Exponential Conversations

How to Lead & Endure thru the Mission

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:28 GMT

The popularity of missional community is rising among evangelicals, and yet, the American church is nowhere near a missional tipping point. How can we lead the church well, and endure, in and through the mission?

1. Stretched Grace

2. What you Make of Community

3. Measure the Right Things

Read the whole piece

Workshop Tracks for the Summit

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:52 GMT

This year at the Summit we want to go deeper and focus on how to build healthy, vibrant church plants. To do this we are featuring three tracks of workshops that focus on how to build a strong foundation on which to plant (alongside 21 other workshops). For more information on the Summit, go here. It isn't too late to sign-up and join us March 6-8 in Plano, Texas!

Communications
Lead by Paul Loyless this track will focus on how your church communicates, church websites, and social media. As the CEO of d2design, Paul has spent the past decade working with his team to equip the church on mission through innovative communication and church marketing strategies. Paul is relentless in his desire is to help churches find affordable, creative solutions that really work.

Communications: Marketing the Church: The term “marketing” is somewhat misleading. The accurate way to think of church “marketing” is as communication. With this in mind, good church marketing can be defined as communicating who you are… bad church marketing as communicating who you are not. Either way, you are communicating. So, the question is not “should we market?”, but rather,“are we communicating well?” In this break out session Paul Loyless will share how you can create and execute your own church marketing strategy.

Communications: Church Website Essentials: In this breakout session Paul will introduce 6 factors you should consider when thinking about a new church web site. He will also discuss best practices you can implement with your existing web site. This session will intentionally be interactive and conversational. Come with questions.

Communications: Social Media and Church Marketing: Church Planters and Pastors have come around to the concept that there may be a place for social media in their ministry. But there remains a lot of myths about what social media can do for the ministry. In this breakout session Paul will bust the five biggest social media myths found in the ministry and share how you can use these tools to gain more access to your parishoners and members of your community.

Administration
Lead by Ken Dean this track will focus on church administration for a church plant, church health, and church culture. Ken has been the Executive Pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, AR, a freelance writer, speaker and Principal Consultant with the Dean Group, and is currently also the Director of the Gateway Foundation a development organization that helps churches, church plants and other non-profit organizations assess, plan and implement initiatives to grow and positively impact their communities and the culture.

Administration: Now What?: So, you are thinking about planting a church. Now What? Or you have already planted a church, but things aren't progressing the way you hoped. Now What? This workshop will explore the best practices for preparing to plant a church, launching a church plant, and what to do when your church plant gets stuck.

Administration: Is Church Size an Indication of Health? This workshop will explore aspects of church size, church health and church culture. Learn how the size of your church impacts the culture within your church. Also learn, how to recognize unhealthy conditions within your church, and what to do about them.

Administration: Q&A: Do you have questions about your church? Whether you are planting a church or you have an existing church that has issues or is not growing, this workshop will provide you with an opportunity get answers to specific questions about your church.

Pastoral Care

Co-lead by Clint Kerley and Amy Flickinger this track will focus on caring for the souls of your congregation, sacramental care, and self-care. Clint is the associate pastor for family ministries and congregational care for Christ Church Plano. Amy is the director of ministries at Restoration Anglican Church in Addison, TX

Pastoral Care: Cure of Souls in Church Planting

Pastoral Care: Sacramental Care in Church Planting

Pastoral Care: One Another Care in Church Planting

Schedule and topics are subject to change.

Journeys to Significance Wins an Award

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:53 GMT

Journeys to Significance was a very personal work of mine that took me 16 years to write. I just found out this week that it has won an award from Outreach Magazine as one of their top resources of the year in the field of outreach, specifically under the category of leadership.

Here is how the awards are decided:

About 170 resources published between Nov. 1, 2010, and Oct. 31, 2011, were submitted to Outreach for consideration—the most submissions in the last four years. Outreach editors narrowed the field to 122 and placed them in categories.

The magazine then enlisted the help of an expert in each category to consider the resources.

"Each year, we are humbled by the involvement of so many people at the top of their fields who volunteer their time to evaluate the resources and choose the best,” Orme said. “We are truly grateful for the participation of the expert panelists.”

Each panelist independently evaluated the resources in his or her area of expertise and selected what he or she thought were the best. The experts chose how many resources to recognize in their respective categories.

I was very pleased that Bill Easum chose Journeys as one of the best. As many of you know I have written several books and each one is important to me, but this one is very personal and different from all the others. That it was selected means much to me.

If you have not read it because you are not interested in house church, than you are misjudging the book (its not about house church, though it does touch on catalyzing missional movements). If you thought that you had figured out Neil Cole and his "stuff" you may be pleasantly surprised by this book. If you chose not to read it because you thought it was simply a book on Acts or on Paul than you are not completely right. As others have found, the book has as much to do with YOU and your journey as it does with Paul.

Here are the kind words that Easum used to describe the book:

“Journeys to Significance is one of the more interesting books to come along in a long time. Based on the life of the apostle Paul and his journeys, Neil Cole’s book explores the various stages in life a leader has to pass through and how each stage affects the next stage until the leader reaches a point of maturity in which ministry is maximized and contentment with oneself is achieved (unless the leader gives up along the way). There are two reasons to buy this book: one is to read a new and creative interpretation of the life of Paul; the other is to compare the lessons Paul learned on this journeys to how God is working in your own life.”

—Bill Easum, from the March/April 2012 issue of Outreach magazine

I think you will find the book surprising and helpful for any of you struggling through life in the midst of your own journeys. It is easy to read because it has a narrative story throughout. It is also one of the shortest books I've written. Even my family agrees that it is their favorite book of mine.

Thanks to Outreach Magazine, Bill Easum and all the members of the academy. Ah shucks.

Matt Keller Sifted

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:11 GMT

“Too many pastors have spent too long faking out the entire world (including themselves), attempting to convince everyone that they’re okay.” It took several years for Matt Keller to unlearn the untruths and false realities drilled into him by a particular style of church leadership. Pastor Matt Keller’s desire is that something in his sifted story will inspire you to take an honest look at yourself and get help if necessary. Read more here.

30 Additional Speakers at the Summit

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:30 GMT

In addition to our main speakers, Mike Breen, Archbishop Duncan, Scot McKnight, David Roseberry, and David Taylor, we have over 30 additional speakers who will be sharing field reports and workshops at the Summit. Some of these great speakers include:

Jenni Bartling - Jenni will co-lead a workshop on coaching. She is a certified ministry coach who has provided basic coach training to nearly 400 Christian leaders. She believes that coaching is an integral part of growing and multiplying healthy churches. She focuses her energy on developing church plants and empowering excellent leaders in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and for the Titus Institute for Church Planting.

William Beasley - William and his team will lead a series of workshops on multiplying Hispanic congregations, raising up congregations among the college students and the poor, and identifying new leaders. He currently serves as Director of the Greenhouse Regional Church Movement, working directly with Archbishop Bob Duncan in the Anglican Church in North America to help establish new congregations in the Upper Midwest and throughout North America. William is both a regional leader and a rector of multiplying congregations.

Chris Cairns - Chris will co-lead a workshop on St. Paul's Theological Centre in London. In addition to blazing trails for the cause of Saint Paul’s Theological Centre, Chris is the Founding Vicar of Apostles Anglican Church (Knoxville, TN) and a former Network Leader of the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

Chris Culpepper - Chris will lead a workshop on church planting Anglo-Catholic congregations. After graduating from Nashotah House, Chris then served his curacy at All Saints’ parish. In 2008, he began the work of planting Christ the Redeemer which, in 4 years, has achieved parish status, grown to 175 members, and hired a second priest for youth ministry. He is married with 2 children.

Bishop Julian Dobbs - Bishop Dobbs will lead a workshop on answering the question, Am I a Church Planter? Bishop Dobbs is a Suffragan Bishop in CANA and part of the ACNA Executive Committee. He has worked closely with Anglican 1000 since we started. Now, he is intentionally focusing his Anglican 1000 work on leadership development and the recruitment of new leaders for church planting. Previously, he served as the director of the Barnabas Fund here in the US, which developed awareness of persecuted Christians and the challenge of resurgent Islam. He also continues work in this area with the Church and Islam Project. Bishop Dobbs and his wife Brenda live in Northern Virginia.

R.D. Glen - R.D. will preach our Tuesday evening prayer service. He is the parish rector of St. George’s Anglican Church. RD focuses his work at St. George’s on the Great Commission, leadership development, and church planting. Beyond St. George’s he serves on the board of directors for the Anglican Network in Canada. Traveling regularly to resource and develop new missional congregations, he is chairman of Anglican church planting in Canada and a leader in the Anglican 1000 movement.

Bishop John Guernsey - Bishop Guernsey will lead a workshop on stewardship. He has taught and consulted on stewardship education in dozens of congregations and dioceses and taught a seminary stewardship course for 11 years. He served as rector of All Saints’ Church in Woodbridge, VA from 1981-2010. He was consecrated bishop in the Church of Uganda in 2007 and was transferred to the Anglican Church in North America at its launch in 2009. He now serves as bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic

Tom Herrick - Tom will co-lead a workshop on coaching and lead a workshop on gaining momentum when ministry plateaus. Tom is the Executive Director of the Titus Institute for Church Planting and Multiplication, a ministry dedicated to establishing a church multiplication movement in North America. He is a church planter and has served as a catalyst for church multiplication at the regional and national levels since 1995.

Jack Lumanog - Jack will lead a workshop on ACNA. He serves as Canon for Provincial and Global Mission for the Anglican Church in North America. He is the chief programmatic officer of the Anglican Church in North America. As such, he assists Archbishop Duncan in carrying out the mission of the Province, both domestically and internationally. He was ordained a Deacon in 2000 and a Priest in 2002. Most recently he served as Rector at Christ the King Anglican Church, an Anglican Mission in the Americas church plant in Lansing, MI. He and his wife, Amy, have two daughters, Ainsley Mae and Hadley Grace.

Jen Roach - Jen will give a field report on Light of Christ Church in Seattle, WA. She graduated with a MDiv from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology in 2011. She began planting Light of Christ later that same year. She lives with her husband Jeff and their 11-year old son Ian in Seattle, WA.

Jon Schuler - Jon will lead a workshop on planting churches with a global vision. He will also be giving a field report on NAMS. He has served churches in England and the United States for more than 35 years, and in 1994, founded NAMS. With the birth of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) in 2000, Jon planted King of Kings Church in Charlotte, NC, and began the King of Kings Missionary Network the following year. He served as Rector at Church of the Ascension, Knoxville from 1984-1993.

Paul Sorensen - Paul will co-lead a workshop on St. Paul's Theological Centre in London. He serves as the Chair of the Saint Paul’s Theological Centre USA Launch Group and is a Mission Initiative Leader for the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

Brent Stiller - Brent will give a field report on New Song Anglican Church in Port Perry, Ontario. He is the rector of New Song Anglican Church. New Song began in September of 2011 and is one of the newest congregations in the Anglican Network in Canada. Brent has a DMin in Homiletics from Gordon Conwell, an MDIV from Regent College and a degree in International Development Studies from Dalhousie University. Brent has served as adjunct faculty at Wycliffe College in Toronto, and helped launch a satellite seminary in Honduras to help equip lay leaders from various denominations to serve their churches more effectively.

Bishop Bill Thompson - Bishop Thompson will lead a workshop on the upcoming new prayer book. Besides being the Chair of the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force, Bishop Bill Thompson is the Bishop of the Diocese of Western Anglicans which covers Southern California, Arizona, and isolated congregations in the Rocky Mountain West. He was formerly rector of All Saints’ Anglican Church in Long Beach, California. He was active in the Anglican Church Network as one of the deans before helping to form the Diocese of Western Anglicans. He has been an Anglican priest for over 40 years. He has a love of the liturgy and is passionate about having an orthodox BCP.

Cliff Warner - Cliff will lead a workshop on church planting in the urban center. Cliff serves as Rector of Christ Church Austin, next to the campus of the University of Texas. He is also the founder of Ciudad Nueva (“New City”) Community Outreach, an urban mission in downtown El Paso, Texas. He graduated from Regent College (M.Div), Boston University's Sustaining Urban Pastoral Excellence (S.U.P.E.) program, and is a D.Min. candidate at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He and his wife Christine have been married for 18 years and have four children.

For more information on the Summit, go here. It isn't too late to sign-up and join us March 6-8 in Plano, Texas!

Schedule and topics are subject to change.