He had a handout.

• There have been thousands of churches started and hundreds are becoming mega-churches.
• However, only about 40% of people say they go to church. Down 9% from 1991.
• Research states that about 1/2 as many people who say they go actually go.
• Most of the people coming to our churches are from other churches!
• “In the past 15 years the church in America has spent 500 billion dollars on domestic ministry and for it has shown no appreciable growth.“
• Jesus came for the lost, not for the righteous.
• Who cares if you start a church? It has to be reaching lost people.

How do we create evangelistic DNA in a new church?

• Has to start with having evangelistic DNA in the planter. If it’s not in the planter, it won’t be in the church.
• It’s powerful to have evangelistic metaphors and stories.
• You need to be willing to make the sacrifice it takes.

Practical principles to make Sunday mornings truly evangelistic:

• Unfold people’s arms. They are saying: “prove that you’re different as a church”. So? Prove it.
• Wear their shoes. Put yourself in their shoes: What are they feeling? Thinking? Saying? Looking for? What do they smell? What do they hear?
• Treat your visitors at church like you would treat visitors at your home for dinner. There are things you don’t do when you have guests over. There are things that you do when you have guests over. There are also things that you will still do, but you would explain to guests. Use the same principles in your church.
• Check your influences.
  • 1) God and Scripture should be the primary influence.
  • 2) Check your theological issues.
  • 3) Your influences can be: Starbucks, Disney, MTV, etc.
  • 4) Don’t limit your influences to churches.
• Use their culture. Connect it in branding, connect it within your sermon, connect it in order of service.
• Don’t use Christian/church culture. Your assumptions will create your crowd.
• Authenticity is priceless.
• The Joe Dimaggio principle: run and play hard for the kid in the stands at his first baseball game.

The Final Question:

• Are you willing to sacrifice to be part of a church that reaches lost people?

Good, practical stuff from Vince.

Wow. If you’ve never heard Chandler, I’m sorry. You need to get his podcast yesterday. He basically challenged us to be men, strong leaders, and to talk to Jesus more than we talk about Jesus. Download his session. Awesome.

Great stuff here.

• We have to be prophets and stewards of vision. (Amos 3:7)
• We get our vision from God, not the internet.
  
• We then have to communicate our vision.
  •  Often. Vision leaks.
• After communicating it, we have to protect the vision.
  • How? By confronting people. By saying no. By giving people permission to leave.
  • Who do we want to leave?
    • Consumer Christians
    • Spiritual Mavericks
    • Mission Hijackers
• We must not care what other people think, and instead be an audience of one.
• Why? We are called.

Short, but ever so sweet. I needed to hear that talk.

Notes from the “positive” blogger .

• If you learn something from an experience, it’s not a failure.
• God is infinitely creative.
• We are immune to, but surrounded by, God’s creativity.
• We are the pinnacle of God’s creativity.
• The more we become like the Creator, the more creative we should become
• Our sense of humor is really a stewardship issue. As is our artistic skills, language skills, and everything else that comes from the right brain.
• God never ceases laughing at us: we’re always doing something funny. But at the same time, His heart never stops breaking. That’s how infinite He is.
• The church should be the most creative place on the planet.
• 5 Keys to Creativity
  • Keep Learning.
    • There will be Eureka moments as we keep learning.
    • Never lose a holy curiosity.
    • Every -ology is a branch of theology.
    • Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
  • Exegete Culture
    • We must have contextual intelligence.
    • Be a student of culture (1 Chronicles 12:32).
  • Brand Sermons
    • Seven Steps to Brand a Sermon Series
  • Disrupt Your Routines
    • Change of pace+Change of place=Change of Perspective
    • When a routine becomes routine, change it.
    • Good leaders confuse people. Say what?
  • Keep Experimenting
    • We need more churches because there are more people. We need many types of churches because there are many types of people.
    • Everything is an experiment.
    • Don’t be afraid to fail.

If you’ve been following Batterson a while, you won’t see much new, but it’s still powerful because it isn’t reality in most of our churches yet.

• People have an innate need to be saved.
• Believers have to be multiplied in order for churches to multiply.
• The proof text for Acts 1:8 is Acts 16:6-10
  • COME
    • We are sent just as Jesus was: in the flesh.
    • John 3:16 leads to John 20:21
    • Church planting is normal in the New Testament
    • Don’t plant with just a vision for the church, but plant with a vision for the people as well.
    • The how you plant is determined by the who, when, and where of your community.
    • Go into your community not someone else’s! Don’t have community lust.
    • Plant the Gospel. This leads to a church, which leads to change.
    • Plant in your culture, not someone else’s culture.
    • We’ve got to bring Christ, not just the Church.
  • HELP
    • It’s all about Jesus.
      • Start with the Gospel.
      • The bloody cross and empty tomb must stay.
      • Read God Who Sends (Dubose).
    • Being Missional Must Provide Help of the Gospel
      • Too often we’re sympathetic with culture, and we’re just identifying with it, not changing it.
    • Be Like Jesus, Do Church, and Tell the Gospel.
    • Relevance is a tool, the Gospel is the goal. Not the other way around.
    • How do we often express a loss of confidence in the gospel?
      • Personal transformation, not gospel transformation, becomes our goal.
      • Sermons are so practical they neglect the Gospel.
      • We are practical more than Biblical.
      • Outreach demeans others that preach the Gospel.
      • When you are the hero, not Jesus.
      • Personal evangelism is an oxymoron.
      • Invest and invite doesn’t lead to evangelism.
      • Attendance is a greater value than conversion.
      • The cross is lesser than the church.
      • Not offending seekers has higher priority than the cross.
    • US
      • Lost people matter to God.
      • Go therefore and make disciples….of lost people.

Great stuff from Stetzer as usual.

Speaker: Darrin Patrick
Topic: Think Team

• If you don’t have a team, church planting will kill you. Unfortunately, having the wrong team will kill us as well.
• The first thing wrong in the world (aside from Monday [look it up]) was Adam not having a team.
• Think about your team.
• There’s nothing like a team, but team is overrated. The greatest resource (aside from the Spirit) in the church is the lead pastor.
• Everyone imitates the lead pastor. Team is overrated if the lead pastor is not Biblically qualified, appropriately gifted and divinely motivated. The voice of God has to drown out all other voices.
• The follower of Christ is simultaneously just and sinful. That’s who we are.
• What’s fueling our leadership? The main problem in the Christian life: we don’t preach the Gospel to ourselves.
• The lead pastor/elder has to be qualified according to 1 Timothy 3. The character of the leader is the same as the character of the team. The team derives its character from the lead elder. An elder literally “oversees” the church.
  • Above Reproach: A junk drawer term for everything that doesn’t fit the other categories.
  • Husband of one wife: A one-woman man, devoted with eyes/heart/sex-life. It’s too tempting for someone else.
  • Sober-Minded: Temperate. Period.
  • Self-Controlled: You are you, and no-one else.
  • Respectable: Life is stable and not chaotic.
  • Hospitable: You love strangers. You know lost people. You have friends and relationships outside of the church. Most church planters don’t know lost people.
  • Able to teach: You must be able to bring it. Good teachers attract great leaders. Not everyone can be rock-star communicators. Just preach.
  • Not a Drunkard: Not addicted to anything. Meditation produces maturity.
  • Not Violent but Gentle: The key to ministry is to have thick skin and a soft heart. Gentle means to not always have your way. You occasionally have to yield to others.
  • Not quarrelsome: Stop arguing. Don’t be the devil’s advocate.
  • Not a lover of money: Don’t be tempted by it.
  • Manage your household: If you can’t lead your home, you can’t lead the church. Great pastors can still be terrible husbands and terrible fathers.
  • Not a recent convert: Be careful if new/young: get older people to mentor.
  • Reputable to outsiders:If your church disappeared, would anyone care? The church doesn’t need any more Bible teachers/lazy pastors/ego-driven pastors. The church needs more suffering pastors who say “imitate me”, as Paul did in 1 Corinthians 4.
• The team is also underrated.
• Jesus chose a team. Mark 3.
  • Jesus was on the mountain: He was with His Father. Nothing replaces time with God.
  • Do you have a good gut? We need to listen to our wives. They are smarter, more discerning, and usually more godly. When do we get stupid? Where does our discernment drop? In what situations? Are we wowed by theology? By talent? By age difference? By ethnicity?
  • Build with who you have. There are people who are scaffolding: they help build for a time, but then are removed. Find people you like. Find people who are fruitful. Who do we desire to be on our team? We’re looking for elders and deacons. Familiarize yourself with the personality tests. Study Myers-Briggs. Study DISC. Have interns. Have accountability. Have systems and structures. Have a culture of community.
  • We want to believe the best about one another, and wade through the worst.
  • Hire slowly, fire quickly.
  • Make celebration normal.
  • Give people freedom to fail.
  • Remember the team members have lives.
  • No one will ever care about the church more than you.
  • Ministry is not about getting stuff done. It’s about getting people done.
    
  • People see through being used for ministry. We have to use ministry for people.
• Bottom Line: Create an environment where people can make it. But that doesn’t mean they will make it.

Speaker: Ed Stetzer

Topic: Trends in Church Planting

This is where Ed Stetzer presents missional research goodness. You can download the entire powerpoint and presentation here: Missional Research. I will highlight things here that are not in the powerpoint.

• 200 million Americans don’t know Christ; 120 million are ‘unchurched’.
• Typical church plant attendance is low: around 50. We have to keep our expectations realistic.
• 4yr Survivability = 68%. 4yr Survivability in 1988 = 67%. Improvement? Nope.
• Stan Wood has done some mainline research, and Todd Hunter has done interesting stuff with church ‘pathology’/autopsy reports on why church plants fail. I’m looking them up soon.

Good stuff as usual from Stetzer.

Speakers: Brad Abare with Drew Goodmanson

Topic: Get the Word Out!: Church Plant Marketing

Notes:

• Be who you are, not who you’re not. 
• Church plants have found that their website is by far the most effective in marketing.
• Remember your message, method, and mission as far as your website: what are you telling, how are you telling it, and why are you telling it?
• 5 Essential Criteria for the Next Generation
  
  • Experience
  • Transparency
  • Reinvention
  • Expression
  • Creativity
• Americans aged 13-24 now spend more time online than in front of the TV, and nearly 50 million Americans create internet content.
• Soma case study: has social networking built into their site. Is this a good or bad thing? Depends on its implementation, but if it drives people to the local church and into community, it’s a great thing.
  
• The audience is always right!
  
  • When people move, a church’s website has to be the first filter to find a church. No matter how great the church is, they are passed by when the website sucks.

• During studies, 80% of users go to a search engine first.
• Communication without repetition is noise. Communication without repetition is noise. Communication without repetition is noise.
• Use blogs, syndication, API, email to your advantage!
• Use your gut to guide!
• Read Malcolm Gladwell’s books! (Blink and The Tipping Point)
• Be Remarkable. (Seth Godin)

Following that, a short video was played that showed that Jesus wasn’t a Christian, He only called people to follow Him. Wayne Cordeiro started us off with the theme, dissecting the first part of Acts 1:8, “You will receive power”. The theme was “spirit-led”.  Here are my notes:

• The world is crying out for genuine people and authenticity!
• In order to achieve authenticity, there is one profound thing that is simple, yet necessary.
• Don’t substitute largeness for depth.
• We have to remember that although we can teach what we know, we will always reproduce what we are.
• As the leaders of the church in the coming century, we have to realize that with great privilege comes great responsibility.
• As church planters, we often get arrogant and prideful, and yet when we start the work, we don’t have what it takes to finish. That is, wisdom.
• People don’t come to Christ because of lights and bands.
• We don’t know the tests that are to come that are stumbling blocks to people coming to know Christ, but the Holy Spirit does.
• How do we get wisdom?
  • Personal experience. Yes we learn from experience, but we don’t have that much time, or leeway in making mistakes.
  • Others’ experience. A single book full of experience and insight is priceless; yet God, in His infinite wisdom, has given us 66 books of experience and insight, raw and unedited. (Psalm 119:98-101)
• The Spirit is concerned with our root, which determines how permanent our fruit is/becomes.
• Our root is this: daily time in the Word with God.
• The Holy Spirit, at His bottom line, is our divine mentor, constantly with us daily, guiding us through our daily decisions.
• We have to hear the heart and voice of the Master, not just one hour a week on Sunday am, but an hour daily.
• One of the greatest things that Wayne did at New Hope was to teach the people to feed themselves at home.
• But how, practically?
  • Have a study time including a Bible, a dedicated place, a pen, a journal, and a daily planner (to keep distractions minimal.
  • The method Wayne uses in journaling is S.O.A.P.
    • Scripture: Write the key Scripture down.
    • Observation: Write down what the Spirit has brought out in the Scripture to you.
    • Application: How can you put it into practice now?
    • Prayer: Write a prayer including the observation and application for the Spirit to aid you in.
• With no roots, we rot.
• And remember this: our individual time with the Spirit provides our genuineness, so don’t mimic, just tap into the same source: the Spirit-guided Word.

Great stuff from Hawaii. More in the future, of course!