Return from Hawaii

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 13, 2007 in Church | 0 comments

I know it was quiet this week, other than a pre-scheduled post.  I took the week off and head to Kauai (I uploaded 9 pictures from Hawaii including us zip lining through the jungle).  During the trip I had a chance to read a few books (including Small Is the New Big by Seth Godin & Outgrowing the Ingrown Church by C. John Miller, both excellent books well worth a read).

I'll have some posts from thoughts I wrote down, including re-thinking eldership in light of being under-shepherds of God's people, more on our ministry design and other non-related ideas Some of these may need to wait because I leave again on Wednesday for an elder/deacon retreat for Kaleo. 

Conducting a Church Missional Survey

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 6, 2007 in Church, Ministry Design | 5 comments

For the sake of the gospel advancing, the elders at Kaleo wanted to examine how missional our Sunday services are and the people who attend.  We sent out a request to people in our church to fill out a 20 question survey asking them about the preaching, hospitality, worship and many other elements of our sunday service.  We want to (1) learn what people felt about the missional nature of our church and (2) see what fears and hindrances keep them from inviting others to Sundays.  It is our desire that people would invite non-believers to our church to hear the Word of God preached.  

Some observations (many of these came from comment areas for people to post):

1) Non-Christians, new Christians and those little to no church background loved the service style.  People with the most 'churched' background were the most likely not to like our worship style.  (To hear our style of worship, you can listen to the Bazelel mp3 samples at Semper Reformanda Records.  We have had people steeped in a conservative/traditional background struggle with the worship style.)

2) Contrary to many people's fears, non-Christians understood the messages that were preached.  We are really blessed to have a preacher who is able to preach to both mature Christians and address the non-Christian's objectives to the faith.  This talent both acknowledges to non-Christians that we are aware of the prevailing secular worldviews and the arguments against the faith. (eg. "Now, if you are not a Christian, this claim that Jesus was God seems absurd…"  This is the type of address that non-believers appreciate, we don't need to lie or dumb down our faith that we believe is the only true reality.  But we don't leave it there, we address these objections each week.)  Second, it emboldens Christians who hear an apologetic for the faith and often have these same doubts and questions.  And as these Christians face questions from non-believers, they move from doubt to gospel courage.

3) Sunday service is the event Christians are most comfortable inviting people to.  This is over, socials/bbq's, home groups, mercy ministries, etc.  People remarked that they also knew the guests would hear the gospel each Sunday, so this is where they'd want someone to visit.

4) Desire, lack of time, lack of relationships and fear of rejection are the most common stumbling blocks to people living missionally.

RESULTS: If you'd like to see the rest of the results, I've attached a 23 page summary of our Church Missional Survey.   Again, this does not include the pages of comments we got that were quite helpful.

HOW-TO:  If you'd like to do a similiar survey, we used Wufoo to build our forms .  Here is the online form & questions we used to conduct the Kaleo Mission Survey.

Future: As a church we are going to do additional surveys on connecting, developing & sending aspects of our ministry. 

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 4, 2007 in Church, Church Planting, Leadership, Ministry Design | 3 comments

This seems to be the month of conference announcements as we all plan our new year.  I want to add another one for you to consider:  The 2007 Multi–Site Church Conference (the model is not multi-site through video venue but through pastors preaching at multiple sites).     The conference is hosted by Harbor Presbyterian & The model of church planting comes from by Richard Kaufmann, while Executive Pastor at Redeemer Manhattan, and now is the model they are using at Harbor Presbyterian here in San Diego. Doug Swagerty now serves as Executive Pastor and will be leading the conference.    We at Kaleo Church have embraced the model because it allows us to:

 - Plant churches faster and with lower resources. 

 - Centralized administrative tasks allow church planters to focus on ministry without the details of managing an organization.

Other info on the event from the website:

During the two days, we will be presenting not only the model and strategy that we are using at Harbor, but we also will be highlighting other forms of multi-site ministry that some of you are doing.  In addition, we want to share in more detail why we decided to use this model as a church-planting strategy to reach additional communities in San Diego.  So we are planning to present and address a variety of models for churches at all stages of their development.  Approximately half of the conference will be plenary sessions on such topics as “Why Multi-Site Ministry,” “Models of Multi-Site Ministry,” “Pillars of Multi-Site Ministry,” and “The Importance of Team Ministry.”  Then we will also have a number of breakout sessions on such topics as leadership structure, leadership development, central services, financing and budgeting for multi-site ministry, centralized ministries, and the nuts and bolts of getting started on a second site. 

You can register for the conference online by going to http://www.pca-mna.org/multi_site/2007MNAMultiSiteChurchConference.htm.  The dates will be March 13-14.

2007 Church Planting Bootcamp

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 3, 2007 in Church, Church Planting, Leadership, Ministry Design | 11 comments

Here is the announcement that the 2007 San Diego Church Planting Bootcamp has been scheduled.  This conference is hosted by Kaleo Church and several other Acts 29 churches.  We are fortunate to have the Harbor Presbyterian churches with us and many of the other local denominations.  The conference is scheduled for  March 30th & 31st 2007.

Sessions Scheduled: (These are working titles, actual titles wil change.  Additional sessions to be scheduled.)

The 12 Musts of a Missional Church by Michael W. Goheen

The Gospel Story & Worldview by Michael W. Goheen 

Missional Ecclesiology (Newbigin's Missional Logic) by Michael W. Goheen

Preparing & Preaching a Gospel Centered Message by Richard Kaufmann  

Main Speakers:

Michael W. Goheen, Geneva Professor of Worldview and Religious Studies at Trinity Western University , co-author of The Drama Of Scripture: Finding Our Place In The Biblical Story and author of “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J.E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology.  (For more, open Michael W. Goheen 's 26 page PDF Cirriculum Vitae.) 

Richard Kaufmann, the Movement Leader for Harbor Presbyterian Church in San Diego, where he also pastors the Downtown and Uptown sites.  Prior to moving to San Diego in 1999, Dick was the Executive Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan for five years.

NOTE: You can view & download all the sessions from the 2006 Church Planting Bootcamp. (Except my session is located here Church Technology & Mission.)

The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story in the 21st Century

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 2, 2007 in Church, Culture | 4 comments

This year, Kaleo Church began a corporate Bible reading plan.  As we embark on this, I was forwarded an excellent article by Michael Goheen, The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story in the 21st Century (PDF). Goheen writes:

Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of master narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: who gets to narrate the world?”  Webber believes the three leading contenders are the Muslim story, the liberal capitalist story, and (somewhat surprisingly) The Marxist story. Over against these three contenders Webber and Kenyon say: “In a world of competing stories, we call Evangelicals to recover the truth of God's word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of Evangelical life.” 

How can the Church confront these stories and make the Biblical story our centerpiece, when as Goheen rightly claims, Christians fragment the Bible into bits, "moral bits, systematic-theological bits,devotional bits, historical-critical bits, narrative bits, and homiletical bits."  It is when we have a fragmented view of the Bible, there is no one grand story that shapes our 'culture' or worldview.  "The Bible bits are accommodated to the more all-embracing cultural story, and it becomes that story—i.e.the humanist story—that shapes our lives," writes Goheen. As Christians, we need to recover the Biblical Drama as one story, that is THE normative story of history.

Again, read this article, great quotes from Eugene Peterson, Lesslie Newbigin, and N. T. Wright (An essential part of our theological and missional task today is to ‘tell this story as clearly as possible, and to allow it to subvert other ways of telling the story of the world . . .’)

UPDATE: Here are two past posts w/ book recommendations that help present this one story: The Drama of Scripture (Goheen, author of the article) and Promise and Deliverance

Looking back on 2006

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Dec 31, 2006 in Church, Church Technology, Culture | 2 comments

The year 2006 has been a full year for our family.   Some of the events that shaped us were:

• Our family grew with the adoption of Roman in January.
• Gideon, our 3 year old spent two months in a full body cast February through March.
• Monk Development doubled in size, including 100's of churches now using Ekklesia 360 Church CMS and the launch of Sermon Cloud, with 1000's of users and sermon downloads.
• Kaleo Church doubled as well.  We launched Kaleo SDSU in the Fall and are preparing to launch a 3rd location in El Cajon beginning in 2007.

We are excited to go into 2007, many of the above events will still impact the new year. I look forward to learning from you the blogging community, sharing more insights and getting feedback and building relationships with many of you in my virtual community.

Have a great New Years and for now, here are a few Goodmanson December photos to wrap up 2006.  (Images include Christmas, Disneyland, my Birthday, friends & family.)