Tony Wheeler dot Net

As a student of Church Planting over the past decade or more, I’ve seen a lot of fads come and go.  Systems that work well for one church in one location but fail miserably in another.  I’ve seen God’s hand divinely placed on some churches while others struggle and eventually close.  One thing that I can say with certainty is that there is no one right way to plant a church.  What works for one may not work for another.  What one pastor can pull off, another will fall flat on his face with.  In the following, I’m NOT bashing anyone, just sharing where my heart is at.

A couple of observations:

• Many times church planters read a book or attend a boot camp and return to their hometown or the place that they have lived for a number of years.  I think that this sometimes causes a loss of the missional focus of the gospel unless there is a strong DNA already there.
• The picture of what it looks like to plant a church in 2008 in the United States is not easily reproduced by everyone with a calling to plant a church.  Elaborate sound systems, projectors, state of the art facilities…they all cost money.  Not everybody has access to a ton of cash.  Not everybody should plant this kind of church, anyway.
• The core of the the Great Commission is not planting new churches, but making disciples.  We have gotten caught up in a wave of planting churches because it is the cool thing to do and not really gotten good at making disciples.  We have the idea that if we have a great sermon on Sunday and having small groups throughout the week automatically makes disciples.  I’ve read the Bible (okay, I’ll admit that I did skim over some of it…I’m sure that it is important who begot whom, but it is DRY!) and I haven’t found this formula anywhere.  Jesus wasn’t interested in teaching the multitudes for a long time, he was interested in forming a band of 12 and then about 70 into dangerous Kingdom agents. Why is this not our strategy?

Being different for the sake of being different is dumb.  Being different for the sake of the Gospel is not.  I’ve been greatly influenced by a number of different speakers and authors, but in the past couple months I’ve been devouring everything that I can get may hands on regarding Simple Church or Organic Church.  I’ve been greatly blessed by Neil Cole, who wrote Organic Church and a host of other stuff that most people haven’t even heard of.  I heard Neil at the Exponential Conference back in April.  He explained a bit about how discipleship is a lost art and that we are on a search and rescue mission.  He explained about how Awakening Chapels, the organic church planting movement that he founded, does discipleship.  Life Transformation Groups (known by many other names) are one of the primary vehicles that they have used in disciple making.

LTGs are groups of 2-3 people of the same sex who meet for one hour each week for Bible reading, accountability and prayer.  The Bible reading is 30 chapters a week.  Seems like a lot, but Neil explained that the goal isn’t simply to finish the reading, rather the goal is to not finish the reading.  If the reading isn’t finished by one person, then the next week the same 30 chapters are to be read.  This continues until everyone finishes the reading. There are a series of accountability questions that are asked and each person should answer truthfully.  Finally, each person selects a couple of people in their lives to pray for.  When God moves into the lives of those people that we have been praying for, new LTG groups are formed.  The possibility for exponential growth is literally limitless.

Simple enough?  You bet.  Can anyone do it? Indeed.  Can it be transferred to other cultures, time periods in history and survive trends in church planting?  I think so.

So, LTGs are the simplest form of church that I have been able to find.  The Bible promises us that where two or more are gathered in the name of Jesus, that he is there also.

Is that it?  Is that where we want to stop? NOT A CHANCE!

Stay tuned for Part III — The Simple Way Church.

I’ve been intentionally quiet on the Church Planting/Spiritual Community building that we have been called to here in the great nation of Florida.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading, praying, listening and conversing.  Our journey to Florida is one that God has had in the works for years and it has been amazing to watch His hand at work in this whole thing.  From the night in 1998 when I went running (yes, I used to run once in awhile!) down on 192 when I was in Orlando for vacation with my entire family and I felt some strange urging that I needed to live here, to the amazing time in 2001 when I spent 6 months on an internship with Disney and met some lifelong friends and some not-so-lifelong friends, to 2003 when I had an unshakable urge to move to Orlando again (little did I know that God had some serious plans for that season as well including preparing my wife and I for each other) and then about 2 years ago God started stirring in us that we were going to be church planters one day in a land far far away.  That land turned out to be Orlando.  Hindsight is a beautiful thing…The movements in our lives over the past few years have been outstanding.  I’m thankful for where we have been and the people along the way and I’m even more thankful for where we are at right now.

I’m gearing up to say:  I’m going to do a series (okay, well it might be one) of posts talking about some of the things that I have learned and heard over the past few months.  It is all rather exciting, to us at least, and it is a huge God movement in us and around us.

Stay tuned!

Having just spent the better part of last week around 2800 people who aim to return to their home turf and plant churches, I have a lot of stuff swimming around in my head that I’m dealing with.  Prior to last week, I’ve kind of been quiet.  I’d not listened to too many podcasts, read too many Christian type books, surfed many blogs or really thought about what God sent us here to do.  I think that was good for my soul.

Having met and spent some time with some people who are really kicking some serious tail, I’ve got a fire in my belly.  I’m not ready to lay it all out here just yet, but hold on to your britches.  I’m really not a hyped up kind of guy.  There are really few things that make me get really excited — the kind of excited where you jump up and down and get all silly.  God’s been planting seeds in me for a couple of years…those seeds are about to sprout and that makes me excited.
So, all that said, I was doing a little blog reading today and my blogging friend, Ben Arment, had a great post about the difference between a church planter’s first and second church plant.  Now I know that I have never been a lead guy in a church plant, but I’ve done various things at various levels in several plants over the years, so I can feel where Ben is coming from.  The huge thing that Ben talked about was a shift in priorities.  I especially think that in the coming years, the shift from any one ‘church’ or denomination or network to the Church of Jesus Christ will be HUGE.  With declining numbers of people in pews, the economy tightening people’s budgets, and disinterest in organized religion, we are going to have to band together.  Things will have to change.  I’m not saying that God won’t still build his kingdom — that really is ultimately his job, he just invites us along for the ride– but we are commanded to go into all the earth and make disciples, so we should probably be doing that. You should head on over to Ben’s blog and check out what he has to say.  He is a great blogger, marketer and Starbucks fanatic.  I think he and Scott Hodge have kept Starbucks afloat while Howard was away.

(You know, it is funny, now that I have to drive at least 10 miles to get to a Starbucks, I want it daily.  I could drink an Venti-sugar-free-hazlenut-skinny-iced-latte pretty much any time of the day.  I’d much rather have something from a local joint, but alas House Blend is like 25 miles away.  Love you guys, but can’t make that trek for a latte! Wow, I’ll end the parenthetical sidebar now.)

I had a great opportunity to sit in on a couple of sessions lead by Neil Cole. Neil is the founding pastor of  Awakening Chapels that started in So. Cal.  and have since reproduced all over.  He is also one of the founders of Church Multiplication Associates, an organic church planting equipping ministry.  He is also an author of several books, the latest of which I am reading right now and will be talking some about here.  Just a genuine guy with a love for people.  The following notes are from the second session that I attended that were lead by Neil.

Church Multiplication is not:

• Church planting WITHOUT multi-generational reproduction
• Gathering and assimilating Christians from other churches and/or denominations
• Big revival meetings and evangelistic crusades.
• A centralized leadership development institution that sends off many church planters. (That is seminary, church planting organizations, etc.)

In order for there to be a church multiplication movement there must be the two following elements:

• The churches must be self supporting, no life support from the organization.
• The churches must also be self propagating.  Multi generational!

The DNA of the church

• Divine Truth
• Nurturing Relationships (The One Anothers of the Gospels)
• Apostolic Mission — Apostles means sent ones.  Implies GOING

Order in the midst of chaos

• We have confused order with control.
• We long for movements of the Holy Spirit but our “control issues” hinder the very movements we long for.
• Can we have unlimited potential for expansion?

In order for there to be a Church Multiplication movement, we must have Reproducible Systems

• Can it be received personally?
• Can it be repeated easily?
• Can it be reproduced strategically?  Transfers easily to other cultures and languages.

Gravity of Social Groupings — There is a natural span of relational care

• Groups of 2-3 These are friends, accountability partners.  This can also be viewed as the “Mentor”
• Groups of 12-15  This is the range for a simple from of church, or house church. This can also be viewed as the “Discipler”
• Groups of 70-75  This is a regional leadership network. This can also be viewed as the “Facilitator” (Neil is coming from the perspective of an Organic Church guy, where these 75 people would be leaders of their own house/simple churches)
• Groups of 120-150 This is the network of churches.  This can also be viewed as the “Shepherd”
• Groups beyond this size Neil referred to as the ‘multitude’.  At this level the ‘pastor’ is also known as the visionary teacher.

Leadership is not a position or title, leadership is influence.

Albert Einstein quote, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

The key to profound leadership is transformation

• Leadership recruitment is the wrong place to start.  Making disciples is the place to begin.
• Recruitment can never reproduce exponential results.
• Stop consuming and start farming.
• Day of ordained is over, welcome to the day of the ordinary.

Distributed authority empowers each person to have = access to God and His Church.

Some of this seems a bit mumbo jumboish to even me.  I took the notes, I was there.  But my head was swimming in a sea of ideas that day.  Nearly everything that Neil talked about resonated deeply inside of me.  I’m enjoying reading the book that I got of his, I’m going to be reading some more.  I’m also going to be implementing a discipleship process in my ministry that he is using.  I’ll explain that in another post.
Thanks, Neil, for reminding us that making disciples is our primary task.  Seeking and saving the lost. Search and Rescue.

Rick Warren was the final speaker at the Exponential Conference.  I’ve always liked the guy, but I developed a deep respect for him a couple years ago when I was listening to an interview he did with the Catalyst Podcast.  The guy is all heart, a heart to see the Kingdom of God advance and impact the world.  He did mention that he is no longer being billed as the anti-Christ, he is now simply a false prophet.  Oprah is evidently the new anti-Christ.  The dude is just a church planter is mega church pastor’s clothes.  He probably doesn’t even think of himself as a mega church pastor, especially when he is backstage playing ‘tubby tubby’ with his grandkids.  The guy is just a wealth of wisdom.  I’ve read his books, I even have a copy of his first book, “Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods.”  As you might imagine, this book is pretty simple, so that ANYONE can learn to study the Bible. Following you’ll get a recap of some of the things that Rick had to say.  Rick, just want to thank you for investing in other pastors and loving God more than yourself.

• Saddleback history. Crazy idea of moving from TX to CA. “I believe in God and I believe in you, so lets go.” If Kay would have said no, there would be a lot of stuff not done. God uses wives to make us holy, not happy. Many times she is the Holy Spirit speaking to you.  (These words made me cry.  I have heard Rick talk about this before, but it is God’s honest truth in my life.  We would not be where we are right now without my wife.  She trusts and loves God more than I ever will and God is definitely using her to make me holy.)

• Comparing ourselves to others will severely limit what God wants to do with us and through us. God will not ask us how come we aren’t more like so and so. He will, however ask us why we weren’t more like ourselves.

Reproducing Churches

1.Never stop growing personally. Growing churches require growing pastors. You can never take a church where you’ve never been yourself. You cannot ask other people to have YOUR faith in God. The size of your vision must exponentially grow along with your personal growth. Viewing God’s plan as a scroll…each piece is unrolled a bit at a time. Ignore the critics and the compliments…chew on them but don’t swallow.

2.Focus on making disciples. Focus on maturity and development. Focus on building leaders. Anyone can be great for a short time…make disciples! It take time if it is going to be an oak and not a mushroom. Turning members into missionaries.

3.Have to pay attention to your family. Don’t leave your own vineyard unattended while tending other’s vineyards. Build your family first!

4.Are you totally surrendered to the word and will of God in your life?

5.Develop Kingdom mindset. God’s agenda for the world is much larger than your church, your network, your denomination. We are on the same team. Competition is not other churches, it is the world, the flesh and the devil.

What is God’s agenda? Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done….

Kingdom is inevitable. Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached to all the nations, then the Kingdom will come.

Whose church is it? If it is Jesus’ church, then HE will build it. Focus on building people. Purposes of God must be done in order to accomplish this. A great commitment to the great commandment and great commission will grow a great church/community/company.

Had a great day today.  Heard from Alan Hirsch…he said that many Christians need a kick in the ass.  Don’t shoot the me, I’m only the messenger.  He is right.  I pretty much had some things rocked in my world today.  I’ve got notes, but they aren’t with me and my head is swimming in a sea of ideas and emotion.  I was moved many times today by stories that many of the guys told.  Vince Antonucci, a dude who at 20 years old didn’t know Jesus from Adam, is a church planter in Virginia Beach.  The guy loves people that are far from God.  I picked up a copy of his book, “I Became a Christian and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt”…good read so far.  David Putman told some stories about losing his religion and recapturing the way of Jesus.  Solid guy, for sure.

I’m going to be doing some serious processing about what is going on in my heart and life.  I’m thinking a lot about what it is that we are here for.  I know for certain that we are here for a reason…just not sure what that means in terms of church planting/starting/birthing etc.  Some of you may think that this should have been done already, but let me ask you if you have ever cast a vision for a people group that you live across the country from?  Or better yet, how many people go into foreign missions with everything all set up already?  God is going to do some amazing things in us and through us…That I’m certain of.

Good start to the conference. For those that don’t know, Exponential is a church planting conference that has gone on for a few years now. It has grown from about 200 attendees to nearly 3000 this year. It is definitely a gathering for church geeks. Ran into people from all over the country that I know and know of. Heard from Andy Stanley today and also sat in on a workshop given by the Revealnow folks. Pretty interesting stuff. Bummed that I missed the Blogging breakout with Scott Hodge, Todd Rhodes and Chris Elrod. I think those guys had more fun backstage with Ed Stetzer’s Blackberry than anything else. Talk about a blogging buzz….