Ed Stetzer has been working an a number of church planting statistics that we've all been waiting for…well wait no more: 

Statistics are a dangerous thing. Some use them well; some use them badly; but most evangelical leaders use them—and church planting is no exception.

One of the statistics that is frequently cited but never sourced is the survivability and health of church plants. I've heard quite an array of statistics—but one of my favorites is that often repeated "80 percent of new churches fail in the first year."

Well, not so fast.

Full report by Ed Stetzer:  Church Planting and Survivability

Once a year Kaleo preaches a 'state of the union' address of where our church is and where it is going.  This was done in a dialogical format by David Fairchild and I last Sunday.  In it we were able to cover:

1. An overview of Kaleo's brief history.
2. Purpose of the Church
3. Gospel Renewal Dynamics in our church
4. A missional ecclesiology 
5. Our vision for San Diego

You can view the whole sermon: Kaleo 2007

The Gospel Gone Public: Worldview·Mission·Preaching
Regional Event | San Diego
March 31, 2007

There is nothing more beautiful than to see a city transformed by the Gospel. As a fellow laborer for seeing Gospel going forth in San Diego, you are invited to the next Acts 29 regional event in San Diego, The Gospel Gone Public: Worldview·Mission·Preaching on Saturday, March 31, 2007.

Covered at this one-day conference will be topics that affect every pastor passionate about transforming San Diego with the Gospel, including the Church’s biblical mission, how to prepare and preach Gospel-centered messages, Gospel transformation, and much more.

Learn about the speakers, sessions, schedule, registration and the conference partners.

The cost for this conference is $45, and will include the conference materials, lunch, and a copy of Michael Goheen’s The Drama of Scripture.

My friend Ed Stetzer is working on a research project with The Leadership Network (www.leadnet.org) on the state of church planting in the U.S. One key aspect of this study is a close look at multiplying churches and networks: what are they doing, how they are doing it, etc.If your church or organization has been actively involved in supporting new church starts over the past few years, and you have not already participated in the study, would you take a moment to fill out an online survey about your work and efforts? If you know others who should be involved, would you please forward this to them?

The church planting church survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=861003202740

The survey for organizations/denominations can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=545713205672.

We appreciate your time and effort to share your thoughts, experiences, successes and challenges. You won't want to be left out of this groundbreaking study.

In April I will be presenting two sessions at the National New Churches Conference.  On Tuesday Brad Abare, founder of Church Marketing Sucks and I will co-present a session tentatively titled "Get the Word Out! What Every Church Planter Needs to Know About Communication" my emphasis will be on the web.  Later that week I will present "Using the Internet to Gather, Connect and as a place of Mission."  

The National New Churches Conference is the largest gathering of church planting leaders in North America, the conference is designed to connect, inspire, equip and challenge church planting leaders. The lineup of speakers includes Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, Wayne Cordeiro, Ed Stetzer, Dave Ferguson, Bob Roberts, Larry Osborne, Ron Sylvia, Bil Cornelius, Mark Batterson, Jim Putman, Rick Rusaw, Matt Chandler, Darrin Patrick, Shawn Lovejoy, Vince Antonucci, Bob Logan, and David Putman.

The National New Church Conference is in Orlando, Fla. April 23 - 26, 2007.  You can register here.

Church Planting Resources posted a paper that "sets out a new paradigm for church planting that may help create such a culture. Missionary and Missiologist Roland Allen calls the kind of church planting movement referred to in the MNA church planting vision as “the spontaneous expansion of the Church”, its “unlimited expansion” and the “spontaneous freedom of expanding life.”

It includes:

1. Principles of Spontaneous Church Planting Expansion (with applications)

2. Case Studies: Mars Hill in Seattle (of a Spontaneous Expansion), Harbor Presbyterian in San Diego (of a One-Church/Multi-Congregational Movement)

3. Written by Tim Keller it includes much of their philosophy @ Redeemer

4. Feedback in Paul’s Missionary and Church Planting Method

5. The Mission to North America’s (MNA) Church Planting Vision

Go here to download Emergence Theory and the Spontaneous Expansion of the Church – a vision for Church planting in the 21st Century a 22-page PDF. 

Speaker: Steve Childers

"If you are a church planter, by its nature you are a conflict manager," said Childers.  There is a relationship between the church size and conflict.  The smaller your church, the greater the arena and likelihood an antagonist will be present.  (The people set on absorbing the time and the attention of the church planter.)   As your church grows, it brings change.  People do not like change, so you will also experience conflict.

90% of all people that fail in their life vocation do so because they can't get along with the people.  (source: Carnegie Tech Institute)

Christian conflict of opinions is typically much worse than the secular world.  Christians believe their opinions stem from the Creator God of the Universe.  If you and the God of the Universe are taking sides on an opinion, you will take a firm stance.

Childers gleans s from Francis Schaeffer's The Great Evangelical Disaster and said, "If church discipline is not done Biblically, there will be a loss of purity in the church (of both doctrine/life), if there is a loss of purity, there is a loss of power to change lives and culture". Churches need to expect, prepare for and lovingly deal with conflict.  Thankfully, God condescends to us to teach us very practical steps to resolve conflict.   If you want more, Childers strongly endorses, The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict.

Read David Fairchild's (thorough) post on Conflict Management. 

Speaker: Dr. Steve Ogne

David Fairchild provides a good summary of the session on Mobilizing Church Planters .  Steve gives a few suggestions for finding and igniting a multiplication movement. What are we looking for when we think of a lighting rod of a man who knows how to charge and take a hill?

1-The leader should engage the culture intentionally not accidentally.
2-The leader can be someone who is effective at disciple-making and can start and multiply a group.
3-The leader may be a pioneer church planter who starts and pastor a new congregation.
4-The leader needs to have a proven track record of being catalytic in his context.
5-The leader may come from an environment where he is the pastor of a parent church who sponsors new churches to begin.
6-The leader may be a coach who empowers and equips church planters.
7-The leader may be a mentor who raises up disciple-making leaders, church planters and missionaries to start and multiply churches.
8-This leader should be an intercessor who prays for others regularly.

Some qualities that an attractive church planting movement possesses:

1-Reputation- We need to know what our reputation is to the city and other churches. What are our distinctives? How would we clarify our theology? How do we articulate our ministry style?
2-Vision- Do you have an attractive vision for church multiplication? Does your movement have empowering visionary leadership?
3-Compassion for lost people- How do you emphasize outreach, compassion, ministry and evangelism?
4-Care- To what degree are you able to provide personal care for church planters and their families?
5-Diversity- How are you prepared to reach the diversity of the harvest and therefore attract a diversity of church planters?
6-Character- What is the quality and character of your leaders, pastors and people?
7-Coaching- What kinds of ongoing coaching, training and resources can you provide to the church planting team?
8-Resources- Do you have reasonable financial resources and benefits to attract the planters your need?
9-Success- Do you have a track record of successful ministry and church planting?

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few…" (Matthew 9:37b)  How do you raise and recruit leaders to change a city?  Dr. Steve Ogne states that, recruiting is NOT a long term solution.  Ogne believes that effective leadership development systems begin with the lost community.  Pastoral leaders have the responsibility to raise up the next generation of pastors, church planters and missionaries from within their context.   This is exactly what we at Kaleo Church are developing for 2007.  Yet, as we seek to not build a church, but change a city we recognize how short-handed we are.  It is Kaleo's vision to plant 15 churches within the next 7 years through a multi-site model.  This February we are launching our third.  (In this same period, we also have a goal of more than 15 traditional parent/daughter church plants in Southern California through our relationship with Acts 29.)  With that said we are in need of people who have a heart for mission, church planting and seeing a city changed by the gospel. 

In particular we need:

Church Planters who want to actively participate in not just one (a site) but a movement, multiple church plants that will occur throughout the city. 

Worship Leaders, musicians and artists who understand the vision/philosophy of ministry where the style of worship is an expression of the local context, yet rich and true in it's theological proclamations. 

Church Interns and others who want want to roll-up their sleeves and see what it means to learn theology while on mission.

Gospel-Centered Counselors who want to join our counseling center to change & counsel people through gospel transformation.  We just launched Kaleo Christian Counseling Center to minister to both people in the church and to the city at large. 

Supporters who have a heart for reaching San Diego and are willing to pray, donate time, finances and other resources to change the city. 

Speaker: Dr. Steve Ogne

Ogne's session presented a framework for raising up leaders in a local church.  One of the thoughts I've had for a month or so (I mentioned it about re-thinking the role of elders that I still haven't posted on yet, but plan to) is:

    Churches tend to primarily raise leaders to serve the internal needs of the church, rather than towards leading/developing others toward mission.

Ogne believes most churches conduct the leadership process backwards.  First they try to train people in a theological competence, only later do they teach them to mobilize/lead others and disciple people. This is something at Kaleo we have thought about.  We take theology very seriously and often want to have this trained-out prior to giving people an opportunity to lead.  Rick Mckinley made a good point to David Fairchild a while back that has caused us to rethink this, "We assume we should teach people their theology and then send them on mission, rather than teaching them theology on mission." (paraphrase).  Theology is best taught in practical application.  Thinking through the theology of suffering is quite different as a logical/theological argument versus counseling a family who just lost a child. 

For more of the actual session, David did a great summary: Raising Leaders for Multiplication

CHURCH PLANTING NETWORKS 

"Church plants that are part of a network are 400% more likely to succeed."

Ed Stetzer new stats

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

"We've found that if you aim to develop leaders, you'll get what these people can do.  If you aim to develop gospel pacesetters, you will get what only the gospel can do."

Daniel Montgomery (Sojourn Community Church) retelling a quote that Dick Kaufmann (Harbor Presbyterian) gave him regarding developing  leaders.

Here are the sessions I attended today: Developing a Purpose & Mission, Determining Value & Styles (both taught from the infamous 600+ page GCA Church Planting Manual, so I won't quote these) and Redeemer's Global Cities Strategy.  Some ideas from today:

"Church plants are 250% more likely to succeed if they have a good leadership development plan." -Ed Stetzer (from his new research to be released in the book Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can Too May 2007)  Of course people also enjoyed his quote, "There is more evidence from scripture for me to go out and get a concubine than to start a denomination." 

Ed suggested church planters to view the free resources at Namb.net/cmr 

 "European cities and the business class are vastly unreached by the Christian church."  - Al Barth Redeemer Church Planting Center.  Al went on to say that it is more strategic for a church planter to go after the educated and the business class, which in the long run allows you to reach the poor and have a greater impact on a city.   Al also said, "One of the most common false notions a church planter has (even if they verbally disagree) is that 'If we build a church that worships God, people will come.  It is rare today to succeed based purely on an attractional ministry model." (Ed Stetzer also stated this model only works in a few contexts and that often mailers don't work anymore.  Who does direct mail?  Does it still work for you?)

Al Barth also stated that Redeemer is looking for men to be involved in these church plants that…

1. Understand the Gospel (read Keller, Lovelace, C.Jack Miller to understand there view of the gospel expressed.) 

2. Transformed lives from the Gospel

3. are able to clearly Articulate the Gospel

4. and can Apply the Gospel surgically. 

Tomorrow I leave to the North America Church Planting Conference with David Fairchild. "The North America Church Planting Conference is an inter-denominational training event designed to equip church planters, coaches and supervisors to start, grow and multiply healthy, gospel-centered churches that result in the spiritual, social and cultural transformation of entire cities and regions."  Leaders from Acts 29 will attend sessions to map out a network coaching strategy.  This is Phase I of several Acts 29 church planters being trained to be coaches of church planters. 

Phase II is Bob Logan of Coachnet.org coming to Seattle March 21-22 to also train Acts 29 coaches. From Coachnet: "Coaching is fundamental to everything we do in ministry, from discipling new believers to developing new leaders. Dynamic churches and ministries have coaching woven into their genetic code. CoachNet's desire is to see people become intentional about coaching — either in beginning to coach others or in improving the quality of coaching they currently deliver. Everybody talks about it… it's time to start doing it!  CoachNet's Coach Certification program is a specialized, comprehensive process that prepares Christian leaders to effectively coach and develop others."

It is good to be a part of Acts 29 as it continues to grow rapidly, but also mature as men who planted churches 3, 5 or 10 years ago are now coaching others who are just beginning.  If you are a church planter, it is a real opportunity to be coached by people who understand the challenges of church planting and are not so far removed from the process that they speak only in theory.  These relationships are critical to the future of Acts 29 as a church planting network.

For those who are church planters, I've put together a list of Acts 29 pastors who have blogs.  My assumption is that a lot of these planters will post on issues of church planting and being the church.

David Fairchild (San Diego)

Mark Moore (Dallas & Mark blogs about the International Acts 29 movement)

Mark Driscoll (Seattle)

Michael Foster (Cincinnati)

Bill Streger (Houston)

Pete Williamson (Bellingham)

Tim Wagner (West LA) 

Brent Rood (Bothell WA)

Ed Marcelle (Troy, NY) 

Jonathan Herron (Kent OH)

Ryan Mobley (Springfield IL) 

Justin Anderson (Tempe, AZ) 

duane matthew smets (Pacific Beach) 

Mike Edwards (Detroit)

Who else am I missing? 

The Acts 29 site is rolling out a blog and Mark Driscoll posted Twenty Leadership Questions for Building a City within the City for those who are in the church (or are considering) church planting.  These leadership questions are based on Nehemiah.

If Christianity is going to make a difference in the world, its leaders cannot just sit around waiting for the phone to ring and answering every e-mail complaint that hits the inbox. Leadership is not keeping everyone happy (that will never happen-especially for me). Leadership is not just gathering a bunch of mostly stubborn people together on Sunday. Rather, leadership is moving people in a passionate drive toward the mission of God.