Leadership Network Learnings Blog

What’s on Your Mind? With Sam Chand

Greg Ligon — 2012-05-23T13:21+00:00

This week's installment of "What's on Your Mind?" is with Sam Chand. Sam is one of the Top 30 global leadership gurus. He consults, mentors and coaches some of the country's largest church Pastors, speaks regularly at leadership conferences, churches, corporations, Leadership Roundtables, Minister's Conferences, seminars and other leadership development opportunities. In addition, he is the author of Cracking Your Church's Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision & Inspiration. Join me as we ask Sam..."What's on Your Mind?"

1. What big issues or concepts are you currently thinking about or working on?

I’m thinking and working on my next major project which has a working title of “THE PAIN OF LEADERSHIP” in which I postulate that “…you’ll grow only to the threshold of your pain”. The more pain a leader can handle the more their growth capacity. So, right now I’m test-driving that thought in my leadership conference speaking, leadership roundtables and consultations and have found a strong affinity and witness to the concept of Leadership and Pain.

2. What book are you reading right now and what are you learning from it?

I’m reading a few books right now. Some of them are:
Walking the Talk – Carolyn Taylor
As One – Mehrdad Baghai & James Quigley
Practice of Adaptive Leadership – Heifetz, Grashow & Linsky
Reframing Organizations – Bolman & Deal
Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code – Chand (!)
The most important lesson I’m learning is the crucial need for organizational alignment—when Product, Processes and People align creating that inspirational culture which leads to profitable, productive and healthy organizations.

3. Other than the Bible, what book has been the most foundational for your ministry?

Purple Cow by Godin which I read in 2003 when Seth sent the book out free packaged inside a purple milk-carton. This was the first book that challenged me to think “purple” in my own life and in all I do. Because of the thought processes introduced in that book I am able to be effective at a higher level.

4. Just for fun: what’s your favorite coffeehouse beverage?

Starbucks Caramel Macchiato with extra caramel

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To learn more about Sam Chand follow him on Twitter and/or visit his website.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings

How Many Megachurches?

Warren Bird — 2012-05-22T14:34+00:00

Across the world, there are almost 5 million congregations (worship centers) – specifically, 4,738,000 churches according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity’s “Status for Global Mission – 2012” (line 42). In some countries, especially those where Christianity is all but illegal, these gatherings of Christians are almost exclusively house churches in form. Only in some areas are Christians allowed join the public square with known and established places to gather. Thus for better or for worse, only in some countries are large public churches free to develop.

Megachurches – those averaging 2,000 or more in weekly worship attendance, adults and children – do exist in several dozen countries, as my online list of global megachurches demonstrates. Many countries, even giant nations like India, have received minimal research in terms of how churches are growing and multiplying. I look forward to the day when churches worldwide, including larger churches,receive equal study and attention. For now, megachurches in North America have been researched more than those in other countries, and so here’s what we know about large churches in the United States:

Scope and Size

0.5% - While almost 10% of Protestant churchgoers attend a megachurch, these churches represent only about half of one percent of the almost 350,000 Protestant churches that exist in the United States. For more breakdown by size, see these Hartford Institute for Religion Research FAQs.

1,800 - Current number of megachurches in the United States, according to church lists compiled by Leadership Network.

46 - Amount of the 50 states have a megachurch (not yet in Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont). Megachurches can be found in Washington DC as well.

Almost all - Number of Protestant denominations that have at least one megachurch from the biggest (Southern Baptists, United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, etc.) to smaller denominations (Foursquare, Christian & Missionary Alliance, etc.). Most denominational megachurches hold their denominational affiliation lightly –Saddleback is Southern Baptist, and LifeChurch.tv is Evangelical Covenant, for example – and many are nondenominational, such as Lakewood, Willow Creek, North Point and Potter’s House.

92% - I’ve personally visited 23 of the 25 (or 92%) largest-attendance Protestant churches in the United States.

For more facts about megachurches see various reports I’ve authored or co-authored at www.leadnet.org/megachurch.

History of the Term Megachurch

First to identify and track the world’s and nation’s largest attendance churches: Elmer Towns, first in magazine articles, and then in books like The Ten Largest Sunday Schools and What Makes Them Grow (1972), The World’s Largest Sunday School (1974), and The Complete Book of Church Growth(1979)

First to use the word megachurch in a book: Francis Dubois, How Churches Grow in an Urban World, 1978.

First book with specific chapters on megachurches: Prepare Your Church for the Future, Carl George with Warren Bird, 1991.

First book to use the word megachurch in a book title: John N. Vaughan, Megachurches and American Cities: How Churches Grow, 1993.

Trivia Fun

What megachurch name is longest? What pastor’s name is most common for megachurch leaders? Here is a bunch of fun trivia information on megachurches, correct for 2008, that I published in Outreach magazine.

For more blogs in this “megachurch” series, see also “World’s First Megachurch?”, "Youngest Megachurch Pastor?" , “Megachurch Languages?”, "Biggest Megachurch Sanctuaries?" and "Megachurch Books?". For international perspectives, see my listing of global megachurches.

Want to Learn More About Megachurches?

On June 4-8, 2012, I will teach a one-week, extremely practical course named "Megachurches: Studying and Visiting” at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. You or others on your church’s staff can enroll for no credit as an auditor, for master’s level credit, or for doctor of ministry level credit.

Topics we’ll cover in class and on our site visits include:

- How a church becomes a megachurch: What can their success teach us?

- What we can learn about volunteers: finding them, training them, supporting them; - Mission/vision of megachurches vs. other churches, likewise the role of innovation in church;

- Megachurch attenders: Who are all these people? What attracts them? Why do they stay – or go?

- Commitment and participation in the megachurch

- Megachurch leadership, both staff and volunteer

- Challenges and critiques, new trends and implications

- Denominational affiliation, denominational relationships

- How megachurches develop diversity

Unsure if this is for you? See this excellent, short article about what churches of ALL sizes can learn from megachurches.

Questions? Contact Hartford Seminary’s Registrar Karen Rollins at 860-509-9511 or registrar@hartsem.edu. To download the syllabus or a registration form, visithttp://www.hartsem.edu/courses/32

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

The Futurity of Present Events - What’s Next for American Churches?

Bob Buford — 2012-05-21T18:52+00:00

Peter Drucker, Leadership Network's grand mentor, was often referred to as a Futurist. Peter always told me that predictions were perilous and inevitably surprising. I have some drink coasters on my desk quoting Peter that say, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." Peter was usually 20 years or so ahead of events. This is the way he explained it to me, "You look out the window to see what is happening today and build your picture of the future by extending the implications of the present."

It has been 28 years now since Fred Smith, Jr. and I began Leadership Network. We have always found Leadership Network hard to explain because there is really not anything else quite like it. Here is some good news! I am pleased to announce that if you will just follow this link and you will see in 5 minutes exactly what we do and how we do it. I hope you will stop right now and view it. I am really proud of the work that went into this colorful piece so please, please take 5 minutes of your precious time to learn what it would take me three hours to describe and then you would still be confused.

This past week has been an intense time for Leadership Network. There's a lot going on out there. Some churches are gradually withering away and others are just exploding. It has always been our approach to build on the islands of health and strength.

I have just had a talk with Dave Travis, who is CEO of Leadership Network. The majority of our work is with rapidly growing American churches. I asked, "Dave, you have just written a book called What's Next? and your team has been busy looking out the window. Give me the three most prominent trends as you look around the corner for what's coming next."

So I will use Dave's three:

1. More multi-site churches and campuses

Megachurches are growing bigger by developing clusters of smaller and more accessible campuses. The multi-site movement which Leadership Network seeded and accelerated has made a profound effect on this. Our role is to search out the leaders in the field and get them talking to one another in groups of a dozen or so superstar churches and thereby find out what's working and where people are stuck. I have the privilege of walking outside the front door of my office about twelve feet to meet mega church leaders in our Collaboration Center. We held 55 meetings in 2010. Lately we have been collecting Easter Service results. Some are stunning.

Life Church, based in Oklahoma City but with fifteen locations around the country, had over 71,000 attendees at their campuses on Easter Sunday.
Transformation Church, a young multi-ethnic church in Raleigh, had over 3,000, which is pretty good for an eight year old start-from-scratch church.
Mars Hill Church, based in Seattle but with sites in several states, had 19,634.

Here is where it gets interesting.

Life Church actually had 177 different worship experiences. So the average attendance at a worship experience was "only" 428.

At Transformation the average experience had slightly over 800. And at Mars Hill, the average worship service hosted 479 people that day.

Obviously averages can be deceiving. There were certain worship venues and times that had many times the average but also certain ones that were lower than the average.

Here's the change. Fifteen years ago churches were talking about building bigger auditoriums. Now they expand by selecting new sites and making the experience a reasonable size.

Of course, at an average of 428, that would still place those worship services alone in the top 10% of churches in the U.S., but it shows the trend among larger churches to scale up while at the same time building more intimacy.

2. More second and third tier cities

The old conventional wisdom was to look for large innovative churches in the biggest cities and their suburbs. The surprising trend is that expansive church campuses are cropping in all types of locales. For example, every time I drive the 25 miles from Still Point Farm into Tyler, Texas I pass five multi-site locations of large churches located downtown or on the other side of town. When Linda and I are in New York City, we visit Redeemer Presbyterian Church which has multiple campuses around the city - it is a cluster of larger innovative churches, each one representing a slightly different theological stream or primary pulpit style. They aren't all Presbyterian. Dr. Tim Keller, the Senior Pastor, is perhaps the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan Christian speaker in the world. He and his team are spreading new locations around the world in and around cosmopolitan cities. The congregations are predominantly young professionals who have a strong preference to enter the suburbs once they start families. Keller and others like him (even in Tyler, TX) follow these young families to the suburbs and even to the further out suburbs that are getting pretty close to my weekend retreat, Still Point Farm.

You might call these churches high tech and high touch. The music is live and the pastoral care and small groups are all done by live human beings with lay backgrounds. The message, and only the message, is delivered via DVD by one of the best preachers in the country, Craig Groeschel. I suggest you pause for a moment and follow this link to get a good sample: http://www.lifechurch.tv/watch/archive.

3. Community serving churches

Leadership Network has in the past decade convened cutting edge churches who reach out beyond the four walls to serve the members of their communities - mostly the disadvantaged. The guru for this trend, Reggie McNeal, works for Leadership Network and has written several definitive books about what he calls Missional Renaissance Churches. His seminal book written several years ago is titled The Present Future Church.

Leadership Network has groups in a variety of specialized areas. As you now know if you looked at the link I suggested above in the second paragraph, we convene groups of a dozen churches who meet for two days each six months to share ideas and encourage one another. The groups stay together for two years and the level of accountability is amazing. These are people doing the same sort of ministry in different cities. These men and women are mostly engaged in serving the disadvantaged with issues of Hunger, Poverty, Disease, and Mal-education.

The future of this movement is that more and more churches will be important factors in their communities. The worship service is often a means to the end of serving others, not just an end in itself.

Conclusion: I hope I have told you something about Leadership Network that makes sense to you. It is incredibly exciting to see these things happening and in American communities and increasingly these churches are taking their work global as well.

So What About You?

Is your church withering or flourishing? There are plenty of resources available at www.leadnet.org - we have now published 950,000 books that are all about the practice of church, what you might call applied theology.

Author: Bob Buford

Topics: Learnings

Join Me For Lunch?

Chris Mattix — 2012-05-17T13:00+00:00

Isn't it awesome when God takes our small act of obedience and turns it into more than we thought possible?

In February, Linda Stanley @ Leadership Network wrote about Mosaic Central Arkansas Church's food truck court and the great response it was receiving in the South Little Rock area. The church hoped to provide "reasonably priced, good food options to their neighbors and to serve as 'pastors to the community,' not just their church body." The feedback was positive and the church was hopeful that the momentum toward urban renewal would continue to build in the area.

Three months later, the church has added more food trucks, and has a loyal Twitter and Facebook following. On May 1, Mosaic was granted permission by the city to install tables and chairs so that folks can not only gather to receive their food, but also enjoy the fellowship of sharing a meal together with their neighbors in the University Market area.

Banners are now installed marking the University Market and Pastor Mark DeYmaz and his church's commitment to urban renewal in South Little Rock has not wavered, but only strengthened as they move forward with even more exciting plans for the University Market. Check out the details of the Mosaic food truck court here in this article from the Arkansas Times.

Be inspired! Follow the Lord in obedience and stand back amazed as He does "...immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us." (Ephesians 3:20)

Author: Chris Mattix

Topics: Marketplace Success Kingdom Significance Learnings

What’s on Your Mind? With George Cladis

Greg Ligon — 2012-05-16T13:32+00:00

This week's installment of "What's on Your Mind?" is with George Cladis. George is the author of Leading the Team-Based Church, Assistant Professor in the Doctor of Ministry program of Fuller Theological Seminary and serves as Executive Pastor of Liberty Churches in the Boston metro area.

1. What big issues or concepts are you currently thinking about or working on?

The biggest issue I'm working on is increasing our number of campuses (multi-site church) where the church facility doubles during the week as an workforce training center. We've been successful with our pilot in Worcester, MA and we are creating the duplication model now.

2. What book are you reading right now and what are you learning from it?

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

A. To build something truly innovative you have to be 100% committed and prepared for disappointment.
B. You can come back after a colossal failure (he was fired from Apple; then returned).
C. The San Francisco peninsula was, and continues to be, a mecca for scrappy entrepreneurs (I grew up there and attended Peninsula Bible Church with Ray Stedman -- who taught me the beginnings of team-based ministry with his book Body Life).
D. Your brand (Apple) can be totally unrelated to your product (computers).
E. Make something cool.
F. Do temperamental, irritable, relationally deficient, rude, cruel even,and terrible-to-children (Lisa) people always finish first?

3. Other than the Bible, what book has been the most foundational for your ministry?

Body Life by Ray Stedman.

4. Where do you go to explore new ideas? What kind of environments inspire you?

I agree with Len Sweet: The Mountain, the Desert, and the Sea. Lately it's been the Mountain.

5. Just for fun: what’s your favorite coffeehouse beverage?

Black, unsweetened coffee...BOLD!

***************************************

Learn more about George Cladis through his blog or follow him on twitter.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings

Biggest Megachurch Sanctuaries?

Warren Bird — 2012-05-15T16:00+00:00

If you do an internet search for “biggest churches” or similar, you will find lots of websites listed. The vast majority deal with facilities, not people. They track the most square footage, the most acreage, the tallest buildings, the highest steeples, the costliest construction, the longest times from groundbreaking to final completion, and the like. Some record seating or standing capacity.

I’m most interested in the way churches serve people’s spiritual needs, so my curiosities about “biggest buildings” mostly surround how the facilities are actually used today. Among U.S. Protestant churches today, the trend is definitely away from constructing giant sanctuaries. In fact, average seating in a typical megachurch is surprisingly small, according to a national survey of megachurches (“A New Decade of Megachurches,” page 5) that I conducted through Leadership Network along with co-researcher Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research:

While megachurches have very large attendance figures, they often do not have massive sanctuaries. The average seating capacity of the largest sanctuary a church has was 1,778, with a median of 1,500. As in our previous surveys, it is apparent that megachurches make excellent use of multiple services to increase their capacity, and many also are multisite (one church in two or more locations). While virtually all have multiple Sunday morning services, 48% have one or more Saturday night services, and 41% have one or more Sunday night services. Megachurches held on average 5.5 services from Friday through Sunday.

Since really big worship areas continue to make the news, I’ve compiled a list of all known Protestant sanctuaries in the United States with seating capacities over 5,000. Out of 1,800 megachurches – congregations with weekly attendances of 2,000 or more adults and children, only about 2% – fewer than three dozen – exceed 5,000 in seating capacity. Click here for an illustrated list of all churches that seat 5,000 or more, and kindly report any corrections or oversights to me at research@leadnet.org.

Additional Fun Facts about Megachurches

For more blogs in this “megachurch” series, see also “World’s First Megachurch?”, "How Many Megachurches?", "Youngest Megachurch Pastor?" , "Megachurch Books?" and “Megachurch Languages?” For international perspectives, see my listing of global megachurches.

Want to Learn More About Megachurches?

Topics we’ll cover in class and on our site visits include:

- How a church becomes a megachurch: What can their success teach us?

- What we can learn about volunteers: finding them, training them, supporting them; - Mission/vision of megachurches vs. other churches, likewise the role of innovation in church;

- Megachurch attenders: Who are all these people? What attracts them? Why do they stay – or go?

- Commitment and participation in the megachurch

- Megachurch leadership, both staff and volunteer

- Challenges and critiques, new trends and implications

- Denominational affiliation, denominational relationships

- How megachurches develop diversity

Unsure if this is for you? See this excellent, short article about what churches of ALL sizes can learn from megachurches.

Questions? Contact Hartford Seminary’s Registrar Karen Rollins at 860-509-9511 or registrar@hartsem.edu. To download the syllabus or a registration form, visit http://www.hartsem.edu/courses/32

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Multisite Central Support InnovationLab Forming!

Tim Nations — 2012-05-14T20:42+00:00

In growing multisite churches, many core systems and processes require intentional restructuring, including:

Communication
Budgeting
IT Support
Staff Development
DNA Transfer

The lack of clarity on how these and other processes will function across all campuses produces great confusion and frustration. At this point in the growth cycle of a multisite church, the need for central support becomes evident.

But recognizing the need for central support is only the beginning. Many core questions regarding the complexities of multisite leadership, communication and distribution of resources must be raised and addressed in order to keep all campuses and ministries thriving.

To help multisite leaders answer these questions, Leadership Network will be hosting our first Central Support InnovationLab in Dallas beginning this fall. This InnovationLab is a 12-month experience focused on helping multisite church leaders move from ideas to implementation to impact regarding their central support strategy. This opportunity is ideal for churches that have launched 3 or more campuses but have yet to establish the scalable systems and structures necessary to support and coordinate ministry efforts across all campuses. This InnovationLab will put you in the room with churches asking the same questions, connect you with recognized thought leaders in multisite, and guide you toward the development and implementation of your central support structure.

For more information on this InnovationLab, visit the Multisite Central Support web page or contact me at tim.nations@leadnet.org.

To learn more about Leadership Network’s InnovationLab process, visit our InnovationLab website.

Author: Tim Nations

Topics: Learnings

Megachurch Languages?

Warren Bird — 2012-05-11T14:05+00:00

Megachurches are not a creation of the United States. There are far more megachurches (defined as 2,000 or more in weekend worship attendance) outside North America than inside it, as my global megachurches page shows. I've had the privilege of visiting the nation's largest-attendance church in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, China, Korea, and Singapore, among others. And in those churches, as well as those of other sizes, God is worshipped in languages parallel to the heavenly picture of "a great multitude that no one could count, from every tribe, nation, people and language" (Revelation 7:9).

In North America, are large churches primarily an English-language phenomena? No. Many English speaking churches host a church-within-a-church, such as Lakewood Church in Houston that offers three services in English led by Joel and Victoria Osteen and one in Spanish on Sunday afternoon led by Marcos Witt. Others bill themselves as "one church in two languages" such as Christ Fellowship Church in McKinney, Texas, where Bruce Miller is pastor.

Just as significantly, there are also megachurches where the main language is not English. Some have ministry for English speakers and others don't. Here are examples of the largest attendance church in North America for a number of languages:

Spanish: La Iglesia en el Camino (The Church on the Way), Van Nuys, CA, www.tcotw.org, Pastor Jaime Tolle

Korean: Sarang Community Church (Love Community Church), Anaheim, CA, www.sarang.com, Pastor Stephen Chong

French: Eglise Nouvelle Vie (New Life Church), Longueuil, ON, www.nouvellevie.com, Pastor Claude Houde

Russian: Braytskaya Baptist Church, Sacramento, CA, www.brytechurch.org, Pastor Pavel Khakimov

Chinese: Richmond Hill Chinese Community Church, Richmond Hill, ON, www.rhccc.ca, Pastor Daniel Splett

Perhaps you can help me identify large-attendance congregations that speak a dialect from India, Portuguese from Brazil, or perhaps one of the languages from Nigeria or Uganda, or maybe even churches from Arabic-speaking countries. If so, please add a comment below.

For more blogs in this “megachurch” series, see also “World’s First Megachurch?”, "Youngest Megachurch Pastor?", "Biggest Megachurch Sanctuaries?" and "Megachurch Books?" For international perspectives, see my listing of global megachurches.

Want to Learn More About Megachurches?

On June 4-8, 2012, I will teach a one-week, extremely practical course named "Megachurches: Studying and Visiting” at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. You or others on your church’s staff can enroll for no credit as an auditor, for master’s level credit, or for doctor of ministry level credit.

Topics we’ll cover in class and on our site visits include:

- How a church becomes a megachurch: What can their success teach us?

- What we can learn about volunteers: finding them, training them, supporting them; - Mission/vision of megachurches vs. other churches, likewise the role of innovation in church;

- Megachurch attenders: Who are all these people? What attracts them? Why do they stay – or go?

- Commitment and participation in the megachurch

- Megachurch leadership, both staff and volunteer

- Challenges and critiques, new trends and implications

- Denominational affiliation, denominational relationships

- How megachurches develop diversity

Unsure if this is for you? See this excellent, short article about what churches of ALL sizes can learn from megachurches.

Questions? Contact Hartford Seminary’s Registrar Karen Rollins at 860-509-9511 or registrar@hartsem.edu. To download the syllabus or a registration form, visit http://www.hartsem.edu/courses/32

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Youngest Megachurch Pastor?

Warren Bird — 2012-05-08T17:47+00:00

For U.S. churches with 2,000 and more attenders – commonly known as megachurches – the typical senior pastor is age 51. That average almost obscures the amazingly wide range from youngest to oldest.

In the “most senior” department, Chuck Smith Sr., one of the early leaders of the Jesus Movement, has been at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa since 1965 – and being born in 1927 he’s 84. Charles Stanley came to Atlanta’s First Baptist Church in 1971. Born in 1932, he’s 80. Likewise born in 1932 is Anne Gimenez at Virginia Beach’s Rock Church International, where she succeeded her husband John after he died four years ago. Chuck Swindoll and Jack Hayford were both born in 1934, Ed Young Sr in 1936, Tommy Barnett in 1937, and John MacArthur in 1939. (All these dates have been published in newspapers and other media, so I’m not letting out any secrets!)

What about the youngest eaders? Here’s my sense of the dozen youngest megachurch pastors, again taken from published reports:

Church Name	City	State	Webaddress	Senior	Pastor	Birth
Experience Life	Lubbock	TX	www.experiencelifenow.com	Chris	Galanos	1982
Valley Creek Church	Flower Mound	TX	www.valleycreek.org	John	Stickl	1981
Bethany World Prayer Center	Baker	LA	www.bethany.com	Jonathan	Stockstill	1981
Elevation Church	Matthews	NC	www.elevationchurch.org	Steven	Furtick	1980
Solid Rock Church	Portland	OR	www.ajesuschurch.org	John	Comer	1980
Crenshaw Christian Center	Los Angeles	CA	www.faithdome.org	Fred	Price	1979
Emmanuel Church of Greenwood	Greenwood	IN	www.egreenwood.org	Dan	Anderson	1979
The City Church	Kirkland	WA	www.thecity.org	Judah	Smith	1978
The Church at Brook Hills	Birmingham	AL	www.brookhills.org	David	Platt	1978
Rocky Mountain Calvary Chapel	Colorado Springs	CO	www.rmcalvary.org	Eric	Cartier	1978
Eastside Foursquare Church	Bothell	WA	www.eastsidechurch.org	DJ	Vick	1978

The answer? Currently Chris Galanos seems to be the youngest megachurch senior pastor in the United States! The two photos in this blog are of him and the church he leads, which was founded in 2007.

For more blogs in this “megachurch” series, see also “World’s First Megachurch?”, "Megachurch Languages?", "Biggest Megachurch Sanctuaries?" and "Megachurch Books?" For international perspectives, please see my listing of global megachurches.

Want to Learn More About Megachurches?

Topics we’ll cover in class and on our site visits include:

- How a church becomes a megachurch: What can their success teach us?

- What we can learn about volunteers: finding them, training them, supporting them; - Mission/vision of megachurches vs. other churches, likewise the role of innovation in church;

- Megachurch attenders: Who are all these people? What attracts them? Why do they stay – or go?

- Commitment and participation in the megachurch

- Megachurch leadership, both staff and volunteer

- Challenges and critiques, new trends and implications

- Denominational affiliation, denominational relationships

- How megachurches develop diversity

Unsure if this is for you? See this excellent, short article about what churches of ALL sizes can learn from megachurches.

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Twitter Highlight Reel

Warren Bird — 2012-05-07T20:12+00:00

In case you missed these, here are some great articles I shared in recent days on my @warrenbird Twitter account:

Amazing: "90% of all information ever created was produced in the last 2 years alone" http://bbc.in/I836s5 #leadnet

Four inspiring examples from DOING MORE WITH LESS http://bit.ly/ICbaFq @Stacy_Spencer @DeForestSoaries @MatthewBarnett

Chinese language set to overtake English online infographic#1 http://offbeatchina.com/infographic-china-online-population-decoded infographic#2 http://www.smartling.com/globalweb#languages-online

10 Ways to Keep Me Engaged in Your Message by @TonyMorganLive Great article by good friend http://www.sermoncentral.com/pastors-preaching-articles/tony-morgan-10-ways-to-keep-me-engaged-in-your-message-1241.asp

"The U.S. adopts more foreign-born children than any other country" Wall St Journal report http://on.wsj.com/IzhqYx

Why some church senior leadership teams win - and most don't! Find out about yours http://bit.ly/Jfw0I9 @edstetzer

Why church mergers more common, how to make them work--excerpt from new book @MergerGuru http://bit.ly/IaRVkf

surprise: significant GAIN in public's confidence of churches, no so with most institutions http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/how-americans-lost-trust-in-our-greatest-institutions/256163/

God works thru church planting: "Every new church we started in 2009 added about 50 new converts that year” http://bit.ly/HwGq3T

Eagle Scout study: they give more time, more money, more involvement in religion than others http://bit.ly/I27mcz

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

World’s First Megachurch?

Warren Bird — 2012-05-04T19:43+00:00

At Easter, Christmas and other big days when church attendances surge, newspapers like to raise the question of which churches are the biggest. Many also try to name which church was the first megachurch – churches drawing 2,000 or more adults and children in worship on a typical weekend.

Journalists often identify the first megachurch in the United States as the 2,890-seat Crystal Cathedral founded by Robert H. Schuller (and which declared bankruptcy in 2010(. But that's wrong because it was founded in 1955 and didn’t cross the 2,000 attendance mark until the 1970s.

Others cite greater Akron, Ohio, where three of the nation’s largest-attendance churches were based in the 1960s. One was Rex Humbard’s 5,400-seat Cathedral of Tomorrow, Cuyahoga Falls, OH, built in 1958 and filled on a regular basis. However, after lawsuits and a severe attendance decline in the early 1980s, Humbard sold the facility and accompanying television studio to fellow televangelist Ernest Angley in 1994, and the church is now known as Grace Cathedral in Akron, but no longer a megachurch in attendance.

Even earlier was Akron Baptist Temple, started in 1934 by Dallas Billington as a Sunday school, which like most churches until the 1960s drew more people in Sunday school attendance than in worship. By the 1950s the worship attendance regularly exceeded 4,000.

Likewise First Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, reported a Sunday school attendance of 5,200 in 1928, at least 2,000 of which attended worship. Also in downtown Dallas, Texas, several churches -- First Baptist, First Presbyterian, First Methodist and First Christian -- were among the largest churches in their denomination, typically drawing 2,000 or more attendance at worship during the 1950s and beyond. Notable churches subsequently grew in many cities across the United States, such as First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana, which during the 1970s was the nation's largest-attendance church.

Some churches that draw more than 2,000 in weekly attendance today were founded in the 1700s and 1800s, but their worship attendance did not regularly exceed 2,000 until more recent decades. These include:

- The Falls Church, Falls Church, VA, an Episcopal congregation founded in 1734 (but that may change soon due to a doctrinal and property dispute);

- Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore, MD, founded in 1784;

- First Baptist Church, Sevierville, TN, founded 1789;

- Mud Creek Baptist Church, Hendersonville, NC, founded in 1803;

- Park Street Church, Boston, MA, founded in 1807; and

- Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York City, founded in 1809.

Other churches had 2,000-plus attendances in their early days but have not been that size in the last 100-plus years. These include Sansom Street Church, Philadelphia, built in 1812 and seating 4,000; First Baptist Church, Baltimore, built in 1818 and seating 4,000; Chatham Street Chapel, Philadelphia, built in 1832 and seating 2,500; Broadway Tabernacle, in the Bowery section of lower Manhattan, built in 1836 and seating 4,000; First Free Baptist Church, Boston, an African-American congregation, built in the 1840s and seating 2,000; Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, built in 1850 and seating 2,000; and Bethany Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, built in 1866 and seating 3,000.

However it is The Moody Church of Chicago that bears the distinction of being the earliest to break the 2,000 threshold in attendance and continuing to do so to this day. The church facility, built in 1876 and known as Chicago Avenue Church, could hold 10,000 people. It was founded and led by the famous evangelist D.L. Moody. The church was filled to overflowing many times before Moody's death in 1899. The church today, now known as Moody Church and moved in 1915 to a nearby location, has an auditorium seating capacity of 4,000, and its current facility currently draws some 3,000 people in weekly attendance.

Worldwide, the practice of forming very large-attendance churches goes back many centuries. The New Testament refers to certain banner-attendance assemblies, such as Pentecost when “about 3,000” were converted (Acts 2:41). The overall church continued to grow to 5,000 (Acts 4:4) and beyond (Acts 21:20). But the weekly meetings were not akin to today’s megachurch because the earliest Christian communities generally met as smaller groups in homes, according to New Testament record. The first known church building was not built until 201 A.D., and many churches continued to convene in homes even after the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in 313.

Yet over the centuries occasional large-attendance churches developed including the great Abbey of Cluny, the great cathedrals of Constantinople and Europe, and the tabernacles build around the ministries of such evangelists and teachers as Charles Spurgeon in England. As a case in point, Spurgeon preached regularly, often 10 times in a week to audiences of 6,000 and more. He once addressed an audience of 23,654 (without aid of amplification). He grew the congregation of New Park Street Church, later named the Metropolitan Tabernacle, from an attendance of 232 in 1854 to 5,311 in 1892, making it the largest independent congregation in the world. Prime Ministers, presidents, and other notables flocked to hear him. However, attendance there today has been considerably less than 2,000 for several decades.

These were not Europe's first megachurches either. The last ten years of John Calvin's life in Geneva (1555-1564) were preoccupied with missions in France, such as in Bergerac: "From day to day, we are growing, and God has caused His Word to bear such fruit that at sermons on Sundays, there are about four- to five-thousand people," he wrote. Another letter from Montpelier rejoiced, "Our church, thanks to the Lord, has so grown and so continues to grow every day that we are obliged to preach three sermons on Sundays to a total of five- to six-thousand people." A pastor in Toulouse wrote: "Our church has grown to the astonishing number of about eight- to nine-thousand souls."

Today the world’s largest-attendance churches are in Korea, Africa, and South America—symbolic of the geographical shift in Christianity noted by historian Philip Jenkins (2002). I maintain a list of global megachurches at www.leadnet.org/world, and am attempting to obtain a year-founded date for as many as possible. Most of the world’s best attended churches were started in the last century, many in the last decades. It is still unknown which church globally was the earliest both to exceed 2,000 in attendance and to continue at that size to this day.

For other blogs in this "megachurch" series see "Biggest Megachurch Sanctuaries?"

Want to Learn More About Megachurches?

On June 4-8, 2012, I will teach a one-week, extremely practical course named "Megachurches: Studying and Visiting” at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. You or others on your church’s staff can enroll for no credit as an auditor, for master’s level credit, or for doctor of ministry level credit.

Topics we’ll cover in class and on our site visits include:

- How a church becomes a megachurch: What can their success teach us?

- What we can learn about volunteers: finding them, training them, supporting them; - Mission/vision of megachurches vs. other churches, likewise the role of innovation in church;

- Megachurch attenders: Who are all these people? What attracts them? Why do they stay – or go?

- Commitment and participation in the megachurch

- Megachurch leadership, both staff and volunteer

- Challenges and critiques, new trends and implications

- Denominational affiliation, denominational relationships

- How megachurches develop diversity

Unsure if this is for you? See this excellent, short article about what churches of ALL sizes can learn from megachurches.

Questions? Contact Hartford Seminary’s Registrar Karen Rollins at 860-509-9511 or registrar@hartsem.edu. To download the syllabus or a registration form, visit http://www.hartsem.edu/courses/32

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

If You Missed DOING MORE WITH LESS Get The Recordings

Warren Bird — 2012-05-02T18:14+00:00

I just spent the last two days being stretched by a conference named “Doing More with Less,” organized by Dr. Stacy Spencer, pastor of New Direction Church, and co-sponsored by Leadership Network. Nine pacesetting pastors gave us both their passion and their very practical advice. It was a stimulating mix of powerful oratory, panel discussion, audience Q&A, and table discussions.

If the examples below catch your imagination, then order the videos at www.stacyspencer.org, and then select “Store” at top. If you want more info beyond the website above, review some of the conference tweets at Twitter hash tag #DMWL2012

Here were the examples that spoke most to me:

Fighting the Injustice of Predatory Lending: Deforest “Buster” Soaries is doing a significant job of leading his church and his community out of debt. He pointed out that there are more predatory lending institutions in this country than there are McDonalds and Starbucks combined! His concern starts with his own story: “When I began ministry, I was in so much debt personally that I was living example of Proverbs 22:7 which says, ‘The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.’ How could I lead my congregation in that area? Yet I learned the process of becoming financially free has direct parallels to getting out of spiritual slavery.”

Truly Partnering with Your Municipal Government: Matthew Barnett says his local department of social services has come to his church, asking its help with a number of families where social services really WANTS them to stay together and make it, but they cannot due to a lack of certain basics in their home, such as a refrigerator. Without those basics, social services is required to break up the family. The church takes the checklist of what’s needed, and tries to supply the need of as many of them as possible. That’s just one example of what they’re doing. On another front, the church’s most recent development in its “Dream Center” is to open up a 60-bed facility to help victims of human trafficking.

Writing and Winning Community Transforming Grants. Greater Allen Cathedral’s Floyd Flake took us back to 1976 when he came to his church in a very run down section of Queens. Observing all the drug dealers, empty lots and abandoned homes in the neighborhood, he determined to do something about it. “I had no experience as a developer; my background was as dean of students,” he told us. But he took a simple and prayerful course of action: “I began looking to meet people who could make it happen.” Today through the Allen Community Development Corporation, millions of dollars in city, state, and federal funds have been used to help lift the area of Jamaica, Queens, out of poverty.

Transforming the Next Generation through Charter Schools. Our host church, New Direction, launched a high-performing charter school. It pursued excellence and got rated the best in Memphis. Then it sought and achieved the best in Tennessee. “Now we’re trying to be the best in the nation,” one of the school’s administrators told me. I was touched by how they refer to each student not as a pupil, but as a scholar. Apparently these kids are rising to the challenge!

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Reviews Coming in for New Book Better Together

Warren Bird — 2012-05-01T13:44+00:00

Last week, the day Better Together came off the press, I was meeting with a pastor who said, “The strangest thing happened yesterday,” and told me of another pastor he had known for years coming to him and asking, “Could we merge with your church?” I pulled out a hot-off-the-press copy of the book and handed it to him. Below is a description of that book from one of the many reviews coming out. Please take a look, because you never know if God has a merger in your future. – Warren Bird.

Review by DAVE PATCHIN from his blog CHURCHAccomplished.

Like chocolate and peanut butter or “Peaches & Herb,” some things are better together. That’s the premise of a new church leadership book released today by Leadership Network and Josey Bass.

Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, by Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird, went on sale recently and is the first book on church mergers, and unlike most “first” books, it’s insightful and practical. It is a must read for any church leader in a church that has struggled to find adequate facilities to expand, is passionate about a particular community where they do not have connection, or for those leading churches that are stuck or struggling.

The book does an excellent job of identifying the kind of churches that would be a good fit for a merger, which upon examination, is nearly all. It also identifies that in most mergers there is a “lead church” and a “joining church” that often is struggling or stuck and looking for an infusion of life. As well it provides helpful categories on how to think through mergers (rebirth, adoption, marriage, icu).

But beyond the theoretical categories, Better Together is an intensely practical resource. Bird and Tomberlin cover things like legal questions and how to start a merger conversation with other church leaders. They provide dozens of examples and in depth discussion of a few mergers in each category to give you a sense of how mergers progress and are derailed. There are appendices with research, examples, checklists, faq’s, categories to examine for fit as well as a list of churches used as examples.

If your church has been stuck or struggling, or is trying to find a way to expand your kingdom impact, this book will expand your thinking and help you move into the process with passion and practicality. You may discover your church is Better Together.

Dave Patchin is a Christ follower who has spent the past 25 years working with leaders in a large student ministry and a large local church.

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Books Learnings

Good Advice for College Graduates

Bob Buford — 2012-04-25T14:13+00:00

Many of us will find ourselves on college campuses in the next few weeks sending our kids and grandkids, nieces and nephews out into the world. While doing some spring housecleaning this past weekend, I came upon a letter from St. Louis friends, Drew and Meg Smith. Linda and I thought it terrific; warm and wise advice.

Barbie and Kevin:

OK...its food for thought...what to do with the high caliber education you are in the process of receiving. Your education and welfare is the highest financial priority your Mother and I have - not because of the value of it in and of itself - many live in the illusion education is the end point. We believe it is the launch point. A launch point both into life self-sufficiency and an important prerequisite in becoming the God inspired person you are.

Sooo...what is next for you? When Meg and I were in your shoes near the end of college, the only possibility we conceived for ourselves after graduation was entering the working world, finding the best paying and most exciting job we could. 5 years later our natural roles seemed to become "mother" for Meg and "provider" for me (all though the world seemed to value Meg's performance as "provider" higher than mine - she always earned a higher salary than me...smart gal that one). I think we both over time realized self worth isn't measured in dollars paid, no salary makes a job worth it if we are not satisfied. Hitting the 30's-40's seems to make us all think about our "calling" in life. I had a phenomenal time as was well trained as a manager at Procter and Gamble then as a business owner, a role I assumed I would play for the rest of my life. I look back now and realize it was all a training ground God set up for me to be prepared for the real game I am in now.

Meg found her calling early as Mother, caregiver. I found mine in serving the poor. Slogging through tough college courses we couldn't see those callings (OK, maybe Meg had it on her wish list, I was clueless).

Things have changed. My fathers generation saw "greater callings" by writing checks to their favorite causes during their working life or as something to do after "retirement age". My generation saw it as part of the "second half" - first be "successful" (financially) then be "significant".

Your generation has choices-launch into business/secular career then move onto "significance" later or chase your heart upon graduation - engage in the significant first then do a secular career and maybe later with more experience return to your passion with greater experience and assets - or- take the leap into "significance" and stay there (I have come to realize all worthy endeavors - for your profit or God's are never short of funding once a great vision is embraced and executed - and you have family resources to back you so you don't have to pass up a passion out of fear it doesn't pay well) perhaps you will be one of the lucky ones who finds their secular career as a "calling". Your choice. Be assured we will be your greatest cheerleaders!

Below is a regular email I get from Bob Buford, the guy who coined the term "half time" and "second half" career. He has helped change the paradigm of "what is possible" for my generation and now he is challenging your generation (what he calls "Millennial's Rising") - He helped shape my vision in a big way.

As you wrestle with your choices remember you are a part of the 1% of the world's population blessed to be given these options.

Be Blessed!

Mom and Dad

So What About You?

You might find this a favorable season to send a letter to a college graduate you care about.

Author: Bob Buford

Topics: Learnings

Multisite Church Road Trip Q/A - Campus Options

Greg Ligon — 2012-04-23T16:58+00:00

This week's installment in our Multisite Church Road Trip Q/A is...campus options. By now we all know that campuses can be located in just about any type of facility, but which one is right for you? Join me as I answer a variety of questions with the help of several different churches.

What are some unique locations that churches use for campuses?

YMCA - Cedar Creek
Theaters and CoffeeHouses - National Community Church
Third Place Restaurant and Campus - Salt and Light Church
On the Internet

Do you have an example of small/mid sized church models?

Vineyard Church, Lakeland, NY
The Crossing - Quincy, IL

Do you have information on churches that have broken the code on multisite and are running an off-campus with 1000+ attendance w/o significant investment? Ideally, one that started with 500 or so and grew to around a 1,000?

Summit Church, Durham, NC
Healing Place, Baton Rouge, LA
Celebration Church, Jacksonville, FL
Calvary Chapel, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Saddleback, Lake Forest, CA
Crossroads Community Church, Cincinnati, OH
Oaks Hills Church, San Antonio, TX
The Chapel, Lake County, IL

For additional resources, I encourage to read Multisite Church Revolution and Multisite Church Road Trip.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings

What’s on Your Mind? With Dr. R. Robert Creech

Greg Ligon — 2012-04-18T13:31+00:00

This week's installment of "What's on Your Mind?" is with Dr. R. Robert Creech. Dr. Creech is a Professor at Baylor University and Co-Author of "The Leader's Journey." In addition, he spent twenty-two years as the Senior Pastor of University Baptist Church in Houston, TX. Join me for a moment as we gain some insight on Dr. Creech.

1. What big issues or concepts are you currently thinking about or working on?
The biggest issue on my mind currently is the question of how best to prepare pastors for a future church whose form and context are so unpredictable.

2. What book are you reading right now and what are you learning from it?
I'm reading Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry by Thomas C. Oden. Oden argues that the best way to prepare for ministry in a postmodern era is to look back to the foundations of Scripture and the Church's experience, especially in its first five hundred years.

3. Other than the Bible, what book has been the most foundational for your ministry?
That's a tough question. I'm going to go with Eugene Peterson's The Contemplative Pastor. Besides its own content, that book introduced me to Peterson as a pastoral thinker, to Wendell Berry, and to the practice of spiritual direction. All of these have proven foundational to me.

4. Where do you go to explore new ideas? What kind of environments inspire you?
I find new ideas generated often when I'm seated on my John Deere lawn tractor mowing the three acres around our house at "the farm" in Floresville, Texas.

5. Just for fun: what’s your favorite coffeehouse beverage?
I get black, bold, brewed coffee almost every time -- no room, no sugar, no flavors. Just beans and water.

***************************************

Learn more about Dr. R. Robert Creech through his blog or follow him on twitter.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Books Learnings

When Natural Disasters Strike

Greg Ligon — 2012-04-17T13:00+00:00

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Thomas Kim, former Executive Director of Churches Helping Churches and now Board Member. Churches Helping Churches was founded by Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church and Pastor James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010.

CLICK HERE to join me as I talk with Tom about this incredible ministry and learn more about the significant investment they are making into the kingdom.

For additional information and to support their mission, visit their website.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Externally Focused Churches Generous Churches Multi-Site Churches Recovery Ministries Churches Learnings Multi-Site

Multisite Church Road Trip Q/A - Campus Pastors

Greg Ligon — 2012-04-16T13:59+00:00

Deciding to go "mutlisite" can be a big endeavor and many times a journey filled with questions. I have gathered a comprehensive list over the years of my most common questions and answers. Please join me as I share with you some insight into launching a multisite campus.

This week I tackle the importance of a Campus Pastor.

Does each site need it's own Campus Pastor? What about the "main campus?

Yes. An increasing number of churches have a campus pastor at the original campus as well … especially when they move beyond three campuses. You should also engage in the online community for campus pastors.

Who was a campus pastor for a few years, and later transitioned out to plant his own church?

Rick Pughe was at First Baptist Church - Windermere when it was multisite (now gone back to individual churches). He is now Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church - Eustis, FL. Eric Jaffe was at Celebration Church Jacksonville FL and is now the Senior Pastor at Journey Church, Orange Park FL . Troy McMahon was at Community Christian Church and planted Restore Community Church, Kansas MO.

What does the job description for a Campus Pastor look like?

Here is a great example from a large church on the west coast

Campus Pastor Job Description

What should I look for in a Campus Pastor?

Take a look at the following article from @multisiteguy Jim Tomberlin.

What Makes a Great Multi-Site Pastor

Check out this tool from the Leadership Network website that includes an assessment tool for selecting and developing Campus Pastors.

Leadership Development Tracking Tool

For additional resources, I encourage you to read Multisite Church Revolution and Multisite Church Road Trip.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Multi-Site Churches Learnings

Is Your Church’s Leadership Team a True Team?

Warren Bird — 2012-04-12T20:50+00:00

It seems like every church has caught onto the idea that church leadership works best through teams rather than solo players. According to my friend Dr. Ry an T. Hartwig, a practical academic and researcher at Azusa Pacific University, a senior leadership team is:

* an interdependent group

* who collaboratively

* shape vision

* determine strategy and

* share essential church-wide responsibilities

But how do you know if your team is working as effectively as it could? How does your church stack up on such issues as having the right people on the team, having the best communication practices, or having a clear, compelling, and consequential purpose? Does your team have a clear vision for its specific role, and then how that team vision aligns with the overall vision for the church?

Clearly, as you begin asking these tough questions, you discover that not all teams perform as well as others.

If you’d like help in evaluating your church’s senior leadership team, Ryan and I have a free assessment tool for you. It’s an amazing limited time offer where your team gets feedback, first compared to national averages, and then later against a norm of other churches. For more information about the assessment and us, please go to http://www.leadnet.org/leadteamstudy.

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Did You Miss These On Twitter?

Warren Bird — 2012-04-10T20:31+00:00

In case you missed these, here are some great articles I shared in the last week on my @warrenbird Twitter account:

God Is Biggest Producer of Affordable Housing in DC http://bit.ly/ht6KZB, Learn how YOUR church can do same http://bit.ly/H8u6qs

GOOD NEWS: churches newly allowed in "Google for Nonprofits" special programs, discounts, etc... http://bit.ly/H9lOgP

Entire mosques coming to Christ in Sub-Saharan Africa? If true this is absolutely amazing http://bit.ly/H3J0j9

Driscoll: Jesus loves church mergers and so should you @PastorMark http://bit.ly/sLJZLT see my new merger book BETTER TOGETHER http://bit.ly/w9jF42

Driscoll: @PastorMark announces @MattChandler74 is assuming Presidency of @Acts29 http://bit.ly/HdUXoY

If you need more money for ministry, excellent conference brings 7 national pastors to show you how https://www.swiftpage2.com/speasapage.aspx?X=2U0UYV25I4HM1ALC00PVWZ

Most religious states: MS, UT, AL , LA, AR highest. Lowest: VT, NH, ME, MA, AK , Gallup survey of all 50 http://bit.ly/H0Arc6

tattoo growth: 1 in 5 U.S. adults now has a tattoo, women more than men, age 30-39 most likely http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris%20Poll%2022%20-Tattoos_2.23.12.pdf

People are still reading: 71% read 3 or more books in avg yr ,15% read 1-2, only 14% read ZERO http://bit.ly/GQziU2

Asian growth tops all US ethnic groups, even Hispanic, growing 46% 2000-2010 to 17 millionhttp://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb12-cn22.html

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

What’s on Your Mind? With John Bishop

Greg Ligon — 2012-04-10T13:18+00:00

Next up in our newest series "What's on Your Mind" is Pastor John Bishop. John is the Pastor of Living Hope Church in Vancouver, Washington. In addition, he is the acclaimed author of Dangerous Church: Risking Everything to Reach Everyone.

1. What big issues or concepts are you currently thinking about or working on?
The big idea at Living Hope is "Stabilize to mobilize." With getting our K-Mart building, I shut down all campuses (except 3) as they were all local and not needed. We are in a process of realigning staff, reevaluating all ministries, asking what is working, what isn't and in every area, what is the "win" based on our vision which is "Living Hope church exists to passionately, authentically and simply help people know and follow Jesus."

2. What book are you reading right now and what are you learning from it?
Passion for Jesus by Mike Bickle is awesome -- a book about loving God like David.
Also, loved the book Not a Fan. Great read.

3. Other than the Bible, what book has been the most foundational for your ministry?
Purpose Driven Church (Rick Warren) and also 7 Practices of Effective Ministry (Andy Stanley). Both books have been instrumental in developing a long term strategy for ministry which isn't based on a particular model or church, but is based on how to help people become fully devoted to Jesus (Warren) and how to stay focused on the win (Stanley).

4. Where do you go to explore new ideas? What kind of environments inspire you?
I love networking with other church planters and not just new or growing, but churches that are doing all they can do in their environment. The problem sometimes with a list is that it doesn't take into account budgets, demographics, or even ask how many people are saved and baptized. I want to learn from churches that are risking everything they can to reach their cities.
A book that helped me think differently is called The Houdini Solution. Instead of thinking outside the box, we might be better if we can think inside the box. Be who you are, where you are and always for the glory of ONLY GOD.

5. Just for fun: what’s your favorite coffeehouse beverage?
I don't drink coffee, but every Sunday I have a quadruple shot of espresso.

**********************************
Pastor John Bishop is the author of Dangerous Church: Risking Everything to Reach Everyone.
Learn more about John at his website dangerouschurch.com, johnbishop.tv and livinghopechurch.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @John_Bishop

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings

Heaven Is Not Having a Recession so Why Should We?

Warren Bird — 2012-03-30T17:17+00:00

Those who follow my travels know that I’m working hard to find and champion churches ministering to this country’s rapidly growing Hispanic population, especially those for whom English is their dominant language. See previous blogs here, here, here, here, and here.

Last week I visited an amazing church, New Life Covenant, an Assembly of God congregation in the Humboldt Park section of Chicago. Since coming as senior pastor 12 years ago, Pastor “Choco” Wilfredo de Jesus has seen God grow the congregation from 150 to some 6,000 in weekly attendance. Those numbers are not typos! The growth has involved shifting from primarily Spanish to primarily English, changing the church name, relocating several times (see photo of a warehouse they just bought as their next location), developing 120 different ministries which use 27 different buildings or assets the church now owns, and most important seeing literally thousands of lives being transformed by Jesus Christ.

As one of the long-time pastors said to me, “Our attitude is that if you’re in this community, we want to do things that will bless you.” This involves everything from helping women come out of prostitution to maintaining a series of outdoor trash cans in the area. One of the ways they do so is through the Chicago Dream Center and another is by training young leaders through the Chicago Master’s Commission “We’re a church for the hurting, we’re looking for pain, and our resources are geared to that end,” associate pastor Rico Altiery, who grew up in the neighborhood, told me. This church is all about outreach, and it shows.

One way the church is helping people find financial freedom is by teaching then to put God first in their finances, even challenging them to do a 15% tithe so that the church can continue to expand into new opportunities. His attitude is that heaven is not in a recession, so God’s blessings are not limited by our economy. Catch Pastor Choco’s heart in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psybeT2b3_I ">short video. And indeed they’ve lived out that faith. “We’ve bought more land since 2008 than in the last 7 years,” he says.

This is a church that will continue to try new things for Jesus, and we’ll hear more about. In fact you can visit them yourself via their Pastors and Leaders conference on May 14-16 (English) http://www.jumpstartschool.org and May 21-23 (Spanish) www.enciendepr.org

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Destiny and Choice: A Reflection for Easter

Bob Buford — 2012-03-27T16:20+00:00

We are in the season of Lent. Lent is the season of soul searching, a season for reflection and taking stock.

In many ways, Lent, which leads to crucifixion and resurrection, is much more central to Christian belief and practice than Christmas with all its persistent selling and shopping. The Christmas story is one of hope and the dawning of a new day on earth. Lent and Easter are about life and especially the life beyond this life, about the offer of redemption that is there for the taking. Lent is about choice, our choice of how to identify with something that happened 2,000 years ago and its implications.

That leaves plenty of choices for busy life on earth. It seems that God's plan for this part of life is called Free Will. To be or not to be? That is the question. God makes the best course clear, but the "being" is up to each of us.

Six times or so each year, my associates and I hold an intense two days of helping men and women who chose to walk across the bridge from success to significance in midlife (the Halftime Institute). We talk a good deal about the transition from career to calling. The Bible, in both Old Testament and New Testament, declares that every one of us has a destiny, a set of works that are wired into our being one by one individually. It is not only the Bible. In the pre-Christian The Odyssey, Homer described a set of obstacles Odysseus had to surmount in order to reach his destiny to return home. In The Iliad, Achilles was confronted by his goddess mother, Thetis, who tells her son that he has "two sorts of destiny" from which he himself may choose: to live a long life at home without fame, or to risk much, die young, and gain everlasting fame.

More to the point for us are a host of references in the Bible.

From the Old Testament:

O Lord, You have searched

me and known me.

You know my sitting

down and my rising up;

You understand my

thought afar off.

When I was made in

secret,

And skillfully wrought in

the lowest parts of the

earth.

Your eyes saw my

substance,

being yet unformed.

And in Your book they all

were written,

The days fashioned for

me,

When as yet there were

none of them.

-- Psalm 139

A psalm of David

From the New Testament:

For we are His workmanship,

Created in Christ Jesus for

Good works, which God prepared

Beforehand that we should walk

In them.

I, therefore, the prisoner of

the Lord, beseech you to

have a walk worthy of the calling

with which you were called,

with all lowliness and gen-

tleness, with longsuffering, bear-

ing with one another in love,

-- St. Paul

Letter to the Ephesians 2:10, 4:1-2

Earlier Paul says we are "pre-destined" which means that each of us has a specific destiny prepared by God before we were born.

BUT, and this is a big "but," as surely as we have a destiny, we equally have Free Will. Otherwise we would be tin robots. Our role is to discover what that destiny is and having done the archeology to bring it to the surface, it is 100% our choice to accept or reject ... to pass or to play.

And, furthermore, since free will gets all of us into various sorts of mischief, our Father who knows us better than we know ourselves, has given us a way out, a kind of free pass if we will just reach out and take it. But, once again, that choice is utterly up to us.

Several years ago, I chose, as a Christmas Season project, to study the Parables of Jesus. Most scholars think there are around thirty of these hypothetical teaching tales. The Parables are morality plays to guide us through the ups and downs of "real life." Jesus taught two major ways: by His example ("just watch what I do") and by parables ("the Kingdom of God is like "this story"). These stories made sense to some, were meaningless to others.

I have a challenge for you to make the Lenten Season meaningful and surprising. Obtain a list of Parables. Ryrie Study Bible has thirty in the back. In Wikipedia, you will also find a list of thirty Parables with plenty of interpretive material.

There are, of course, all kinds of fascinating ways to sort through these narratives of human drama. All of them seem to involve a dilemma and a decision. I chose two categories:

Expectations for results and performance.
Grace and forgiveness.

I suggest you mark each parable on your list of thirty with either the word Expectation or Forgiveness.

To my delight and astonishment, I found fifteen parables about Expectations, the rules and regulations, for example - the Sower and the Good Samaritan. And I found an absolutely equal number of fifteen parables about Forgiveness, for example -- the Prodigal son, the wheat and the tares.

Think of it. The principles for a rich and fulfilling life are made clear in these vivid stories and, what may be even more important, the Prodigal son, which is all of us at one time or another, gets welcomed back into the family with grace and forgiveness and a big celebration. A free pass. All he/she had to do was turn back towards home and say, "I blew it. Will you take me in?"

This way of operating the world blows me away every time I think of it. It is the story of Easter made simple! Welcome home.

Jesus' explanation of why he taught in Parables:

"The disciples came up and asked, "Why do you tell stories?"

He replied, "You've been given insight into God's kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn't been given to them.

"Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That's why I tell stories to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.

"... But you have God-blessed eyes - eyes that see! And God blessed ears - ears that hear. A lot of people, prophets and humble believers among them, would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing, but never had the chance."

-- Matthew 13, The Message version

Author: Bob Buford

Topics: Learnings

Leadership Network Author Notes with Reggie McNeal

Greg Ligon — 2012-03-26T15:00+00:00

I recently asked Reggie McNeal, Missional Leadership Specialist at Leadership Network to answer a few questions regarding his reading and writing. His third book, Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post-Congregational Church, was released a few months ago as part of the trilogy exploring the popular missional movement. Reggie has worn many hats over the years including best selling author, pastor, noted lecturer and development coach. This experience makes him an invaluable resource to churches all over the world.

1. Why is reading important to you, and how do you find or make time to read books and blogs?

Reading informs, inspires, and imaginates me. I'm certain that most of my thoughts are the result of something I've read somewhere. I use a lot of my travel time to read--airports, plane trips have lots of down times that are put to good use this way. I stack up magazines, books, and make a list of web stuff I need to get to.

2. What books are you currently reading that you would recommend to our readers?

-The Coming Jobs War by Jim Clifton. This book, by the Chairman of Gallup, is a great read for those interested in being engaged in more meaningful ways to make a difference in their communities. Just a wealth of information--not just opinion--and synthesis that makes sense.
-Coming Apart by Charles Murray. This is a culture study, specifically of white America over the past half-century. It reveals the culture divide that has occurred. Two huge implications involve marriage and religious engagement--both are plummeting among the white population that is high school grads or less, blue collar workers. Enormous implications for understanding/reaching our culture. Murray studied whites but says the same dynamic is at play among other ethnicities.

3. How do you make time to write books or blog?

I have to schedule this time like everything else. I used to look for whole days I could write. I have found this to be harder and harder to do, so I look for mornings or afternoons. Sometimes long flights allow a sufficient block of time. I need at least two hours, because it is necessary for me to "quiet" all the voices in my head clamoring for attention.

4. What is the “big idea” of your most recent book in a Leadership Network book series?

Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post-Congregational Church talks about how critical it is for the church to nurture new life forms that are going to be necessary for the gospel to be present in every crack and crevice of our culture. I give readers a half dozen looks at how missional communities are emerging to be part of this solution.

5. If leaders only had time right now to read one chapter of your book, which one would your recommend... and why?

I would read the first chapter--it describes the need for this new life form in the church and helps describe church leaders' challenges of going forward with a vibrant gospel witness in our culture.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings

You’re the Catapult, Not the Carrier

Bob Buford — 2012-03-20T15:25+00:00

I had an AHA moment this week, a serendipity ... you might call it a blinding flash of the obvious. Something that was there all along but hidden in plain sight.

But first some history: My Primary Concern for twenty-seven years, even in my money making season, had been to discover my calling and to get busy doing it. The Bible says that each of us has a life task "prepared beforehand for us to walk in" (St Paul in Ephesians 2:10). Homer and the ancient Greeks called it a destiny, a necessary work predetermined by "the gods." King David, in that most marvelous of all Psalms, Psalms 139, declares:

"For you have formed my inward parts;

You have covered me in my mother's womb ...

For I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Marvelous are your works,

And that my soul knows very well ....

When I was made in secret ... your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed.

And in your book, they all were written

The days fashioned for me,

When as yet there were none of them."

I and each one of us has a life task coded into what I call our Spiritual DNA. We don't have to do it. That is what the Bible calls Free Will. "To be, or not to be: that is the question" is the memorably succinct way Shakespeare put it in Hamlet.

The other big question is "how to?". For me it was never a question of whether or what to do, but "how to?".

Now on to the serendipity I mentioned in my first line. The answer came to me in five unplanned encounters, all during the past week. In each case, I had long ago made a small investment of time or money in someone's life that had provided a stepping stone for them to go ahead with a task God had uniquely assigned them. Every one of the people I will describe was fully equipped. All they needed was a shove. What I like to say is, "The fruit of my work grows up on other people's trees." In whatever form it took, the HOW TO result was

Encouragement

It is what Peter Drucker did for me.

Someone needed to say, "You can do that," and to ask, "How can I help you?"

Story #1 came in the form of an email from the spouse of a participant in a Halftime Institute I led on Monday and Tuesday. Out of 700 different people I have done HTI for, this is the first and only letter from a spouse. Bill Peel wanted to thank me "for Kathy's experience this week at the Halftime Institute. She is beginning to dream again for the first time in two years about how God might want to continue to use her gifts to impact families and help women become who God created them to be." Kathy Peel is a superstar who has sold two million books, appeared on Oprah four times over, written countless articles, and delivered innumerable speeches. She is just tired of being a road warrior. Kathy and Bill have three children. Bill went on to say, "I also want to thank you for how God has used you in our lives for the past 25 years. In 1986, you paid for me to go through the SIMA. When I saw my gifts and motivated abilities in black and white, I realized I had limited self-life in most churches." Both Bill and Kathy moved forward into ministries that were congruent with their strengths and calling.

Story #2: I had breakfast last Saturday with Jim Mellado who heads the Willow Creek Association. I invested and funded what we called The Foundation Conferences for ten years with Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek team. Along the way, I invested in strategy planning for the Willow Creek Association and was a speaker three times with Bill Hybels at WillowCreek. Willow began with two conferences a year each serving about 500 people. Last year's Global Summit Conference served something like 150,000 church leaders, most of them through satellite downlinks around the world. It was a small investment on my part and a big payoff on theirs.

Story #3: Mark Bankord, age 54, is the Directional Leader of Heartland Church. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Sherri, and they have four grown children. All of them are involved in Heartland which Mark started from scratch in his home eleven years ago. The church has grown from 128 people at his first service in 1998 to 6,000-7,000 people each weekend at two locations in Rockford, IL. An article in the Rockford paper quoted Mark, who doesn't mince words when it comes to who he used to be, saying, "I was an arrogant, egotistical jerk. I lived for me. It didn't matter who I stepped on or over getting there. The difference now," said Bankord, "is that my life no longer revolves around myself. The difference is Jesus Christ." Bankord sold his asset-management business four years ago. Heartland sees teaching and leading as two different skills, a still radical innovation. Mark said, "I don't do the teaching on the weekend ... my job is primarily to build a team of people who figure out what they are best at and what God is calling them to do and make sure we are all directionally headed the same way." Heartland uses the phrase, "It is a different way to do church."

Story #4: On last Friday, I had lunch with another friend of many, many years. Bob Shank spent fourteen years as a businessman/entrepreneur in the construction industry. At 31, he transitioned from business to ministry and founded Priority Living, a faith-based organization serving businessmen and women in the marketplace. In 1997 with a nudge from me and after three years of training which I funded, he launched The Masters Program, a leadership training program that has helped thousands of leaders across North America to expose and exploit their unique kingdom callings. I made a couple of other investments at strategic times. Bob told me last week that the encouragement was probably more important than the money.

Story #5: I first met Jim Lane when I served as a speaker for a very vigorous and ingenious men's groups in his home in New Canaan, CT. Jim was previously a partner in Goldman Sachs who now runs a private investment firm. His major concern is the New Canaan Society whose meeting I attended last weekend in Washington, DC. Along the way, I helped provide Tom McGehee, who is one of the best process facilitators in the country, when Jim wanted to expand. Friday night I was in a room with 800 men representing forty chapters of New Canaan Society with forty more chapters on the way.

"You are the catapult, not the carrier." A good way to sum this up is what I learned from my good friend, Admiral Ed Allen, who was captain of one of the U.S. Navy's twelve carriers. He once expressed my role in this way, "The catapult is what makes United States Navy work. It is virtually invisible but it gets 60,000 pounds that is a fully loaded F-16 off the deck in about 200 yards. You are not the carrier. You are not the plane. You are not the pilot. You are just the catapult that gets the plane airborne."

As always, I welcome your thoughts. You can email me personally at bob.buford@ACTIVEenergy.net, or converse with the entire community at ACTIVEenergy.net.

Author: Bob Buford

Topics: Learnings

Leadership Network Author Notes with Darrin Patrick

Greg Ligon — 2012-03-19T17:00+00:00

In his second book, "For The City,” Darrin Patrick partners with Matt Carter to practically equip churches with relevant tools to engage urban culture in their city. As an author and lead pastor of The Journey Church in St. Louis, Darrin is constantly looking for new ways to reach people who are "underserved." I was recently able to ask Darrin a few questions regarding his reading and writing.

1. Why is reading important to you, and how do you find or make time to read books and blogs?

Mark Twain has supposedly said, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.” I think the ability to read and write are gifts from God. It is really an issue of priority. I have the time to read, but will I take it?

2. What books are you currently reading that you would recommend to our readers?

I am reading a business book called Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Bossidy, Charan and Burck because our church culture is vision-oriented and too much of that can be a real weakness. I am also reading a great little book by Greg Gilbert called “What is the Gospel?”

3. How do you make time to write books or blog?

I have a set time every week that I write and I take two or three writing retreats a year

4. What is the “big idea” of your latest book in a Leadership Network book series?

As Christians, we are called to build a great city, not just a good church.

5. If leaders only had time right now to read one chapter of your book, which one would your recommend... and why?

“Confessions”, in which Matt Carter and I tell all of our dumb mistakes.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Books Learnings

Read This If You Need More Money For Ministry

Warren Bird — 2012-03-16T20:12+00:00

If you’d like to hang out with seven outstanding pastors who are knocking it out of the park in transforming their communities for Christ on a limited budget, take a look at this video from Pastor Stacy Spencer at New Direction Christian Church in Memphis, TN

These pastors each work with economically challenged reality, and yet they have each found significant breakthroughs that other churches can learn from – partnerships with their cities, community development corporations, grants, facilities with multiple use, and more. So all in one location you get the insider’s story of New Direction’s amazing work at transforming their city, but you also hear from Floyd Flake (Greater Allen AME, Queens, NY), Buster Soaries (First Baptist, Lincoln Gardens, NJ), Jamal Bryant (Empowerment Temple, Baltimore), Matthew Barnett (Dream Center, Los Angeles), E. Dewey Smith (Greater Travelers Rest, Decatur, GA), and Freddie Haynes (Friendship West Baptist, Dallas). What a notable, nationally known group of pacesetters!

Yes, the conference is biased toward “transforming the ‘hood for good,” as one of the workshops says, but it is by no means limited to urban or ethnic applications. Any church serious about making a difference in its community, and mobilizing its people to do so, will find much practical help here.

I would be going, even if Leadership Network weren’t a co-sponsor, and even if the registration didn’t include five tasty Memphis-style meals (it does). I’ll not only take a lot of notes, but the setting is intimate enough that every participant should be able to interact personally with some of the speakers. If you’re facing lots of ministry opportunity, and you want to learn how to “do more with less,” as the conference title promises, register now before it’s full.

See you there. It’s the best $199 you could spend. Here’s the link to register or learn more.

Author: Warren Bird

Topics: Learnings

Leadership Network Author Notes with Dave Gibbons

Greg Ligon — 2012-03-12T15:00+00:00

Author, activist and strategist, Dave Gibbons, is a world reknown "game changer" and Lead Pastor of Newsong Church. In his first book, The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church, Dave has challenged an entire generation of leaders to embrace our culturally diverse world with relevancy and compassion. Calling it "The Third Culture," masterfully details how adaptability in our churches and organizations can create the ultimate environment to grow relationships with Christ.

Take a moment to get a quick glimpse into Dave's reading and writing.

1. Why is reading important to you, and how do you find or make time to read books and blogs?

Reading expands my thinking, ignites ideas, evokes action.
I make time daily to read mostly posts, FB notes, tweets to keep current. Books I read as I travel. It's not natural for me. It's something I have to choose to do. I'm typically one who likes to experience more than sit and read. It's a discipline.

2. What books are you currently reading that you would recommend to our readers?

Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company That Changed the World by Chris Lowney

DE-CODED by Jay-Z

3. How do you make time to write books or blog?

Schedule blocks of time. And mostly, when I'm feeling it. Inspiration usually has to strike for me to get moving!

4. What is the “big idea” of your most recent book in a Leadership Network book series?

MONKEY and the FISH: LIQUID LEADERSHIP FOR A THIRD CULTURE CHURCH
In two words: PAINFUL ADAPTATION
Loving your neighbor is loving those not like you. This requires painful adaptation.

5. If leaders only had time right now to read one chapter of your book, which one would your recommend... and why?

Hmmmm. . . How about just closing your eyes, thumb through the pages and reading the chapter where your thumb rests. It could be providential. Man, I don't know what chapter for you to read. Depends where you may be. That's a third culture answer.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Books Learnings

Multisite Churches in Unique Locations

Greg Ligon — 2012-03-08T16:34+00:00

One of the exciting parts of the multisite church movement story are the unique places that are selected as venues and campuses. There are a growing number of churches that are partnering with their local YMCA to launch a collaborative campus through shared facilities and sometimes even shared staff. A great example is partnership between Cedar Creek Church West, Aiken Regional Medical Center and the Family Y of Aiken County, South Carolina. Check out their story here.

How about your church? Please use the comment feature to share where you are launching campuses in partnership.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings

Leadership Network Author Notes with Dino Rizzo

Greg Ligon — 2012-03-07T22:45+00:00

1. Why is reading important to you, and how do you find or make time to read books and blogs?

Reading is a priority in my schedule, especially when I travel. I look for ways to read as I go. It stretches me, grows me, and helps me stay in the classroom of the Holy Spirit. We can never think we have arrived- there is always something to learn, an area to grow in. I have found reading helps me relax, wind down, step out of the craziness of life and take a pause. Readers are learners, and I still have much to learn.

2. What books are you currently reading that you would recommend to our readers?

-Rebuilding Your Broken Word by Gordan McDonald

-The Happiness Secret by J. John

3. How do you make time to write books or blog?

Writing has always been a team effort for me. I have a great team around me that I can trust to help me shape my books, blogs, etc. The "why" behind the "what" is very important to us. The reason we take time to write, is in hope that it will be a resource to grow and build the body of Christ.

4. What is the “big idea” of your latest book in a Leadership Network book series?

We believe the greatest cause you could give your life for is serving others. Christ set the ultimate example by modeling a life of servant-hood. The "big idea" of this book was His from the beginning. We have discovered that serving unlocks even the hardest of hearts and opens them to the love of God. A Servolution is not an event; it is a culture. As the body of Christ, it's not something we should think about doing - it's who we should become! Our desire is to not only inspire churches through Servolution, but to provide practical resources and ideas on how to implement it into the DNA of your church.

5. If leaders only had time right now to read one chapter of your book, which one would your recommend... and why?

Chapter 5 describes a turning point in my life. From the first time we opened our doors as a church, our heart has been to serve the poor and the hurting. Serving is our mandate, and our passion. But sometimes you get tired. Sometimes the needs are over-welming. Hurricane Katrina relief efforts exhausted us, stretched us, and required 24/7 serve for several months. During one of the midnight shifts God used a filthy car, a family of eleven, and a mucky diaper to wake me up and remind me we were not done yet. There is always one more person in need, always one more hurting, always one more desperate for the love of Jesus Christ. We must always be on the lookout for those who are hurting right at our doorsteps, right within our reach, and do whatever we can to communicate that Jesus cares.

Author: Greg Ligon

Topics: Learnings