant 30 churches this year! If you are interested in planting a church, you can find out more about A.R.C. here.

I’d love to hear from any ARC pastors! Tell us who you are and something about your church.

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Kingdom-Minded 4 (of 4)

Intentional Partnerships

I’m becoming increasingly passionate about intentional ministry partnerships.

The driving question should be: How can we do more for the glory of God together?

Here are some ideas. We could:

Share buildings. (I know I already mentioned this before. It’s worth mentioning again.) When does your building go unused? Who could use it at that time? (If you need to charge them to cover your costs, do so. If you can give them a gift and let them use it for free.)

Partner in target ministries. Maybe your church can’t afford a full-time singles pastor. Consider bringing four or five churches together for monthly combined singles events. (What other areas could you partner in?)

Offer free pulpit supply. If you believe in the power of video teaching, here’s a great idea… Say a church loses its pastor, and is struggling to find another one. Your church could let them use your video messages during their search.

Give all our video teaching away to churches… for free. We’re very excited about “network” churches. These are separate churches who use our teaching. Praise God that His message is getting out. We don’t get money for this. We don’t count their attendance. We simply get to help. Yeah!

Partner in missions. Instead of all 400,000 American churches trying to do separate mission work, consider partnering with another church (or two, or 20) to make a difference in one significant place. Instead of your overseas trip not filling up and ending up canceled, maybe it will overflow and you’ll have to book a second.

Merge ministries. We’ve partnered with a few churches who decided to become a part of LifeChurch.tv. Across the country, many ministries are realizing they can do more united than they could divided.

Do a series together with other churches. Our church and three others decided to do the same series simultaneously. As pastors, we prepared the messages together. All of our churches prayed for one another. We played videos of each pastor and reported what God was doing in each church. All our people loved it and grew together in an awesome way.

Adopt a church. Find a church that could benefit from what you’re doing and adopt them. What does that mean? I’m not sure. You prayerfully decide. How can you help? Maybe your leaders can mentor theirs. Maybe you can give them your old choir robes, or your church van. You might help them find the worship leader they’re looking for. Whatever it means to you, do it.

I’ll ask it again: How can we do more for the glory of God together?

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