If you don’t already have a Facebook page or your business, go create one. With over 500 million active users, Facebook is a powerful network to tap into to expand the online footprint of your business.

The next step in personalizing your business page is to get a username to create a vanity URL (customized web address). By default, your Facebook page will get a randomly assigned number and URL (facebook.com/pages/yourbusiness/123456789), but last summer, Facebook made it possible to customize your Facebook page URL (facebook.com/yourbusiness).

Here are their easy instructions on how to create a FaceBook page vanity URL. Remember, though, that you need at least 25 fans of your page before you can claim your name.

Wow!  I love that story.  How many church planters can say that?  That is the story of a missionary.  Contextualization is important work for a church planter.  One of the unique facets of the gospel is that it is not contained within a particular culture.  If a person is a Gentile, they don’t need to first become a Jew to access God.  Remember that story?  The first thing a church planter needs to do once they are on the ground is what Alan Hirsch calls missional listening.  Church planters are typically highly driven individuals who want to hit the ground running.  Too often they assume they understand the culture and begin planning for church services.  When this happens, I guarantee you are planting a church for yourself and not the culture you are in.

Read more at Church Planting Tidbits

Make sure it doesn’t.

If you answered yes to both of these questions you could qualify for a website free for 12 months! SiteOrganic is offering this great deal to church plants meeting the criteria. For more information on this offer, click HERE.

• Going Deep with Sabbath Rest

  Acts 29 by JR Vassar
  Church planters are notorious for ignoring the Sabbath. JR provides solid biblical grounding for practicing the discipline of Sabbath as well as the practical benefits.

• Creating a Facebook Page for Your Ministry Part 1 and Part 2.

  Church Crunch by Nick Shoemaker
  This is a easy to follow set of instructions for setting up a facebook page for the church. It includes several screenshots to make it dummy church planter proof

• 10 Church Planting Mistakes and the Lessons I Learned

  Church Leader Insights by Nelson Searcy
  Nelson recaps a list by Sean King. If you are planting a church, you need to read this list.

• Fear of Philanthropy (Avert Your Eyes)

  By Seth Godin
  Seth voices a question many of us have asked. When giving generously, how much is enough? There are some great insights here for those raising money.

This morning I came across a video by Jason Fried of 37signals (Thanks to our voip provider, OnSip).

It doesn’t take much to qualify Jason Fried’s knowledge. Fried and his colleagues at 37signals have created web apps now used by over 3 million people. Yet, 37signals does not have a PR Team. They do not have traditional marketing campaigns. They do not spend money on advertising. Instead, they simply share information about their expertise, including their product features and business efficiency, in their blog.

Share in the comments how you do (or can or should) do this in your church.

Launch team meetings are DNA setting experiences. What you do and communicate at these meetings matter. This is where the vision and values of the church begin to be lived out. First and foremost, launch team meetings are vision casting experiences. The church planter should be planning out what will be communicated at new member or 101 level classes. This is your playbook. If you are on this team, these are the plays we run and how we run them. It is crucial that the church planter communicate the playbook to the launch team and ensure that the entire team play according to it. Remember that you are setting the DNA. It doesn’t matter what is in the playbook, if no one plays by it.

It’s also important to remember that what you are launching is public services. From the beginning your launch team is the church. Therefore, the church planter should balance business meetings with time together to worship. In fact, launch team meetings may be a terrible thing to call your gatherings. The word meetings communicates business and for many church meeting communicates pointless and boring.
Alan Hirsh in his book, The Forgotten Ways, says there are three key elements to church: worship, discipleship and mission. Launch team meetings should include aspects of all these. If launch Sunday is the first time your launch team has done these three things together, chances are you have missed the chance to ingrain these habits in the church DNA.

• Monday is for Missiology

  Lifeway by Ed Stetzer
  This entire series has been phenomenal. In this post, Ed focuses on the connection between missiology and soteriology.

• Mind Dump for Church Planters

  By Jimmy Britt
  This post really is a mind dump, but includes some great thoughts on church planting. It’s worth the read.

• “And” Instead of “Or”

  by Tony Morgan
  Tony wonders why the Church has an ‘or’ mentality.

• Driving the Chevy Impala

  by Tony Morgan
  GMC is used as an example of what happens to organizations that don’t change.

• Leadership Is Tough – Part One of Three

  By Perry Noble
  God told Joshua to do what?

I worked with a planter once who had 40 adults on his launch team from day one. Three months later the number of people on the team had shrunk to 25 adults. What happened? The team lost momentum. Let’s start with the assumption that you will have at least 50 adults on your launch team. Most church planters are great at building the team to about 20 people, or the size of a rather large small group. The problem is what’s next? You may still be months away from holding services. So how do you build momentum? How do you keep the team growing?

The problem for many lies in the fact that they are trying to build the launch team on their own. The answer lies in turning those twenty adults in church planters. We are a consumer culture. Let’s face it. As pastor’s we sometimes feed into this cultural sin. As a church planter, if you are focused on building the team yourself you are really just creating a consumer culture where you are the product. At some point, those 20 adults must be commissioned and sent. They must see themselves as church planters and just as you have invested in them, they must in turn invest in those God has given them influence over.

When this happens, growth will naturally occur. And to be ready for it, you must have a plan in place. It’s easy to meet in your living room crowding in 20 adults, but what happens when its 30 adults? What about 50? I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer here. Some planters take a small group model to the launch team and reproduce groups. Others, move into a larger meeting facility as the team growth. Some do a hybrid of both. Some use service in the community to gather the group. Others focus more on marketing and fun events.

Here is my advice. Dream about what God is calling the church to become. How do you envision the discipleship happening? How do you envision leadership development happening? In order to build and keep momentum, use this vision as the foundation for what you do with the launch team now. Remember you are setting the DNA of the church. Church DNA is a lot like concrete. It might be wet now, but there is quickly a day coming when it will dry and then to change it you will have to chip away at it.

Launch Team Covenants (as well as membership covenants) are about one thing: Expectations. In part 3, I talked about filters for deciding who should be on the launch team. The first two filters were beliefs and values. Early on, beliefs and values are merely words on paper. Unless the staff, leadership team and launch team live out these beliefs and values they are meaningless.

Enter expectations. Expectations are simply the ways we live out what is really important to us. They are the actions that demonstrate our beliefs and values. Clear expectations are vital to a healthy launch team and later on a healthy membership. Expectations help create a clear path to spiritual growth and let everyone know that if they are on this team here is where they need to go.

Many church planters shy away from high expectations. The thought is if my expectations are too high, then I’ll scare people away. Expectations reveal your desired picture of a disciple. If you have low expectations, then don’t be surprised when you are frustrated that your church is full of spiritual infants. Consider some of the expectations Jesus had of us:
Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Mark 8:34 “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Luke 18:22 “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Those are high expectations. Expectations are not meant to be legalistic rules, but a desired picture of a disciple. When seekers and Christians alike come to the church, I believe they are let down by watered down expectations. If they don’t have to change much they may go looking elsewhere.

To determine what expectations you will have look to your values. Will Mancini in his book, Church Unique , encourages a healthy exercise. He says to take each value of the church and flesh it out with “as demonstrated by.” For example, if you value relationships, how is that demonstrated in the life of the church? Then ask, how will we measure that because what you measure you value.

Now to answer the question. Should I Use a Launch Team Covenant? Maybe. You need to determine how signing a covenant will be received in your community. But if you don’t use a covenant, you still need to communicate expectations. In lieu of a covenant, what will you do to communicate expectations? Thoughts?

Doug is the Director of Project Management with Stadia (www.stadia.cc). He has a church planting focused blog at www.dougfoltz.wordpress.com.