Church Planting Keeps Christianity Alive

[By Audrey Barrick - Christian Post Reporter]

Church planting is hard, many pastors would say. But it's where much of the church growth is happening in America at a time when most churches are dying.

"Two-thirds of all churches in America are plateaued and declining," said Pastor Rick Warren after speaking Thursday to thousands of church planters at the Exponential Conference in Orlando, "and if it weren't for the growth that's taking place in church plants and megachurches, Christianity would be declining."

Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., says the growth in church plants and megachurches has helped keep the Christian population in the United States from dropping.

His comments come as the latest statistics from the Southern Baptist Convention, of which his church is a part of, show baptisms have dropped for the third straight year in 2007 and total membership dipped. Some say membership has plateaued and is on a trend toward decline unless change happens within the 16-million member denomination. Southern Baptists are now being seen as one among many major Protestant groups that are declining.

News of the denomination's decline was released during the April 21-24 Exponential Conference where over 2,700 church planters and leaders attended to analyze the DNA of successful reproducing churches. The annual conference has been touted as the "mother of all church planting conferences"

Today, church planting has reached an all-time high with approximately 4,000 new churches planted every year in the United States, according to the "State of Church Planting USA" study. Church plants are also starting out with larger crowds with hundreds joining the first worship service, and the survival and success rate of church plants is at 68 percent.

One of the biggest trends in church planting today is the multiple venue church, or the multi-site church. The idea is that one church meets in multiple locations which are fed video satellite preaching from the main church campus.

Dave Ferguson, pastor of Community Christian Church, is expanding outreach and already transitioning from a multi-site church to a "poly-site" church – reproducing different kinds of campuses to reach different kinds of people – where the mission becomes the priority rather than just reproducing the same church, he said.

While some believe the large church trend will soon die out, Warren says the next generation of churches is going to be even bigger.

"They're going to be far larger than the boomer generation of churches because they're not limited to one campus anymore," he said in an interview featured on the Exponential Conference Web site.

Warren's Saddleback has planted over 40 independent "daughter churches" in Southern California and it recently launched a multi-site initiative with a goal of 10 campuses by the year 2010. According to Saddleback's multi-site church blog, its new campuses in Corona and Irvine drew 490 and nearly 2,000 attendants, respectively, to the first service.

"Reproduction is the mark of health," Warren commented.

Meanwhile, Alan Hirsch, co-founder of Shapevine and the founding director of Forge Mission Training Network which focuses on developing missional leaders in western contexts, believes church plants in America need to adopt a more missionary stance.

"I think here in America, I think church planting is still very bonded to church growth methodology and ideas," Australian-born Hirsch said in an interview featured on MondayMorningInsight, a Web site for pastors and church leaders.

"It (America) hasn't really thought through ... the nature of the church as a mission agency. We simply have to adopt a missionary stance in relationship to our culture," he continued. "We've got to break the monopoly that church growth thinking has over our mindset. Because unless we do that we'll never become a truly missionary agency."

The Exponential Conference featured other well-known speakers, including Tim Keller, founding and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian; Ed Stetzer, former church planter and director of Lifeway Research; and Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church.

Church Shooting

[By Malcomb Daniels -- The Birmingham News]

An Hispanic man of about 45 years of age was shot and killed today during an argument in the parking lot of a St. Clair County Alabama church.

The man, whose identity is unknown, was shot multiple times in the parking lot of church on Pinedale Road in Ashville, Alabama according to St. Clair County Coroner Dennis Russell. He was pronounced dead at 4:20 p.m.

The man was shot during an argument with someone who lived in the area, Russell said. The dispute started after the homicide victim ran off the road and hit some mailboxes, Russell said.
Church was not in service at the time.

United Methodists Continue In Decline

United Methodists, at their General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, are being urged to reverse the denomination's decades-long decline in membership.

Lyn Powell, a church lay leader from Georgia, told delegates the United Methodist Church has been bleeding membership for years. "The United Methodist Church in the U.S. lost 55,000 members last year, 70,000 the year before that, [and] 60,000 the year before that. In fact, we have lost membership every year since the 1970s," Powell contends.

Meanwhile, transgender Methodists at the conference held a news conference seeking broader acceptance. Among them was Drew Phoenix, who pastors St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore. Phoenix was a woman named Ann Gordon before she had a sex-change operation.

Some analysts believe the reason for the declining membership is the abandonment of scriptural teaching on sin within the United Methodist Church.

Mart Green Attempts To Balance ORU Budget

Layoffs and other budget cuts are possible for debt-ridden Oral Roberts University, as the tiny evangelical school looks to regroup from several financial scandals and keep enrollment from sliding further, the school's trustees chairman said.

"We can't spend more than we bring in," said Mart Green, an Oklahoma City businessman who recently donated $70 million to the school. "Let's find out where we're fat, where we're thin and make this place strong, and not just going hand to mouth year after year."

Green's comments on Friday came days after a tense faculty meeting where administrators braced professors for the possibility of job cuts as a way to make budget ends meet. Professors were also implored to persuade students thinking about transferring to return to the school in the fall.

"The message in the faculty meeting was, 'Hey, we're not on easy street just because we've got $70 million,'" said ORU interim president Ralph Fagin.

In an interview with The Associated Press, neither Green nor Fagin offered specifics on how many positions or programs might get the ax, but said the school is exploring all options as it reviews each department, a process that could take several years.

Already struggling to keep enrollment numbers up, ORU was rocked by a financial scandal last fall that led to the resignation of Richard Roberts, who had been school president since 1993. He left amid accusations of misspending school funds to bankroll a lavish lifestyle at a time when the school was more than $50 million in debt. He has denied wrongdoing. In the past eight years, the school has lost 500 students, and projected enrollment for the fall 2008 semester could be 150 students fewer than the 3,166 who attended last fall, Fagin said.

Even with Green's donation, the school is $25 million in debt and has deferred maintenance costs between $50 million and $60 million. Green, founder of Mardel, a Christian bookstore and office supply chain, declined to comment on the status of several lawsuits the school still faces in the wake of the scandal from former professors, students and a former accountant.

The two professors, Tim and Paulita Brooker, whose Oct. 2 lawsuit claims they were forced out after alleging financial and ethical wrongdoing on the part of Richard Roberts and his family, have asked the school for $2.5 million to settle. Attorneys for the professors and the school declined to comment this week on any potential negotiations, citing a judge's gag order. "We're doing the best we can to go through the legal process," Green said. "Let the legal process take its course."

Rick Warren Video Interview

CLICK HERE to watch an awesome new video interview with Pastor Rick Warren on the subject of discipleship, church planting, and other pastor secrets.

How Long Is Your Church Service?

The results are in! The average church service/experience time is 78.74 minutes. With an average range from range from 65 minutes (NV/PA) to 150 minutes (AK/Brazil/FL).

The shortest service/experience time was 55 minutes in MO with a three-way tie for the longest in AK, FL, and Brazil at 150 minutes.

Click on the graphic to see how each state’s average compares!

Protection Program Helps Keep Children Safe In Church

A Christian media ministry with a passion to keep children safe from sexual abuse released a new resource that will help churches and ministries properly screen, train and oversee the people who work with children.

Since the 1980s, when a surge of child sexual abuse cases in churches surfaced, allegations of abuse by clergy have decreased, yet allegations of abuse by church lay leaders and volunteers have risen sharply. Last year, more than 300 incidents were reported within church or ministry organizations, and in half of these cases the perpetrator was a volunteer or paid staff member. The reason? Many child sex offenders seek out welcoming environments where there is easy access to minors.

According to Richard Hammar, church law expert and the legal counsel for the national headquarters of the Assemblies of God, "Many churches and faith-based youth organizations still fail to implement proper screening processes for their workers and adequate training of staff and volunteers before placing them in service with minors."

Christianity Today International developed an all-new, DVD-based training kit: "Reducing the Risk: Keeping Your Ministry Safe from Child Sexual Abuse." This is the third edition of the "Reducing the Risk" series, which started 15 years ago. Its release coincides with National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

The latest version of "Reducing the Risk" features DVD training for churches, complete with real-life stories from a victim and a convicted sex offender; a roundtable discussion with leading national experts; "what would you do" scenarios; and teaching from Richard Hammar.

The kit also offers a leader's guide, trainee workbooks, screening forms, and records files. Together, these tools enable churches to immediately implement a program that effectively trains ministry leaders and build the systems and procedures needed to make churches safe havens for children.

For more information about "Reducing the Risk" and keeping children safe from sexual predators, see http://ReducingtheRisk.com/.

[Christian Newswire]

Thousands Commit To Church Planting

This was the closing moment at Exponential 08. It was awesome as thousands of leaders came forward committing to start new churches/sites or committing the new church they are starting to God.

In this pic Rick Warren (seated on the stage) is praying for all these new church planters and reproducing church leaders asking God's blessing on their efforts. What you see here has the potential to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches!

"Vision" by Andy Stanley

[Here are Vince Antonucci's notes on another of the sessions at the Exponential Conference. Andy Stanley is brilliant and makes everything seem so ridiculously simple...]

Vision = Mental picture of what could be, fueled by passion of what should be. Vision begins as a burden, What’s clear in here must become clear out there – or people won’t know how to follow us.

5 Things To Do:

1. State it simply
- Memorable is portable
- We suffer from the curse of knowledge
- People don’t ask stupid questions, they’re just letting us know how poorly we’ve communicated the vision.
- Northpointe’s Vision: “Create a church that unchurched people love to attend.”

2. Cast it convincingly
- Define the problem (If people don’t feel weight of problem they won’t be excited about the vision).
- Offer the solution (Your vision is the solution to a problem.)
- Explain why and why now (Why now in this community?)

3. Repeat it regularly
- Discover the rhythm of your church
- Build vision casting into the rhythm

4. Celebrate constantly
- Problem with vision – no pictures going somewhere that only exists in my head.
- So when we get “pictures” – hold them up – celebrate the win.
- Stories do more to clarify vision than anything else.
- Don’t miss opportunities to showcase examples

5. Embrace it personally (and publicly)
- Share with staff and church when you invite someone, what happened this week in your small group, etc.
- Don’t miss opportunities to showcase examples.

Only 15% of Pastors Consider Missionary Outreach A Top Priority

Leaders of the Church of God Theological Seminary and World Missions teamed up this week to celebrate the annual Seminary Missions Week, turning the spotlight on the missions calling of the church.

"Our work is cut out for us," said Bill George, coordinator of education for World Missions. "A recent national survey of pastors indicated that only 15 percent of them considered missionary outreach to be one of the top priorities of the church. We believe the Bible gives it much higher precedence."

The weeklong observance, planned by Dr. Grant McClung of the seminary faculty and a committee from the school and the missions office, included a panel discussion in the Tuesday chapel service, a luncheon on Wednesday, and a preaching event in chapel Thursday. Displays depicting missions ministries remained up near the chapel throughout the week.

Roland Vaughan, general director of World Missions, spoke in the Thursday chapel on the subject, "Finishing the Great Commission." He told students and faculty that it now seems possible within the coming few years to ensure that the message of the gospel will have reached all people throughout the world. This would not have been doable until now, but advances in technology and people movement have made it possible, he said.

The Tuesday panel explored the dimensions of the church's mission and included a focus on local church outreach and foreign missions activity. Panelists were Carl Caffrey, pastor of evangelism and discipleship at Westmore Church of God; Kirk Walters, pastor of missions and discipleship at Mount Paran North church in Marietta, Georgia; Brenda Hughes of the Bradley Initiative for Church and Community; and Dan Howell of the Center for Spiritual Renewal.

A special missions project was the collection of books for a Bible institute in Mongolia. Two June graduates, Bayarjargal Gombosuren and his wife, Mendbayar Nansandorj, will return to their home country and set up the new training school.

Dr. Steven Land, president, hosted a luncheon of seminary and missions leaders and students from other countries who are studying at the school. "Our partnership with World Missions helps us keep a focus on the importance of having a world vision," he told the participants.

[Source: Church of God World Missions]

How Do You Build A Reproducing Church

1. Never stop growing personally.
- all leaders are learners.
- the vision of the church will never exceed the vision of the pastor.
- you can delegate a lot of things. But, you cannot delegate faith in Jesus.
- Most of us have polaroid vision. The longer you look at it, the more clear it gets.
- God’s will is not a giant map, its a scroll. As you read a little, God unfurls a little more of His view for you.
- How do you build significant growth for 28 years? Solid, steady discipleship.
- God builds a mushroom in 6 hours. He builds a solid oak tree over decades.
- its easy to get a crowd. A crowd is not a church.
- Integrity, humility, and generosity are the antidote to the traps of leadership.

2. You’ve got to pay attention to your family.
- Don’t be like Solomon who while tending other vineyards, left his own unattended.
- Take a day off. Take a sabbath. In fact, don’t call it a day off, call it a sabbath.
- Don’t read email. Don’t answer the phone.
- Don’t pay attention to the critics or to the compliments. Focus on what Jesus says about you.

3. Develop a Kingdom mindset.
- God’s agenda is bigger than your denomination, your network, your agenda.
- The competition is not other churches. Its other recreation, stuff, and things.
- What is God’s agenda? It is the Kingdom of God.
- “The Kingdom of God is like….”
- Where is the Kingdom of God? Summarized is wherever Jesus Christ is (in heaven, on earth, in your heart).
- The Kingdom of God is eternal, inevitible
- Everytime the disciples wanted to talk about prophecy, Jesus changed the subject and began to talk about evangelism.

4. Focus on building people, not the church.
- In the first year of the church, the pastor is the glue. But your job is to wean people off of you.
- On the last Sunday of the first year, I stood up to preach and fainted. I had my midlife crisis when I was 26. Depressed and afraid.
- You have to have a system of incremental movement taking people to maturity.
- Why do people sit around in churches for decades and never mature? Because simply preaching doesn’t get it done.

MY PRAYER FOR YOU: Acts 13:36

The methods of the church must change with every generation.
For too long, the church has had no hands and feet … just a big mouth.

[From Rick Warren during a session at Exponential Conference - National New Church Conference]

IPHC Warns of False Prophets

[By Ethan Cole - Christian Post Reporter]

The International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC), a 108-year-old traditional Pentecostal denomination with about 4.2 million members in 95 countries, states its commitment to the Word and the leadership of the Holy Spirit in its 21-page “Apostolic Biblical Statement and Practical Guidelines.”

“God is moving in these days with an emphasis on the apostolic anointing and the prophetic,” said Presiding Bishop James D. Leggett, in a statement. “The Apostolic Position Paper recognizes and provides for the exercising of apostolic leadership. Yet it gives a word of caution about false prophets. The balanced approach is good for the church today.”

The document covers three levels of the apostolic: Jesus Christ, the foremost apostle; the twelve apostles, the foundational apostles; and functional apostles, who functioned both in the scriptures and in the church today.

The role of apostles is to “plant the gospel in every culture worldwide” and to do it on the “base built by Jesus Christ, the foremost Apostle, and His foundational apostles,” the document stated.
“We recognize the ministry of functional apostles and bishops in church history as having a close resemblance,” the paper read. “We also recognize that false apostles appeared in the apostolic church as well as in the church history, and that we must remain alert to the continuing danger of these emissaries of Satan.”

Pentecostalism is one of the fastest growing segments of global Christianity with at least 500 million adherents worldwide. But along with its successful growth has come problems of false teachers who vow miraculous healing, promises of pending fortune in exchange for church donations that are used for their own personal wealth.

Many mainline Christian leaders in Africa have denounced false prophets who claim to be anointed Pentecostal preachers.

In the section titled, “Recognizing True and False Apostles,” the document states that there are false apostles, or people who are not appointed by God but rather “carnal men [who] usurped the role for their own glory.”

To distinguish true and false apostles, the document gave a list of characteristics of a true apostle that includes: ministers with total faithfulness to the writings and teachings of the foundational apostles; accept personal responsibility for the Lord’s Great Commission, even at great cost to themselves; continue to serve even when no one confers on them a title or recognizes their role; and are free from the love of money.

“The Apostolic Position Paper presents a sound Biblical foundation for both the historical and present day Apostolic Ministry,” said Rev. Ed Wood, Chairman of the Apostolic Commission. “The paper is the result of the International Pentecostal Holiness seeking to be Biblically based in its position regarding the current apostolic movement.”

In 2005, the denomination's General Executive Board, at the request of the General Conference delegates, commissioned seven denominational scholars and theologians to conduct a biblical/historical study of the role of apostle in the church today. The board also invited a representative from each of the denomination's 28 regional offices to participate.

The document was presented to the General Board of Administration, the highest governing body between General Conference sessions, and approved by the board on Oct. 30, 2007, with minor changes.

The document also includes practical guidelines for apostolic ministries and other current theological issues in the IPHC.

IPHC is a charter member of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Pentecostal World Conference, and was instrumental in creating the Pentecostal & Charismatic Churches of North America.

Southern Baptists Are Now In Decline

For now, Southern Baptists are a denomination in decline. Experts believe it is a local church issue.

Baptisms are at their lowest levels since 1970 with seven of the last eight years showing annual declines. Even though some might hope the decline in membership numbers is due to lack of reporting, the inescapable conclusion is that baptisms by individual churches is falling off. (LifeWay Research will provide more analysis next month.)

Some might say it’s "only one year," and they would be technically right. But, briefly dwell on the top of the above graph. Reality is, they have peaked.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Researchers believe three issues are involved:

First, that they have to deal with the continued loss of SBC leaders. They have witnessed a serious (and increasing) depopulation of young leaders at the convention. Also, ethnic leadership remains absent after decades of ethnic change in America. Vacant seats still exist at the SBC table for the ethnic and generational diversity that matches the America they are attempting to reach. The departure by the future leaders of the convention has led to fewer church plants, missionaries, and energetic pastors to lead their faltering churches. They must retain these leaders not because they need them for their churches. They need them to reach the lost whom their churches have yet to touch.

A second issue is the infighting which defines so much of the SBC—its meetings, its churches, and its blogs. It is public knowledge that they do not always settle their differences amicably. The national caricature once again colors many local scenes where First, Second, and even Third Baptist Churches exist in one town because of past infighting. Satan has used their incessant bickering over non-essentials to promote his last great mission on earth—to keep lost people lost.

People simply do not want to hear what they have to say when they can't speak kindly to one another. If the focus of every SBC meeting is a new controversy to be debated, new parameters to be narrowed, and new issues to be fought, the trend toward decline will only accelerate.

The third, and most important, issue is the loss of focus on the Gospel. They must recover a gospel centrality and cooperate in proclaiming that gospel locally and globally. David Dockery and Timothy George pointed the way with their helpful booklet, Building Bridges. They called for a unity around the Gospel, and the time grows increasingly urgent.

The Conservative Resurgence failed to produce a Great Commission Resurgence. It restored the denomination’s value of Scripture but application is often absent, at least in the area of evangelism.

We Need Strong Local Churches Healthy Enough To Plant Churches

[From MMI Weblog by Todd Rhoades]

Ed Stetzer was first up at the Exponential Conference. Ed talked about some of the new research they have done at Lifeway on Church Planting churches. It was a very informational session. I jotted down just a few notes about the session that you might find interesting...

- If you are a church planter who is not interested in planting churches, they you are a dead end on the great commission pipeline.

- When your church is planted, your church is ready to plant.

- Church planting is the greatest thing your church can do for evangelism.

- Training is more important that finances when planting churches.

- Do your church’s official documents mention church planting? Is church planting in your church’s DNA?

- Does your church regularly send people out to help start and/or support new churches?


We have plenty of church planters … what we need now are tons more churches who are willing to help these planters plant churches.

Revival

REVIVAL

Evangelist Don Brock

Wednesday - Thursday - Friday
April 23-25, 2008

7:00 PM Nightly

Mentone Church of God of Prophecy
Highway 117 Across From The Post Office
Mentone, Alabama