Missio Dei Suburbia

How Do You Measure Success?

Yesterday morning, a bunch of us passed along this note on Twitter: 'Over 80% of church plants in the US fail but churches in the Acts 29 church planting network have a 95% success rate.' That news is both exciting and humbling for those of us in A29 who are well aware that we're not that smart and we're not particularly more gifted than some of the guys who have crashed and burned in planting.

A few minutes after I tossed out that information, I had someone I respect push back a little, wondering if our definition of success lines up with how Jesus defines success, pointing me to John 4:35-38. If you read that text and listen to the stories of people whose church plants have shut down, it's hard to ignore the work of God in proverbially making lemonade out of lemons.

So how do we define success?

Seth Godin talks about a hierarchy of success and the critical importance of attitude:

• Why are you doing this at all?
• What's your bias in dealing with people and problems?
• How do you deal with failure?
• When will you quit?
• How do you treat competitors?
• What personality are you looking for in the people you hire?
• What's it like to work for you? Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
• What sort of decisions do you make when no one is looking?

Over at the Desiring God blog, Mike Thate reminds us that:

there is an outright war over who gets to define “success.” There is some irony in this story in that my flight originated in Manhattan, a monument to success. But what is success? And who gets to define it? While success benchmarks are of course both entirely natural and often helpful—e.g. a manager’s use of statistical evaluation to determine a batting lineup or pitching rotation or a trader’s measuring financial turn on investment to evaluate market share—they should also be held in suspicion. Who is defining it? Once success is defined, desired outcomes and lifestyles are set for many. In this sense, they can become totalizing and subsuming.

And finally, Skye Jethani reminds us that our success - our legitimacy - is found in what Jesus has done for us.

Keepin' Mama Happy: Sources of Satisfaction and Stress for Church Planting Wives

Global Church Advancement (GCA) shares six primary and eight secondary sources of satisfaction and stress in church planting wives.

Primary Sources:

1. The Husband
2. Support System
3. Sabbath Rest
4. Reliance on Christ
5. Boundary Ambiguity
6. Physical Health

Secondary Sources:

1. Changed Lives
2. Commitment and Sense of Calling to Church Planting
3. Family Time
4. Raising Kids
5. Church Growth
6. Expectations
7. Finances
8. Use of Gifts and Abilities

Read the rest of the post here.

Scott Thomas on Replanting

Christ Community Church is a replant - an organic description of a process that mechanically can feel like taking a machine apart piece-by-piece, discarding the parts that are unsalvageable (and no, I'm not talking about people), cleaning up what can be repaired and building out a church that gets the job done.

I spoke on replanting at an Acts 29 boot camp in Dallas last year - and almost ten months later, I get calls about replanting every week. Some men intentionally walk into a church knowing it needs this kind of work; more often it's not until someone has been part of a particular church and its particular culture and processes that they discover a church that needs to die and experience ecclesiastical resurrection.

Scott Thomas is the director of Acts 29. He also has experience in replanting churches - and he's writing a five-part series on replanting that's well worth your time. The truth is, we need patient, compassionate, courageous, persistent men who will love dying churches well enough to help them die well and experience new life.

10 Qualifications for Church Planters

Scott Thomas lays out the ten qualifications of church planters - men who plant reformed, missional churches that plant churches.

1. Spiritual Vitality
2. Theological Clarity
3. Clarity and Strength of Calling
4. Strong Marriage and Family Life
5. Relationship Building
6. Leadership Abilities
7. Emotional Stability
8. Missional Lifestyle
9. Disciplemaking Skills
10. Entrepreneurial Aptitude

You can read the whole post here.

Replanting Churches

Is your church ready to live by dying?

More here.

Before You Go Out To Plant a Church

Some sound advice from my boy Keith Watson, lead pastor of New City Church in Macon, Georgia.

At the end of 2008 New City would have been considered a very successful church plant. We were pushing 150 in attendance and growing. We were connected to the city in amazing ways. The 567 was nominated as one of the city's best new businesses. Three guys were in the process of changing their entire lives in order to join us - moving from as far away as Spokane, WA.

Today those guys are here and we are creeping up to 200 in weekly attendance. I am daily amazed at the new doors opening in the city. We didn't win the best new business, but our events are at the 567 are generally a success and things are going great.

And I am exhausted.

Tim Keller on Preaching, Cities, and Culture

Adrian Warnock blogged Tim Keller's talks last week at a Newfrontiers event. Videos of each talk are located here:

Preaching to Change Them in Their Seats

Why Cities Matter

Relate to the Culture

Driscoll Interview at SEBTS - Culture, Planting, Pastoring

Mark Driscoll has received a lot of recent media attention due to the seemingly incongruous topics of sex and Jesus but here's a change of pace - an excellent interview done with Mark by Dr. David Nelson of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on culture, church planting and pastoring.

Tim Chester - Gospel and Community Intersect in Church Planting

From The Resurgence:

The guy I first started church planting with used to tell the story of the first time he attended a church business meeting. He’d recently been converted and was looking forward to plotting the downfall of Satan with the other members of the church. What a letdown! They spent the meeting talking about the restrooms in the church building. Somehow churches have a tendency towards maintenance mode.

The great thing about church planting is that it puts mission at the heart of church. When you’re eight people meeting in someone’s front room—as the Crowded House was once—then you can’t help but be about mission.

But church planting also puts the church at the heart of mission. So much evangelism today is about me doing my thing with my friends. We have evangelistic ministries divorced from the church. This is not the New Testament way. New Testament mission was church planting.

Mission at the heart of church. The church at the heart of mission. Welcome to church planting.

Foundations of Church Planting

Scott Thomas, Director of Acts 29, listed out seven things he would do differently if he was planting a church today. You can also approaches that list as foundations for missional, Reformed churches that plant churches.

1. Expose the gospel to the fullest extend possible in every context, relationship, conflict and teaching.
2. Connect with God as you connect with culture.
3. Develop missional communities as expressions of the gospel in as many contexts as possible.
4. Develop young men for the mission of Jesus.
5. Train leaders relentlessly.
6. Get a coach.
7. Enjoy the journey of church planting.

Read more - Part 1 Part 2 Part 3