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Getting to the Second Church Service (part 5)

June 18th, 2011 by swggy

Here is the last of a five-part series on getting your church to the second service…

Final Thoughts

  • With two services on a Sunday morning, timing on the first one could be tight, depending on the slack between the two. SOP is to put at least 30 minutes between them, although if you have limited space and hold a time of fellowship in the room you’re using for a sanctuary, you may need to expand that.
  • If you hold communion separately from the main service, it will need to be during the service always if there are 2 services on Sunday morning. Further, it will need to result in a shorter ‘longer’ sermon for #6.
  • When someone else is preaching, are they preaching for both services? And if the sermon is different, they need to be warned. That’s a lot to ask of anyone.
  • Whatever you do, some people are not going to like it and may take the opportunity to leave. Make no mistake: when you split the service, you split the congregation. If you’re trying for reason #10 (let’s split to try to grow the numbers) and your numbers aren’t all that good to begin with, then this could be a very serious error. Further: The chances are you won’t have an even split – a 75%-35% split seems more likely, considering that people came to your single service originally because they could make that time and style (and yes I can add; some folks will go to both services because they or their spouse is involved). Subtract from both services the number of people in ministry during the service – preacher, usher(s), nursery workers, teachers – how many people are left in the seats for the smaller service? Will the people feel targeted when the preacher speaks? Will it still be capable of developing community and stability? Or will there be a dozen people and an ocean of chairs between them?
  • If you’re splitting because of style, expect this ratio to be even more skewed, and at first your current style will be the popular service – after all, that’s why everyone was there in the first place. You’ll need to do something extra for the other service to make sure people see it as important in your eyes. Without that, they won’t believe you’re truly invested in it – so they won’t put effort into inviting friends or developing personal outreach – and you’ll find that you’ll soon shut the other service down. Ministry fail! However, splitting for style can be incredibly rewarding and healthy if you invest in and execute the new style well, and if the people in the new service are actively reaching out to others.

Further reading

  • Dan Kimball, David Crowder, Sally Morgenthaler. Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations. Paperback. Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2004
  • Dan Kimball, Rick Warren. The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations. Paperback. Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2003
  • Bob Kauflin, Paul Baloche. Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God. Paperback. Crossway Books, 2008
  • Tony Morgan blogs about church strategy – he had one on summer services last year. My thoughts on summer services is that time is not the issue – content is. If the congregation gets smaller over the summer, that suggests that the people who are still attending are the ‘hard core’ Christians of your church. Summer is the time to go deeper and address outreach, stewardship and other of the more meaty types of subjects.
  • Pete Wilson on Deeper Preaching.
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Getting to the Second Church Service (part 4)

June 17th, 2011 by swggy

Here is the fourth of a five-part series on getting your church to the second service…

The way we think

There are some cautionary psychological considerations to keep in mind for a church split as well.

  1. Some people are coming to a single-service church because they like the feeling that they know everybody and everybody knows them. In a 2-service church, that feeling can shut down and they may leave, although hopefully the people in their service become the ‘family’. Nevertheless, there will always be the sense that, ‘I don’t know everybody anymore.’ You can counter that problem by upping the fellowship level. Don’t think that all fellowship is eating, though. Sometimes we are called to reach out to others. Nothing will make your church more of a beacon for Christ than helping in the community, and surprise! It’s what we are called to do as well.
  2. Further, there are some who go to church (i.e., don’t not go) because if they stayed away their absence would be noted. Not the best reason for going, but if it’s where they’re at in their walk with Christ and they’re moving forward little by little, who are we to judge?
  3. There is also a potential for the musicians to feel they are carrying the brunt of this move to two services, as noted in #1e two posts back.
  4. There is a tendency on the part of the congregation to think that if it’s not Sunday morning it’s not really worship for the week. Many people will enjoy a mid-week service, but they’ll feel it’s not really as important as the Sunday morning one – that’s the REAL service. If you go with #7 that attitude needs to be firmly squashed.
    1. Similarly, to the minds of some your church leaders – whichever the new service is it’s not the ‘real’ one. But both services need to be treated with equal respect. There’s no point in adding a second service if your church’s administration thinks one isn’t as important. So let’s say you have 2 services all year, a contemporary one at 9:30am and a rock one at 11am. Then you get to the summer. Are you going to drop one during the summer? Will it be the rock service? That sends the message that the people at the rock service aren’t as important as the ones at the ‘real’ service. Will you alternate rock and contemporary? That will drive away people from your contemporary service who don’t like ‘loud’ and from your rock service who don’t like ‘wussy’.
    2. Make it important to you and it will become important to the church. Schedule around it rather than blow it off because of conflicts. For instance, if you put it on a night when you have a quarterly meeting, don’t move it for the quarterly meeting; that shouts to the congregation that they’re not important. Move the quarterly meeting instead.
  5. If you have a different preacher at a second service because you can’t manage the time to develop 2 separate sermons in a single week (i.e., reason #7 above), there is a very real danger of separation within the body of the church as people decide they like one preacher over the other. Don’t let this happen.
  6. If your definition of seeker-friendly means reaching the unchurched, be aware that the unchurched, by definition, may have no idea of your church’s expectations of their behavior. So they may think it’s reasonable to smoke or drink coffee during the service – after all, they do at home and you told them you wanted them to ‘feel at home’. Or they may come down to the front when the band is playing – they do when they go to a concert; or talk or use the phone, just as they do when they’re out at a restaurant or the mall. Or they could start asking questions in the middle of the sermon – what a great opportunity! Don’t get upset and blow that chance.

Tomorrow: Part 5: Final thoughts and some further reading.

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Getting to the Second Church Service (part 3)

June 16th, 2011 by swggy

Here is the third of a five-part series on getting your church to the second service…

On the timing and style (part B)

I should note at some point that, whilst I’m listing these as if they’re separate reasons for splitting, these options are certainly not mutually exclusive. For instance, you may be starting a second service because your church is close to capacity, but you’ve decided to make the second service appeal more to younger people by giving it a harder rock theme. Or you’re going to a second service which will combine liturgy and hymns. It’s all good if it’s been planned out well.

Here’s the continuation from yesterday’s list:

  1. If you’re going for a seeker-friendlyservice:
    1. the sermon will be radically different, since you’re trying to reach people who don’t know terms such as ‘saved’, ‘grace’ and certainly ‘propitiation’, and who think ‘washed in the blood’ is probably a quote from a cult horror movie.
    2. Perhaps half the time, the research and even the outlines can be the same, but the examples, presentation styles and rehearsals will always be different, so plan on adding at least 5 hours to preparation in those cases. There are many times, however, that a seeker needs milk but a Christian needs meat – and just as you must protect the seeker service from technical talk, you must protect your mature Christians from baby talk. Two different stages need two different messages.
      The seeker needs to hear Paul:

      8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9not a result of works, so that no one may boast.— Ephesians 2:8-9

      The mature Christian needs to hear James:

      17So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.— James 2:17
    3. Better, perhaps, to have two preachers – the problem is, if you’re going from one service to two, chances are your church currently only has one preacher. And you can’t just use a long-term member who is enthusiastic – preaching to the unchurched takes more knowledge, wisdom, insight and compassion, not less. The unchurched have stayed away because of hurt, or resentment at the way they perceive God has treated them, or through fear of getting drawn into some cult-like activity, or for any number of other reasons. And they haven’t been trained yet to not ask questions (that was gentle sarcasm, folks!), so their questions will be wonderful, big sweeping gulps for knowledge. Great opportunities that demand insight and Godly wisdom.
    4. If your regular preacher isn’t preaching this week,either the alternate preacher needs to be aware of the need for two very different sermons, or you need to bring in two alternate preachers.
    5. The worship music should focus around relevant popular culture hits rather than clever Christian rhymes. Now’s your chance to hear “Stairway to Heaven”, “I Wanna be Inside your Heaven” and “We are the Champions” in church.
    6. There will be 2 projection schedules to load.
    7. Also be aware that Seeker-friendly services are no longer considered to be very effective as an outreach ministry (this from Dan Kimball, who did it for a long time – read Emerging Worship 1 ).
    8. Lastly to this point: Do you have a plan for moving people from the Seeker Service to the Christian service as they are saved, so they can continue their growth effectively? It doesn’t have to be (and probably shouldn’t be) the next week, but soon after their conversion they will begin the drive to get some solid meat.
  2. There are definitely those in the congregation who would prefer to hear more preaching and go deeper, even at the expense of less music. The trend in the large and fastest-growing evangelical churches is to move to 40+ minute sermons – Pete Wilson at Crosspoint, Craig Groeschel at LifeChurch, Perry Noble at NewSpring, Mark Batterson at National CC. A good communicator can make 40 minutes seem like 10 (just as a bad one can make 10 minutes seem like 40!); a good message deserves the additional time, and a good preacher can use this additional time to excellent effect. But longer sermons are only justified if the extra time taken actually addsto the message, and that demands a lot of extra effort from the preacher. Pete Wilson says he sets aside 20+ hours of preparation every week; doubtless the others do likewise. (Emerson Eggericks said it used to take him 30 hours.) There aren’t too many changes from 1 above on this one, actually:
    1. Prepare the long sermon and figure how to halve it effectively.
    2. If your regular preacher isn’t preaching this week, the alternate preacher needs to prepare the 40-minute sermon plus a 20-25-minute stripped-down version.
    3. The music leader decides which songs to cut – singing 2 to 3 instead of 6 to 7. There is an alternative here: there’s no law that says your service must be an hour. You could leave the music alone and have a service that runs for 80 minutes instead. And if this service is all about going deeper, that may be exactly what you need.
    4. The music leader needs to load 2 projection schedules.
  3. There is a movement around these days (reading in the evangelical pastors’ blogs) to build late weekend services (i.e., Sunday night) or mid-week services. A lot of people work late on Saturday nights or have to work on Sunday mornings – waitresses, police jobs, health workers who don’t have the luxury of a weekend off. Some single parents want to get their children to church but the child is with the other parent over the weekend. Holding a service on a Sunday evening or mid-week is a real plus for these people. Issues:
    1. Is this going to be a full-blown service or just an afterthought? If the former, then you need to develop a full team to support the service: greeters, ushers, music teams, a/v team, preaching team, coffee.
    2. Schedule time for the janitor to clean up before & afterwards.
    3. If you make the sermon & music different, some people will come to both. If you have only one preacher this may not be a viable option.
  4. For those people who find the current time inconvenient or impossible: same as #1 above.
  5. Split to encourage growth: Same as #1 above.
  6. Develop a concert-style service. This is a very different approach, primarily for outreach and youth development – this isn’t an opportunity for learning, rather for emotional connection. As an outreach method vaguely connected to a worship service though, it has its merits.
    1. This definitely needs to move off Sunday morning – indeed, its nature would suggest night-time. Some good opportunities for distinctive lighting in that case.
    2. As with #7 above, you’ll have to provide a full-service team if it’s to succeed – greeters/welcomers, janitorial support to clean up afterwards, etc.
    3. Since this is essentially outreach, refreshments will also be a definite requirement, along with the providers and servers of same. And as an outreach, make sure you have enough trained workers to meet with, talk with and pray with/for the people who are given the opportunity to come to Christ.
    4. The music team will bear the brunt of the work, and it may be too much to ask a team to come up with concert-level music week after week. Perhaps this should be schedule on the first week of each month instead – at least until the team has built up a rehearsed base from which to work.

Tomorrow: Part 4: Cautionary psychological considerations of this change.

Footnotes:

  1. Dan Kimball, David Crowder, Sally Morgenthaler. Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations. Paperback. Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2004 ↩
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Getting to the Second Church Service (part 2)

June 15th, 2011 by swggy

Here is the second of a five-part series on getting your church to the second service…

On the timing and style (part A)

From the administrative perspective, these are the 2 key areas that must be understood and conquered. Of course, for reasons #1, #7, #8 & #9, the only concern is timing (the numbering is based on the table in yesterday’s part 1). Even that can be non-trivial.

Here are my thoughts on each area:

  1. If you’re splitting for capacityreasons, you’re probably going to have the second service stay on Sunday mornings – after all, that time’s working well for you. If you’re moving off Sunday mornings, then you’re in reason #7. The capacity reason is a great problem to have, since it means that – with all those extra people – you will have no shortage of helping hands as teams expand.
    1. Add a parking lot team, at least at first. With two services, you’ve got traffic flowing in and out – children are at risk, especially during the early days of the second service. As they come racing out of church, they are so used to cars only leaving the parking area that they don’t think to look out for cars coming in.
    2. Recruit more greeters. This shouldn’t be hard if you have buy-in from the church – and is even easier if you’re pushing capacity.
    3. Formalize a team of ushers. Besides nudging people in at the beginning of each service, manning the doors during the service, taking the headcount and serving communion when asked, their job needs to include nudging laggards out after the first service and cleaning the sanctuary (collecting bulletins, papers, pens, crayons, coffee cups, etc.,) between services.
    4. If you have one, the a/v team will need to do double duty. Minor changes may be needed to the way the projection schedule is run. If you post your services or just your sermons for the web or for shut-ins, either record both services/sermons and use the better, or just plan to record the first (which allows you a second chance if it failed).
    5. The music team will have to do double duty, and some may feel they don’t want to be ‘on’ twice. They may also feel that, since they were ‘on’ during the first service, someone else should minister to them this time. You could have 2 teams, but that means that (a) you have to schedule two sets of rehearsals, and (b) teams are up twice on as many weekends.
    6. The sermon will be the same.
    7. Children’s Sunday school should be during only one of the services, so the teachers can go to the other service. (If you have teachers that come to teach but don’t stay for the service, move them out of teaching fast! A teacher that doesn’t love worship is neither communicating nor modeling Truth.) This means that parents will either want to go to that service and drive straight off with their kids, or use SS as a babysitting time while they go have breakfast – which in turn will mean you have children in the other service.
    8. 4 choices for Adult Sunday school: (i) With the Sunday school service, so parents can go to it – that will deplete the adults during that service. (ii) With the opposite service, which will deter parents from staying through both. (iii) At a separate time so anyone can go to it, or (iv) have it both times, which means the Adult Sunday school teacher doesn’t go to the service – not really acceptable for long-haul teachers.
    9. Nursery volunteers will have to be doubled, or else you only have nursery during one service (probably the same as the Sunday school, since the same parents are often involved).
    10. Coffee services will have to be before and between services in the lobby, and possibly after the second service.
    11. Consider the need to have the custodian there to handle sudden crisis-level mess between services. Statistically, blocked toilets and child hurlage will increase as attendance increases.
    12. Hold celebratory events (confirmation cake, etc.) between services, which means that confirmations, baptisms, et al usually happen during the earlier service.
  2. If you’re wanting to reach out to a younger crowd looking for harder rockmusic during their worship, and you keep it on Sunday morning, everything will be the same as (1) above, except:
    1. Probably minor: Recognize that there are some people who actively dislike the noise and rhythm of rock, and won’t even want to be in the same building when it’s going on. There is a segment of the population, mostly older folks, who associate rock music with defiant, aggressive and destructive behavior – after all, those are its roots, and the older folks were there at the time. That may put a damper on people who would otherwise serve during that service – greeters, ushers, SS, nursery, ABF, and coffee servers.
    2. Will the sound travel far enough to disturb any neighbors close by?
    3. The music team will probably be made up of very different people. How many on your contemporary worship music team would be up to leading rock worship? If too few, this may be a time for others to step up. I would anticipate that you’ll need a second team each week, alternating weeks. You’ll also need to schedule 2 sets of rehearsals. That’s not impossible, but my church benefits greatly from having an early Sunday rehearsal – is that still possible with 2 sets of rehearsals? If you move the service off Sunday morning, this may no longer be an issue.
    4. There will be 2 projection schedules to load.
    5. With a different congregation and different expectations, you may want to make minor adjustments to the sermon, but probably not significant ones.
  3. Going for the hymnswhen you’re currently having a contemporary service can move in 2 directions:
    1. Either drop the music team for the new service and have a single song leader with a good pianist. This would simplify a lot about the second service preparation; less rehearsal, no conflict. Chances are your church has a couple of pianists capable of doing this – one of them is sure to be available regardless of who’s in the music team in the other service. (Also, pay the preacher the courtesy of letting him choose the hymns, rather than the song leader or pianist. That way the hymns link more tightly to the sermon.)
    2. Alternately, add 3 or 4 hymns to the music team’s practice (which for many churches already contains at least 1 hymn each week). This will add considerable work to the music leader and the team, but you’ll have a bigger presence to the music.
    3. The music leader will need to load 2 projection schedules.
  4. For those who are looking for a more liturgical service, a few different thoughts:
    1. When you’re catering to the people who like liturgy: their approach to the worship service is radically different – modern vs. post-modern. Their connection to God comes through the duty, discipline and sacrifice of worship rather than the emotional intimacy of the post-modern service. They are looking for structure they can count on. No moving things around. If you usually have 1 song in the front, they won’t like suddenly having 4.
    2. They’ll want to start and end on time.
    3. This also means they’re looking for the old forms, such as the Apostle’s Creed, a prayer of confession and the Lord’s Prayer all printed in the bulletin; possibly a processional, certainly an invocation and a sung benediction.
    4. They’ll want a bulletin that always reads the same way.
    5. So add some preparation time during the week for the preacher to choose the hymns, the readings and the prayers for the bulletin.
    6. Also, add a couple of hours to the church secretary’s schedule to type and print the bulletins.
    7. The sermon in a liturgical service tends to be around 15 minutes max.
    8. If your regular preacher isn’t preaching this week, the alternate preacher needs to prepare the regular 20-25 minute sermon plus a 15-minute stripped-down version. Having both the same means that one group is going to leave that day feeling they don’t count as much – remember, ultimately YOU’RE the one responsible for initiating the different services!
    9. You can have either hymns or contemporary music as long as you do it consistently.
    10. The projection schedule will be very different, but because the liturgical service is always the same, a standard template can easily be tweaked each week by the music leader or the hymn-chooser, whichever.

Tomorrow: the second half of “Timing and style details”.

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Getting to the Second Church Service (part 1)

June 14th, 2011 by swggy

When does a church move from one to two services? Is your sanctuary getting crowded? Are you feeling a drive to open up to other types of people, or to serve in a different way?

Before anything else, though, let’s ask this question: What will your commitment be to this new service? Will the service be dropped if it’s inconvenient? For instance, if you usually move your current service earlier during the summer, as most churches with a single service do, will you drop the new one so you can shift the ‘main’ service into its time slot? Or if you choose a new style of service and it seems to be limping and taking too much effort for too few people, will you drop it and give up? Or drop it and try something else?

The question that determines your level of commitment is: Why are you doing this? If God has truly inspired you to go this route, you will carry on through thick and thin. One service will have a lower attendance than the other, but you’ll give equal priority to both, and make sure they both are done excellently. If it’s just something that seems a good idea, then when the going gets tough – and it will get tough – you’ll give up. Unless you’re going to a second service because of an overwhelmingly obvious need – such as rapid growth leading to overcrowding, or an influx of new people in the area (like the great immigration waves of Irish and Italians into NYC during the 1800s) – then the chances of success are low. Unless you have the inspiration: the vision.

Vision must come first. Once vision is clear to the leaders and shared with the congregation, then you can begin to strategize. Not until the strategy is laid out publicly do actions like this have the chance of success they deserve – when the congregation sees organized Godly purpose, commitment, determination and drive behind the initiative. Prior to sharing vision and the ensuing strategy, the congregation will see this and other endeavors as just another random act – a flash in the pan – and not really buy into it.

This is the first of a five-part series on getting to the second service…

On the reason why:

There are a number of reasons for your church adding a second service. The obvious one – I’ll call this reason

  • #1 – is that the church is getting too full.

The rule of thumb here is to begin planning as you approach 75% of the seating capacity if you have pews. With chairs, it’s a slightly different issue: families like to keep at least one seat between them unless they’re close friends. So if you have long rows of chairs, and/or you have a high proportion of singles in your church, that means a lot of empty chairs that people don’t like to move to. Further, people don’t like to sit in the front rows or in the middle seats of a row – they prefer sitting on the aisle. (Less embarrassing if they need a bathroom run, I guess!) We’re very protective of our space our Western culture.

If you’re not being driven by capacity issues, are you being driven by outreach? This would mean that you have a definite target group in mind. What is that group? Is it the people who want a different worship style? For instance, if you have a contemporary worship format in your current service, are you looking to reach:

  • #2 - people who want rock during worship?
  • #3 - people who want traditional hymn-based worship?
  • #4 - people who want a more liturgical worship?
  • #5 - people who need a ‘seeker-sensitive’ service?

Let’s state the obvious: the vast majority of the people who are there today are present because they like the current style. There will certainly have been some who left because of the style, but only because whatever brought them and kept them in the first place had stopped. Style wasn’t the predominant factor for them.

  • #6 - of course, there are also some people who want to go deeper – trade off the rest of the service to get to a 45-minute sermon à la LifeChurch.tv, etc. – you’ve certainly heard from a few of them in the past.

Or is it for people who want a different worship opportunity?:

  • #7 - people who can’t make Sunday mornings because they work or because the kids are with the other parent over the weekend;
  • #8 - people who don’t like the time at which the current service is being held.

In this case, those people aren’t anywhere close to a majority today either, and this will be a long haul.

Finally, the only other reason I can think of is

  • #9 – adding a service just to try something new or on the off-chance it might result in growth, and my reading indicates that adding a second service has rarely worked to drive growth in and of itself, even in a large church – it is, if anything, divisive. It will drastically reduce the numbers at the primary service, possibly below the point where the service is effective in the eyes of those left behind.

There is a 10th possibility – although it’s not a service in the regular sense of the word:

  • #10 – a ‘service’ in the form of a concert.

No. Description Timing Preaching Music
1 Capacity Same Same
2 Style-rock Prob some evening Same 2nd team
3 Style-hymns Same Pianist
4 Style-liturgy Shorter sermon Same or pianist
5 Style-seeker 2 sermons 2nd team
6 Style-deeper Longer sermon Same (fewer songs)
7 Mid-weekend bad Move off Sat & Sun am Same Same
8 Current time bad Same Same
9 Split to grow Same Same
10 Concert Move off Sun am None 2nd team

Tomorrow: the first half of “Timing and style details”, in which we go into requirements for these 10 reasons.td

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Church Multiplication Conference Notes 3

July 9th, 2010 by swggy

Pete Wilson

Pete’s job – teaching, vision & discipling the other pastors. Pages of notes here about Crosspoint’s experiences (‘MS’ stands for Multisite; ‘CP’ for campus pastor.):

Regarding the campus plant:

  • A launch team is essential
  • Launch takes a massive amount of work
  • Missions are a great way to bring multiple campuses together to help cement connections in the whole church
  • Crosspoint has 4 ‘Serving Saturdays’ each year
  • MS makes any DNA problems more evident
  • MS appears to demand matrixed management, but it doesn’t work very well (something that’s become very obvious in the business world).
  • MS has the advantage of making a congregation become less building-centric (cool insight).
  • Launched new campuses with mailers, but word of mouth has always proven most effective. Not too much with Twitter/FB. Social media good for communication and assimilation; not so much for growth.
  • Target is to have campuses self-supporting within 1 year
  • Also give an offering to churches that are planted nearby

Regarding the CP, he must be exactly the right fit:

  • same as the lead pastor except for the preaching – Crosspoint’s CPs report to Pete and Jenni Catron (the executive pastor) and meet twice each week.
  • Qualifications: heart, commitment to the DNA, be a strong leader, strong communicator.
  • Top passions: leadership and spiritual development.
  • Every campus sees the CP as their pastor rather than Pete.

Regarding video teaching:

  • Video teaching is working well – used to be a 1-week delay, now down to same day (actually about 10 minutes, and could be pulled down to a 2-minute delay if they chose).
  • There are 2 backup messages ready if needed.
  • Regarding the switch to video teaching –
    • it was hard to stop looking at the people locally and focus on the camera, and
    • gets feedback from the CPs about the video teaching.

Regarding the week’s schedule:

  • Mondays: every visitor gets a handwritten card; volunteers get a card as well.
  • Tuesdays: meeting day
  • Wed/Thu CPs do counseling, visitation, meet with volunteers & staff

My takeaways here:

  1. The way Pete talks about it sometimes, you might think that Crosspoint is a well-oiled machine that everyone else is running, and he’s just a figurehead wandering around. But it’s clear that he does an incredible amount of work behind the scenes. Until recently, for instance, every new person coming to the church got a handwritten note of welcome from him – as the church growth rocketed upward, that alone was a huge amount of work.
  2. Choosing the right people and investing them with the right vision is evidently an essential constituent of the growth – almost as vital as consistently great teaching and an environment of fellowship.

A wonderful talk to listen to – hard to miss the excitement he feels for the church and it’s people.

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Church Multiplication Conference Notes 2

July 8th, 2010 by swggy

What follows is the summary of the 15 pages of notes I took at the conference, speaker by speaker. Each of these men were encouragers; some were better atuned to the listeners than others, but I certainly got some tremendous help from each of them.

(‘MS’ stands for MULTISITE; ‘CP’ for campus pastor.)

Terry Broadwater

Director of the Chi Alpha Network

  • Go where the people are.
  • Lead the elders through a study of Acts – what should we be doing? Where should we be going?
  • We must raise up and release a generation of church planters
  • We should be people like Philip, who left the Jerusalem church and traveled to the desert, overtaking the lost eunuch in his search for Life.
  • David’s attitude and praise in 2 Sam 6 – an example of NT worship in the OT
  • Accountability is relational now, not legislated.

The question coming out of Terry’s talk for me is – are your elders or deacons so connected to the pastor that they want to spend time with him? … are they personal friends? … have they bought into the vision he has been given? Or are they ignoring or resisting what he’s trying to do? The founding pastor of a church plant gets to choose the elders, and they generally follow his vision and lead. When the founder leaves for whatever reason, the elders look for the replacement – and from that point on there’s always the concern that he’s bringing in change that they don’t agree with and that wasn’t part of the original pastor’s vision. After all, if they’re hiring him, then he reports to them, right? So there’s often an expectation that he should do the things they want the way they want.

But people and culture inevitably change, and so God’s desire and path for the church will change; can the elders grasp that if they haven’t had formal training? In general I think they can, but a real spirit of unity and humility must be present. Further, there must be a joy in the yoke. I think the proof of that is – do the elders enjoy doing things with the pastor (cookouts and hang times just for the lead team), or do they only get together at official meetings? If the latter, I’m pretty sure the church is in trouble.

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Church Multiplication Conference Notes 1

July 8th, 2010 by swggy

Just back from a great 2 1/2 days in DC at the Church Multiplication Network. Got Josh to drop by a couple of times each day to keep Biff company (thanks, Josh), and we conned a couple of folks in the small group to get us to the train station and pick us up on the return (thanks, Mike & Frank!). Naturally we had a heat-wave for traveling – over 100F in DC Monday through Wednesday – so that made lugging bags extra fun. Waiting in the sun on the platform for the Amtrak Vermonter that was 50 minutes late was a treat too.

Apart from the heat, though, this was an incredible trip. The Assemblies of God (http://AG.org) had laid the church planting conference on for free. I caught wind of it from Twitter, since I follow some of the presenters, and Pastor Ryan & I managed to sign up relatively early. (Some good responsiveness and follow-up from the AG staff during the leadup to the conference – thanks to Debbie Armstrong & Nicolle Rockenbaugh)

As it happens, there are a number of interesting events intersecting for us on this topic – first is the conference itself, of course; secondly the fact that we have just started a series called GOING – something very missional to encourage a more personal level of ministry and outreach. I’ll be taking the sermon “Mission (to the Promised Land)” based on Joshua’s invasion on 7/18 and then doing the follow-up to VBS on 8/1 (“Tidy to messy”) – pastor Ryan is covering the other 5 weeks. The third of these events is an elder meeting next week where Pastor Ryan is sharing God’s vision for Praise Christian Fellowship’s church growth.

So the timing of this was great for us. We’re also thinking of going to the Sticks conference (Nov 9-10) and considering a Grand Tour of a number of the churches whose blogs and pastors’ blogs we’re tracking – Mark Batterson at NCC, Pete Wilson at Crosspoint, Greg & Geoff Surratt at Seacoast, Dave & Jon Ferguson at CCC, Shaun King at Courageous Church and Andy Stanley at North Point and one or two others. It’ll be interesting to see how many we could fit into a weekend. Sadly we’ll not make it to Zak White at Revolution Church.

The other vital accomplishment during this trip was to get Ryan hooked on Doctor Who. All right-thinking men should be, so we watched the episodes written by Steven Moffett – one of the two best writers of current production TV (the other is Bob Larby, but you knew that).

More notes to come…

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Notes on this Morning’s Service

June 20th, 2010 by swggy

  • Pastor Ryan was away today in Minnesota for our denomination’s biennial convention. He’s on the technology panel there, and he’s visiting a multi-site church as well.
  • The new coffee continues to be a hit. There is a dedicated crew that comes in around 8am to get it ready by 9am – a real gift!
  • Worship music was great as always – Chris added in a new song, “Every Move I Make” – at the request of a couple of children. It has a chorus with NA NA NA repeated about 20 times, but we lived.
  • I preached on Fatherhood (see my previous blog, ” Message: A Father’s Heart”), as the last of our series on “Love in New England”. I think it would be a breeze to build outlines for preaching on Fatherhood every week for a couple of months! There was so much I had to cut out.
  • The Elders have joined the service during May & June, taking turns to pray – this is the last week of that, but I hope they continue. Phil’s prayer today spoke to children (and me!) powerfully.
  • Attendance was lighter, as usual during the summer, but at the beginning it looked non-existent. Folks trickled in during the first 15 minutes and we wound up with a goodly crowd by the time we got to the sermon.
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Message: A Father’s Heart

June 20th, 2010 by swggy

Here are the supporting Scriptures from the message on ‘A Father’s Heart’, June 20, 2010. The audio message will be posted here: A Father’s Heart

… and the slides are here:

[gview file="http://blog.gwilt.org/faith/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/FatherHeart1.ppt"]

Further readings on ‘A Father’s Heart’:

Want to know what your teenage kids are up against? This is an eye-opener:

… and here’s another …

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