The Missional Network

I TOTALLY agree.  I'm gonna go back to school, get a software engineering degree, make bank, and plant gobs of churches without a penny ... LOL.  Makes you wonder sometimes the role us us religious professionals.

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For the City,
Sean

Most movements start from the margins. Christianity in America has been marginalized. We've got to stop trying to restore the Church in America to some incredible place of influence on society. We must recognize that the culture has changed and the influence of the Church has declined as attendance in our churches has declined.

Once we accept the fact that we've been marginalized - we can be freed from those "current forms" that hold us back from rapid, exponential growth.

See this post: The US Church Is Marginalized 

Certainly adversity is a factor in movements - both in the book of Acts and China and around the world! 

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DaveDV
www.missionalchallenge.blogspot.com
www.linkedin.com/in/davedevries

You nailed it on assessments - "if a guy can't connect people to Jesus, he doesn't need to be planting."

I assessed a potential planter who didn't have any non-believing friends. He only had friendships with Christians and only hung out with Christians. He failed our assessment because of this. He quit his "church" job and took intentional steps to hang out with non-Christians on their turf. Now he is attempting to start an "incarnational community" in Phoenix. He has had to radically change his behaviors.

Why are our churches so good at extracting Christians from relationships with non-Christians? This is a major obstacle to making disciples!

While I'd love to see every Christian a church planter - it won't happen without a radical change in the way we make disciples.  

See post: Extractionalism 

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DaveDV
www.missionalchallenge.blogspot.com
www.linkedin.com/in/davedevries

John,

 I didn't take the time to peruse all the responses to your post.  Having spent the last 15 years or so in church planting, I can affirm the reality that we (nationally speaking) aren't doing a great job.  I think the 1 in 5 post is inconsistent with the data, but the failure rate is fairly high, and many of the 'successful' plants are existing in survival mode rather than thriving mode.

That said, I still haven't found a more effective way to reach lost people in North America.  In fact, I've not found a close second.  So, in my opinion, we need to keep planting churches.

Now to the assessment side of things.  We use the place ministries assessment tool, but we combine it with personal interviews by experienced church planters.  I've used other tools as well, but the tool isn't as important as the interview process.  Successful planters have a couple of common traits: they tend have an apostolic gift (take the APEST test on Alan Hirsch's website if you need a tool for this); they tend to be type-A personalities, and they tend to be stubborn (they don't give up easily).  On an imformal basis, experienced church planters are usually pretty good at identifying future church planters.  In fact, this seems to be far more effective than any assessment tool I'm familiar with. 

Thanks Stan.  I appreciate your response.  We want to be faithful and responsible when supporting men who feel called to plant churches.  We have close relationships with many of those we support and we have a Greenhouse in which we help train and provide networking for them. Some are planting in distant locations though and our ability to "look them in the eye" is more difficult. We also want to help them understand what type of church they may be best suited. 

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John Walters
Calling Pastor
Grace Point Church
San Antonio, Texas

Ok, let me refocus my intentions with the "stop planting churches" comment. I don't think we should slow down "making disciples." Instead we need to speed that up. But that doesn't mean throw more resources into a strategy that is falling behind the population growth rate.

When I say things like "stop planting churches" I know that could offend some or raise the anxiety level for people that are currently planting(like me) or trying to help planters(like NAMB and others). I don't want NAMB to go away or anything like that. We need you guys! We need you to be leaders into the next era. We need for you to help us disconnect from our old wine skins and move onto the next stage of the journey that Jesus is leading us.

While I do appreciate the heart behind saying "I've not found any better method or a close second" (paraphrase) it only reflects that we keep applying the shock paddles to something I'm not sure we can keep alive. The idea that the stage of culture(pre-christian v. post christian) may guide how we try and reproduce faith communities is at least worth discussing. It feels like those questions are dismissed and we go back to the "tried and true," "a million more in '54!" I don't mean for that to be disrespectful of the faithful that have gone before us. That is my heritage also, I was saved at a Billy Graham crusade in '73, but that is not the future. Let's engage each other and agree that questions about strategy and cultural receptivity are not assessment of any past or present people or churches... except to say this - if I was continuing to do the same thing, over and over,  and expecting different results... I would beg one of you to talk to me about it and try to help me see it.

Having said all that, I am open to being wrong or needing some adjustments in my perspective. Feel free to engage that with me.

For all of you on this discussion strand, I am committed to being the last guy standing if that's what it takes. I just think we're supposed to stand together more.

This Sunday, at Mosaic(church start in Seattle), we were singing the lyrics "I will worship you till the very end," while not 10 miles away, another SBC church plant, like us, were having their very last service. We tried to help them but there was no strong relationship to an existing church. That is one of the reasons I think we should discuss a reproduction strategy as opposed to a planting strategy. Does that make sense?

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barry odom, mosaic seattle
www.whatismosaic.com
my blog: barryodom.voxtropolois.com

I believe most all want reproduction...to make disciples.  The issue we all face is how best to do that.  Traditionally it has been through the "church" as we know it.  As we face a changing society do we tweak what we are doing or just abandon what has been the prime vehicle to "reproduce" even though we all agree that we've missed the boat and focused on growing numbers more than changing lives.  As I get excited about the house church and the organic church movements, I hear my pastor and others say that these are not as successful models of reproduction in the U.S. as they are made out to be.   So I'm left to ponder, is there a "best" model of church plant for the U.S.?

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John Walters
Calling Pastor
Grace Point Church
San Antonio, Texas

Mike Fechner from Prestonwood recommended I post an answer to this thread. I am glad I found you guys.

I work with a group in Dallas called Vision360. It's a group of churches that have a heart for planting no matter what their denomination or network. A good friend of mine, Nick Boring at Kennsington in Detroit, spent a year assessing the assessment centers. Nick also is with Vision360. Here is what we do with planters and wives.

We first send them to an Online Pre-Assessment
•    www.churchplanterprofiles.com
•    $79 fee for personality, spiritual gifts, church planting abilities, personal and professional references, etc. A small price to find out how the couple is wired.

We then send a couple to one of four assessment centers depending on their location and what "tribe" they are a part of.  Here are the Vision360 approved In-Depth Personal Assessment Centers

•    TeAMerica – Green Lakes Wisconsin
•    CPAC (Church Planting Assessment Center) - led by Dr. Tom Jones
           and part of the Christian Church Restoration Movement.
•    ECC (Evangelical Covenant Church) - led by Dave Olson
•    Acts29 - led by Scott Thomas and will primarily be used by those that will plant Acts29 Churches.
 
I hope that helps!

 Brian Hook
 brian.hook@vision360.org

 

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Brian Hook
Regional Director of Vision360
www.vision360.org
brian.hook@vision360.org
214.701.9937

John,

 Distance certainly makes the 'face to face' option more difficult. Can you capitalize on networks in the areas where your planters are locating?  I'd be willing to help you assess planters in the mid-atlantic, for instance.  I realize you may be supporting planters where there are no existing churches, though.

As far as online assessment tools go, you might check out Bob Logan's assessment tool, or John Worcester's 100 Q's for potential church planters. As I said in my first reply though, I think an Apostolic calling and a driven personality are probably the most important factors.

There is no one tool that will perfectly assess a church planter and spouse.  However, I still like the Ridley assessment as used by the NAMB and the Nehemiah Project combined with the Discovery Tool.  There is tremendous flexibility in the interview process, a focus on past behavior, and the opportunity to engage each spouse directly.

Given the above, there is absolutely no replacement for spending time with a potential Church Planter and observing him/her in life situations.  I always enjoy the meals that we schedule during assessments.  The person/couple being assessed has no control over location, type of food, or menu item ordered.  The reactions range from completely missional to horrifying funny.

Finally, without a support network, even the best church planter will struggle. Even the Apostle Paul struggled when left alone and feeling abandoned.

Blessings!

Mike

I guess this all goes back to what I was trying to get at before.  Haven't we overly complicated things?  We've so narrowly defined who can plant a church and look what the results are?  Well in Arizona that means only 10-12 church plants a year for the SBC tribe and 95% of those are among white middle-class suburbanites.  That's it?  What about an explosive movement?  Exponential growth?  Heck, I have 50-100 people a day moving to Tucson and in our current mode of planting we can't even keep up with growth let alone back fill the 93% of a city of 1.1 million who "don't go to church."  We've "strategized" ourselves right out of any possibility of movements with (a) our narrow confines of who can plant of not ... type A up-front charismatic leader type who has to follow our code of morals otherwise he won't get cash, (b) we really only advocate and support funded / vocational models, (c) attractional models are the baskets were putting all of our eggs in and the result?  Sheesh ...

There's got to be something we're missing in the North American church.  This next quote troubles me more than anything else ...  "It seems that the Chinese church can manage without many current mission requirements - funding, trained experts, paid staff, social services, outreach stations, sophisticated programs and strategies, favorable social and political conditions, political influence, international support, coordinated activities and public evangelistic rallies." (p. 83 from Witness to Power)

Your thoughts? 

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For the City,
Sean

Institutions do tend to make things too complicated. It's the nature of the beast. I guess what I want to see in a guy that feels called to plant a new church is a passion in his eye ... you know that look that tells you ... "I'd love to have your partnership (money) to help us plant this church ... but with it or without it, God's called me and I'm planting a church." Churches were started across the north and west by individuals that just followed God's call ... set their "nose to the grindstone" and "Got 'er done!" It was driven by the passion to obediently follow God's call.

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bobby gilstrap

Great point Bobby!  I love to see that in planters because that's the stuff movements are born out of!

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For the City,
Sean

Ultimately we can assess the snot out of a planter with all kinds of tests, but we need to see the life of Christ in the couple, and the desire for them to not only be a disciple, but make a disciple. This is why the center of Christianity has moved to areas of the world that are not so focused on the less important factors of planting. I might be wrong, but that is what I'm seeing.

By the way, I still think assessing the snot out of a planter is a good thing.

Brian

 

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Brian Hook
Regional Director of Vision360
www.vision360.org
brian.hook@vision360.org
214.701.9937

What is missing in the church in North America?

Think about the tremendous resources that the “Church” in the United States has to bring Christ to people here and around the world.  What if the pastors and leaders of churches would not rely solely on the denomination but take responsibility and raise up church planters and help them to be successful.  What if they would have a world kingdom mentality of sending instead of small kingdom mindset of trying to keep their flock inside the walls of their own church? 

With that in mind as each mother church mentors a church planter and invests and helps them grow, I would think it is a critical step to assess the couple to see just what type of church may best suit them.  Assessing the church planter is not only about trying to assess the capability  but also the capacity of a church planter to see what type of church plant the couple may best be suited for.  In the western world we may over analyze but I think we all want to give the church planter the tools that will best help him succeed in planting a church, whatever that may look like.  

Our church supports couples in apartment ministry, a couple who is working in the inner city with an organic plant concept, couples who have the ability to plant missional/attractional churches and church plants in several countries around the world from small villages in southern Sudan to squatter camps in South Africa.   We can’t get it done by just pointing out our failures.  We must do it!

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John Walters
Calling Pastor
Grace Point Church
San Antonio, Texas