Church Planting Archive

MORPHE: Church Restarts and Parent Church

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Moving at the Speed of God

This past week I had the opportunity to sit down with a leader in church planting in my tribe. His name is David Jackson, and he is the church multiplication and church planting guru of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware. He also does a podcast called Moving at the Speed of God. David is a collegue and coached me for a year. We were able to put together a podcast on my experiences in church planting, church restarts, and being a parenting church. Enjoy!

 
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MIROR: Reproducing

Organisms reproduce.  Institutions get bloated.

That is a large difference between the MIROR, Missional church and others.

Reproduction is not copying you, it is creating something new.

Remember the movie Multiplicity? In the movie, Michael Keaton’s character, Doug Kinney, is a stressed-out family man who meets up with a scientist who has developed a successful means for cloning humans. The scientist allows Doug to make a clone of himself that can take over for him at work, while he tries to spend some quality time with his family. The clone, called “Two” (while having all the knowledge, memory and experience of Doug), turns out to be overly macho and easily irritated, suffering a residual personality quirk of the cloning process.

Eventually two more clones are made. “Three”, in sharp contrast to two, is extremely sensitive and thoughtful (“Two” considers him a ‘wuss’). “Four” is cloned from “Two”, and has the mentality of an overly-curious child. Unfortunately since he is a clone-of-a-clone, his IQ is considerably lower than that of his predecessors, since the personality defects are more pronounced when a clone is cloned (The analogy from the movie refers to how a copy of a copy may not be as ’sharp’ as the original). One night Doug leaves home for a business trip. While Doug is gone each of the clones run into Laura and each one sleeps with her. The next day “Two” comes down with a cold and can’t go to work, so he sends “Three”. As “Three” goes to work not knowing a thing about construction, an inspection on site is on that day. “Three” unimpresses the inspector which leads to him losing Doug’s job.

As the movie progresses, Doug’s wife becomes increasingly upset with her husband, not realizing that many times she is speaking to a clone. After she pours out her heart to “Four”, mentioning how he (Doug) has never kept his promise on fixing the house, she asks him what he wants and is unromantically told “I want pizza”. Upset, she takes the children to live with her parents. When Doug returns he learns that Laura and the kids have left. He also learns from the clones’ confessions that he has lost his job and each one of them have slept with Laura. Trying to figure out how to get Laura back, “Four” tells him about what she said to him on how he never fixed the house. With the help of the clones, Doug remodels the house and wins back the love of his wife. With their purposes served, the three clones leave and set up a pizza shop called “Three Men from Nowhere”. There “Two” becomes the business man of the shop, “Three” is the chef and “Four” is the delivery boy. (1)

Reproducing is not cloning; it is not going multi-campus.  Reproducing involves birthing something new and separate with its own DNA.

Reproducing requires sacrifices from the parent.

The parents of any organism sacrifice for the sake of the child. This could require the release of a number of your current church members as they participate in the birth of the new organism.  In our church, though we were a small church of 50-70, we released three families, eight people in all who felt God was leading them to our plant.  We encouraged our planter to build relationships knowing that we could have members released to him.  We lost almost 10% of our membership.  However, it really was not our church.  It was HIS church.

Reproduction expands the influence of the parenting church.

The child church will reach people the parenting church cannot.  The child church will be able to be contextual as it reaches people through the personality of the church in the context it resides.

So how do you go about reproducing?

1.  Spend some time with Bob Robert’s book The Multiplying Church: The New Math for Starting New Churches. It’s one of the best books on multiplication written.

2. Talk to denominational leadership or other church planting organizations. There are many church planting organizations out there, from Glocal.net to Acts 29 to Church Multiplication Associates.

3.  Develop a church planting process and system.

4.  Find areas in your community where there are large populations of unchurched.

5. Plant a church.

Notes:

(1) Wikipedia contributors, “Multiplicity (film),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Multiplicity_(film)&oldid=243283039 (accessed November 3, 2008).

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The Barnabas Factor

The Barnabas Factors

The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members, by author and professor J. D. Payne, describes how Barnabas should be considered as a model for contemporary church planting team members. Each chapter of this work addresses a particular “Barnabas Factor, ” a healthy aspect of Barnabas’ life that assisted in Kingdom expansion. The eight practices include:

1. Walks with the Lord
2. Maintains an Outstanding Character
3. Serves the Local Church
4. Remains Faithful to the Call
5. Shares the Gospel Regularly
6. Raises Up Leaders
7. Encourages with Speech and Actions
8. Responds Appropriately to Conflict

Dr. J.D. Payne is a National Missionary with the North American Mission Board and an Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Planting in the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Having taught church planting and evangelism courses in evangelical institutions for nine years and served with several church planting teams and with the largest Protestant evangelical missions agency in North America, Dr. Payne is aware of the lack of quality church planting resources, particularly resources addressing church planting teams.

The book will be available later this week.  Purchase the book at the discounted rate of $14.99 $12.99 by going here. It is coming soon to online and brick and mortar retailers.

Praise for The Barnabas Factors:

Given the risky and pioneering nature of church planting, it is essential to develop healthy relationships amongst members of the founding team. Here J. D. Payne gives us a biblical model of engendering healthy team dynamics by looking to the life and ministry of Barnabas. This is a book for those of us who want to keep a joyful camaraderie whilst advancing the kingdom.

Alan Hirsch
Author of The Forgotten Ways and The Shaping of Things to Come
Founding director of Shapevine.com

The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members is a unique and much needed book for anyone interested in church planting. I strongly believe it is a must-read for newly appointed missionaries and just as essential for veteran missionaries. This book powerfully sets forth the need for godly personal characteristics that are vital for successful church planting teams. The diagnostic tool at the conclusion of the book will be a great help in evaluating potential team members.

Charles Brock
President, Church Growth International
Author of Indigenous Church Planting: A Practical Journey

I highly recommend this book. From end to end it is practical: it’s the relationship stuff, the personal qualities of team members, and the realistic nuts and bolts of ministry that are so ultimately determinative to fruitfulness in the church planting and team contexts. Payne brings great clarity as to what is a missionary “call.” And for no extra charge there is a powerful tool at the end pulling all the principles together to help you decide who to take onto your team and who not to. A must-read for all church planters.

Daniel Sinclair
Author of A Vision of the Possible: Pioneer Church Planting in Teams

You reproduce what you are! In The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members, J. D. skillfully uses Barnabas to expose eight critical factors that enable a person to be an effective team player. Often, in the West we focus on glittery leaders; J. D. focuses on Barnabas, the glue of Paul’s first team. He does an excellent job of making these attributes practical and applicable in the team church planting context . . . The book certainly should be read by those headed for the field and those teams already functioning in a field context.

Dick Scoggins
Head of Leadership Development, Frontiers
Author of Building Effective Church Planting Teams

Dr. J. D. Payne stresses the crucial need for possessing the personal and character qualities that were evident in the life and ministry of Barnabas. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those who are dead serious about planting churches that are built on a solid biblical foundation and impacting their communities in the same manner in which the churches started by Barnabas and his team members impacted theirs.

Daniel R. Sanchez
Director, Scarborough Institute for Church Planting and Growth,
Roy Fish School of Evangelism and Missions,
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Having served as a church-planting missionary and trainer of church planters for over twenty years, I believe the greatest obstacles to effective church planting teams were, and today remain, unresolved team conflict and personal character issues of team members. Now there is a tool to help church planters be more proactive in effectively selecting suitable team members. If there is a priority need today in church planting, it is a need for the church planting team members first to be people of exemplary Christ-like character . . . Payne’s book addresses this issue in a clear and concise manner. This tool is a necessity for every church planter’s, mission agency’s, and church’s toolkit as they seek to develop and deploy effective church planting teams for the glory of God.

R. Bruce Carlton
Associate Professor of Missions, Boyce College
Author of Acts 29: Practical Training in Facilitating Church-Planting Movements Among the Neglected Harvest Fields

J. D. Payne offers sound biblical advice for building a strong church planting team. Often, in an attempt to build the perfect “Dream Team” many church planters rush the process and end up shipwrecking the potential of a new church. Nothing can be more devastating to the birth of a new church than a spiritually dysfunctional team. Whether you are planting a new church or leading a church planting organization, The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members is a must-read!

Stephen Gray
National Missions Director for the General Association of General Baptists
Author of Planting Fast Growing Churches

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Tim Keller and Church Planters Part 03: Reproducing

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Tim Keller and Church Planters Part 02: Missional

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