Category: Church Planting

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What If We Joined Boats?

What if you joined our boat? Or, someone else’s boat and their crew?

While speaking at Azusa Pacific University’s chapel, Francis Chan shared that he and his family are moving to Asia, this year, to become missionaries. He said, in part:“I feel like I’ve been fishing in the same pond my whole life and now there’s, like, thousands of other fishermen at the same pond, and our lines are getting tangled and everyone’s fighting over stupid things. One guy tries some new lure and catches a fish, and we’re like, ‘he caught a fish, let’s all try his method,’ and it just feels like, what are we all doing here?”

For Francis, he feels led to go to Asia where there aren’t so many “fishermen” to share the gospel with the people in that region. I commend him for his obedience to the Great Commission, in this way. 

When I heard Francis Chan’s message, my immediate thought was, “Why not join efforts?” This might be because I have long believed that we have too many churches (yes, I know I started one), and many of those churches could and should join together. That’s why I was not shy about asking Dayspring if they were interested in merging with New Passion, and whether or not we would be “Better Together?”And, we found that we are better together. Dayspring wasn’t the first church I had talked about merging with, and it surely won’t be the last.

Together, now one family (New Passion Church), we share the same mission to lead people to become passionate followers of Jesus.

Dayspring won’t be the last church we’ll merge with because our heart is to help the local church be as effective as possible in leading people to become passionate followers of Jesus.

Francis Chan is right about many areas in the United States. There are a lot of fishermen fishing in the same ponds and in many cases their lines are getting tangled. Everyone sees the other as ‘competition’ and that shouldn’t be the case. We are family. Let’s be honest, it’s even more difficult for smaller, struggling churches. Especially when they are limited in finances, people, leaders, and facilities. It limits what ministry they can do, effectively. It’s more difficult when the ministry load is dependent on a smaller group of people who have to do everything. You can’t afford staff or quality leaders to help facilitate change and growth. Eventually, it leads to burnout and people depart for a boat they can rest on, without having to be the sole responsible person for their specific ministry. The already small, struggling church shrinks even more, until eventually it just barely exists or it has to fold.

Some churches have declined so bad they only have their life-long core group, & can’t even afford to hire a pastor.

What’s the silver bullet to change that? What’s the solution that will finally get the church over that hump, and keep it there? What’s the answer?

Some churches seek that silver bullet for years and never find it.

What if we were to untangle our lines and join our fishing crews? Our lines could be focused in specific directions to effectively catch fish, without overlapping each other. The weight of the mission wouldn’t be on just a handful of fishermen. And, there would be more resources to work with.

I am fully aware that not every church can be joined together successfully, but that shouldn’t be an excuse not to try, or to have a conversation.

I’m not the only one who believes this way. Just the other day, Eric Mason was advocating for more urban churches in Philadelphia to join forces.

I’ll tell you the biggest reasons why many churches won’t entertain this idea. Pride and Ego. It may mean having to admit failure. It may mean changing positions on the boat. It may mean giving up power. It may require giving up tradition. It may mean change. But, what could happen, if we didn’t allow pride to decide for God what He could do, when His people decide to work together for a greater purpose than the name on our boat?

If you would like to join New Passion’s boat, we would love to talk to you. But, just as importantly, if you and another church decide you want to join forces together, to become more effective, New Passion’s team would love to help assist you in that process, or to help orchestrate that process, as we have had a very successful merge with Dayspring. It’s not about New Passion Church, so however we can help you, we are willing to try.

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Creating a Great Church, Together (Part 1)

Old Church

Over the next several weeks, I am going to share some thoughts and challenges on how we can create a great church, together, at New Passion. I hope you’ll tune in each week.

The first step to creating a great church is to ARRIVE EARLY.

Notice, I didn’t say arrive on time. Typically, if we aim to arrive “on time” we set ourselves up to arrive late, especially if we face traffic issues or other complications along the way. It may seem elementary to ask people to arrive early, but here are some reasons why it’s important:

1. Glory not Guilt: We don’t aim to just be on time with anything of importance. When I go to Athens to see the Dawgs play, I don’t aim to just arrive on time. I want to get into the stadium, find my seat, go to the bathroom, purchase refreshments and be ready for the kickoff. I’m excited to be there and I don’t want to miss anything.  If I aim to just get there on time, something can happen and cause me to miss a portion of the game. When Nicki and I recently went to see Expendables 3, we didn’t aim to just arrive on time, just as we don’t with any other movie. If we arrive in the theater as the movie is starting that means we’ve missed the previews, we’re going to end up in a horrible seat and once again, something could happen to make us late and we’d miss a portion of the movie. There’s no way I’m missing a second of Stallone on the big screen! I like to get to the theater, get my seat, go to the restroom, and catch all of the previews for upcoming movies. I am sure some of us try to arrive just on time to work, but some like to get in the building, get settled and clock-in without having to rush, risking a late clock-in….that could eventually cost you your job.

I don’t say these things to make you feel guilty. I have found guilt is a poor motivator. I can motivate with guilt until that guilt wears off and then the old behavior returns. I challenge you to arrive early for God’s GLORY. If we arrive early to those things that we value, that we’ve invested in, and that we don’t want to miss, why would we want to give God anything less than what we have given our favorite sports team? Regal Theaters? Or, your place of employment? Paul said, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV) I don’t want to miss anything that we do on Sundays at New Passion. I don’t want to give God less than I give my job, my favorite teams, or my favorite actor; none of those people or things provided my salvation like God did through Jesus. One of the ways that we create a great church, together, is by arriving early. God is not glorified when we are slack, he is glorified when we give him our best and give him our all. David said, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory….” (Psalm 115:1 ESV)

2.For the Community of Faith, not Yourself: It would be easy to share all of the benefits that you gain by committing to arrive to church early, but to be straight forward with you, as Christians we are not called to live our lives for ourselves, but rather we are called to do good to our faith community. Rick Warren opened his famous book, The Purpose Driven Life, with this life-altering statement, “It’s not about you!” Paul said, “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

“Everyone”: It’s disheartening to guests and to new families, who have only been to New Passion a few times to look around and see an empty auditorium when the service starts. By being early, you have the opportunity to be in your seat when the service starts, but you also have the opportunity to connect with those new guests and families when they’re sitting in seats all alone. This is just one way that we have the opportunity to do good to everyone, simply by arriving to church early.

“Household of Faith”: Our band works hard to provide a service that is uplifting to our hearts as we sing and worship our Savior and God, together. The band has a weekly practice where they take time out of their personal schedules to rehears the Sunday set list and learn new songs; they arrive early (7am) on Sundays to set up the stage, the tech booth and to rehearse the songs before the service starts (10:30am). The band does this to provide quality music during that portion of our worship service…and if you ask me, they do an amazing job. HOWEVER, it is extremely difficult to sing and lead worship to an empty room or a room with just guests, who don’t know the songs we sing and therefore stand silently. By arriving to church early, you have the opportunity to be there with the first strum of Jonothan’s guitar, you get to help fill the room with worship, as your voice fills the air, you get to help make guests feel comfortable in a full room and you make it easier on the band to actually have people to lead and sing with. You arriving early and participating is vitally important to the worship service. The band is not there to sing FOR us, they are there to lead us, so they can sing WITH us.

Another way you do good to the household of faith, by arriving early, is that you enable other people to enjoy the entire service. If you arrive at 10:30 (when church starts), or even at 10:35, the Guest Services team does not have the liberty to go into the auditorium because 1) we want everyone to receive a warm welcome, but 2) if you have children, they will need assistance getting checked in. By arriving early, you serve your church family by helping them get ministered to through the music portion of our service.

One final way that you do good to the household of faith, by arriving early, is that you do not cause disruptions to the PassionKidz environments, or to the adult service. It can be a major disruption when a large number of people are dropping children off in the Grove and the Ridge, after they have already started, as well it causes disruptions to the adults when a large number of people are walking in late and looking for seats.

If we want guests to be excited about what’s happening at New Passion, that excitement has to first flow through and be seen in us. Let’s work together to create an environment that is God glorifying, where we do good towards our community and the household of faith.

Let’s make a commitment, together, to arrive early and be in place to start the service powerfully each week! Instead of thinking of church starting at 10:30 a.m., think of it starting at 10 a.m., after all, each of us are the church, so “church” begins as soon as you walk through the door.

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Only God Can Get the Glory

I hate preparing a budget. It’s not fun at all. Especially when you have to look at the reality of how much it costs to run a church and the reality of how much money actually comes in to the church; and then there’s the balancing act of budget requests. I never really liked it when I was younger when my dad would tell me that money “doesn’t just grow on trees.” I’ve not only come to realize that as an individual trying to provide for a family, I’ve definitely learned it as a pastor. I could add to my dad’s statement that “God doesn’t just put money in the bank account either, even though its his church.”

I met with our CFO last night and as I was preparing for our meeting I was listing our income versus expenses for the last quarter, laying out some of the things we need to purchase right away, some of the things it would be nice to have right away, and of course the new budget for the second quarter of 2011 (we do a quarterly budget right now since everything is so fluid as a church plant). I was almost tempted to get depressed by what we didn’t have and how little we do have, but in the midst of looking at actual numbers, I was excited and thankful. We are not rich by any means, but we are still breathing and we have what we need to operate and to do a little extra as we need to. See, it wasn’t always this way…

It was only about 22 months ago when things were quite depressing although I made sure to put my happy face on. I wouldn’t recommend starting a church the way I did unless you are absolutely 100% SURE you are called to do it. Most experts will tell you to raise $125,000 or more to do it right, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. At this point I had asked three friends to be as stupid as me and help me launch  the church, two friends couldn’t do it, and the other, Billy Wilson, agreed to launch with me as New Passion’s Mission’s Director. We absolutely had no money. The only money we had was our tithe and the pastor at the church where we were members recommended that I start tithing to New Passion. We had no choice, we had to.

A friend who pastor’s a house church sent me a message and wanted to meet with me. He said that their church wanted to help us, but because they were only a small group of around 8 people and had little money themselves, they could only offer us a loan of $5,000 which would have no due date, no interest, we would just pay them 10% of whatever we brought in the offering every month. We had no money, no building or location to meet, no equipment, we had a CFO outside the church, Billy Wilson and his family was the only leader who had committed, and we had only one other family who was praying about jumping on-board, and I wanted to borrow $5,000. Do you know what you can do with $5,000? A lot with God. I don’t think any of them thought it was a GREAT idea, but they knew we didn’t have too many other options, so they gave me the good ‘ol ‘whatever you think pastor‘ commitment and we signed the papers.

I think I came to the realization at that moment and it has been my personal slogan and motto ever since that “God was going to build New Passion in such a way that only He can get the glory!” Which honestly should be the story of any church. Let me put this into a little bit of perspective though. Between our church logo (one of the first things we bought), our trailer, our first community, “Hey where coming to the area come join us” event, and our mix-matched sound system over $3,800 of that loan was spent. Here’s a few more notes of interest:

  • We launched with a team of 35, oh yeah half of those were children and they can’t serve.
  • When we secured a location, it was an Elementary School, the school board just doubled their rates, we were looking at a lease of $1,740 on a four week month and $2,100 for a five week month.
  • We didn’t have a worship leader until one month before we launched. I asked five other leaders who didn’t work out.
  • We had no other churches partner with us. We had two churches give us $1,000 each and tell us they were praying for us, the spiritual definition of that means, “Good Luck!” 🙂
  • We did have some individuals give us one time gifts while one friend gave us a re-occurring gift for 6 months.
  • We finally (right before we launched) got $5,000 in start-up funds from the GA Baptist Convention.
  • By the way…Our Church Planting “Coach” left mid-way through our launch process, so we really had no help or guidance in the last couple of months of our launch.
  • All said and done, we launched New Passion with $15,000; $5,000 of which was a loan (oh yeah…and a lot of PVC).
  • Jonothan Powell and his family came on-board as our Worship Leader in August and we launched in September. One of the first things he asked to see was what we had for sound. I showed him our $800 investment, his immediate response was a giggle and a reply, “So, how much money do we have?” We used that sound equipment for a couple of months or more until Jonothan sold his personal motorcycle and used the money to buy a very nice sound board and two very nice speakers.

We were also fortunate to have received a phone call from a guy who I had only talked with a couple of times on the phone and connected with through the internet. His church had some equipment they were not going to be using for a while, so they loaned it to us (cafe items, lights, children’s stuff, etc). This was huge because we couldn’t afford any of it.

I can go on and on and on and tell story after story of small and big risks we took and how we shouldn’t even be breathing as a church. If it were up to the belief others had in us, we’d be dead. However, there is only one thing I have had to cling to over the last 18+ months, this is what I know God called me to do.

Sure we aren’t running thousands of people. This isn’t an Elevation story. This is the story of New Passion in Grovetown, Georgia that has about 15,000 residents. We’ve seen God take a team of 35, most of which have gone back to their own churches, and turned it into a weekly average of around 110 (including children), he took a group of nine people $5,000 in debt to a church that is averaging approximately $6,000 per month in giving (which could literally be doubled if more people would embrace Biblical Giving). We’ve already been able to send more financial support to two churches each, one in Baltimore, MD and the other in Surfside Beach, SC, than we received total from any other church to help us. Most importantly, we’re seeing lives changed by the gospel

God is literally building this church in such a way that only he can get the glory. There is still a lot of stuff we cannot do as a church, but we will be able to in God’s timing. I have nothing to complain about, I can only stand amazed at what God has done in 18 short months.

Happy 18 months New Passion. May God continue to always receive the glory from our church.

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Velocity 2010 Session and Breakout Notes

velocity-buttonVelocity 2010 Church Planting Conference

Mountain Lake Church was not able to ramp up their bandwidth for the WIFI network in time for the Velocity 2010 Church Planters Conference. This was like a forced Blogging and Twitter fast for me, but it wasn’t a bad thing. All of my attention was on the speakers and taking old school notes 🙂

Here is a landing page for all of the notes I was able to take (now posted on my blog) for each session, except session 5, and for the Breakouts I attended, some of the notes may not make any sense to you, they probably will not make much sense to me once I go back and review some of them, because several of the speakers had in-depth studies and terms that I couldn’t record before they moved on:

Main Session 1: Shawn Lovejoy
Main Session 2: Alan Hirsch
Main Session 3: Steven Furtick
Breakout Session 2: Pete Wilson
Main Session 4: Dave Gibbons
Breakout Session 3: Tony Morgan
Main Session 6: Rick Warren

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Velocity 2010 – Rick Warren

rickwarren-buttonVelocity 2010 Church Planting Conference

Session 6 Speaker: Rick Warren

If God has called you to be a church planter, do not STEP down to do anything else…not even the President of the United States. This is the greatest calling.

1,000 Years from today, if Jesus does not come back, all Kingdoms will have fallen, but the church will still be standing.

If you can grasp that God created me to love me, I should never struggle with inferiority again.
No need for posing, masks, being cool, etc. Because God chose me.

Nothing matters more than the church.

Do All for the Global Glory of God.

The more important your job, the more humble you must be.

What the church is doing will outlast anything Bill Gates, Any Country Leader, Famous Musicians, or Famous Athlete does.

We need new churches for new generations.

Spread the major mistakes around. Challenge staff to make 1 major mistake a week J

Rick’s Rules for Church Planting:

1.    Don’t take early losses seriously – They don’t determine the outcome of your church.
-Ignore your early losses…Rome was not built in a day, neither is a church.

A mushroom takes 6 hours to build; an oak tree takes 60 years. Do you want a mushroom or an oak tree as a church?

Legitimate growth is conversion growth.

Focus on membership & discipleship, not on the crowd or the numbers.

The measure of a church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.

It’s not a sin to be a small church, it is disobedient to be a small minded church.

If you want the anointing of God in your life & his blessings; your life must be built on humility, integrity, and generosity.

These are the antidote to the three Greatest Traps of Ministry and Leadership:

The Kingdom of God needs us to FINISH WELL. It does not need us to flame out.

Satan is entirely predictable. His main 3 temptations are:

1.    Lust of the Flesh is the temptation to Feel – Anything that makes you feel good. (Hedonism) (Pleasure) [Sex]

2.    Lust of the Eyes is the temptation to Have –
(Possessions) [Salary]

3.    Pride of Life is the temptation to Be – Desire to be worshipped, envied
(Position) [Status]

(I John 2:16, 18)

Never confuse your self-worth with your net-worth

Jesus was tempted to use what was given for ministry to feed him-self.

Satan wants to tempt us to use our gifts on ourselves, verses for the ministry and what God has called us to.

Jesus was tempted to be spectacular with the gift he was given.

Satan will tempt us to be spectacular.

Glory comes from suffering, not showing off.

You don’t have to be original in everything that you do.

Church planters need to study a lot of the first 1500 years of the church for deep roots.

Jesus was tempted with things.

Satan will tempt us to develop a spirit of expectation that we deserve things because of what we’ve done.

Antidotes to these 3 Temptations:

1.    Integrity – From Integer “A unit of one” – Our life is one, we are not separated into sects, we are one.
“Titanic Trap” – – You cannot compartmentalize your life. If you try, you lack integrity.
A hole in your life is a hole in your life and it will sink
You never sin privately, you are affecting your family, your church, and others you influence.
You don’t have to be perfect to have integrity, you have to be authentic.

2.    Generosity (antidote to the lust of the eyes) –
The way you spend your money shows what you value.
The more I give the more I become like Jesus.
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
Every time you give you break the hold of materialism in your life.

3.    Humility – (antidote to
It means you don’t give yourself the title “Apostle”
If you have to have a big title you’re not humble.

Titles mean nothing, what matters is do you love people?

Don’t give in to false humility:

God created you, Jesus died for you, the Holy Spirit lives in you. You are not junk.

Humility is not denying your strengths, but being honest about your weaknesses.

We grow fastest and best through models.

It’s better to have someone following a person who is trying to do right versus someone who isn’t trying at all.

Someone who is not teachable is not humble.

Be humble or you will stumble.

Lesson from the whale – When you get to the top and get ready to blow, that’s when they harpoon you.

How do you bring people through the front door and out the back to get involved in missions? You better have an intentional process.

It’s not about looking cool, it’s about meeting needs.

If you are going to last and make it to the end…you must understand the 6 phases of faith:

When God does any miracle…he takes it through 6 phases of faith:

God…

1.    Gives a Dream

2.    Decision (choose to go after it) – Dreams are unimportant if they are not moved on.

3.    Delay – Always a delay (New Passion 3 years) – God is not a vending machine. God is more interested in the individual than the dream.

4.    Difficulty – You will face all types of problems (Critics, Lack of Resources)

5.    Dead-End – The death of a vision

6.    Deliverance – God likes to turn difficulties into possibilities; He then gets the glory, not us.

Every time we hit a dead-end, God does not want to help us, he wants to do a miracle.

I got to meet Rick Warren, one of my all time Spiritual Influences

Velocity Conference: Main Session 1 Highlights – – Main Session 2 Highlights – – Main Session 3 Highlights – – Breakout Session 2 with Pete Wilson Highlights – – Main Session 4 Highlights – – Breakout Session 3 with Tony Morgan Highlights