Author Archives: nathancreitz

About nathancreitz

Nathan is passionate about pursuing the mission and multiplication of the local church.

Radical Faith or the American Dream?

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Book Review: Radical: Taking back your faith from the American Dream
David Platt (Multnomah 2010)

I have a short-list of books that I use in discipleship and mentoring relationships. “Radical” is now at the top of the list.

In fact, this is one of those books that needs to be read by every American who claims to be a Christian, whether Protestant or Catholic, evangelical or liberal. I want to give a brief review here because it actually falls into all three major topics of ChurchETHOS: making disciples, planting churches, and engaging culture.

David Platt was a doctoral candidate at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary when I met him. He was the teaching assistant for Dr. Jim Shaddix at the time so he presented a couple of lectures if Dr. Shaddix was absent.

A few years later I worked with David at a conference in New England for young adults. I was the conference coordinator and we asked David to be our speaker. It was the most powerful conference I have ever participated in. During one of the sessions, David quoted Romans 1-8 entirely from memory. At certain moments, people were standing and cheering for what we were hearing. It was amazing!

I was so moved by the conference that I visited David in New Orleans to recruit him to become a church planter in New England. However, he was already in the process of accepting the position at The Church at Brookhills in Birmingham, AL, a 4,000 member church. At the time, this made him probably the youngest megachurch pastor in the US. Since that time, he has mobilized that church to serve God in Birmingham and around the world.

Many of the stories he shares in the book are stories I was familiar with from knowing David in other contexts. However, he does a compelling job of weaving those stories together to make a case for radical commitment to Jesus.

Rather than do a thorough review of the book in one post, I’d like to begin a series of posts that will unpack some of the themes of David’s book (but for less than $10, you really should just go ahead and buy a copy). However, I do want to highlight the last chapter which is entitled “The Radical Experiment”.

The Radical Experiment

This book is more than a collection of stories, Scriptures, and quotes. This book is a manifesto for American Christianity. The subtitle is “Taking back your faith from the American Dream” and the last chapter provides some practical steps that anyone can take to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Jesus. Of course, the five steps in this last chapter are meant to be a starting point to help launch someone onto a path that looks more like obedience to Jesus than self-centeredness and it by no means is enough. The challenge is to do five things for one year to see how God blesses your obedience.

“I dare you over the next year to…”

1. Pray for the entire world;

David writes, “In a world where more than 4.5 billion people are without Christ and more than a billion are on the edge of starvation, we have to begin somewhere.” He recommends a resource I’ve used before (and my wife and I are using now) called Operation World. You can find it online or at Amazon for pretty cheap.

2. Read through the entire Word;

This needs no explanation, but I love the stories David tells of traveling to China and Indonesia and elsewhere where people are so hungry for God’s Word that they are willing to risk their lives to come and learn more. David writes, “God has chosen by his matchless grace to give us revelation of himself in his Word. It is the only Book that he has promised to bless by his Spirit to transform you and me into the image of Jesus Christ.”

3. Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose;

The idea here is not to just give out of our abundance, but to really sacrifice. We have more than we need but it’s all those things we want that keep us from radically giving and sharing with others who are in desperate need (around the world or next door). David asks: “What if you took the next year and set a cap on your lifestyle? What if you sought for the next year to minimize luxuries in your life? This might involve selling present luxuries or withholding the purchase of future luxuries or intentionally sacrificing resources you already have.”

Keep in mind that this challenge is encouraging you to spend your money on something that is gospel-centered, church-focused, and that meets a tangible need.

4. Spend your time in another context;

Volunteer weekly at a soup kitchen. Spend a week in a foreign land with a mission team. The point is to get out of your comfort zone and see how others are living their lives. John Ortberg once preached a message where his only point was to “get out of the house!” Allow God to open your eyes to the need around you and spend your time meeting those needs.

5. Commit your life to a multiplying community.

This is where the other four challenges converge. This is where you will find accountability. This is where you will find encouragement. We can’t fly solo when we follow Jesus. He didn’t allow his disciples to do that and he isn’t calling any of us to go it alone either. If we are going to follow Christ through radical obedience, then we need others who are committed to the same thing.

The back cover of the book says that Jesus followers would “leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily… but who do you know who lives like that? Do you?” By God’s grace, I pray that my life will continue to conform to the image of Jesus and that I will encourage others to live a radical life of obedience.

What are your thoughts? Do you live more for the American Dream or for the Kingdom of God? Who is King in your life, you or Jesus? If you’ve read the book, what insights do you have to share?

One Month to a New Church Plant

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Church Planting Exercise: If you only had one month to start a church, what would you do with your time?

Let’s add some context: You find out that your town doesn’t have a church. You may very well be the only follower of Jesus. You know that you should love God, love people, and make disciple-making disciples. You have no team and no resources other than food, clothing and shelter. What do you do?

Before answering the question, let me also say that I’m curious to hear from people in the missional and attractional church planting camps (and all the other church plants that don’t fall neatly into one of those two categories).

I should also point out that this is simply an exercise. I know it is God who establishes His church. This is a fun activity to help us think through what is most important to us about church planting (plus I’m hoping you’ll help me with some good ideas! :)

So, what are your thoughts? Would you spend your time on budgets, buildings, and bodies? Would you spend your time in prayer? Would you spend your time on relational evangelism, event evangelism, servant evangelism, or mass marketing? Would you spend your time on demographics and ethnographies?

What would you do?

Bridge Element Website Design for Church Planters

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Update: The following offer from Bridge Element to ChurchETHOS readers is only available until September 26th!

Bridge Element is a flash driven website design service for churches and Christian ministries. The team at Bridge Element is especially passionate about helping church planters. They are a part of a church plant in the Boston area so they know our unique needs (money?) and challenges (time and money?). As a church planter, I need a website that is sharp, clean, easy to find through search, and doesn’t take a lot of my time to add content. Bridge Element makes all of that possible. They will work with you to make sure you get exactly what you want and they are about half the price of other similar services.

Their service includes:

  • $499 setup fee for a full flash website design from dozens of templates (includes hours spent on customization)
  • $20/mo hosting and full support
  • Unlimited storage space, bandwidth, and email addresses
  • Easy to use content management system (CMS)
  • Branding, printing, and other media services that are more affordable than the big names (trust me, I’ve looked!)

The best thing is, they are offering my readers a reduced rate on website design if you mention “ChurchETHOS” when you order. Rather than $499 for the setup fee, you only pay $399! That’s about $600 less than some of the other leading website design companies.

Below are a couple of screen shots of their website, but feel free to go on over and check it out for yourself! Make sure you mention ChurchETHOS and get that $100 off the initial setup fee!

This is the front page of Bridge Element! Check out the link in the bottom right to try out their easy to use CMS. That way you know exactly what you are getting!

This page is a template that you can play around with. Notice the free backgrounds and other free stuff they offer to add some snap to your website design.

What other website design services are you using for your church? Do they include a content management system, hosting, and support? If so, how much are you paying?

Outreach Events in Swampscott and Marblehead

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Over the past few weeks, my wife and I have been involved in a lot of opportunities to do outreach in Swampscott and Marblehead. We are planting a church in Swampscott (RRCC) and meanwhile, we are still members of a church in Marblehead (GCC) that is becoming more outward-focused.

In this post, I want to share a few things we have been doing and offer some bullet point lessons we’ve learned about how to make events like these a success for our community.

High Seas VBS

Grace Community Church has been hosting a Vacation Bible School in Marblehead for years. We can only host about 100 kids due to space limitations. This is such a popular event in our community that registration is closed within weeks. My wife led the kindergarten class and this was her first VBS experience. Here are a few thoughts about how to make VBS a successful outreach opportunity:

  1. Go bananas with the decorations! I once led a VBS that had a submarine theme. So, we created a huge submarine facade that covered the entire front entrance to the church! This took a huge volunteer commitment, but the kids loved entering the church through a port hole.
  2. Train leaders early and often. If leaders can’t commit to 3 out of 4 training sessions (for example), they probably shouldn’t volunteer for such an important event.
  3. VBS should be a momentum builder. How is it tied into a larger, year-long outreach strategy in the church? What is the follow up process? How about creating a miniature VBS every Sunday morning during regular worship services.

International Barbecue

A member of GCC has been hosting a barbecue for international students for years now. This year, there were close to 75 students and their families from places such as Colombia, Korea, China, Japan, and Morocco. The internationals spend the day in Marblehead enjoying the Festival of Arts, then they arrive at the Steadman’s home by 4pm. We eat around 5pm and then have a program at about 6pm with some music and a few testimonies. All of this is followed by dessert. People from our church in Marblehead bring food and interact with the internationals. Here are a few thoughts about this ministry:

  1. Every church near a college campus should have some sort of outreach to students and their families – even more important in a place like Boston where there are students from about 145 nations studying in Boston area schools.
  2. Ongoing relationships are easy to form with international students and their families through English conversation, TOEFL preparation, and simply inviting them into your home. They are longing for these sorts of interactions with people.
  3. Again, is there a larger strategy to this sort of ministry? How can a ministry such as this get support from the Body? Are leaders being developed to help with the ministry? Are there opportunities for internationals to be welcomed into the Body?

Strawberry Festival

We had a team of students help us pass out gallons of strawberry lemonade at the annual Strawberry Festival in Swampscott. We included a small flyer that gave our website and phone number and some information about an upcoming Bible study series.

  1. Taking advantage of town events shows an investment in the community. In addition to handing out lemonade, it would be even better if we stayed late and helped clean up.
  2. Having t-shirts for our church for this event would have been extremely helpful. We thought about it in plenty of time but just didn’t have the budget for it this year.
  3. I think in the future I would prefer to just give the gift and not advertise for anything. That’s the difference between servant evangelism and marketing. Servant evangelism might include a note saying, “A gift from Red Rock Community Church”. Marketing says, “this gift is so that you will think more favorably about what we want you to do.” Even still, it was a fun time and a lot of people were very appreciative (though some wished the lemonade was spiked…maybe next year…kidding!).

Fourth of July Parade

Okay, so this event was awesome! Every year in Marblehead there is a parade for the children on the Fourth of July. This year it happened to fall on a Sunday and the parade was at 10am. Of course, we could’ve complained and asked the organizers to move the event to a more amenable time (how dare they organize something when everyone is supposed to be in church, right?) However, we decided to simply have a shorter worship service at 8:45 (instead of 9:30) and then go and participate in the parade! We had 20 children and 18 adults marching in the parade and we had about 15 more volunteers giving out water at three separate “watering holes”. We all wore matching t-shirts, decorated bikes with red, white, and blue, played music from our VBS from the week before, and even had a float that someone made to look just like our church!

  1. We were able to tie this event in with our 200th anniversary year celebration. Our theme this year is “Excited about Grace” so we carried our banner and we had homemade signs saying Excited about… children, God’s love, families, the Bible, etc.
  2. We walked in the parade under the “historic” category (other categories were current events, fun, etc.). This made our reason for walking relevant and it wasn’t forced. Celebrating 200 years in Marblehead and walking in the “historic” category just made sense.
  3. We even won a cash prize of $50! We’re still trying to figure out the reason, but the point is, people noticed us! A lot of people along the parade route had big smiles on their faces and kids from VBS held the week before recognized the music we were playing.
  4. As noted before, being a part of your town’s events shows a commitment to the town and raises the awareness of your church’s activity in the community.

Well, those are just a few of the opportunities we had to do servant evangelism, children’s events, and making connections with international students. This kind of stuff is fun! Really there are two kinds of people in a church, suckers and servants. You are a “sucker” if you see the church as a group of people who exist to serve you! If that describes your perspective then you are sucking the life out of your church (though there may be times in your life when you need more than you can give, but that’s the exception not the rule).

On the other hand, a servant is someone who gets involved in reaching out to the community through events like the ones listed above. Church isn’t a place to get but to give. It isn’t a place to be served but to serve. Plus, it’s simple and fun. The parade took very little commitment and lots of smiles. Kids had a lot of fun participating. VBS took much more commitment but it also has a huge impact in the community. Regardless of the opportunity, just make sure you are doing something to show love to your neighbors!

God’s Faithfulness in Church Planting

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Yesterday was a great day of ministry in Swampscott. For the past few weeks we have had some volunteer help from a group of eight college students. Since the annual Strawberry Festival was happening in Swampscott yesterday, we decided to deploy this small army of students to make and give away cups of cold strawberry lemonade. Of course, what sounds like a simple plan actually required a lot of faith on our part.

Faith Challenge #1: Food – It has been a pleasure working with these students and they are basically octo-multiplying (made that up) our efforts here in Swampscott with the time they are spending meeting people, conducting surveys, and blessing people! It has also been a pleasure sharing meals with them. For the most part, people in our church have volunteered to give meals. However, on Sunday, we basically had nothing lined up for them.

God Is Faithful #1: Food Provided – On Sunday morning, just 8 hours before we needed to provide a meal, the youth pastor of Grace Community Church in Marblehead approached me and asked if we could use some hamburgers and hotdogs that they had left over from a previous event. We graciously accepted! Praise God for providing the food!

Faith Challenge #2: Lemonade – As we are still in the process of raising our own support, we don’t really have a budget for things like strawberries and lemonade. In fact, not only do we not have a budget, we barely have a bank balance. Yet, we knew we wanted to bless our town with a small gift of love, and giving away strawberry lemonade at a Strawberry Festival with smiles on our faces and an invitation to a Bible study for the adults sounded like a good idea.

God Is Faithful #2: Lemonade Provided – We basically had a little bit of money in our account and decided this was the way God wanted us to spend the money. It was not a waste of resources! We met dozens of people and left a positive impression and talked with several people about our upcoming Bible study and about our church. Looking forward to seeing how God uses this in the coming weeks!

Additionally, this morning I found that someone had made a donation to our ministry through our online donation tool. The amount was about four times what we spent on the strawberries and lemonade in the first place!

Faith Challenge # 3: Rain – An hour before the Strawberry Festival, I drove down to see if they were still setting up because it was raining outside. Even the weather forecast was for rain all evening and into the night. There were a few people setting up and they said they were still on. However, even if the event was still being held, we had no tent or enough umbrellas to protect our team from the rain. No one wants to stand in the rain and give away watered down lemonade. Besides, who wants to drink watered down lemonade?

Thirty minutes before the event, the rain was coming down even harder and so I called the team and said they could still come over to our house but that we wouldn’t be handing out lemonade. I went upstairs to cancel the printing job on my computer. No need to print anymore invitations to the Bible study right?

God Is Faithful #3: Sun – A couple of minutes later the team leader called back and asked if we were sure we were canceling and I started to say yes but I looked outside and it was crystal clear. Within minutes the clouds had rolled away and the sun was shining brightly! The team got to my place at 4pm and we prayed that God would grant us good weather and that He would be glorified through our small attempt to be a blessing in our community. From that point on, it was the most beautiful weather for an outdoor event: sunny, partly cloudy, light breeze, not too warm, beautiful!

Faith Challenge #4: Fuel – This is a small little miracle, but I thought it was a fun way to end the day. We have been running low on our gas for the gas grill for a week or two now. I’m sure I will need to go and fill it pretty soon but I’m not really looking forward to that right now. Yet, we needed to cook the hamburgers for the team after spending a few hours giving away lemonade.

God Is Faithful #4: Fuel Provided – The beef patties were pre-formed and were frozen so all I had to do was throw some on the grill, get out the condiments and pour some drinks (actually, some of the students helped with a lot of the preparation). After two minutes  of cooking, the fire was so strong that I simply shut off the gas. The burgers were on the grill for about 10 minutes in total and I probably only used two minutes with the grill turned on. The rest of the time, the fire continued simply by feeding on its own grease. I’ve never seen my grill or any grill do that…sure, sometimes you have to turn the grill off to let the fire die down, but I’ve always had to turn it back on at some point.

Just one more way that our Father shows His faithfulness!

Thank you, Father, for a beautiful evening and the opportunity to show your grace to our neighbors.

Sunday’s Coming Video

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I thought this video was extremely funny! Then I thought it was sad! Then I was confused!

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

How did you react? I laughed because the video is well made and uses satire to drive home a point. I was sad because I realized too many churches don’t get the point. Then I was confused because I’m not sure what the point is either, based on who created the video in the first place.

Let me explain! (but before I get too serious, take a minute to laugh…it is, and was meant to be, a funny video!)

The Multi-site Megachurch Worship Form

NorthPoint Community Church is on the cutting edge of the multi-site megachurch model. You can agree or disagree with this model but there’s no doubt that thousands of people’s lives are being transformed and men and women are becoming Jesus’ disciples through their ministries.

The confusion sets in because it seems that the North Point Media team are creating a parody of their own services. A large part of the NPCC resources go into their weekly services (or worship show depending on your positive or negative impression of what NPCC does each Sunday). NPCC is bringing more people to Jesus than I’ve ever met so I am not throwing stones, I’m just asking questions.

In his book, The Disciple-Making Pastor, @billhull says, “You can always get a crowd, if you demand very little and put on a show.” I would add that the better the show, the bigger the crowd. I don’t suggest that NPCC demands very little but they definitely put on a great show.

So, what is NPCC encouraging us to do in this video? Eschew the “show”? Will they? Is the answer to simply reorganize our music and message so that it doesn’t fit the form in this video? Is their form engaging culture? Does the culture scoff at this particular form? Or, perhaps NPCC is engaging culture in a more relevant and life changing way than I ever will?

Your Corporate Worship is Not Valid!?

Another stream of questions: Is a pattern of corporate worship inherently a bad thing? Can we have a standardized way (or “traditional”) way of doing things in our churches? Can we really say that one way of doing things is wrong? If I were to go to a concert, what would I expect? If the musician sat on the edge of the stage and just talked for two hours would I be disappointed? If I go to see a comedian and they take up an offering, sing a hymn, and preach from the Bible would I think it was innovative or would I be upset that it wasn’t what I expected? Isn’t it human nature to follow forms and systems and even traditions?

How did you get ready for your day this morning? Is that any different than asking how someone started off their week at church? The fact that we fall into predictable patterns

I don’t think we should let forms paralyze us or cause us to fall into complacency, but if NPCC uses the form that is satirized in this video, and it’s ‘working’ for them, maybe it’s okay for them to follow the pattern. Meanwhile, deviations – or better, variations – on the form could be healthy and keep people from settling into predictability and consumeristic complacency.

Anyway, the NPCC form probably isn’t for me and it does sadden me that our more “cutting edge” churches have adopted this form without question because the megachurch gurus do it and look at how many people they have! Hopefully, NPCC is taking the first step in breaking the mold and maybe that’s what this video is about. However, if they are simply nodding and winking at a practice they think is ineffective, then this video simply leaves me confused and seeking answers.

So, what are your thoughts about this video? Does your church follow this form? Does the video sting a little bit or have you gone the other way and are establishing forms and patterns that simply appeal to you? Can we just admit that we are all consumers to some extent and we search out a way of doing things that resonates with us? We will never completely rid ourselves of consumeristic tendencies, but are you striving to practice the presence of God as naturally and theologically and experientially as possible?

Conducting a Community Needs Survey

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There are a lot of resources out there for church planters to be able to determine the needs of their community. In the early stages, it makes sense to do some ethnographic research. Basically, ethnographic research is qualitative, rather than quantitative, research. Most ethnographic research in any field includes interviews and observations from someone who has immersed himself in a particular culture.

This kind of research isn’t meant to be completely objective, but should be participatory. In other words, when a church planter engages in ethnographic research, he is trying to understand his neighbors and enter into their world (yet without sin).

This month I am spending most of my days engaging in two activities that fall under the category of ethnographic research: prayer walking, and community needs surveys. Both activities, I hope will bring about a better understanding of the needs of my community and will give me a deeper burden for my neighbors.

Prayer Walking

The first and most important step in determining the needs of the community is to prayer walk. I can’t believe how often my eyes have been opened as I walked, drove, or rode my bike through my neighborhood and interceded for my neighbors. My wife and I really benefited from a resource on this from Randy Sprinkle called Follow Me: Becoming A Lifestyle Prayerwalker.

The goal of this time is to allow God’s Spirit to open our eyes to the needs in the community. I’m including a few observations of how to make prayer walking a normal and fruitful part of your ministry.

1. Go together – Prayer walking alone is natural and should be happening even if you are walking to the store and back. However, prayer walking with someone else provides accountability and intentionality. It’s exciting to see the insights God gives to someone else, or to see Him confirm something He is speaking to your heart when your partner prays the same thing.
2. Limit conversation and increase intercession – It’s easy to gravitate more towards conversation with a prayer walking partner because it’s more comfortable. Just realize that God is there with you and turn more of your attention to Him than to your partner.
3. Record Your Observations – Take a small notebook and keep track of any major insights or observations that God reveals to you about your community.
4. Share the Stories – If several teams are prayer walking at the same time, come together at a specified time and share what God has shown you.

What ideas do you have to make prayer walking a regular and fruitful part of your ministry? How have you seen it help in developing an ethnographic profile of your community?

Community Needs Survey

Next to prayerful observation, the best way to determine the needs of people in your community is simply to ask them.

I’ve heard of a lot of church planters who develop a short survey (maybe 4 or 5 questions) to determine the needs of their community. When I started a church in Boston, this was one of the first things we did and it is something we will be doing this month. My personal goal is to knock on 1,000 doors and prayerfully receive at least 250 completed surveys.

Of course, there are a lot of ways to do these surveys. We had a lot of success the last time simply standing in a high traffic area and asking people for a couple of minutes of their time. There are a couple of spots that we could potentially do this in our current town but we want to try the door to door thing and see how it goes.

Also, there are a lot of different goals in conducting surveys and certain types of information that people want. Ours is going to be a basic community needs assessment. We want our community to know that we care about them and want to present a positive first impression rather than getting into doctrinal issues.

Here are some of the questions we will be asking:

- What do you think are the greatest needs that this community faces right now?
- Describe the kind of church that you think would meet the needs of this community.
- What advice do you have for me as I start a new church in this area?

I also developed my own series of questions based on the following pictures:

What questions would you ask to determine needs in your community? Would you go door to door or stand on a busy street corner? Other ideas?

Documentary: Lord, Save Us From Your Followers

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Lord, Save Us From Your Followers [affiliate link] is the title of a new documentary that just came out on April 20th. My wife and I were able to watch the whole thing online the day it came out and I want to recommend this resource to you.

In this documentary, Dan Merchant asks the question, “Why is the gospel of love dividing America?” With interviews, quotes and clips from people like George Bush, Barack Obama, Bono, Al Franken, Tony Campolo and Rick Santorum, Merchant does a great job of presenting a balanced and reasonable look at the way Christians are engaging culture.

Merchant uses a variety of approaches to getting everyone’s perspective on the “culture wars” in America between various faith communities. He interviews Dr. Tony Campolo who is a noted evangelical scholar but he also interviews Sister Mary Timothy who is a cross-dressing “nun” in San Francisco. In addition to dozens of great interviews, Merchant also does some pretty interesting “man on the street” style interviews. He walks around in a big white jumpsuit with various bumper stickers espousing Christian or non-Christian values. His point is to show that when we reduce the conversation down to a bumper sticker we aren’t really engaging anyone with our beliefs and values.

This documentary has animations, clips from popular culture, and a quick moving pace that keeps you interested in the content. Overall, this is a well-researched and compelling documentary on how followers of Christ should be acting. Merchant even shows up at a gay pride event and opens up a confession booth with a hat tip to Don Miller of “Blue Like Jazz”. When he begins confessing the sins of Christianity (like how many hate rather than love our homosexual neighbors) to many of the gays and lesbians who enter the confession booth many of them are visibly moved and appreciate his willingness to take the first step in reconciliation between the two sides.

There aren’t too many people creating Christian films on par with what Hollywood can produce but this documentary is a refreshing change. The message is sound and compelling and the video and production are done with excellence. This documentary needs to be seen by churches and families as we consider how to show love to our neighbors.

Here’s the product description from Amazon:

Whether someone is Atheist, Agnostic, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, – or yes, even Christian – all can identify at times with the cry, “Lord, Save Us from Your Followers!” Fed up with the divisive bumper sticker mentality overtaking America, director (and follower) Dan Merchant donned his Bumper Sticker Man suit and set out on the daring search for meaningful dialogue and the true face of faith. Appearing in the film:Senator Al Franken, Dr. Tony Compolo, Former Senator Rick Santorum, Sister Mary Timothy, Paul Young, Bono, George W. Bush, and many, many more.

How are you engaging culture? Are you sharing the radical “Gospel of Love” to your neighbor or are you reducing the Gospel to a bumper sticker length message of condemnation?

How to Stay Connected to Your Sponsoring Church

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This week I have already done a lot of work connecting with churches who are already sponsoring our church plant or are praying about their involvement with us. These churches are supporting us (or potentially going to support us) in a variety of ways: they are praying for us, sending us money, volunteering time, and sharing our vision with others.

This sort of involvement from churches in neighboring towns or from around the country is crucial during the beginning years of a new church. In New England I’ve even heard some denominational leaders say that the typical church plant requires ten years before it is self-sustaining financially. I’m a little bit more optimistic than that, but the truth is, there is a lot of money, time, and resources that need to come from outside before a church can be planted.

So with all of this outside support coming in, what do those of us who are planting churches have to give in return? Is your church plant only receiving and never giving back?

Our church plant has attempted to answer those questions by identifying six ways we can give back to our church planting supporters (we call them planting partners) and stay connected with them.

Six Ways to Stay Connected to Your Sponsoring Church

1. Write a Monthly Newsletter – This doesn’t have to be fancy and it shouldn’t be too long. The goal of your newsletter shouldn’t be fundraising but story telling, vision casting, and glory giving. You are giving back to your supporters when you share stories of transformation and spiritual victories. I think every newsletter, whether it is mailed or emailed should include pictures, stories, praises, and prayer requests. Here’s our most recent newsletter from March to give you an idea. You can sign up for our newsletter here.

2. Pray for the Sponsoring Church – Keep a prayer list of the struggles and needs of your sponsoring church. If you are asking them to pray for you, pray for them too! If we only receive and never give, we get the mentality that our field is more important than the field our sponsoring church is plowing. They have prayer concerns and we should be lifting them up to our Father. After all, He is the One who establishes His church.

3. Share a Church Planting Vision – Your church plant may be the only touch the sponsoring church has with Acts 1:8 types of activities. Use your influence to provide a context where THEY can grow in their understanding of mission activity. For example, if the sponsoring church sends a mission team, train them how to do “evangelism that results in new churches” (HT: JD Payne). The short-term goal is to get a little bit of help in your own neighborhood. The long-term goal is to train them and equip them to engage in the same sorts of activity in their own neighborhood and around the world for the rest of their lives. Make it fun! Teach them! Equip them! Make an impact!

4. Send Them a Video – Related to sharing a church planting vision is the idea of sending a video of greetings, thanks, praise and bullet point prayer requests to your supporters. With vimeo and youtube and a $150 pocket camcorder you can record a simple video that personally addresses your sponsoring church. Keep it under a couple of minutes and they might even show it on Sunday morning to the whole congregation. Or, they might just send an email to their members with a link. Either way, you are able to connect with them in a more meaningful way than just a monthly newsletter. Here’s an example of a friend of mine in New York who has planted a church and stays connected with sponsoring churches with short video clips.

5. Visit Them In Person – Take a week each year to travel and visit as many churches who are supporting you as possible. This will solidify their support when they can hear from you in person. On the other hand, don’t do too much of this because it can be extremely costly and time consuming. If your supporters are in more than a handful of states, or if they are only sending you $25 a month, it might not be worth spending $1000 to fly around and visiting everyone in person (not to belittle the churches that can only send $25/mo). If it works out for you to preach or share your vision at a sponsoring church, then it’s just that much more exposure they have to what God is doing through you in your neighborhood!

6. Build a Website – Any church in the 21st century should invest at least $500 into developing a great website. Even as a church leader I wouldn’t even give a church the time of day if I can’t find them on the internet (okay, I need to exhibit a little more grace than that) but hopefully my hyperbole reveals how important it is for an unchurched seeker to be able to check you out from a distance before diving in headfirst! So, build a website but you should also build a site that is geared towards your supporters. You can set one up in minutes with wordpress or blogger and start to communicate your vision, values, strategy, and demographics of your neighborhood so supporters can get a sense of what they are giving to. Here’s our website as an example.

Bonus Ways to Stay Connected

Many of our supporters are also connected with us here at ChurchETHOS and on Twitter and Facebook. One day maybe I’ll write a separate post on how these tools are helpful for church planters.

So these are six things we have decided to do to stay connected with church planting supporters. Do you think it’s important to stay connected? Or do you feel entitled because your area is the lostest of the lost? What are you doing to stay connected with your supporters?

Stuff I Like

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I currently have 81 subscriptions in my feed reader to blogs of various church leaders and thinkers. I find a lot of value in these blogs and thought I would share a sampling of my most valued content.

ChurchETHOS is a collection of thoughts about making disciples, planting churches, and engaging culture. So let me share with you who I’m reading that informs my own thinking on these three topics. (These may or may not be the topics that the blogger chose for his or her own blog. In fact, some should be listed in all three topics. However, I chose to put them in these topics because they are the MOST helpful TO ME in that particular area.)

Making Disciples

Doug Hunt – Doug was a mentor of mine while we were both living in Boston. He is now the BCM director at Clemson University. Put him on your feedreader because he doesn’t post every day…he’s too busy making disciples!
Lewie Clark – Lewie is a disciple maker in Chicago. He really seeks to live like Jesus and he is truly seeing the reproduction of disciples as he invests in others.
Floyd & Sally McClung – Floyd & Sally are passionate about making disciples, training leaders, and planting churches. I especially love their insights on making disciples from an international perspective.
David Watson – David is another church planter that I’ve put in the “making disciples” category because I’ve really valued his insights on discipleship even more than his insights on church planting. (Tip: Making disciples leads to new churches and David gets that!)

Planting Churches

JD Payne – I heard JD speak at a meeting of church planters and I appreciated his fresh insights into Biblical church planting. I’ve also read his book [affiliate link] and follow him on twitter.
Tim Morey – Tim has written one of my favorite books [affiliate link] on church planting and I’m glad he has started blogging as well.
Doug Foltz – Doug has been blogging a series of posts recently about church planting launch teams that has been especially helpful but all of his other stuff is awesome too!
Ed Stetzer – Who is planting a church in North America and hasn’t benefited from a stat, a book [affiliate link], a post, or a tweet from Ed Stetzer?

Engaging Culture

Jon Acuff – Jon Acuff, from “Stuff Christians Like” asks the question “Does the stuff we like ever get in the way of the God we love?” Jon answers that question with satire and wit on his blog and now in his new book [affiliate link]. Get ready to horse laugh!
Mike Wittmer – I recently did a series of book reviews on Mike Wittmer’s book Don’t Stop Believing [affiliate link] because Mike does a great job of showing us how to be both theologically sound and culturally engaging all at the same time.
Church Marketing Sucks – This site helps your church communicate its message in a non-sucky way. Whether online or offline, the church needs to do a better job of utilizing our God given creativity and talent to share the gospel with our neighbors.
John Saddington – John is the genius behind ChurchCrunch, a blog about all things church and technology. John helps me think through the use of technology as I engage the culture around me.

So these are just a few of my most trusted resources as I think about making disciples, planting churches and engaging culture. I’m always looking for new sources of good info so feel free to recommend some in the comments section.