Last Tuesday I started a series sharing some of what I learned while planting a church.  My top secret plan in all this is to turn the comments section of these posts into a powerful resource for planters, and potential planters… so please, share your wisdom, insight, and experiences and let’s walk through this together. Thursday I shared the first of three thoughts I had for those who are thinking about church planting: Limit Your Exposure.  Today, I [...]

On Tuesday I started a series sharing some of what I learned while planting a church.  My top secret plan in all this is to turn the comments section of these posts into a powerful resource for planters, and potential planters… so please, share your wisdom, insight, and experiences and let’s walk through this together. I don’t know that I have met a church planter who believes that they were fully prepared for what they [...]

Many of you know that I helped to plant a church in Baltimore called The Garden Community.  Planting a church was an incredible roller coaster ride, teaching me about dependence on God, effective leadership, how to care well for people of different backgrounds, and my own spiritual condition.  A friend of mine once told me that everyone should start a church at least once in their lives.  While I may not fully buy into that [...]

As we continue down the road with this missional conversation by examining our existing church structures we encounter along the was some things from the old world and wonder how they will work in the new world.   Recently a church planter friend asked me my thoughts on three things he has stumbled across.  He is working to innovate and discover new models of being the church that better empower people to live as missionaries. [...]

I spend a good bit of my time working with church planters.  At the end of my first phone call with a planter I ask them all to do the same thing: put me on their email list.  I do this because I am geeky about church plants, and love to watch what happens with them.  I enjoy getting updates on how God is moving in a church and praying for their struggles.  I greatly [...]

This week I will be in Orlando for Exponential… probably the largest gathering of church planters in the country.  I have been going to Exponential for a few years now and I enjoy the opportunity to be around thousands of church planters who are getting ready to head off and change the communities that they will be serving in. I am looking forward to connecting with a great deal of church planters, and planting resources [...]

Earlier this week I was asked what are the top five things that I think church planters need to know when it comes to church finances.  It was a great question, and after giving it some thought this is what I came up with: Fundraising. Let’s face it, starting a ministry from scratch can be expensive.  Even if you do it on the cheap, church planting is a a costly endeavor.  Fundraising can be exciting, [...]

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been writing posts related to a presentation I gave to Directors of Missions at the NoBA conference at Southwestern Seminary in January on effective church planting in and by the Baptist Association. The streaming video of that presentation can be found here. In the first of these posts, I described ways to effectively develop a culture for church planting. The reason developing a church planting culture is primary is [...]

In my last post, I stressed the need for a culture-shift within Associations of churches that results in a high priority on the multiplication of churches. I’d like to continue on that theme today with a couple of additional steps that I think are crucial to developing this kind of atmosphere. Don’t Give in to Resistant Churches. Changing a culture is a precarious undertaking in any environment, and when you seek the kind of substantive [...]

My maternal grandfather passed away when I was six years old. Even at that young age, my early experiences with him left an indelibly positive mark on me. Most of our time together was wonderful and usually involved going to baseball games or watching “Gunsmoke” re-runs. But there were a few unpleasant moments in our relationship as well. One of those would happen every time I followed him through his garden–walking barefoot through that rich [...]