missio

After a brief hiatus, we’re back talking church planting wisdom. Up today is the guy with the weird last name, the pastor of Oak Leaf Church, Michael Lukaszewski. (Gee, wonder if he’s Polish?) Here’s some of his wisdom:

• Read books about Jesus, faith and Christianity, not just about church planting. In fact, most books about church planting will hurt you more than help you. Most people, including myself, don’t really understand half of what they are talking about.

• Look to growing churches and good churches for models, not churches that aren’t growing. Hang around with people who are doing it. Go to conferences and talk to people in the halls and the leaders of breakout sessions. You’ll learn more from conversations than from books.

• Play to your strengths. We didn’t have a worship leader on staff, which is what everybody said to get first. We hired bands and played to our other strengths and our other staff guys’ strengths.

• Don’t act like a real church, except for Sunday morning. I think one of the reasons we were able to launch large was because our sunday morning service is very good. I work very, very, very hard on it. On the message, videos, music, creative stuff, etc.

• Learn how to market and advertise. It’s not unspiritual to market a church.

To learn the lessons he’s learning on his journey, check out his “backstage blog” at Behind The Leaf. He’s also got a great personal blog, entitled You Can Know God.

Thanks, Michael! Tomorrow? It’s Philip Nation, who co-pastors Lake Ridge Church in Cumming, GA with Ed Stetzer. He’s got some great insights for us!