Kairos Church Planting

Where Planters Share . . .

2012-01-22T16:08:00.000-08:00

The Exponential Conference is the largest gathering of church planters in the world. The Kairos staff and many planters attend the Exponential Conference to learn and grow for our mission of gathering new Jesus believers into new churches.

The focus for the 2012 Exponential is SIFTED:

Ryan Woods, church planter in downtown Vancouver, Washington began his full time church planting ministry last May. In his second week Ryan was diagnosed with spinal cancer. Kairos featured Ryan's story in our December newsletter. His story is featured this month on the Exponential Sifted website alongside Francis Chan.

How do you allow God to enter into your story and reveal His grace and love through it? Be encouraged by the amazing story of Ryan Woods learning to use every moment for God’s glory.

"My story of sifting is neither tidy nor complete. As I write this, everything is still unresolved and messy, as we wait daily to receive test results telling me if I’m closer to dying or to further living. In May of 2011, shortly before my 29th birthday, we discovered that the strange limp Read more . . .

The Struggle with House Churches

2012-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago Mike Breen of 3DM posted a blog post provocatively entitled, “Why the Missional Movement Will Fail.” Mike’s point was that the missional movement is like a car without an engine: The conversation’s got a lot of curb appeal but lacks the means to work.

Mike left a lot undefined in his blog. I'm going to take the liberty to read between the lines to read "missional" in terms of the house, organic, simple church movement represented by Wolfgang Simpson, Felicity Dale, Neil Cole and recently Francis Chan. I'm not sure the house church movement is going to fail, but I surely do know that we're struggling with it.

Recently Andrew Jones of Third Day Churches expressed his frustrations at the lack progress in creating a house church movement in the US and the west: "They are tasty and soft and very tempting. But they have not yet hardened into something permanent."

That's been our experience as well. We've worked with several new church projects that used the house church form as their base model. They haven't worked--yet. The house church model holds out lots of promise but it hasn't proven its capacity to reach into the unbelieving population around us. There's something missing in the form: I think it's the congregation.

Despite the assertion from the house church movement that the house church is the normative, biblical model it's not. House churches are culturally formed models that meet cultural conditions. So far our experience is that the congregational model, a mid to large size community of God's people, is still the most effective form or model for new churches in America.

Mike called our attention to the discipleship engine. The missional movement calls our attention to the missional wheels. The congregation calls our attention to the frame. Apparently the model we choose to employ does impact the harvest.

What's your experience? If you know of a dynamic, growing house church movement or network in America let me know.

What's in a name?

2011-12-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how many churches are dropping a denominationally affiliated name and taking on a generic, community focused name?

How does this trend make you feel? You and I both probably know people who are thrilled at the thought, others who are saddened but understand the baggage that oftentimes comes with a name and still others who say "no way!"

The Southern Baptist Convention has released a report on a study of the perception of Southern Baptists and other religious groups in America. The study asked people about their level of agreement to the statement, When I see (Southern Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Latter Day Saints or Muslim) in the name of a church, I assume it is not for me.

What do you think they found? Those who strongly agreed that the particular church named was not for them were:

63% for Muslim
52% for Latter Day Saints
35% for Southern Baptist
33% for Catholic
26% for Methodist and
20% for non-denominational

Two-thirds of Americans surveyed are without strong feelings in regards to all the Christian faith groups included in the survey. Ed Stetzer noted, ". . . most of the unchurched don't have strong opinions or awareness of denominations, . . . This would be especially true in areas of the country such as the West . . ."

You can read the full report on the LifeWay website.

Team Training in Vancouver, BC

2011-12-05T20:33:00.000-08:00

This first weekend of December Gena and I drove up to Vancouver BC to do a Myers-Briggs (MBTI) based team retreat with the McMullens and Etheridges in East Vancouver. It was an insightful weekend for these couples as they explored their personality characteristics in the context of teamwork as church planters.

This year Kairos has worked to increase our capacities to support church planters and their plant teams. The MBTI team workshops are one of the additional applications we're bringing to bear to bless church plant teams. The MBTI provides fruitful insights for teams as the make decisions, solve problems and develop their team skills in their mission contexts.

We've also been blessed this year from the insights of Tim Roehl (co-author with Steve Ogne of Transformissional Coaching). Amos Allen and Tim worked on developing coaching processes to help us pursue our goal of facilitating fifty new church plant projects in 2016.

2011 has been a demanding year that has challenged us to increase our capacities. We're thankful for friends and tools like Tim Roehl and the MBTI who guide us towards the future.

Priorities in Fast Growing Church Plants

2011-11-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

The following article is from Ed Stetzer, based on his 2007 “Church Plant Survivability and Health Study” and Stephen Gray Planting Fast Growing Churches, 2007.

Church plants that grow faster are also intentional about their outreach priorities. For example, 80 percent of fast-growing churches put 10 percent of their budgets toward outreach and evangelism compared to 42 percent of struggling churches committing this percentage. Fast-growing churches also use more contemporary worship styles that are more culturally relevant to the unchurched people they are trying to reach.

Other significant findings that differentiate fast-growing church plants from struggling church plants during the 3-year period following launch include:

Only 9 percent of fast-growing church planters are given salary support past 4 years; 44 percent of struggling church planters are supported past 3 years.
63 percent of fast-growing church planters raise additional funding for the church plant. Only 23 percent of struggling church planters raise additional funding.
Planters leading fast-growing church plants are given more freedom to cast their own vision, choose their own target audience, and they have more freedom in the spending of finances.
Fast-growing church plants have multiple paid staff. Two paid staff members was a majority among the church plants.
A majority of fast-growing church plants utilize two or more volunteer staff as part of the church planting team prior to public launch.
Fast-growing church plants utilize more seed families than struggling church plants.
Fast-growing church plants use both preview services and small groups to build the initial core group.
Fast-growing church plants that use preview services used three or more of these services prior to public launch. A large contingent of these churches use over five.
Fast-growing church plants have children and teen ministries in place at time of launch and offer at least three ministry opportunities to first-time attendees.
57 percent of fast-growing church plants teach financial stewardship during the first 6 months from public launch. By contrast only 40 percent of struggling church plants teach financial stewardship.

Circle of Biblical Leadership

2011-08-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about why many church leaderships struggle to make decisions: a committee structure; a polite, democratic process, the one-person veto vote and aversion to risk. There’s a more global reason as well. We seem to have failed to recognize and practice the full circle of biblical leadership.

God’s intent for church leadership as described in Ephesians 4:11 is to gift the church with a robust leadership structure. Alan Hirsch calls Ephesians 4 a five-fold—APEPT—structure of leadership. While recognizing different kinds of leaders, Hirsch falls short of providing an integrated leadership model. There is a way to model biblical leadership that may help us break through our current stalemate.

Look at the illustration above. The model begins with two axis lines representing orientations or directions of leader attention. The horizontal axis line shows attention focused either external or internal to the church. Leaders on the right side value the relation of the church to its environment. Leaders on the left side value the relationships among those inside the church.

The vertical axis line represents the focus of attention toward either change or stability. Leaders on the lower end of this line value the solidarity of the group. Leaders on the upper side end of the line value the adaptability of the group and its members to one another and the world at large.

Around these two axes is the circle of biblical leadership. Each quadrant of the circle is identified by a biblical leader role. These leadership roles serve as analogies for actions leaders in these quadrants use for the benefit of the church. These roles are not meant to directly correspond to the biblical leader for which each is named. Each role has value orientation and two primary leadership functions that the leader role fulfills to provide a robust, healthy leadership structure for the church.

Leader as Prophet

Prophets scan the environment in which the church exists and look for trends or patterns for the future. The prophetic leader’s primary value is for relevance. The prophet’s two functions are to identify the future and clarify vision. Using the analogy of a car, the prophet provides the church with headlights to illuminate what is coming and a steering wheel for guidance.

Leader as King

Kings are action-oriented builders. They build systems and organize people for action. The kingly leader’s primary value is to grow and consolidate. The king’s two functions are to give direction and develop structure. In the car analogy, the king is the gas pedal. Let the king start pushing the pedal and the church will go!

Leader as Priest

Priests are system and relationship caretakers. They keep things operating smoothly and help repair ruptures that occur in life. The priest’s primary value is to protect that which exists. The priestly functions are to support the smooth operation of the church’s systems and to maintain the integrity of the internal relationships of it’s members. Going back to the car analogy, the priest acts as the car’s onboard computer that monitors its performance and adjusts its operation to keep everything running smoothly.

Leader as Shepherd

Shepherds are people developers. They provide teaching and mentoring that helps people mature in Jesus. The shepherd’s primary value is to nurture and mature the flock. The two shepherding functions are to promote relational development and to mentor for personal growth. Shepherds would be the signal and minor lights of the car, they keep themselves and other cars safe.

When all four leader roles are represented in a church, and if they have learned to work together, taking advantage of each others strengths and covering each others weaknesses, the church will have a robust, healthy leadership system. When one or more roles are minimized, missing or malfunctioning the church has got a flat tire, or maybe is missing a tire all together!

The circle of biblical leadership has two vital results for the church. One, it eliminates the idea of a leadership hierarchy. Ask most any church member to start listing the types of leaders at their church and the hierarchy begins with a senior pastor, elders or some other dominant leader role. We see the top-down leadership line. But in a circle there is no line! The idea of hierarchy disappears and the mutual importance and respect for each role is self-evident.

Two, the circle of biblical leadership allows for the idea of personal giftedness among the members. Robert J. Clinton in Leadership Emergence Theory describes giftedness in terms of natural personality, learned skill or God-supplied ability. If Ephesians 4 is describing God’s leadership giftings to the church, the circle of biblical leadership provides a context in which they all can operate.

Activity

If you want to see the natural inclination of leadership in your church, fellowship or denomination, draw the two axes on a piece of paper.

Which half of the horizontal axis receives the most attention by your leaders, what is happening (or not happening) external to the church or internal to the church? Shade that half.

Which half of the vertical, change or stability, axis is most comfortable for your leaders, change or stability? Shade that half.

Now you will have one quadrant that is doubly shaded, two quadrants that are singly shaded, and one quadrant that is not shaded at all. This is the quadrant with which your church will struggle the most. If it’s the Prophetic quadrant you struggle with clarity and vision. If it is the Kingly quadrant you struggle to grow and develop constructive systems. If it is the Priestly quadrant that is empty you feel tensions and lack of relationship between people. If it is the Shepherding quadrant that is empty your people will be stagnant and maturity will be minimal.

How does this model of the Circle of Biblical Leadership help you understand your church’s leadership system and your strengths and weaknesses as a leader?

Beyond Paralysis

2011-08-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

In my last blog post I reflected on the state of “decision-making stalemate” I observe in many churches. I want to tease out a couple more ideas on that topic.

Len Schlesinger (http://bit.ly/uvtWS), president of Babson College and past CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, says that in our fast-paced, internet based world we face large-scale problems, continual change and high degrees of uncertainty (and don’t we all feel this) where the end result is often paralysis. The complexity of decisions—all the people effected, the potential outcomes, the unanticipated results—leave us frozen in the place of “what is known is less fearful than what is unknown.”

Now lets flesh this out a bit more. The July/August issue of Harvard Business Review describes two kinds of technology:

1. Sustaining technology is based on continuity. It takes what exists and makes things bigger and better. The digital camera, for example, works on the same thought basis as film technology, it extends and improves upon the previous film technology.

2. Disruptive technology is based on discontinuity. It supplants what already exists with something different. For example, the internet is an entirely new way of distributing information that is supplanting the traditional technologies of newspaper and the once all powerful TV network news show.

It is helpful to think of these two technologies as two paradigms for decision-making. Sustaining decision-making takes what already exists and refines it for improvement. This sustaining paradigm makes sense when something is working well. As an example, I’d suggest that the Willow Creek and Saddleback models of seeker church took a healthy 20^th century church model and made it bigger and better.

The disruptive paradigm is appropriate when things are not working well or when there is a need for R&D, new idea thinking. In contrast to the “WillowBack” style of church, the emerging, next generation churches work with a disruptive paradigm. They begin with the question of “what could be?” then experiment to flesh it out. The disruptive paradigm fits well with Schlesinger’s advice for breaking through paralysis: “action trumps everything.” Or, in the words of Nike, “just do it.”

Today’s leaders need to bring both decision-making paradigms into their toolbox. It is not an either-or, it is a both-and. When faced with critical decisions leaders should run the process through both paradigms. Anticipate results in both paradigms. Some decisions will need to be made in one or the other paradigm. Every now and then a decision needs to be implemented from the sustaining paradigm while at the same time freeing someone up to explore alternative answers through the disruptive paradigm.

Challenging? Yes! Let’s keep Jesus’ words from Luke 9:62 No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Then let’s do it!

Why churches don't make decisions

2011-07-06T05:48:00.000-07:00

My observation traveling around the country is that elders (our primary church decision makers in Churches of Christ) are, for the most part, effectively frozen as decision makers.

Why do our elders struggle to make decisions?

4 core reasons:
1. Elders work in a committee structure.We have practiced, and biblically so, a plurality of elders to shepherd a congregation. In a shepherding context this is necessary. In a decision making context it is problematic. Just think how seldom elders meet and how crowded their thinking time is when they have people and organizational issues to think through. Then we add consensus to the mix.

2. We've adopted a polite, democratic process. In a small eldership, up to four men, it's possible to work through questions reasonably rapidly. After that the complexity multiplies geometrically. Then, those men equipped by personality, gifted by God and honed by use to make decisions rapidly must either wait for the slower people to work through the question or risk being "charismatic tyrants" always pushing for their way. The polite, spiritually mature path is to be polite--and wait.

3. The one-person veto. This reason is empowered by the polite, democratic process. Any one person has the right to keep a decision "in committee" with the words "I'm just not comfortable with this." There does not need to be explanation, reason or rationale given.

4. Risk aversion. Elders often say, or think, "a good week is one without problems." Elders, by the function of their people focus and problem minimizing role are naturally risk averse. Changes and decisions are always risk-full when risk is measured by whether or not someone complains. We're people; we love to complain!

Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know at sgranberg@kairoschurchplanting.org.

Attendance in new churches

2011-06-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

Kairos now coaches in group coaching sessions. A coach (sometimes 2) meet with two or three planters via phone or in person for group coaching. At a recent coaching session with planters working to grow the churches they lead beyond 200 attendance we had a great discussion on counting in new churhes.

What's the scorecard? How does a new church keep track of the direction of its growth?

Here's some of the ideas we talked about:
- Traditionally we count Sunday worship attendance. Our question was: does worship celebration give the best estimate of connectedness and activity with the church? Probably not
- Nelson Searcy (Ignite) and Scott Thumma (Megachurch Myths) both suggest it leaves out the "growth zone" of new churches. Thumma shows new churches grow from the "crowd" zone, people who may come once a month or so.
- New Christians often take a long time to develop the "attendance" habit, if ever. For example, a new Christian at Renovo comes once a month (she works 3 weekends a month and has a God-antagonistic husband), yet she is weekly at Missional Community.

Implications
1 - A new church should pay attention to its zones
- Committed, typically membership covenants
- Highly engaged, often those in the relational and midsize groups that engage in mission
- Crowds, attend at big days and other special events
2 - A productive "key numbers" dashboard should keep track of multiple attendance venues including worship celebration, relational groups, midsize groups and Big Day events. Big Days may give a more accurate snapshot of the church's active network of relationships, people for whom this church is their self-selected church identity point.
3 - Pay attention to your database. What categories do you keep records of? How do you move people from active to inactive and vice versa?
4 - Crowd is your assimilation group. What is your well-identified and known pathway that people travel to move from crowd -> committed -> core (members)
5 - Demonstrates the need for multiple plug-in points, what may let one person connect well (say worship celebration) may not work for another person
6 - When people are asked to commit to some kind of membership covenant it allows the church to have more say in their lives on discipleship, leading, life discipline, etc.

Questions about Evangelizing

2011-06-09T19:26:00.001-07:00

My daughter and son-in-law are on a mission team heading to Angola, Africa (http://www.angolateam.org). The team has been in Portugal the past year learning Portugese. They're still waiting for Angolan visas. While they wait they're still preparing their minds for Angola. Recently they sent out a list of questions about evangelizing to some of their teachers, mentors, trainers. How would you answer?

Early Stages
For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9b)

We envision our first phase of work as primarily learning and building relationships to prepare for our second phase, in which we will transition to purposeful church planting on a small scale, gaining experience. Our third phase will be church planting and mentoring church planters on a larger scale based on the experience gained in phase 2.

1.      During our initial phase in Angola, we will do many small research projects to help us learn about Angolan culture. What research projects do you think would be most helpful for us in preparing for evangelism? What questions should we be asking?
2.      In your experience, what were the best places to make contacts and how were contacts typically made?
3.      How did you overcome different types of barriers (ie. Social, Cultural, Religious, etc…) that once overcame opened doors for more effective opportunities to evangelize?
4.      What were some effective evangelistic programs, activities or tools that you incorporated in your ministries? From your perspective, why did those work? What things did you try that “flopped” or were ineffective? Why were they not effective? What would have made them more effective?
5.      What is your perspective on ‘one-on-one’ vs. group evangelism?

Mentoring
A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. (Luke 6:40)

One of our core values is mentoring. That means, during our initial phase, we would like to ask Angolan Christians to mentor us in a variety of ways so that we can learn by doing. Later on, we hope to mentor Angolans as our primary means of teaching, so that they can learn by doing.

1.      Our mentors may come from a variety of backgrounds, depending on who is available and willing. Do you have suggestions for how to initiate and/or structure these relationships?
2.      How did you divide your time between personal evangelism and training or mentoring others to evangelize?
3.      What should we do in order to prepare our own hearts to evangelize to the lost? What are some ways that we can prepare the hearts of those that we’ll be mentoring?
4.      In your opinion, how much time should be spent in teaching fundamentals of the Bible or of faith to evangelists in training as opposed to accompanying them in actual evangelistic activities?
5.      Are there certain characteristics that you have observed in those that evangelize fervently and those that don’t? What are they?

Dependence vs. Independence
A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. (Proverbs 1:5)

In evangelism (and every aspect of ministry), we want to avoid dependency on our team from the beginning. We are searching for ways to let the Angolan church depend on its own leaders, rather than us.

1.      Are there ways that we can evangelize during the initial phase of our ministry without immediately creating a dependency on our team? In other words, how can we lead people to Christ without inadvertently planting a church that looks to us as its leaders?
2.      In your experience, how quickly did new or potential converts shift from being the receivers to taking the lead in studies or evangelistic efforts? Was there a specific method used in transferring responsibilities to these people?
3.      Was your ‘Western’ background (or lack thereof) a help or hindrance in reaching your targeted people-group, and if so, how? What are some common pitfalls that you have experienced or seen others experience in trying to communicate the gospel message cross-culturally?
4.      In your context(s), what were some of the obstacles that hindered people from hearing or responding to the Gospel (i.e. cultural mindset, other religious or philosophical beliefs, family pressures, etc.)? Were people initially drawn directly to the Gospel or to an individual, group, program, etc.?

Advice
Hear counsel, and receive instruction, so that you may be wise for the rest of your life. (Proverbs 19:20)

We are striving to be the best missionaries that we can be. We realize that this ministry is much bigger than us and that we have much to learn from those that have gone before us. We are open to any other advice or input that you may have. These last questions are more subjective. We would like hear your input and learn from your experiences.

1.      If you had it to do over, what would you have dedicated more or less of your time to?
2.      What advice can you offer to encourage us as we work with others to live evangelistically?
3.      What additional advice on evangelism would you give that is not covered by any of the questions above?

The Multiplying Effect

2011-05-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

The 2004 Ashton Klutcher movie The Butterfly Effect drew from a chaos theory idea that a small event done in one place could have a much bigger effect somewhere else, such as a butterfly flapping its wings in South America could effect weather in Central Park. We're seeing what we should call The Multiplying Effect in church planting.

We're always faced in life with limited resources and unlimited needs and possibilities. This is particularly true in our service sensitive culture where serving others is one of the few agreed upon "good deeds" in our society. So, when a church is presented with the opportunity to fund and support a church planter the response we hear often is, "There are too many needs here at home for us to spend our precious resources somewhere else." The problem with this thinking is it ignores God's multiplying effect.

In just the past few weeks I've heard reports from church plants in the Kairos network providing two million meals (that's not a misprint) in Zambia, starting churches and schools in India, providing helping services to over 350 needy families and organizing recovery groups for people coming out of slavery (yes, this is not a misprint either) and human trafficking here in the US.

So, what if the churches that helped finance these new churches had said, "You know, we have too much to do here at home to help a new church start somewhere else?"

What do you think?

Pepperdine University

2011-05-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

The 68th Annual Pepperdine University Bible Lectureship was May 3-6 and Kairos was there big time. Among the 330 speakers Kairos had over 30 people on the program in a track on New Churches in New Places for New People as well as several theme tracks. In all there were over 50 Kairos associated people at the lectures.

The Pepperdine Lectures is a powerful place for us. The name Kairos was decided upon after the lectures in 2004. This is where we first floated the idea of a church planting ministry in Churches of Christ at a national level.

This also was a big year for us as I cast the vision for Kairos for the next five years at the Friday morning breakfast. Stay tuned for more about that later.

Like Africa

2011-04-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went to Africa in 1983 to be missionaries among the Meru people in Kenya. One of our primary reasons for going was we wanted to work with receptive people, and they were. It was a joy to work among the Meru people. They were hungry to learn and grow in Jesus. We worked with local leaders to help them start indigenous churches, then provided training for them to support their work and growth.

When we came back to America in 1993 I had no idea what we would find--or do. Now we've been working with Kairos for five full years, doing much the same thing we did in Africa: we look for local leaders and provided them training to support their work of starting new churches.

So after such an amazing Easter as this last one I went back to our church growth reports on our Meru work and looked at the year 1988, at five full years work. This is the same place we are at with Kairos. Here's what I found:

	Meru	Kairos
Churches	19	13
Preaching Points	7	5
Attendees	1,048	2,172

In Meru, Kenya in 1988 we were working with 19 churches and 7 preaching points. In these churches there were 524 active members, that's baptized believers. We always doubled that number to get our adherent count, so 1,048 attenders.

With Kairos in 2011 we are working with 13 churches and five "preaching points." The average attendance (adherents) is 2,172. So while we are working with 8 fewer churches and preaching points the number of attenders is double what it was in Meru. All in all, after five full years of work in America we're pretty much where we were after five years of work in Africa!

What does this say to me? It says America is a receptive country. It says we can reach people with the story of Jesus who have not been Christians before or who have left Christian faith and practice.

If you or your church want to be part of God's harvest in America, contact me at sgranberg@kairoschurchplanting.org.

2,759

2011-04-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday, it’s resurrection day and a time when God’s pursuit of people sometimes becomes visible.

This Easter 2,759 people gathered into thirteen church plants in the Kairos Church Planting network. We can hardly believe it. In 2010 there were 1,651 Easter worshippers in twelve new churches. That is 1,100 more new people experiencing resurrection celebration in 2011 than 2010. God be praised!

We do know that numbers cannot tell the whole story, not by any means. For example, numbers don’t tell you that two families visiting the Agape Church of Christ in Portland, OR had never been to a Christian church. One family were Albanian Muslims, recently immigrated to the US. The other family were Hindus from Nepal.

The numbers fail to communicate the joy of an 83-year-old African-American man experiencing a redeemed life for the first time in Brunswick, NJ. Neither can the numbers express the sentiments of people who have been freed from addictions, who are receiving the ministry of healing from spouse abuse, or who find solace in the company of Christians as they struggle with depression. We have heard stories all over our country from people who have found new life in Jesus and are sharing life together in a new church.

Twice a year we look at numbers as one indicator of how we’re doing: Easter and year-end. Here are a few more Easter numbers that are significant markers for us.

2,172 is the typical number of people worshipping in these thirteen churches on an average Sunday.

587 people visited these churches Easter Sunday.

181 of these visitors came for the first time.

212 was the average Easter worship attendance in 2011 in thirteen churches.

150 was the average Easter worship attendance in 2010 in twelve churches.

We’re overjoyed at what the Lord has done since last Easter.

Now imagine this: what if your church was helping plant new churches? What if instead of thirteen new churches we were looking at thirty, or three hundred? God can do that with us, if we’ll let him. Is your church involved in planting a new church in America? If not, why not? What will it take to convince you that God is so pleased with new people in his kingdom that you will respond to him to make that happen?

Please, call me at 360-609-6700 or email at sgranberg@kairoschurchplanting.org and lets talk about how you can become part of God’s harvest work through Kairos.

Preaching in Unbelief

2011-04-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Here's your kernel about preaching in the context of unbelief: work in the text until the text takes you to the point of your unbelief, then write that unbelief on paper and begin preparing your sermon.

Now let me back up with some autobiography. Some weeks disparate ideas come together and the week becomes one of those very good weeks. That was this week for me:

I reread one of my most helpful preaching books: Zack Eswine's Preaching to a Post Everything World. Eswine calls me to dig deep into the Word and he reminds me of tools to take me to the place he calls Challenger Deep.
Gena and I were in NYC and made the 7pm service of Redeemer Presbyterian at Hunter College. Tim Keller was preaching this service, always a pleasure to hear Tim, whether live or recorded.
I taught the last weekend of my class--Missional Strategies for the 21st Century--at http://HUGSR.edu. If the title doesn't fully reveal the content, the course is about evangelism. Yep. Evangelism. This last weekend we talked about evangelistic systems on a whole church level.

Hope you're not lost yet. There actually is a thread of commonality between these three events: Preaching.

Here's the connect.

Eswine calls us to preach what is challenging. What's more challenging then unbelief?
I love Tim Keller's work on defeater beliefs (http://bit.ly/eI92rD). Keller suggests, "Defeaters are dealt with when the person feels you have presented the objection to Christianity in a clearer and stronger way than they could have done it."
Preaching is the most influential event in a church's life or a minister's repertoire.

If we're going to preach in ways that influence people deeply I propose the best way is to preach the gospel in the context of unbelief. Find your point of unbelief in the text. Hone it to a state of mental "scary sharp," then let God take you to his point of resolution from the text. There it is, the core of your sermon. Now wrap that core with a layer of street made reality and you have a sermon that will grip anybody. Probably even yourself.

How are new churches doing?

2011-03-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

At the end of 2010 Kairos was working with 18 new church projects in the US.

12 of these new churches have launched. They grew at 59% in 2010. They averaged 1,549 people at worship services on Sundays

Today, March 6, 2011, I received a report on research on new churches in the Washington DC - Baltimore, MD region from my friend Todd Wilson.

The MD NUMBERS:

274, the number of new churches found planted since 2005
< 100, the average size
81%, were planted by denominational work thrusts
49%, were planted by Southern Baptist Association
35%, non-English as primary language
25%, planted as multi-sites from a base church
< 1%, restarts in older church buildings

Kairos is working with 1 of these 274 new churches: Bridgeway in Lexington Park, MD. The average size of the plants we're coaching is 129.

BIG IDEA: the new churches that are thriving the soonest were planted from a regional hub church that partners with a church planting network (something like Kairos).

WHY?: The regional hub church provides a nearby resource of relationships, mentoring, prayer support and encouragement. The regional church provides personal care resources that help planters be healthier, less lonely and feeling supported. The network provides ministry expertise through assessment, training and coaching to help them reach their communities with the gospel.

TAKE AWAY: If we're going to see large steps forward in introducing Jesus to lost people we'll do it best by working together rather than working independently!

You can download the complete report at the Kairos website.

Would your church like to talk about what it means to be a regional church for starting new churches? Contact me.

Is God tugging at your heart to lead a new church start or to be a team member? Contact me.

Stan Granberg
sgranberg@kairoschurchplanting.org
360-609-6700

Conversion: A rare and wonderful experience

2011-03-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

Do you remember your conversion? What emotions did you feel? What did/does it mean to you? You might remember all the details vividly or, like me, you remember the emotional content of your conversion experience. Wherever you fall, your conversion was a rare and, I hope, wonderful experience for you.

Until recently I did not give much thought to how rare an experience conversion is a person’s life. For most people conversion is a once in a lifetime experience. In America (which had the highest rate of conversions in a 40 nation study*) only 14% of people had a conversion experience, a change from non-religious to religious or a major religious shift.

Conversion is a life quest

The conversion process typically begins with some kind of crisis. The crisis may be an event, unexpectedly tragic or maybe just the straw that broke the camel’s back. It may be a new idea that blows their world apart. Or, it may be a question that sticks in the mind, demanding an answer to make sense of life. Whatever it is that starts the quest, the quest leads the person to a new state of life. The quest is an exploration of life.

Another insight about conversion is that conversion tends to come in the young adult stage of life. Most people will have had their conversion experience before they reach thirty years of age. By that time they will have reached adulthood, married and established their own life. In fact, marriage is the most often mentioned reason people give as the impetus for their conversion.

Reasons for religious change:

#1, marriage or family

#2, friends or change of location

#3, issues of theology

Guide People Through Conversion

Think about what all this means. A person hits a crisis point. They get knocked off their feet. They’re off balance. They don’t know what is happening to them. They’ve never experienced this before. They find the conversion process awkward or even frightening.

Treat a person going through conversion gently, tenderly. Be a compassionate guide to them. Provide encouragement. Offer direction when they’re asking. Give them confidence that what they may be feeling is normal.

Conversion is a rare and wonderful life event. It is, in every respect, the birth of a new life. As we confess Jesus into the lives of others, let’s encourage each other to treat their conversion quest with all the wonder and joy of new birth.

“How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again? . . .Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life” (John 4:4-6).

*"Religious Conversion in 40 Countries" by Robert J. Barro, Jason Hwang, and Rachel M. McCleary
Harvard University, Cornerstone Research, Harvard University.

A Story of Conversion

2011-02-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

Is conversion a process or a point action event? When I was growing up the teaching I received at church left no doubt in our minds: conversion is a point action event! The conversion stories of Acts were absolute patterns, down to "at that hour of the night" (Acts 16:31-33). Coming from our believers’ church background, this point action conversion perspective made sense. It also fit the conversion model of the mid-twentieth century: hear, believe, convert (baptism) and join the community of faith.

Last Sunday I met a young woman at the Agape (http://missionagape.com) church in downtown Portland: 38 yrs. old, single, fourth time at Agape and we were praying for her healing since on Thursday she was diagnosed with cancer.

During the meet and greet time I sat down with her to get to know her. Here’s her story:

Three months ago she “didn’t know if I wanted to be here.” Was that at Agape, in Portland, or what? Her answer: living. As she wrestled with her thoughts and despair she felt an inner compulsion to see an old high school friend living in another state. They made contact and this young woman flew out for a week. Her friend and she talked about spiritual life, faith, and Jesus. Back in Portland my new friend came into contact with Agape and, as I said, this Sunday was her fourth visit.

I asked her whether she was a believer, if she had any experience with religion or church. She told me that in the last twenty years, there were maybe three years where she connected anything approaching regularly with a body of Jesus followers. This was new territory for her. Yet here she was, sharing her faith journey with pretty much a total stranger. Her parting remark was, “I can look back over my life and I know that as far back as twenty years ago God was working in my life to bring me here, to this church, at this time in my life.”

It was time to re-gather and I asked her if I could make a strange request of her and take a picture of her and I on my iPhone. “You’re not normal,” she said. Yes, I agreed, but I told her I wanted to pray for this following week and having a picture of us together would help. Meet my new friend:

I would say my early understanding of conversion was naive. Conversion is much more dynamic and processual than I realized then, yet it is also sprinkled with points of concrete action. Something happened in this woman’s life that took her to the edge, which drove her to search for something else. She decided to visit a friend, to go to church, to ask a church body to pray for her, to let a stranger interview her. One day, I pray, she will confess Jesus as Lord in baptism. These are all points of action in the conversion process. Each one is critical to developing a life of active faith as a follower of Jesus. Together they are part of the conversion process.

The classic study on conversion in America is Understanding Religious Conversion by Lewis Rambo. Yale Press, 1993.

Monitor Your Performance Dashboard

2011-02-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

Doctors look at blood pressure, heart rate and temperature. Mechanics look at oil pressure and temperature gauges. Policeman look at their radar guns as you blow by! One might think there's something to monitoring performance.

Research shows that the best way to achieve greater performance is to monitor the numbers. Here's how you do it:

1. Set the appropriate targets
2. Know how you're going to measure them, then measure
3. Review and see how you did

Churches need to monitor their performance. How? They need a basic dashboard. Here's what you monitor:

Relational (small) Groups Attendance: this is a life blood indicator. People need to both know others and be known by others.

Worship Attendance: Keep a running average through the year. Every church planter and minister knows that "if everyone who should have been there was there . . ." but they never will be all there. So count the ones who are!

First time guests: Why? These are your "hot people." They walked into the door of your church, or school, or wherever. They're motivated. They just gave you a blank check to find out who they are, why they came, and what Jesus is doing in their lives. Yeah, you got to know who they are first. How are you going to do that?

Offerings: That probably hurts. Church planters really struggle with asking people for money, so we hide a box in the back and tell people they might drop something in it if they can find it. Blah, blah, blah. You've heard it before. Yet there seems to be something directly connected between our money and our discipleship. Keep a watch on your 52 week average and your per person giving average.

Gains/Losses: People come into churches 4 ways--conversions or biological, transfer-in, or restorations. They leave in 3 ways--reversion, transfer-out or death. That's it. Keep a weekly record of the way people are moving in and out of your church.

This may sound like a lot of work. It actually takes just a few minutes a week with a few key people and a basic recording system. Download the Kairos Weekly Stats Dashboard at our website then train a few people to take care of the numbers and you've got it. Login into our Resources pages and then go to the link above.

What helps planters see faster growing churches?

2011-02-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

Ben Arment in Church in the Making provides a good look at some sociological factors that impact planting a new church. Ben argues that often the make or break factor is whether or not the planter has embedded themselves into existing social networks, can gather crowds through those network relationships, and understands the power of people groups. All good stuff.

I want to attach some reflection from our experiences to Ben's work around the person, the planter. When we look at the planters we work with, looking at those who are planting faster growing churches compared to those whose churches are growing more slowly, three items stand out.

1. The planter's propensity to create action appears to lead to faster growth. Some people are production oriented and others are process oriented. Planters who act fast, who foster action, tend to gather more people more quickly than those who think, reflect and refine. And it's not that action oriented planters don't think. I see them as good, high level thinkers. Rather than trying to anticipate the multitude of contingencies and possibilities that could happen they think in the midst of action. They seem to use activity as an experiment. They instigate action, watch what happens, make in-process adjustments and guide the action so results move towards their intended goal. In other words, they process the activity rather than their ideas about the activity.

2. Planter's who gather and lead other high level leaders in their early team see faster growth. These planters display something of a talent scout. When they think through what they need they immediately look for people who brings those skills, experience and capabilities in a high degree. They don't look for warm bodies, they look for gifted people. The difference between planters might be described this way: some planters lead people while other planters lead leaders who lead people. It is the latter who tend to have faster growing churches.

3. Following Ben Arment's insights, planters who work within existing social networks experience faster growth in their churches than those who don't. This means that parachute drop planters need to plan on taking more time to identify and enter into existing social networks and in creating new networks. It's a timing issue. Rather than rushing towards a predetermined launch date planters of faster growing churches intuitively grasp the timing to mobilize networks, drawing them together to create crowds that they form into churches.

So what we're looking for are leaders who create action, lead other high capacity leaders, and live in the midst of extensive social networks.

Where are these leaders? Call me at 360-609-6700.

The Meaning of Christmas

2010-12-23T23:10:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's that "most wonderful time . . . of the year." And it is! Who would have thought that one day each year would become the day that the world actually paid attention to Jesus with some sense of determination to let his peace reign on earth?

Now, imagine what it must feel like for people who are not believers? They must experience some sort of a hollow feeling. I've got to admit, I haven't asked any of my non-believing friends what they think of the whole Jesus story during the Christmas season. That's got to get on my asking/listening list.

Then this week I get an email from www.agapecoc.com with photos in it: three people being baptized in the church horse trough (yes, an honest to goodness metal, barnyard ready horse trough), giving themselves over to Jesus and experiencing the Advent story in a whole new way.

Ken and Linda were sold into the sex industry as teenagers and have spent years now to leave those scars behind. Jesus is the savior of scarred people.

Deborah was a Wiccan believer who laid aside her Tarot cards to worship the Lord of the heavens.

Yes, Christmas is a whole new lifestyle event for Ken, Linda and Deborah. Maybe that's the way we need to approach the story as well.

Bless all of you and may the joy of the world find fulfillment through the one who brought joy to the world.

Why church planters are different

2010-12-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

Recently Amos Allen, our Kairos Director of Planter Care, wrote these words to a church planter:

Don’t worry about your sanity; it’s already gone. I’m half joking. You are so on the edge of where most people live, doing and saying things few others ever attempt, much more dream of. And yet, you must find those “places” that give you a firm footing.

Are church planters a different kind of person? You bet they are! As one of my favorite movie characters, Matthew Quiqley, says, church planters are "a half bubble off plumb."

Why is this? One answer is to look at the idea of a call. A divine call is not an easy event to live with in one's life. It takes away our choices, leading us in directions that, perhaps, we would not have chosen for ourselves. Just look at the biblical prophets. Most of them were quite hesitant about taking up the prophetic mantle. And--most of them were just a little bit different.

We also need to look at planters' lives. Planters are people who fiercely live on mission. They have to. In their book Transformational Church (2010) Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer talk about the missionary mentality as a "holy restlessness." People on mission ". . . have a restlessness about them. They refuse just to sit and soak. They are restless to look, learn, and live out the gospel (p.54).

Yup, that pretty well describes this breed of Christ-person we call a church planter. They are people restless with the spirit of God with a burning commitment to help others make positive decisions about the lordship of Jesus in their lives.

How You Can Receive a Divine Smile Too

2010-12-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

Most Saturday mornings a men's prayer group from the Renovatus Church of Christ (www.renovatus.com) meets at a local restaurant for sharing and prayer. One of the practices we keep is to ask our server if we can pray for her or him. It's interesting and delightful to see their responses.

For the fall we changed to a different location, so we've been breaking in a new set of servers. A month or so ago our server was Katie. She's young, probably still in her 20's, unmarried, has a child. A fairly typical situation. When I asked Katie if there was anything we could pray about for her, her response was shock. She drew back to stand straight and stiff. Her eyes got big; her face froze into place. Interesting. Was she going to say no and run?

Nope. She pulled herself together and faced this table of fifty-year old men and asked us to pray for her car. It needed new tires and some other work and she was afraid of getting into a spot with her child. Yeah, not real exciting or earthshaking, but we prayed for her car.

Two weeks later our waitress was Annette. Older, about our age, a lot more life experience for stability. Annette shared with us how excited Katie had been to have some people at her table pray for her! Katie had talked and talked about it.

Since then we've prayed with Annette several times. She was ready for us, but still a bit surprised the first time.

This morning, as Annette was laying out our silverware and handing out the menus she was moving kind of slowly, a bit expectantly. When Kevin Woods (planter) asked her what we could pray about for her she got the biggest, most excited smile on her face, laid down the menus and told us about another of her co-servers who is undergoing chemo therapy for cancer. She had been waiting on us. She had something she wanted to pray about.

God smiled at us this morning, only it was through Annette's face. That was a divine smile.

Spread the good news, Jesus is alive!

So why do we need new churches?

2010-05-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

The following is an email I sent to a recent acquaintance to answer a series of questions he had about starting new churches. These same questions have probably crossed your mind.

Dear friend,

I’ve been on the road hard for the past month. Thank you for your questions, or at least statements. I’ll parse out a couple of your questions and answer them to the best of my ability.

Question 1: Why plant new churches when old churches are not growing?

Rather than old (though that may apply too) let’s use the term existing churches. The majority of existing churches are from the post-WWII era of the 1950s and 1960s. That is when they were planted by the wave of GI-grown, action-oriented Christians. These churches did a great job for their time, place and generation. They were highly contextualized to American, post-war culture. They addressed both the questions and the needs of that generation of Americans.

Fast forward to 2010. American culture today is significantly different from that of the 1950s, so much so it is best to think in terms of cross-cultural mission work for someone of the existing church culture to relevantly reach those of the new generations. How different is this new culture? You may remember I spoke of BC and AC churches (that’s Before Computers and After Computers). BC people are book people, linear, A to Z thinkers. AC people are internet, visual, multi-directional thinkers. It’s not a generation gap now, it’s a culture gap!

So, why do we need to plant new churches? Because the existing churches are ministering to people who are no longer being made. Every new person born now is an AC person. BC churches will increasingly be unable to minister effectively to AC people—unless, they become AC churches. Then who would minister to us BC people who are going to be around for another 30 years? In this seam of time we need both BC and AC churches ministering to our culture side by side.

Question 2: What kind of revitalization programs are available for existing churches?

The most obvious answer is almost anything you can think of: lectureships, any ministry, most books and magazines, etc. I think we are asking the wrong question when we ask “who will help us (the existing church)?” The better question is “How can we (the existing church) help new churches start that reach these new people so we can learn from them.” If no one does the exploring, the cross-cultural mission work of learning how to engage the new generations of Americans in spiritual conversations with Jesus at the center, then we lose. No, God’s kingdom concerns won’t lose. God has banked thousands of faithful, missionary focused people in the two-thirds worlds of Asia, Africa and South America. His mission will continue. Will we choose to continue to be part of that mission?

I hope these brief answers make sense.

In Christ,
Stan Granberg, PhD
Kairos Executive Director

Connecting call and vision

2010-03-03T14:21:00.000-08:00

There's a commonality we've seen among church planters: they are susceptible to falling in love with the church they have in their head rather than the church God wants to bring about in the world.

Will Mancini uses the idea of the Kingdom Concept in his book Church Unique to bring reality to vision. At Kairos we speak about a call as arising from the confluence of a PEOPLE, a PLACE and a PASSION for both. Will gives us a tool to dig deeper into our vision through the 3 pieces of the Kingdom Concept

1. Local Predicament - This is about the PLACE. Will's challenge is to see our communities with God's eyes. We need to get beyond being tourists as we live in our communities. A Polish anthropologist identified our human tendeny to place most of what we see in the category of "background noise." We get so inured to the commonplace that we no longer see what is around us. As God's ambassadors we need to learn again how to see what is around us. Here's a few ideas: a) get out of your car and walk, b) ride in public transportation, c) ride in a police squad car on patrol. These are just beginning points but they'll open your eyes to your community. Remember, it's about the PLACE. Fall in love with your community!

2. Collective Potential - This is about the PEOPLE. Will writes for an existing church audience. He calls us to look at the people gifts god has given (Eph. 4:11-12). Church planters see people gifts in their community. Who has God placed in the community through whom he wishes to work for his will and purposes? How do we engage with them? Even unbelievers are in God's plan (Habakkuk 1:5-6).

3. Apostolic Esprit - This is the PASSION. God has formed us with personality, history and reflection on experience. When we learn the people, fall in love with them and understand how they are connected to their environment we begin to develop similar passion's as those God feels.

Will's idea of the Kingdom Concept keeps pulling us out of our own heads and into the reality of the community to which God has called us. It's a worthwhile journey.

Bon voyage!

10 facts about faith conversations

2010-01-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

If you are a Christ follower think back to the last time you invited someone to church, a church event, or even began a discussion with them about faith and spirituality. For most of us, that could stretch back a long time. There's just something--frightening--about "those" conversations.

Recent research by Lifeway Research (www.Lifeway.com) identified the top ways those who do not perceive themselves as Christian are willing to respond positively to our overtures:

1. 67% would be willing to visit a church if a family member invited them.
2. 63% would be willing to visit a church if a friend or neighbor invited them.
3. 63% would be willing to receive church information if a family member gave it to them.
4. 56% would be willing to receive church information if a friend or neighbor gave it to them.

When unbelievers are most willing to consider faith:
5. Christmas - 47%
6. Easter - 38%
7. After a national crisis - 38%
8. After a natural disaster - 34%
9. After birth of a baby - 28%

My friend Shawn Anderson has a new book to be published in March titled Living Dangerously. Shawn's research on people who became Christians as adults gives us fact #10:

10. 84% said the faith conversation was initiated first by someone else, not them.

Now let's get out there and speak.

What does it mean to be missional?

2010-01-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

The missional concept is somewhat a phenomenon in the church planting context. Recently Ed Stetzer mentioned the "missional tree" formulated by Leadership Journal. Yet the concept itself remains fuzzy. What does it mean to be "missional"?

There is a growing trend to name as missional anything that has a social or cultural orientation and that specifically does not involve anything that has traditionally been termed evangelistic. For example, what did your church or youth group do on its last mission trip? Clean up a neighborhood? Build a house in a third-world country? Conduct educational activities in an inner-city church?

Here's the rub: there is a growing sense that to serve the world is good, it's PC (politically correct). To convert the world is bad, it displays our Christian prejudice and inflexibility.

This is not a new phenomenon in recent Christian history. C. Peter Wagner* recognized that the definition of mission has been debated for the past one hundred years. The debate revolves around the poles of the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28; Matt 22:39) and the evangelistic mandate (Gen. 3:9; Mt. 28:19). The strong rise in our social consciousness, of our responsibility to both the creation and the social and physical condition of our fellow people, is bringing the cultural mandate again into prominence in our Christian thinking.

That brings us again to our question: what does it mean to be missional?

My missions training at Fuller Theological Seminary included the classic formulations of Presence (do good), Proclamation (tell why) and Persuasion (make disciples).

Here's my simple answer: SPEAK JESUS! You can turn almost any activity into mission activity when you are willing to open your mouth, confess your belief in Jesus and engage others in conversations about "righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25).

*"On the Cutting Edge of Mission Strategy," Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, 3rd ed., pp. 531-540, 1999.

5 reasons the unchurched do not believe

2010-01-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

5 reasons the unchurched do not believe:
1. Cultural Influence
2. Intellectual
3. Life Choices
4. Oppression
5. Bad Experiences

One of the “new” skills we Christians, and church planters particularly, need to learn is the art of spiritual diagnosis. Like a doctor learns to diagnose illnesses from the symptoms and words of patients we can learn to diagnose the reasons why the unchurched around us do not believe.

The situation we face today is that almost every unchurched person (someone with no significant experience with a community of God followers) is unchurched by choice. They have already made a decision not to be a Christian. Sometimes that decision was made by default with little thought put into it. Other times they have a carefully thought out rationale.

This means we’re working with second decision people. It’s a more difficult prospect to help people make a positive decision about something they have already decided against then it is to help people make a first decision. It makes sense, then, before we try to persuade someone who is not a believer about the validity of belief in God and Jesus that we ought to understand why they have chosen not to believe in the first place.

When we strike up conversations with people about faith in God and the claims of Jesus here are the five big reasons people choose not to believe:

1. Cultural influence. Western cultural is de-Christianizing. The tide is moving against Christian belief. That’s why Niki Gumbel’s introduction video to the Alpha Course is titled “Christianity: Boring,, Untrue or Irrelevant.” The unchurched around us live in a culture that promotes and rewards unbelief.

2. Intellectual. Evolution is obviously true and stamped with approval by science—isn’t it? Many people find the intellectual claims of science and philosophy overwhelming to faith. These intellectual claims cause a “kink in their think” when it comes to faith.

3. Life Choices. People enjoy the claims of “life freedom” Satan throws at us. Life styles and behaviors driven by human drives undisciplined by godliness feel good. Sometimes belief is simply drowned out by “what I want to do.”

4. Oppression. This is a tough reason. Sometimes people do not believe because the situations of life, the oppressions of others, or personal drives hold faith captive. Life oppression may come from systemic, social issues, such as poverty, that harden some people against faith. Walter Wink associated demonic influences with social systems. Others may come from family systems with generational oppression. Domestic violence is often passed down generationally. Dependency and addiction issues (drugs, alcohol, sex) or mental illnesses based on personality, chemical or other internal states over which the individual has little or no control may bind people in situations that overwhelm faith.

5. Bad experiences. I usually consider these bad experiences with Christians. Unbelievers are often able to tell a story about how they wer abused by a believer “in the name of Jesus.” A bad experience can also be some life tragedy in which faith in God no longer makes sense.

Before you launch into a spiel about why someone should believe in Jesus, first listen to them to discover why they do not believe in the first place.

2 goal prompts and 5 goal setting tips for your new year

2010-01-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is that time of year when we set all those well intentioned goals, then promptly get derailed. Sigh, that's the challenge isn't it? Not so much setting goals, but learning how to stay with them.

I've learned to practice two powerful prompts for setting goals and staying with them:

1. Identify 10 faith goals for the year. If you're a believer faith is the "listen to God" part. When one of my personal coaches, Gary Rohrmayer, challenged me with 10 goals it was a bit overwhelming at first. Ten was a lot! In fact, I only was able to come up with six right away, the other four took me a a week to identify. Ten is a significant number for a year, yet we can potentially achieve ten significant goals.

2. Write all 10 goals on paper and keep the list where you see it at least weekly. I keep mine in my desk daytimer at the beginning of every month. I'm running into them constantly. This repeated reminder has a significant accumulative effect.

So how do you write your goals? www.mindtools.com gives these 5 easy suggestions:
1. Write your goals using positive, sensual, emotionally intense language.
2. Express each goal clearly, with the target you want to achieve expressed unambiguously (i.e. don’t say “do my best”, and don’t leave any “wriggle room”!)
3. Make each goal measurable, so you know if you’ve achieved it or not.
4. Make each goal achievable, but only just. It’s been shown time after time that people with difficult-but-achievable goals do much better than people with moderate goals.
5. Set a clear date by which you’ll achieve the goal. Express the goal in the present tense. This makes it so much more powerful!

Best wishes to you as you prepare your 10 faith goals for 2010.

Counting Members: Tribes, Sets and Toxic Non-Attenders

2009-12-29T10:57:00.000-08:00

Church planting has a lot of ambiguity to it. One area where planters struggle with ambiguity is the concept of church membership, "who's in who's not." In the millenial world of tribes the idea of membership feels archaic--even controlling.

Paul Hiebert, one of the most influential Christian anthropologists of the 20th century (http://bit.ly/5vijc6 and http://bit.ly/5enFaG) wrote about bounded sets and centered sets (see http://bit.ly/11lCNH).

Bounded sets are defined at the edge, by fences; a person is in or out. There are no soft edges. Getting inside takes a definite act of will.

Centered sets are defined by the center. The edges are fuzzy and porous. Getting inside can happen gradually. The idea of movement towards the center is critical.

So here's our rub. On the one hand we (leaders) need to know who is part of our community, who has taken hold of the vision and is willing to lend their strength and gifts to this church. On the other hand members want to retain maximum flexibility that allows room to grow, change and discover. Church has moved from a place where people had to believe before they could belong to a place where belonging typically precedes believing and our communities are constructed around embracing diversity.

As church planters deal with this tension they can find themselves like Goldilocks--always changing chairs, beds, bowls of porridge--looking for "just right." Meanwhile, how do those around us react, feel, even suffer?

Matt Schmucker in his article "Those Toxic Non-Attenders" (http://bit.ly/7QOXEh) suggests 4 ways that too much ambiguity in centered set thinking harms the local church.

Toxic non-attenders:
1. They make evangelism harder. They claim Jesus as Lord but the way they live looks and feels like identity theft.
2. They confuse new believers. New believers live messy lives. They need good role models to follow. Toxic non-attenders are confusing. They live the message, "you don't really have to do that."
3. They discourage regular attenders. It's a real ouch to hear "Our church has 130 people in it" when all anyone ever sees is the faithful fifty.
4. They worry their leaders. Can people who don't attend be shepherded well (Heb. 13:17)?

Here's another two I would add:
5. They prevent others from committing themselves to Jesus. Making that step of faith to Jesus is tough enough without having to work through why someone who professes faith doesn't contribute to the community good.
6. They steal from God and his people. Wow, that's a tough one. Malachi 3:6-9 speaks here.

"They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us" (1 Jn. 2:19).

Death by (Staff) Meeting

2009-12-16T16:58:00.000-08:00

Have you experienced it? The slow, life sucking, gut-churning, mind-numbing event called a staff meeting? You are probably part of the herd whose experience is that meetings are finger nails on the blackboard. I am.

Here's my confession: leading a good meeting is not naturally me. It is for my wife. She's locked and loaded when she's chairing. In fact, if I scour my my mind it's hard for me to find any meetings where I didn't come out frustrated, defeated or brain-dead. A personal dream I have is to observe meetings of the 10 best gurus who would give me the opportunity to learn. Why? Because, I hate to admit it, meetings are important.

Patrick Lencioni wrote a helpful fable he titled Death by Meeting. It's an easy read, but probably you'll do just as well to download his Meeting Model and other summaries from http://bit.ly/pybFG. Lencioni will increase your repertoire on the kinds of meetings you can have

Here's my tips to direct winning meetings.
1. Define your win. Every meeting has some purpose. Know it and celebrate it publicaly when it happens.
2. Listen, then engage. Don't drone on people. That's boring. Let others have the bulk of the talking time. Listen for the interesting comments, the unspoken "fishing" statement (the one that slyly asks "is anyone really listening to me" and respond. Recognize the person's statement, reframe or rephrase for clarification, then ask others to comment.
3. Summarize key ideas and their author. It's a double win when someone comes up with a great perspective, then receives public recognition for their acumen (that's a $10 word for "great work!").
4. Define next steps. What action needs to happen and who is responsible for it? If you don't "bell the cat" before the meeting is over nothing much will happen afterwards.

These actions won't ensure 100% success, but they may raise your batting average for better meetings.

7 DEADLY PRACTICES TO KILL SPIRITUAL PASSION

2009-12-04T11:10:00.001-08:00

New England Church leader Gordon MacDonald gives honest insight into seven practices of life which have the capacity to undermine your spiritual passion and dampen your enthusiasm.

Whether you are a brand new Christian, a maturing Christian or a leader in the church you will do well to guard your heart against these 7 deadly spiritual practices that kill spiritual passion:

Words without action
Busyness without purpose
Calendars without a Sabbath
Relationships without mutual nourishment
Pastoral personality without self-examination
Natural giftedness without spiritual power
An enormous theology without an adequate spirituality

from Brunswick Church of Christ www.njmissions.com

www.agapemission.com

2009-12-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Agape church, Nov. 29, 2009

Preaching to Unbelief

2009-08-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

Preaching to Unbelief (PTU) is different to Preaching to Belief (PTB). Here's a few of the differences:

1. PTB is to confirm what Christians already know so we feel affirmed in our belief system. PTU is to raise questions about the dilemmas of life.
2. PTB protects us from the world. Sundays fill us with resolve to withstand the world's evil. PTU calls us to engage the world, looking for the ways God is entering into the world.
3. PTB begins with statements. PTU begins with questions.

Just a few ideas to throw out. Give me yours as I explore this topic.

A Road Not Traveled

2008-03-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have the opportunity to travel widely across the country, observing, listening to and engaging in conversation with the fellowship of the churches of Christ. As we do this I keep a travel log of what we are learning. Recently I was blessed to share with our local preachers what God has been doing through Kairos. Since many of these men are my “traveling companions in the kingdom” I wanted to share with them some of what I have been learning about our fellowship. The following is a condensed version of those thoughts. I pray these considerations will encourage and challenge you as you serve God in his great kingdom.

1. Our heritage is blessed by a powerful “believers church” theology that, in its strength, is not complacent with the world as it is. For church planting, it is this theological heritage that critiques pragmatism or personal preference as the foundations for decision making about what a church planter will do. Our believers’ church heritage should help us live out God’s desires in the midst of the fiercely opposing values of a world where the “prince of this world” rules hard. Leonard Allen in Things Unseen describes the essence of a believers’ church theology as an apocalyptic vision of the kingdom of God of which we are both recipients and outposts; this apocalyptic vision provides the dynamic that energizes us into service to the world.

2. Our fellowship is blessed by a deep desire to obey, rooted in a trust in God’s Word. When this desire to obey is based on relationship, knowing God--we do well; when this desire to obey is interpreted as being knowledgeable of the Word, disconnected from relationship with a personal God, we lapse into law-keeping which turns us brittle and harsh.

3. The Road Not Traveled – This is the title of the final chapter in John Mark Hick’s Kingdom Come, the story of James Harding, David Lipscomb and the Nashville Bible School. Our fellowship, and probably God’s people in general, tend to do better when we are traveling folk and not settlers. Our call is still the call of Abraham to leave Ur and of Moses to leave Egypt so that we can experience God as we travel with him. Working with John Mark’s theme, here are three areas that for me constitute the road our fellowship in our generation has yet to travel:

a. Reducing our pride and arrogance. Our spirit of debate and insistence on our correctness are signs. Our well-honed ability to critique, evaluate and look for fault is another. The most damaging evidence of this sin is our struggle with spiritual submission to those whom God brings with spiritual authority into our lives. I confess, I am truly a child of my heritage—I feel I can do better then “they can.” So I have the right to tweak, adjust, dissent. But honestly, I can’t do better. I’m doing the best I can. Lord enrich my willingness to be blessed by others.

b. Serving the world as part of the fellowship of the broken. Our strong “set apart” exclusivity has not only separated us from other believers’ traditions, it has often separated us from the world God intends for us to serve. If we are to be salt and light among God’s lost people we will gain the opportunity to be heard as we recognize that we too are members of the fellowship of the broken. It is this personal recognition that will raise our level of compassion out of the pew and into a life of transforming service in God’s world.

c. Developing a culture of generosity at the level of the congregation. My experience is that as individuals our fellowship can be generous—at times. This has seldom been my experience at the congregational level. A friend of mine recently made this observation of us, “When missionaries go to churches of my fellowship if they do not ask for big money, the churches are insulted. When missionaries go to churches of Christ your churches are insulted if they are asked for money.” Giving without expecting the benefit of the gift must truly be the definition of generous giving. My experiences suggest that generous giving is a road our churches have yet to travel.

I just wanted to share these thoughts with you as we learn together how to minister from our fellowship, calling one another to God’s mission among God’s lost people.

God bless you all for your contributions to the kingdom.

Stan Granberg

Kairos executive director

Coaching

2007-12-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Pray the holiday season will be comforting and enjoyable.

One of the active systems that we use to support church plants is coaching. We're familiar with coaching in a sports context, but in a church context it's a bit strange to us, so I thought a short bit of background might be helpful.

For the past 5 years we’ve been delving into the church planting systems that have grown up in the US. In the 1980s starting a new church changed from the home based, mom & pop with the kids in the living room to a more public arena activity. It was a rugged activity and failure rates were in the 80% range.

Out of the desire to see the kingdom grow and to minimize the spiritual damage of failed plants, Bob Logan, Steve Ogne, Aubrey Malphurs and others began to explore systems that would reduce some of the risk. The three central systems that have become the heart of a planned approach to church planting are: 1) assessment, 2) training and 3) coaching. The first two are no strangers to us in the foreign missions context. The coaching, however, has not been part of our support agenda. We’ve felt like the sponsoring, supporting churches handled that. We mis-fired on that assumption.

Since 2000 the systems approach to planting churches in the US has grown into a marketable industry. The New Church Conference in Orlando, for example, was an in-house event for Christian Churches just 5 years ago with about 200 people attending. Last year there were 1,800 people from every spectrum of Christianity attending. The systems approach has also turned around the survival rate from 80% failure to 80% success at year 3 (Stetzer, Church Plant Survivability and Health Survey, 2007).

Our experience with Kairos is that the coaching is both the glue that keeps church planters functioning and the edge that helps them be more effective. Our journey into coaching is still fairly young, but we’ve learned a few key ideas.

1) Coaching for a church plant, or for a mission work, is more directed than life coaching. We speak of “coaching towards.”

2) To learn to coach well is a long term growth process, best done by being coached while coaching others.

3) Coaching is a tool that is really cutting away the stubborn, isolationist, “I can do it myself and don’t need anyone else” mentality that I have experienced (and promoted at times) in our fellowship. We our thoroughly enjoying the highly networked, interconnected relationships that our coaching system is developing among the church planters with whom Kairos is working.

Last month we invited MRN to join us for a seminar with Gary Rohrmayer, national church planting director for the Baptist General Conference, at what we called our “Making a Movement Seminar” for the Kairos leadership team and our sponsoring church. Gary challenged us to not only develop our systems (we are developing 10 clearly identified systems), but to be deliberate in infusing all of them with spiritual dynamics.

We’re not claiming expertise with coaching, whatever expertise we have comes from the fact we may be just a few steps further down the path. Nor are we promoting Kairos as a “coaching certification” organization. I do think we have some good insights and experiences to share and we are really keen on deepening our partnership with others.

Blessings,

Stan

Church Generations

2007-10-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

Quite often I am asked why don't we work with existing churches that are declining, or at least encourage church planters to move into these churches rather than start something new from scratch. Here’s some short answers to this question that I wrote recently.

Some general ideas and observations:

Churches tend to have a generational lifespan, i.e., most will live for the lifetime of those that started them, when that generation passes away, typically so will their churches (I’m talking sociologically with the “their” pronoun).
The churches each generation starts exists to take care of the spiritual needs of that generation and is endowed with their generational DNA. When younger generations express feelings like they don’t fit, they are saying that the church isn’t of their generation, it’s of their grandparents and parents’ generation. This idea is a sometimes difficult for those in our fellowship to grasp since we view the church through ahistorical lenses.
-Unless churches have a strong revitalization that changes their basic foundation to a new generation, they will not survive much beyond 50-70 years.
Statistically, only 5% of churches that reach the stage of decline, and even long-term plateaued growth, will successfully revitalize into an actively growing church again.
David T. Olsen’s (www.theamericanchurch.org) research on the American church scene found that from 1990 to 2004 the established, already existing churches in America added 0% to the growth of Christianity in America. Church plants added 7%, the only growth that occurred.
The issue with what is now the majority of our churches in Churches of Christ is not theological, it is sociological. We developed and spread as a southern, rural oriented fellowship. Our country is now urban. The farmlands of America are generally depopulated now compared to what they were 50 years ago.
As a fellowship we are still wrestling to learn how to live and thrive in urban environments, though we’ve made progress in suburban environments.

Some observations from my personal experiences:

I’ve worked long and deeply with 4 churches that would be similar to those you have in mind. None of them have been able to respond effectively to the changes they needed to make in order to become a vital, growing church again. The issue is primarily one of DNA identity. Those members still at church are closely connected to, or they are of the founding generation. To make more the minor, incremental changes makes them “feel” that the church is changing, which is exactly the point. They become resistant on theological grounds because they do not know how to deal with the change process emotionally.
Almost all of the resources that we have available in Churches of Christ (lectureships, seminars, colleges and universities, missional church resources, elder link, print media, etc., etc.) are produced and designed to minister to already existing churches, all of those churches that we see around us. On a percentage of resources we have 0% of our resources focused on developing the next generation of churches that will serve the younger, urban people we see all around us. Kairos is one of only 2 church planting ministries in all the Churches of Christ who are desperately trying to help our fellowship face the future through a new generation of churches.
We have often spoken of a “generation” gap between those below 30 or 40 and those above. It is more appropriate to speak of this as a “culture” gap. The difference between these age groups is far larger, much more dramatic than a generational difference. In historical terms, those above 40 are the product of the printing press while those below are the product of the internet. These two generations process information differently, they perceive the world differently, they ask fundamentally different questions. For example, while those above 40 have typically asked “what is truth?” those below 40 ask “what works in life?”
Existing churches minister best to existing Christians while new churches minister best to new Christians.
As you stated, many churches are in states of decline because the predispositions they work from have taken them to that point.

So here’s the bottom line as I have experienced it, you’re correct, to work with an existing church will take lots of time and lots of effort. Will it produce results? The statistical odds are only 5% that you will see any appreciable, lasting results for long term health and growth of any church you select to work with. Certainly any work you do will help people feel loved and appreciated, and in that way it will feel good. During the 10 years I was at Cascade College I agonized deeply with how best to serve our existing churches and worked hard at it. The conclusion I came to, which is part of how God led us to our present ministry with Kairos, is that the best thing I can do for our existing churches is to help them see new healthy, growing churches and so find hope that we can make a difference for Jesus again in America.

Hope these thoughts give some further ideas to help you.

Blessings,

Stan

Answers to some questions

2007-08-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been asked to answer some questions about church planting and Kairos. I thought the blog would be a way to interact with these questions in a more public venue.

What insights have you gained and/or lessons have you learned on church planting in the United States?

1. There is a new receptivity developing in at least parts of the US. The west coast, for example, is an amazing area of new church planting activity. We are finding people open for spiritual conversations. It does take them time to develop faith. The concept of believing in God is not familiar to them. They often ease into the idea that they are believers.

2. The most effective church planting groups in the US (Baptist General Conference, FourSquare, Vineyard, Evangelical Covenant, Southern Baptist) have:

a. Developed systems for assessing potential planters, training and coaching planters and funding the new churches for the first 3 to 5 years. They do not tend to work ad hoc or as isolated entities (i.e., an individual church learning everything from scratch).

b. A culture of expectation. As these groups have become more practiced, they have developed a culture of expectation and success towards church planting. Starting new churches becomes the norm, not the exception, and they expect that most of them will do well. I am amazed at the consistently positive response we receive from these groups. They are encouraging; they want to see our planters succeed. They are willing to share resources.

3. Our fellowship has a lot of men and women who are ready to plant, but they want and need help. The task is too daunting for most of them to leave established ministries and jobs without having others walk alongside them. A ministry like Kairos provides such an impetus as well encouragement and confidence that lets them make the decision.

4. Potential planters in our fellowship often do not have a background in evangelism, very few of them have experience in growing, healthy churches and virtually none of them have experience in a recently planted church (5 yrs. old or less). This means we have a lot of training, expectation building and reorientation of ministry that we help planters develop.

5. How little our fellowship knows about or understands church planting today. Our primary reference for a model goes back to the 1960s and “living room” based church plants. Typically there were a few members of Churches of Christ in a location. Someone opened up their home for the gathering. Other members moved in, joined, and Bible studies (“cottage” meetings, Jule Miller filmstrips, etc.) where conducted with friends and neighbors. Most church members we talk with now perceive church planting as either a church split or an existing church must “hive” off 50 or 75 members to another location. We need other models to work from.

Today the 1960s pattern is seldom effective, vis a vis the “stateside mission” church that grows to 35 or 50 members and plateaus, requiring continued external assistance for many years in order to survive. Our culture is now suspicious of Christianity and much faith-based activity. To plant new churches that can become self-supporting in 4 or 5 years and vitally influence the unchurched community in our new context requires more intentional effort and comprehension than the living room model provides.

The Damascus Road Call

2007-07-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Acts 9:1-19, the call of Paul on the road to Damascus. It is interesting how this most extraordinary and demanding call is the one we think of most often when we think of a call from God. The fact is, however, that God seems to use this type of calling quite seldom, and with good reason.

What comprises a Damascus Road call? First, it involves an intense, often supernatural experience. It is the call of Isaiah (chapter 6), Jeremiah (1:4-19), Elisha (2 Kings 2:9-12) and Moses (Exodus 3), where God meets people in remarkable ways, ways that leave them changed—transformed. Certainly Charleton Heston’s transformation on Mt. Sinai in the Ten Commandments is theatrically contrived, but it captures the essence of the transformation of the Damascus Road Call.

Second, the Damascus Road Call carries God’s intent for that person from the very beginnings of their life, if not before. Paul speaks of his call as having been designated for him from birth (Galatians 1:15). Jeremiah’s poetic revelation from God says:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

Before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5)

And then there is Moses’ miraculous salvation from the wrath and hubris of the pharaoh of Egypt, only to end up a protected member of the royal family (Exodus 2:1-10).

The third characteristic of the Damascus Road Call is that there is a clearly identified purpose, often delivered by a spoken message from God. Again, each of the above individuals demonstrates this. Jeremiah, for example, receives a vision that describes the intent of God’s message as well as God’s verbal proclamation that prefigures the content of Jeremiah’s prophetic message to Judah (Jeremiah 1:15-16).

The fourth characteristic of the Damascus Road Call is that God uniquely prepares the individual he calls for the specific task for which he has called that person. When Moses was drawn from the Nile River even most kings and princes of the world could neither read nor write. Yet Moses, educated in Pharaoh’s palace, received the highest education the world at that time had to offer. God used Moses’ education to begin the writing of his personal revelation (the Bible) through Moses’ hand (Exodus 17:14; Mark 12:26). Paul’s personal heritage and background also came into play in his ministry. When Paul and Silas were falsely arrested and beaten in Acts 16, the Philippian magistrates feared reprisal for punishing a Roman citizen without trial which changed the tenor of response towards the fledgling Philippian church (Acts 16:37). Again under arrest in Jerusalem, this time by his own Jewish people, Paul used his background as a Pharisee to throw the Sanhedrin council into an uproar, setting Pharisee against Sadducee over the fact or fiction of the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:6).

The final characteristic of the Damascus Road Call is that it demands from its recipients all they can give—and more. Paul describes his personal experiences of beatings, floggings, hunger, cold and shipwrecks in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28. The Hebrews writer provide his graphic, summative commentary this way, They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them (11:37-38). Besides being the most extraordinary of calls, the Damascus Road Call is also the most demanding.

So why is the Damascus Road Call the one we gravitate to most quickly? Who in their right minds would want to receive this kind of call if it is so costly? A few reasons come to mind as I reflect on what people have told me. The most common reason seems to be that we want an absolute certainty that what we are doing is what God wants us to do. We feel unprepared or inadequate to make the decision facing us, so it would just be easier if God made the decision instead. Another reason people may gravitate towards this call is they do not know any other type of call exists. The Damascus Road Call is the default. And finally, some people feel like there must be some amazing glory to be had in the Damascus Road Call. Perhaps there is a recognition or reward for the “the few, the proud” that others will not receive. Perhaps. But more often than not those whom God has called in the stark, drastic event of the Damascus Road Call have been called to drink from a cup of sacrifice rather than a cup of glory (Matthew 20:22-23).

I don’t want to discourage us from pursuing a Damascus Road Call. God uses Damascus Road experiences because he has important, kingdom tasks to be done. To refuse such a call exacts even more of a price than one pays accepting the call. But for most of God’s people, thankfully, there are other ways that God calls that are just as valid, but easier to bear.

Next thoughts: the Exposure Call

The Call

2007-07-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

“Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight” (1 Tim. 1:18).

Wouldn’t you like to be able to slip deeper into Paul’s mind, and Timothy’s, to gather more information about what Paul was saying.? Paul merely tantalizes us with these words, but for Timothy, they must have been both electric and comforting. Timothy had a deep purpose from God for his ministry, a purpose that had been clarified through prophetic utterance and energized through spiritual gifting from his mentor (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6). In the concise parlance of today’s religious world, we would say these statements refer to Timothy’s call.

Calling is an important concept in the church planting context. Studies by the Assemblies and Vineyard planting ministries revealed that for those church plants which failed, 90% and 50% of the planters, respectively, felt uncertain about their call to plant a new church. From experience, it is the certainty of the call that kept me going through some truly dark times on the mission field. The call in the life of a church planter is important.

In my fellowship of churches of Christ the vocabulary of call is not well known or well used. It leaves many of our planters wondering: “Did I get a call?” “What happens when I receive a call?” “Will God just tell me where to go and what to do?” These are all great questions. For the next few blogs I want to share my experiences with the calling of God as I have seen them in mission field contexts, both foreign and domestic.

3 Types of Calls

I’ve seen three general types of calls in my life and the lives of many friends and acquaintances. Here’s the taxonomy of calls I’ve developed from these experiences and from the biblical text:

1. The Damascus Road Call

2. The Exposure Call

3. The Consideration Call

Next blog: The Damascus Road Call

Selfish Churches

2007-06-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

In the age of reality shows (Apprentice, the Bachelor, Pirates, etc., etc.) one theme begins to appear consistently: people are pretty selfish. When the whole object of the game is to make alliances, then break them so you set your “friends” up to be skewered, that’s selfish.

It does cause me stop and think about myself though. Living the life of kingdom giving is a challenging assignment. Jesus asks us to give up wealth (Mark 10:20), to give up family (Mark 10:29), to give up our sense of self-autonomy and the right to decide what we are going to do with our lives (Mark 10:35-45). That’s heady stuff on the personal level.

Kingdom living is probably even more difficult at the community level—interpret that as church. There’s something about making decisions with a bunch of other people that absolves us of responsibility. It’s not up to me, right? Everyone is involved with this. What can I do if there are some people who can’t give it up? And so the selflessness challenges slowly float by while we (the church), calmly sit on the bank untouched—and unchanged.

Here’s a short list of community challenges to selfless, kingdom living.:

Doctrinal purity – we’ve got the right to be right, read that the right to determine what is right and what is not based on our own preferences.

Autonomy – this bundle of joy allows us the right not to join anyone else in doing something together lest we violate our right to do everything on our own.

Community existence – this is a tough one, it means we retain the right to keep on going long after our ability to be a kingdom light in the world has been extinguished (look at what Jesus said to the church in Ephesus if this sounds harsh, Rev. 2:1-7).

Myopia – this is the ability to see only what we want to see, to narrow our field of vision down to a single slice of reality while ignoring everything else.

When we read Mark 10 about Jesus's comments on wealth, family, life and autonomy we cannot read them only at the level of the individual. Those kingdom maxims are intended for the level of kingdom communities as well.

Begging prayer

2007-06-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

Remember that crazy little story Jesus told about the persistently begging widow. Luke records this story in 18:1-8. See how Luke begins the story, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Recently I heard the story of a Christian woman who told a friend that she was practicing “begging prayer.” Her son is in the army, and like so many today was being scheduled to go to Iraq. This mother went to God in begging prayer over his safety.

What is begging prayer you ask? This woman said begging prayer is prayer that you do over and over again. Anytime you think about it, you pray. Anytime you are reminded of your request, you pray. Anytime you sit down to pray, you ask God for that item for which you are begging, over and over and over again. And “you know what” she says, “God answers begging prayer faster than any other kind of prayer.”

May I ask you to practice begging prayer for our church planters and the people they are meeting in the name of Jesus?

25 Years of Church Planting Results in America: A Change in the Tide

2007-06-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

For at least the last 25 years church researchers have consistently reported there were more churches closing in the US than new churches were opening. This year, both Warren Bird and Ed Stetzer, experts on church planting and growth in America, both announced that in 2006 the best estimates are that 3,500 new churches were started while only 3,000 closed. There are several reason for what we pray is a tide shift and not just an anomaly.

One reason for the positive shift is that there is a better understanding of what it takes to plant new, contextually appropriate churches. Through research and experience a defined process has been identified for selecting and equipping as church planters that is leading to better results. Kairos continues to train and learn as a beneficiary of the work of many others in the US who have pioneered this process.

A second reason is there is a greater awareness of and commitment to the need to strategically and deliberately plan where and how to plant new churches. Groups are planning church plants by the hundreds. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, plans to plant over 1,500 new churches in 2007 and they have 400 full time people whose job is to strategically engage the work required to meet this goal. This strategy challenge may be particularly problematic to us in churches of Christ with our practice of what often amounts to a radical congregational autonomy. While autonomy of congregations is certainly a biblical concept, we must also ask ourselves if the radical autonomy we practice may also be a major hindrance to us. Perhaps a conservative autonomy that would let us strategically join forces for kingdom benefit would serve us better.

A third reason for the planting of more churches than closed in the US in 2006 is that there are now second and third generation new churches being started by a generation of Christians who were converted in and/or matured in their faith in the context of growing, new churches. This new crop of church planting evangelists understands the challenges of church planting through personal experience. The demands of church planting are second nature to them, thus they do a better job than those who must learn the demands of church planting for the first time. We found this true in our work in Kenya. We missionaries did OK planting new churches, but the national Christians were much more effective than us.