Rookies in Nascar have a yellow stripe on their bumpers. Yellow in Nascar is symbolic of caution. It tells the other drivers, “Watch out! Rookie driver.” The majority of church planters are rookies. I find that most church planters only start one church. Like rookie drivers, they are inexperienced and can have trouble navigating unfamiliar territory. For rookie drivers, a good crew chief and a good spotter are essential. The crew chief coaches the driver through the race. The spotter gets a bird’s eye view and tells the driver what’s coming up so that they can avoid wrecks. A project manager functions much like the spotter. They have been around church planting for a long time and can help the church planter navigate through the tough spots. They can also alert the driver to what’s coming up and any red flags along the way. OK enough Nascar analogy.
The Project Manger helps the church planter create a plan that will accomplish the vision for the new church. Because the project manager has been a part of planting several churches, they have a unique insight into the planning process and what it takes to plant a healthy church. Then the project manager oversees the plan and lets the church planter know what key tasks need to be worked on when. For example, every church planter knows they need to purchase equipment. But few know when to purchase it and where to get the best deals. The role of the project manager is to understand that if the church is starting in September and the first preview service is at the end of August then equipment needs to be purchased in June, assembled at tested at the beginning of August. To do that a facility must be chosen in May and an equipment list developed. To do that the church planter must network in the community and do demographics to determine the best meeting locations. The project manager also is responsible to find the right solutions at the best prices from trusted vendors.
Remember the mission of a project manager: Keeping church planters focused on people.
by Perry Noble
“The longer we lead the more desperate for God we should became…because it becomes more and more obvious to us that we are not as good as we think we are…”
by Ed Stetzer
Rick discusses some interesting insights with Ed regarding the what types of small groups work best based on your communities income and level of education.
by Will Mancini
Let me start by saying Steve Jobs does make disciples and he’s good at it. Will analyzes Steve’s announcement speech of the iPad and how Apple’s success has several parallels to the Church.
The IRS form 1023 is what we use to file for a church or nonprofit’s 501c3 exemption. As of January 4, 2010, there are two big changes:
The submission fee was increased to $850 (from $750)
They are creating an online submission system that will only cost $200. Only it’s not ready yet.
Sign up for the IRS Newsletter to be notified when they finally get the cyber assistant up and running. If you need to file soon but can wait just a bit, you might be able to save $650. Of course, we probably shouldn’t count on the IRS to do anything quickly except cash your check.
When New Life Christian Church started their first multi-site campus, Lead Pastor Brett Andrews sat down to formulate the plan. He had a compelling vision for what the new campus would look like and how they would effectively reach pre-Christians. But then came the details. Brett and his team quickly learned that there were all sorts of details that needed to happen in order for the new campus to be started. Brett was left wondering why every time a church was started were we recreating the wheel. Out of this frustration, project management was born.
When starting a new church, there are several things a church planter must do that are one time only tasks. A good example is filing all the legal paperwork (Articles of Incorporation, EIN, 501c3, etc.) Because the church planter isn’t an expert in these tasks and has had no formal training it takes them a long time to figure out resulting in less time spent on evangelism and discipleship, which results in a smaller impact. Our project managers are experts in the one time only tasks for starting new churches. Our mission is simple: Keep church planters focused on people. That’s why our blog might not be the most exciting, controversial, though provoking blog out there. But hopefully you find the posts will save your time and money allowing you to spend more time with people.
Free publicity is available via the press if you let them know what’s going on at your new church. Every press release submitted to the media won’t go to print, however, mostly due to poor composition or incomplete information. If you’re going to submit a press release, do it right!
Lastly, before you submit it, don’t forget to run your press release through HubSpot’s free Press Release Grader. You’ll get constructive feedback to make sure your press release is the best it can be. That can only increase your chances of being published.
by Aaron Loy
In a 3-week long contest, they had roughly 70 designers submit over 200 designs, a number of which they would have been delighted to have as their logo.
At Passion 4 Planting we set up all of our church planters on Google Apps. It’s free and its a great solution for email, document storage, calendars, and a whole lot more. All you need is a URL to get started and you can be up an running in no time. There is a little tech involved so I’ve include a Guide to Setting Up Google Apps. The guide is written assuming the URL was purchased from GoDaddy. If you purchased from a different domain registrar, don’t worry. Google has instructions for several different ones.
Once you have completed your 501(c)3, you can apply for a free upgrade to the education edition of Google Apps. The biggest advantage over the standard version is that you get 24/7 support from Google for free. Thank you Google. To apply for the education upgrade follow the instructions provided by Google. The online form only takes about five minutes to fill out.
This is a popular event to tie to an outreach opportunity, especially when trying to connect with men. Did you know, though, that the NFL has been aggressive with protecting their copyrights against churches?
Here are 3 basic rules for a Super Bowl party that the Church Law Group has put together there’s no penalty flag thrown on your event:
Gregsurratt.org by Greg Surratt
Greg talks through shifting from a personal Facebook page to a Public (Fan) Page. A must read for pastors who feel like Facebook is taking every waking hour.
TechCrunch announced yesterday that Google would be rolling out support to upload any file type to Google Docs. It’s basically cloud storage for all your files. A nice advantage is Google’s sharing feature. You are able to share files easily on Google Docs by simply entering an email address. You get 1GB free and then can purchase additional storage for 25 cents a gig. This is about the same price you could expect to pay per GB for traditional hard drive storage. The advantage is you can access the files stored in the Google cloud from anywhere you have internet connection including many smart phones. Google is likely moving in this direction to better serve their upcoming Chrome OS release and subsequent laptops that will run Chrome and live largely in the cloud.
For church planters this is a great solution. You will now be able to upload videos, images, database files, etc. and share them with each other through Google. Imagine a volunteer editing a video at home and then just uploading it through Google Docs and sharing it with the pastoral team. No more worry about how to get the file from place to place. As long as you have internet connection, its just there. This also provides handy backup functionality. Most people knowadays back up critical files or their entire computer to an external hard drive. This is a great solution until someone steals your computer and backup drive, they both fail at the same time (happened to me), or there is a fire that destroys them both. Storing critical files in the cloud ensures you will always have a copy.
While cloud computing is tremendously handy, I still advice you to keep local backups on a hard drive. While Google has a pretty good reputation, if they have a data failure you’ll be out of luck if you haven’t backed files up locally.
In over 530 blog posts to date, I have never blogged on "the team" we work with! Of course their stories have been shared and referred to many times over the years, but never have I actually blogged about the entire group of men and women that make up our church planting team.In the above photo, taken yesterday, six of our team are missing. Marcos […]
I’ve been working on my calendar today. Here’s where I’m going to be heading over the next several months: Launching two new coaching networks here in Atlanta and on the Web Speaking to the staff of 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia Speaking at the Velocity Conference in Cumming, Georgia Consulting with The Rock Church in Monroe, Washington Speaking a […]
Over the next few months leading up to missionSHIFT, along with introducing to you to the folks who are joining us at Ridgecrest to be a part of the missional conversation, I want to make sure that we continue to trace the roots of the missional debate historically and theologically. These posts will be a continuation of my "Meanings of Missional" […]
Today I want to introduce you to Linda Bergquist. She will be speaking at the missionSHIFT conference this summer. We are also excited to have her voice as a part of framing the Missional Manifesto. Linda and her husband Eric live in San Francisco, California. She is a New Church Starting Strategist and the co-author of "Church Turned Inside Out" f […]
The picture on top is our building before construction started. The one on the bottom is about one week into construction.This whole process is so intimidating. Construction has to be complete by our opening Sunday on March 14th...please pray!Featured on newchurches.com […]
John Burke of Gateway Community Church (Austin, TX) discussed what is really missional during Verge Conference's 5th session. Here is what he said: If your unchurched friends are not finding faith and becoming the church, you are not missional. You aren't really living on the mission of Jesus. If the world is not coming to Christ, can we really say […]
Hugh Halter of Missio discussed the power of posture during Verge Conference's 5th session. Here is what he said: Posture is about nonverbal communication. It is a powerful thing. You must be missional and incarnational. Christian leaders living in excess is a posture problem. Think about how often you have done things nonverbally that make people unint […]
Briefly describe your story of your call to plant a church I was called to help lead a large existing church into and through the deep change needed to help transform it into a missional church. What were the biggest challenges you faced in planting your church (and/or currently facing)? The biggest challenges faced were that of folks resisting changes to an […]
Continuing yesterday's post… #3 – The Faith Test Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God. SO…if your vision seems “impossible,” if failure is absolutely certain unless God somehow gets involved…then I would say that you are proba […]
Most of you know that in addition to starting a brand new church for the people who work on and live around the Las Vegas Strip, I've also been trying my hand at stand-up comedy. It began with open mic nights, and then last month I was asked to audition for a professional comedy troupe, and was chosen. Last week was my first time performing as a real co […]
