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Church Planting Efforts of the Assemblies of God

2012-05-24T19:56:26Z

Steve Pike

I recently connected with Steve Pike, the National Director for the Church Multiplication Network (CMN). Since 2006, the Assemblies of God has invested $4 million directly into local church plants and has planted over 1,500 churches across the United States.

TONY: I’m hearing incredible news about the Assemblies of God church planting efforts. Can you share a little bit about what’s happening?

STEVE: God has been doing some amazing things since the formation of the Church Multiplication Network (national Assemblies of God US church planting office) in 2008. Since that time we have planted over 1,000 churches. We’ve gone from 247 new churches in 2008 to 368 (second most in the last 45 years) in 2011 and have already opened 137 churches in 2012. We are on track to start 410 new churches, this hasn’t been accomplished in our movement since 1982 when we opened 400 churches.

TONY: What prompted the denomination’s church planting focus?

STEVE: It has been the leadership of Dr. George Wood. When he was elected in 2007, he wrote out five core values that would determine the priorities of his administration. Those five values are to: Passionately proclaim the Gospel, strategically invest in the next generation, vigorously plant and revitalize churches, skillfully resource the fellowship and fervently pray. Under his leadership he has realigned resources to facilitate the implementation of these values.

TONY: Don’t existing churches get a little bent out of shape if you’re investing leadership, energy and financial resources into what could be perceived as their competition?

STEVE: We don’t feel it is an either/or scenario, but a both/and. We frequently say that church revitalization and church planting are the same thing starting at two different points. Our fellowship has taken proactive steps for both existing churches and new churches to be or become healthy and effective.

TONY: What’s unique about your church planting strategy?

STEVE: The strategy is unique because we are principle based, not model based. There are numerous kinds of church planting models. We want to see models as different types of bridges that lead to where people are and that communicate the Gospel in a way that meets their needs. This might be through dinner churches like the ones we have in Seattle, WA, organic churches like in Summit County, CO, Armenian Churches in Los Angeles, CA or attractional models in suburbia. We believe that every plant needs a few core principles to be successful.

These principles are simple. The plants need a prayer network, assessments, coaching, training, and financial partners. Adding a “parent” church relationship to this mix exponentially increases effectiveness. We require all churches that we provide $30,000 in matching funds to have those elements. In the last four years this has led to a 92% success rate and almost 14,000 confessions of faith in the 201 churches we’ve funded. These new churches have also given over $2 million to missions cumulatively in the last four years.

TONY: Why is your strategy working?

STEVE: We believe it’s a number of things. Primarily, the Spirit of God is doing some amazing things in our country and He’s using church planting as the channel to accomplish His mission. Along with that, God is empowering our planters to start the kind of church He is calling them to plant. We simply encourage them to apply the previously mentioned principles to their process.

The Arithmetics of Branding, Part 2

2012-05-23T13:40:46Z

In our first post, The “Arithmetics” of Branding, we discussed the formula for successful branding. Your audience will encounter your brand or message an average of 7 times before acting on it.

Reaching your community shouldn’t be a shotgun effort. You should have a pointed, carefully executed strategic plan to get your message to the right people.

I’ll ask the question posed in our previous post, “What do those 7 encounters look like for your organization?”

Your strategy should include a mixture of mediums that are broad enough to reach your audience multiple times, multiple ways. Keep in mind, the goal is to not only stand out amongst the 5,000 marketing messages our culture encounters. Your goal is to be remembered. Here is a quick checklist for your organization:

1. Take a few minutes to write out every form of marketing and outreach your church currently employs. How many ways can the same person see or hear your message?

2. Now ask yourself, “What is communicated across all of those channels?”

Is it the same message? Is the messaging even similar?
Do you have brand cohesion or brand confusion across all of your outreach mediums?
Are any of your marketing/outreach promotions centered around who you are and your vision, rather than an event?

3. While thinking through what your main communication point is across all of your marketing, consider what call-to-action is on each of your outreach mediums.

What do you ask of your audience? What do you instruct them to do?
How clear is that request?
Is that call-to-action the same on all of your messaging?

One important call-to-action across all of your marketing materials is for people to visit your website. Today, 85% of people will visit your website before attending in person.

According to UseIt.com, users will leave a webpage in 10-20 seconds unless their attention is captured.

Churches can spend thousands, even millions on outreach and marketing, but until there is a process in place to grab a guest’s attention and connect them to your church, those resources are wasted.

Your marketing should all funnel to your website
Your website should reflect the quality of your ministry
Create your website as the front door of your church, with visitors in mind

If you’d like to have an Online Strategy Review of your church’s marketing and communication efforts, give us a call at 877.703.2484 and press 2, or request a quote for your church.

Here are some additional ways faithHighway partners with your church to help you attract visitors and close the back door:

Church Marketing to build connections
Web Design to attract more visitors
Church Management Software to increase retention and engagement
Church Commercials to reach more people
Sermon Streaming to take your message beyond the Sunday experience
Church Planting Resources for an affordable, successful launch

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This is a sponsored post from faithHighway, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com

Replenish

2012-05-23T12:27:12Z

My friend Lance Witt served 20 years as a senior pastor and five years as the executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. Last summer, Lance released his book Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul. It’s a great book for church leaders. It’s so good, in fact, that I had my recent coaching networks read it for the conversation we have about personal health.

Here are some of the highlights from my reading:

“When leaders neglect their interior life, they run the risk of prostituting the sacred gift of leadership.”
“It’s scary to realize that the path to external success and internal emptiness can be the same road.”
“The truth is you don’t have to have a healthy soul to be seen as a success in ministry.”
“Be interested in others more and interested in yourself less. Ask people questions about their lives. Get someone to tell you their story.”
“A healthy staff culture does not happen by accident. You won’t drift into it any more than you would drift into a healthy marriage.”
“More time spent with fewer people equals greater impact.”
“Trying not to upset people and make waves makes just the opposite happen. In our attempt to avoid conflict, we actually end up creating it.”
“Systems modify behavior, which in turn creates healthy habits that result in positive change.” [Tony says: "Systems (or think disciplines) shift behavior."]
“Sometimes we are so accustomed to doing things one way that we can’t see how broken the system really is.”
“When a culture is dominated by ineffective and dysfunctional systems, spiritual practices get marginalized.”

I highly recommend this book. Here’s my Amazon link for Replenish if you’d like to pick up a copy for yourself.

For those who have already read the book. What were your big takeaways? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

Platform: An Interview with Michael Hyatt

2012-05-21T01:55:14Z

Interview Highlights

Find out why Michael started blogging.
Watch Michael and me discuss who has had the more boring profession.
Hear what Michael has to say about the role of traditional publishers.
Learn how to encourage more conversation around your content.

Interview Links

Strengthen Your Senior Leadership Team

2012-05-17T12:09:27Z

Guest contribution from Dr. Ryan T. Hartwig and Dr. Warren Bird

It’s no secret: Churches are more complex than ever. As a result, key jobs in the church are more demanding than ever. Pastoring requires more specialized skills than ever. And the need to develop leaders is as crucial as ever.

As a result, many churches have adopted Senior Leadership Teams to address these challenges. Great Senior Leadership Teams involve more people in leadership functions and share the leadership burden, bring experts face-to-face to strategize, and facilitate leadership development. In fact, Leadership Network’s recent “Team Collaboration Report” noted:

The structure is changing from a single leader calling all the shots to flattened-hierarchy leadership teams that share crucial strategic and directional responsibilities…Steps to broaden the leadership platform [have resulted in] leadership teams with multiple strategic and directional leaders who not only use their gifts, abilities and varied backgrounds to oversee important facets of decision making and execution; they also share the load for visioning, strategic direction and communication.

However, just slapping the “team” term on a group of senior leaders doesn’t make it a true team. But there are many things you can do to help your senior leadership group become a real team that offers outstanding spiritual and strategic leadership to your church. Based on Ryan’s two-and-a-half year study of one church’s transition to a senior leadership team and the current literature on senior leadership team effectiveness*, we know that…

Great senior leadership teams:

Know, believe in, and pursue a clear, compelling, and consequential purpose distinct from the church’s overall mission.
Identify and focus on the crucial tasks it needs to accomplish (such as establishing vision, determining strategy, building capacity, etc.) and give the rest away to other individuals and groups.
Are comprised of persons who possess, in a balance with others, the needed skills, experience, conviction, and perspective to accomplish the team’s purpose. Check out Tony Morgan’s post about this very issue.
Utilize a solid team structure that keeps the team as small as possible, gets meaningful tasks on the agenda and trivial matters off the agenda, establishes healthy meeting norms, and holds team members accountable to them.
Access and utilize important resources necessary for the team to do its work, such as:

meaningful information,
educational opportunities to develop not only functional skills but also team/collaboration skills,
reward systems that reward team-level performance as well as individual effort,
time, settings, and material resources that enable the team to collaborative effectively in formal and informal settings, and
coaching (not team building) to grow into a great team.

Clearly, developing a great senior leadership team requires thought, intentionality, and effort.

To help you strengthen your team, we have a free assessment tool for you. It’s an amazing, FREE, 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, please visit http://www.leadnet.org/leadteamstudy.

*For a great resource on Senior Leadership Teams, check out: Senior Leadership Teams: What It Takes to Make Them Great by Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burress and Richard Hackman (2008).

[Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

It’s Personal: An Interview with Brian & Amy Bloye

2012-05-16T12:26:58Z

Interview Highlights

I reminded Brian that the Cleveland Indians are ahead of the Detroit Tigers in the baseball standings.
Find out what the Bloyes identified as the biggest challenge of planting a church.
Brian: “There are a lot of folks out there who, in my opinion, just shouldn’t be planting churches.”
Learn why “it’s personal.”

Interview Links

National Conference on Preaching Workshop Notes

2012-05-15T16:58:23Z

This afternoon I will be the token non-preacher at the National Conference on Preaching. My “sermon” doesn’t have three points and a poem, but I do think my message will challenge preachers in a way only a non-preacher could challenge them.

If you plan to attend my workshop, feel free to download the notes and follow along. I’ve also provided links for additional reading.

National Conference on Preaching Workshop Session

Title: Finding Your Communications Focus
Whether you know it or not, your church is probably bowing down to the perceived power of the “giant inflatable blue monkey.” It’s impacting how you define and communicate your discipleship strategy. It’s impacting how you promote what’s happening at your church. And, it’s impeding your ability to help people take their next steps toward Christ. I will help you discover a few simple strategies to deflate the giant blue monkeys lurking in your ministry.

Time: Tuesday 4:00-5:00pm

> Download the Notes

For further reading:

12 Tools I Use to Run My Business

2012-05-15T13:28:31Z

Last week I talked about the three strategies I use to avoid getting overwhelmed with everything on my plate. I talked about focusing on priorities, empowering my team and using systems. Fortunately, it’s getting easier and easier to implement those strategies thanks to a toolbox of web apps that are available.

I thought you might be interested in seeing the tools I’m currently using for my business. Some of these will also be applicable in ministry settings. In some instances, though, there are better ministry-specific solutions available. Here are…

12 Tools I Use to Run My Business

Asana — This is what my team uses to track all our projects and tasks. We’ve created templates for projects that reoccur. We can deletage tasks to fellow teammates and follow the progress on each project. This drives the conversation in our weekly traffic meetings. (HT to Phil for introducing me to Asana.)
Bidsketch — This app creates all the proposals we send to potential clients. It syncs with Highrise to track when proposals are created, sent, viewed and accepted. The best part, though, are the templates that we set up so that we don’t have to recreate the wheel every time we generate a new proposal.
Expensify — This is a great app for creating travel expense reports. It imports expenses directly from the credit cards. You can also use the SmartScan feature using the mobile app to import receipts into reports without typing anything. It almost makes expense reports fun.
Google Drive — This is how my team shares documents. Every church we work with has a shared folder. Every document that’s generated through our consultations is dropped into the folder. Google Drive makes it easy for our entire team to collaborate without having to send large files through email.
Google+ Hangouts — We use the Hangouts for our weekly traffic meetings. It’s great for video chat and screensharing is built in. I’ve also started using it for coaching with church leaders when we’re not able to meet face-to-face.
Highrise — This is our client database. We use it to track every person, church and consultation. We also use it to log every email message and phone conversation we have. If I’ve talked with you, there’s a note in Highrise with your name on it. This is a great solution for small businesses. For churches, though, I recommend Church Community Builder, my strategic partner on the Leisure Suit Series.
Intuit Online Payroll — This is the solution I use to make sure my team gets paid and the government gets all their taxes. (By the way, the government makes it as challenging as possible for small businesses to add jobs. It’s ridiculous.)
LessAccounting — It’s accounting for guys like me who have only had a couple of college accounting courses. Similar to Mint for personal finances, LessAccounting pulls in transactions automatically from my business checking, credit card and PayPal accounts. Once a week I go in and make sure all the transactions are coded accurately. We also use LessAccounting to handle all the invoicing. My tax accountant loves this solution, because the reporting makes life easy for her.
MailChimp — Are you signed up for our monthly newsletter? This is the solution we use to manage our email lists and send out the ever-popular monthly newsletter.
PayPal — Yes, there are other options that are cheaper for accepting payments for services, but PayPal integrates with all the solutions I use and it’s the standard that everyone knows and trusts. My favorite feature is the subscription solution that I use to handle all the monthly coaching network payments.
TripIt — I’ve upgraded to the PRO version to track all my travel itineraries. TripIt grabs all the travel confirmations from my email inbox and automatically creates the itineraries and makes sure all those details get on my calendar. I used to create “trip folders” every time I traveled. Now it’s all right on my phone.
Wufoo — It’s simply one of the best web applications available. Wufoo is what we use to capture information in forms on our website. It integrates with Highrise, so there’s no data entry to update our client database. We also use Wufoo for our online surveys that are a part of the ministry health assessment we offer to churches.

Do you see anything in my toolbox that’s missing? If so, I’d love your recommendation. Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

[Image: www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

Soul Detox: An Interview with Craig Groeschel

2012-05-14T12:31:59Z

Interview Highlights

“We’re actually not a body with a soul, but the reality is we’re a soul with a body.”
Find out why Craig couldn’t get a date in high school.
Craig challenges churches that focus on entertainment.

Interview Links

Two similar stories. Two different endings. God is glorified in both.

2012-05-13T20:59:48Z

Over the past few years, I’ve had two close friends diagnosed with colon cancer. Their stories were similar. The outcomes were different. In both stories, though, God is glorified.

Here’s the story from Troy and Lindsey Page that was shared in this morning’s services at West Ridge Church.

And, here’s the story from Zac Smith, my friend from NewSpring Church.

I hope you’re both encouraged and challenged by these stories. God is good all the time.