Church Planting the Easy Way
I just finsihed a consultation with a denomination that is considering planting some churches. I told them they had to if for no other reason than to survive (of course that should never be the reason, shouold it).
We then discussed how to do it the easy way- find four churches that will put up $15,000 a year for four years as well as allow the planter access to all of their equipment and an office. Hopefully one of the four churches is growing and can offer some guidance along the way. But in any case the planter should have as much up front equipping as possible and the conference should hire a church planter coach.
I first heard of this method from Todd Wilson at http://www.churchplantingnetwork.com/. they are the ones putting on the Exponential conference next year. By the way you can hear me there.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Many other church planters are cultivating the organic opportunities that flow from beyond their local church into the larger Church. Just as in the now age old illustration in “Spiritual Redwoods” , these leaders are networking below the surface for back office support. One might offer the support system for evangelism another for discipleship. Younglife uses this model in their “Church Partnership Model” something that I strongly support.
Perhaps a specific example is how multiple churches (or the church plants via the parent church) can share the same “Hosted CMS solution”. This type of partnership can reduce the cost to each church (well below the $10/member average cost), maintain autonomy and privacy of all data, and provide access to more program/ software solutions than otherwise might be affordable to each church.
There are other examples of this type of catalytic partnership that include fellowship, HR, accounting, missional, and software solutions. New business models are popping up across the USA to provide what independent churches have never had, and denominational offices have failed to provide satisfactorily for well over 30 years.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:29 am
I read similar article also named Church Planting the Easy Way, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me