While planning is key, there are a variety of imaginative ways to begin.
For the past few years, I’ve been working primarily outside of the church, mostly in research or academic roles. The last time I served as a full-time senior pastor was in Erie, PA.
In my last article, I wrote about the last time I served as a senior pastor. I was a volunteer senior pastor at a new church in Nashville, Tennessee. I wrote about how we wanted to be involved in church planting from the first service— taking up our first offering and announcing we were going to be a church planting church.
At another church plant early in my career in Erie, Pennsylvania, we had a commitment to plant our first church within three years. (I had been told that was the optimal time— later, I would try to be involved from year one.)
It was through these experiences where I learned important lessons about what it means to plant churches in healthy ways, which is crucial for the sake of the mother and child church.
Sending People Out
Anyway, we had grown our church in Nashville from 3 to 400 after three years, so we decided to be bold. We decided to start two churches on the same day. We figured, if we’re going to start one, we might as well start another. Right?
It was bold, but we believed it was what God had called us to do, but in the first few weeks of planting two daughter churches, we sent many members of our church to the new churches. Actually, about 15% of our church were sent out— around 50 people.
An entire worship team went out to one church plant— and we were glad they did!
But there were times we were uncertain. People at the mother church were nervous, questioning if we’d made a mistake. We reminded them that planting had been a good idea and that God would work in all three of the ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2nejIgS
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