Bad News: Santa is Coming

Ready to Hire a Mystery Worshiper?

Thursday, Christianity Today's online mag posted an article titled: "Get Thee Behind Us, The Devil's Latest Marketing Guise."

It concerned a new service called "Church Check." Church Check is the brain child of a mystery shopper company which has expanded to now provide "mystery worshipers" who you can hire to visit your church and give you feedback on how you are doing and how you can better reach your community.

Included in their pitch is this promise:
Our team of savvy professionals can secretly worship at your church, analyze it in detail, and present you with a report detailing items that are lacking. With this report, you can make changes that boost your retention rate and make your church grow. Make the adjustments our team suggests and you'll not only retain more of your first-time visitors, you'll get them talking to their friends about you.

The article's author, Mark Galli, asks this probing question about their statement:

Should churches really make it a goal to "boost your retention rate and make your church grow"? Is that not a product of other things, like faithful worship, meaningful biblical teaching, and sacrificial love for one another and the neighbor? What has happened to a church that makes "boosting your retention rate" a focus, instead of these other things?

I'm curious what your thoughts as church planters are on this.

When we enter into a church plant, what should be our goal?
How do our goals differ from that of an "established" church? Or do/should they?

Should it be to "grow"?
Should our goal to be to have a high retention rate?
How do you plant a church if these are not foci of yours?
How do you avoid compromise if they are?

It seems to me that in order to answer these questions we need to answer some more fundamental questions.

What is a church planter?
An missionary/evangelist?
A pastor?
Both?

If he is an missionary/evangelist, then should we be casting the seed and then bringing in someone after us to actually shepherd the flock that God grows?

If he is a pastor, then should we be as driven by growth as we are?

Another question that we need to wrestle with is: "what is the purpose of the church?"

I think we can all agree with Rick Warren at least in one regard- we do need to be "purpose driven."

But what, really, is the purpose of the church?
And as I ask this, I'm thinking of the institution of church- not the individuals composing a local body of believers which I believe Dr. Warren actually does. We are all called to worship, do ministry, fellowship, disciple and be discipled, and to evangelize. But is this the call of the institution of church? Clearly that call is closely related to the call of the pastor. As a believer, he is called to these five things as well, but in his role as pastor, what is his specific call?

These are some questions it seems to me that we need to do a better job wrestling with and, unless we wrestle with them, I don't see how we can possibly have any basis by which to judge whether or not to hire "Church Check."

I'd like to share some of my thoughts and I will, and I hope that you will too.
What do you think?

-Doug

Recommended Book

Memoirs of An Ordinary Pastor
The life and reflections of Tom Carson by D.A. Carson

Tim Challies of challies.com fame listed this book as his book of the year 2008 writing that it is "D.A. Carson’s tribute to his father, a pastor who labored for many years in relative obscurity. Tom Carson was an ordinary pastor, a man who struggled with depression and who saw his ministry bear visible little fruit, but he was a man who remained faithful and who served the Lord with all his heart. This is a must-read book for anyone in ministry."

I checked out the reviews at Amazon and found myself ordering it immediately despite the backlog of books I have waiting to be read.

I received it today and read the preface before I sat down and am already hooked. Here is some of what Carson writes as introduction:

"Some pastors, mightily endowed by God, are remarkable gifts to the church. They love their people, they handle Scripture well, they see many conversions, their ministries span generations, they understand their culture yet refuse to be domesticated by it, they are theologically robust and personally disciplined....

Most of us, however, serve in more modest patches. Most pastors will not regularly preach to thousands, let alone tens of thousands. They will not write influential books, they will not supervise large staffs, and they will never see more than modest growth. They will plug away at their care for the aged, at their visitation, at their counseling, at their Bible studies and preaching. Some will work with so little support that they will prepare their own bulletins. They cannot possibly discern whether the constraints of their own sphere of service owe more to the specific challenges of the local situation or to their own shortcomings. Once in a while they will cast a wistful eye on "successful" ministries. Many of them will attend conferences sponsored by the revered masters and come away with a slightly discordant combination of, on the one hand, gratitude and encouragement and, on the other, jealousy, feelings of inadequacy and guilt.

Most of us- let us be frank- are ordinary pastors.


Do you see yourself in this description? I sure do.

I'll post any especially helpful nuggets, but if you feel inclined to get the book, drop me a line and lets encourage each other as we read along together.

-Doug

What Role Should Small Groups Play?

A church planter once told me that he thought small groups were so important to the church that if his church members had to choose between Sunday morning congregational worship and the small groups, he would rather them attend the small groups.

At the time, I, along with all the other planters, agreed over the usefulness of small groups, but I thought his thinking was wrong-headed.

As I have thought more deeply upon the role of preaching and God's use of it in the conversion of sinners and the building up of the saints, I am now convinced he was wrong-headed.

I was reminded of our conversion by something Greg Gilbert (senior Pastoral Assistant at Capital Hill Baptist) wrote this past week. He was responding to some comments made about small groups and wrote this:

"Small groups should be used carefully. They shouldn't become the main point of contact for members of the church, nor should they become the main meal of grace for them. That should belong to the preached word and the ordinances. If you consistently hear more people saying that they "get a lot" out of their small groups than say that about the preached word, then you probably should rethink how your small groups are functioning in the life of your church." (full essay here).

What says you?

-Doug

P.S. Please identify yourself when you post or comment so we know who we are dialoging with- some of your login names are a little ambiguous.

Let it snow, let is snow, let it snow!

thoughts on Church Planting

This church planting thing began over 4 years ago in my heart and has flourished in ways that I really didn't expect. The Community Fellowship is 2 years old (launched January 7, 2007), and God keeps on rocking our world.

So, today's thought is really about encouraging each other to be creative, think outside the box, do something different, get some people's attention and all for the case of 'making Jesus famous'. We are all in for that. Right?

 

This past Sunday we kicked off a new series which is also our theme for 2009. LOVE MORE ... EXPECT LESS. is about doing what God called the church I serve to do. We are called to demonstrate the love of God to our community in every way possible through the gifts He has given us and through the people He sends our way. The theme verse is Romans 13:8 which says "Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another..." A new mindset to say the least has to come over many of us in the church world.

 

Another thing we were able to do this last Sunday is to 'put our money where our mouth is' by giving our people money to bless people around them. We have called this GIVE BACK. 70 people committed to pay for a meal, pay a bill or do something creative to bless a person in our community. $2,000 in all will be given. Only thing we ask of our people is that they report back what God did through them.

 

It is time to be creative. As church leaders, but mostly as God's people, we have to do everything we can to let people see and meet Jesus. These days call for us to be creative with what we have and to be successful in sharing what He has to offer. Think about it!

 

1 Corinthians 9:22 --- To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

 

Church planting is not about a new church in town. It is not about doing something different. It is not about the planter finding freedom. All those things are true, and I found them true for me. BUT Church Planting is about winning people to Jesus. Let's celebrate that fact and do more to make it happen.

 

Get creative. Encourage the people you serve to give back to those around them. It could be a hug, some food, a prayer or something else. It's Christmas. It's the season of giving ... all in the name of Jesus.

Which takes priority- public worship or private devotion?

versus



What happens when someone argues that their own private times with God are more important than the corporate gatherings that you are working so hard to pull together?

Each of us, I'm sure, have heard those who have questioned the necessity of corporate worship, thinking that it is less "spiritual" than their own private times of reading and meditation.

Well, R. Scott Clark, professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary in California, has recently written saying that a strong case can be made from Scripture that public worship is more important than private.

He writes:

"We know precious little about God's clearly revealed requirements for private piety. What we have are clearly revealed requirements, in the typological revelation about attending to the divinely appointed feasts and other corporate gatherings...In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the relation between the public and the private became reversed under the influence of pietism."

Clark argues that private practice of devotion and worship should be secondary to the public: "It is through the public reading and preaching of the Gospel that God has promised to bring his people to faith (Rom. 10). " He adds that communion and baptism are administered in public services. People are disciplined (or ought to be) for failing to attend to these public gatherings.

He continued:

"Remember, universal literacy is relatively new. Universal bible ownership is relatively new. That doesn’t mean that people couldn’t have recited passages or even whole books from memory but it means that, for much of world history, God’s people could not have had “devotions” in the way that we think of them.

Private piety and devotion is important. If we neglect private prayer and meditation on Scripture we deprive ourselves on important benefits and blessings. There is probably a correlation between private devotions and maturity but they are not the public means of grace. When it comes to piety, the private flows from the public. The latter is not the joint expression of a hundreds of private religious experiences. Whatever private religious experience we may (or may not) have our Christian life is grounded in the preaching of the Word, especially the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and public prayers in the context of public worship services."

His full article can be found here.

For more help in this area, 9 Marks (a ministry out of Capital Hill Baptist) has wonderful resources on the importance of church membership and worship.

Is Your Plant Rooted in the Bible....

...or is it rooted in something else?

Another Tim Keller video clip. He makes the point that how we do church must be grounded in theology, otherwise, it is grounded in, oftentimes, heresy. Hmmmm.

Keller Clip

Tim Keller clip from a church planting conference. His trilogy of "affinity, ability and opportunity" are helpful for discerning whether or not you, or someone else, ought to be planting a church.

Jan. 22 Meeting Location

Here is the website of the church we will be meeting in for our first regional CPN on January 22: Green Ridge Baptist

I've not heard any response on the timing. Are we still good for the 10-2 time or is there something that works better for all?

-Doug

D.A. Carson's ironic advice to the SBC

I was listening to an interview with D.A. Carson, N.T. professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (if you haven't read his book "The Cross and Christian Ministry," go get it now and devour it, it will benefit you immensely), this weekend and he was asked if he had any advice for the S.B.C.

This is his response:

"Learn again to go back to the Bible to expound the Bible as the whole counsel of God, check things according to the Bible again and again and again. I know there are some really excellent Bible teachers among SBC pastors…but I do get the impression that there is still a shockingly high number of people who still do not handle the Bible well…there is an awful lot of preaching that is cliche driven, cutesy, eviscerated of the Bible that is profoundly discouraging….there are rising movements for which we should thank God but there are other movements which are drawing significant numbers but which are of a more sociologically driven agenda."

I say that this advice is ironic simply because Southern Baptists claim to be "people of the Book." Spending a number of years in S.B.C. ministry, however, I see Carson's counsel greatly needed. Even in seminary I can't count the number of times my fellow students groaned over the awful exegesis that was being propounded by guest preachers in our weekly chapels. Do we really believe that the message behind David in Goliath is that God gives us the ability to slay the "giants in our lives" by using the three stones of ......(Fill in the blank with whatever three tools you find helpful- prayer, Scripture reading, and meditation for example). Ugh.

Unfortunately, church planters seem to be among the worst offenders in this arena. By nature, we are entrepreneural and it seems to me that we are often so focused on building a congregation that we are apt to play loosey goosey with the text to justify any means we can concieve of to meet that end. If you would ask me, I would have to say that planters are often times more pragmatists than they are biblicists.

Lets be honest. When is the last time you heard a planter grapple with the Jurassic Park question (paraphrased): "Instead of asking 'can we do it,' the right question is 'should we do it.'" My answer is "almost never." It is often assumed that the ends justify the means. But on what do we base that assumption?

And if you challenge anyone on something they are doing they pull, what I'll call, the "1 Corinthians 9 card" : "Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible...I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:19,23).

Apparently, according to the Church Planter's Exegetical Guide, this verse frees church planters up to do virtually anything to grow their churches. A plant in my town offered people $10 to visit their church. I've heard of others raffling away free cars and even promising free beer to visitors (which turned out to be rootbeer).

But is that what Paul had in mind?

What do you think?
What is Paul saying here? How far is too far- or is there such a thing?

-Doug

Should We Plant Without a Vision Statement?

Okay, to get things rolling:

For me, the guys at 9 Marks are lifesavers. They force me to think through issues such as membership, church discipline, etc. in ways others have not.

Well, not failing to disappoint, they posted this interview with Mike McKinley, a guy that they sent out as a planter (really it is a restart), about church planting with the teaser description: "Why you should plant a church without a vision statement."

Take a listen and share what you think. What do you think of McKinley's take - (I paraphrase) "I don't have a vision per se unless you mean the vision to build a church centered on the Scriptures, biblical community, and evangelism. If that is our 'vision,' that's great but I don't present it as such. It is just the description of what a church should be."

What about Matt Schumaker's comment that vision statements can be "dangerous." And Dever's statement that vision statements tend to be "selfish" and "pastor centered."

Disagree? Share.
Agree? Why?

How about Dever's comment that when he looks at church planting material that "A lot a non-essential stuff gets a lot of airtime in their material and it makes me wonder how much church planters are being taught the basic essence of what a church is."

These comments on vision, etc. all start at about 9 minutes into the interview.

Here is the interview

-Doug

The Way God Grew It

Double click the cup to read some church planting advice