National New Church Conference
Teacher: Dave Olson, Director of Church Planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church and Director of The American Church Research Project.

Many Christian leaders wonder whether planting new churches is necessary for the future of the American Church. They say: Don’t we have enough churches already? Aren’t most new churches very small? Most new churches don’t survive anyway, do they? Shouldn’t we focus instead on the small, struggling churches we already have?

42-45% of Americans say they go to church on Sunday according to George Barna and George Gallup. From 1991 to 2006 this number increased from 36% to 47%, this is an 11% increase (in a country with roughly 300 million people, this means 33 million people started to attend church. Olson believes these survey's are wrong and are greatly impacted by the halo effect. For example, of those surveyed, 54% said they voted in an area where only 46% actually did. Olson doesn't base his research on these polls but actual headcounts at 200,000 churches. [His question is, how many pastors ever under count attendance?] Some of Olson's findings include:

17.7% of the US population attends church. This breaks down into 9% evangelical, 5.5% Catholic and 3.1% Mainline denominations.

The rate of those who attend church is declining. In the West, there is a -1.2% decrease in the population of who attends church in the 1994-2004 timeframe. Nationwide, to just to keep up with population growth, we would need to plant 51,826 more churches than we did in this period. Including churches that were planted, this means we would have needed to plant over 100,000 churches! The greatest increase and conversion occurs in church plants. For more of the statistics, and for specific statistics for the top 80 Metro areas, go to The American Church.

We've gone to the National New Churches Conference and the Resurgence conference. What's next? What other conferences would you recommend? Here's my vote:

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Session from the National New Church Conference
Teacher: Dr. Tom Jones, Regional Director Stadia East

This session went over an introduction to raising funds for a church planter. Dr. Jones outlined different finance models such as the Mother church, Associations, Denominations, Network, Self-Support, Lay Launch teams, Business-supported and other models. When it comes to raising funds Dr. Jones suggests that you "Make sure you are clear about your call and vision, asking questions such as:

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I returned last night from the National New Church Conference in Orlando, Florida. It may take a bit but will unpack:

- Conversations and dinners with Ed Stetzer (Stetzer don't just lurk, post a comment!), Bob Roberts Jr., Acts 29 guys. I received a preview copy of Breaking the Missional Code and Planting Missional Churches by Stetzer, so I'll post thoughts on those as I read.
- Sessions attended on Fundraising for a Church Plant by Dr. Tom Jones at Stadia, Outreach Networking: Building Strategic Relationships in the Community and The State of the American Church - Why Church Planting is Critical to the Future of American Christianity by Dave Olson, Director of Church Planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church and Director of The American Church Research Project.

…and so much more. I don't know how much I'll do before I board a plane to head to the Resurgence conference in Seattle.

Yesterday I met with 9 church planters here in San Diego. Admist the conversation, one guy told us how he raised $450,000 for the next five years. He got the idea from Funding Your Ministry: Whether You're Gifted or Not

His primary method was to approach local churches that would allow him to speak to 10 congregants. He then pitched his vision to these congregants and asked if they would be willing to make a monthly tithe commitment of $300, $500 or $1,000. There you have it, that is how he has $7,500 a month above and beyond his congregations tithe. [btw- If you want to support church planting in the South West, I'd be more than happy to take a monthly commitment!]

UPDATE: The Tentmaker Group has launched to help church planters raise funding.

As I posted earlier, the influence of Keller/Harbor/Frame and tri-perspectivalism is far reaching. It should be the very worldview that we filter everything through, we looked at its influence in church leadership development and preaching. Now, here is a take on how it influences WHAT type of churches you should plant.

First the NORMATIVE is that the church must view the whole Bible as the gospel. This means it is the gospel that is not just the entry into the Kingdom, but is the very way a Christian will grow in grace. Second, the SITUATIONAL impact is the gospel calls us to mission. We must plant churches that are on mission. We are a church 'for' the city/culture/people where God places us. We must learn the context, speak the stories, understand the myths, heroes and struggles around us. Mostly we must not be of, against or above but for the culture we live in. Lastly, our EXISTENTIAL stance is one of constant grace renewal through faith in Jesus Christ. We are motivated by grace (not guilt) and understand all challenges, problems and answers need the Gospel. I have 50 pages of notes from lectures Harbor (Doug Swagerty) and John Frame gave that go over these in much more depth. They go into the theology of ministry, including leadership development, preaching/teaching, administrating, counseling all through this framework….I'll ask Doug if it's ok if I post more about this stuff….

I just bought my tickets to attend the 2006 National New Church Conference.

Twelve front-line, church planting leaders will facilitate our time together through main sessions, interviews, and Q & A sessions. These speakers are leaders in their areas of passion. Gene Appel / Ed Stetzer / Dave Ferguson / Mark Driscoll / Bob Roberts, Jr. / Ron Sylvia / Neil Cole / John Burke / Larry Osborne / Bob Logan / Steve Andrews / Dave Nelson The conference experience is designed to connect, equip, inspire and challenge church planting leaders. Through pre-conference intensives, main sessions, workshops, and networking time you will meet other leaders with similar questions, struggles and passions.

Anyone else plan on attending?

Goodmanson.com was added to PlanterBlogs.com… PlanterBlogs.com is an aggregator of the personal blogs of a diverse group of church planters. It is an opportunity for current and potential church planters to learn from the experiences of their peers. This collection of blogs is meant to offer a range of views in planting style, personality, and theological background.

Hopefully this means Acts 29 will continue to aggressively plant churches worldwide:

As chairman of the board for newly formed Vision USA, Mr. Weiss aims to raise $300 million over the next 10 years for aggressive church planting in 50 of the country's most influential cities. The project is well underway in Orlando, where several million dollars of grant money will help open eight to 10 churches by the end of the year. Preliminary efforts have also begun in Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Nashville, Charlotte, New York, and Washington, D.C.

…it goes on to read…

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and founder of the nondenominational Acts 29 church-planting network, is among a growing list of prominent leaders to join Vision USA, each hoping to combat the roughly 2,500 church deaths in the United States every year. "Church planting is hot right now," he told WORLD. "For years, guys wanted to get out of seminary and go get a church that had a nice salary and would call them pastor. Today, young entrepreneurial guys don't want to take over a church. They want to start one."

Full Article: Disney executive moonlights as director of church-planting effort (Registration Required)

I'm sure many of you have seen this: Hi, I'm a casting director with Bunim-Murray Productions (Real World, Starting Over, The Scholar), and I'm currently working on a TV show about a pastor who is starting a new church. I found your church information on the Emergent Church website and since this is the type of church we'd like to document I thought you may have some good suggestions for pastors who are hoping to start a new church in the coming year. We are still in the developmental stage of this process, but we're looking for a dynamic pastor that we can follow as he plants a church over the course of the year. Some of the costs for the first year will be covered by our production company. If this is something of interest to you or if you can recommend someone else with whom I could speak, please feel free to email or call so that we can discuss this further. Thanks for your time. Best, Jaye Pace Casting Director Bunim-Murray Productions [EDIT : I omitted the Contact Information.]

Bruce Chant tackles one of my favorite concepts, the long tail (For work we're devloping on a long-tail content management system. Not Ekklesia our church content management system.) and discusses it's implications for church planting:

Within my own city, you see “niche’s” of people everywhere, not just geographically, but in terms of demographics, lifestyles and values. And where these niches exist so to does opportunities for new churches to be planted in order to take the good news to these people in indigenous forms. The more new churches and the greater the sum of these churches the greater the total, overall impact for the Kingdom of God. That is the effect of the Long Tail and the power of church planting.

Full Article at his blog: The Long Tail and Power of Church Planting