Planting a Church Together
November 28, 2007 4:07 pm BlogsYesterday I heard news that one of my pastor friends who planted a church right around the same time we did finally gave up and ended up sending all the people to another church. After hearing that I couldn’t help but think about us, The Resolved Church, and where we are at and where we are heading as a church plant.
My friend Ed Stetzer who works for the North American Missions board recently put out a report studying 1,000 church plants from the year 2000 to 2005 to try and determine how many church plants survive and why. Statistics can always be tricky, it is commonly said that only 20% of church plants survive. Ed’s findings are interesting, I encourage you to check out the report here.
The four main factors of the report were: 1. Having realistic expectations (Openness and honesty about the plant and having a plan). 2. Church leadership development. 3. Church planter peer group (Being connected to a denomination or network with support for the church planting pastor). 4. Stewardship plan (Church membership committment including financial accountability). I found this report very interesting in light of many of the things we are currently doing and have made plans to do that have mostly grown out of learning the hard way in the last two years of what not to do.
How do we add up? Having realistic expectations has personally been one of the most freeing things for me. I’m not kidding when I tell you that I truly thought we did not need a plan and that because of my superb preaching 
we would be nearly in the thousands within the first year. If you haven’t noticed were not that big. Realizing that putting on a good performance in our service isn’t the heart of our church plant, it is the people. People who are individually growing in Christ, being pastored, using their gifts and partnering together in community.
Leadership within The Resolved Church has radically changed within the last year. In January when my co-planter Justin Bragg left, it really challenged me to rise up and be the leader God called me to be. Since then I have been doing my best to establish myself as the Pastor of The Resolved Church. And by establish I mean show and demonstrate to you all that I will lead you and care for you because a title means nothing if you are not actively showing that. In May I began regularly meeting with those leading in different ways in the church. Last month, Aaron Braun, Michael Trujillo, and John Bale just finished reading and going through the book “Lead Like Jesus” with me. This month we are stepping up our meetings to every other week and are about to tackle a new book. In addition, I have been working with Josh Carstensen over the phone, who lives in Newport Beach and drives down with his wife Meagan every week to oversee our set-up and tear-down and to oversee our Sunday service publically.
As far as a church planter peer group. Not only do I function with four “virtual elders” who I talk to about things on a regular basis, but The Resolved Church is part of the Acts 29 network. Besides bi-yearly conferences, I have a monthly meeting with 6 other Acts 29 pastors for discussion and prayer about our church plant. These support systems are invaluable and I know I could not continue to be your Pastor without them.
Lastly, regarding a stewardship plan. One of the best things we have done in the last year is start membership. Tonight will be the completion of our second round of church membership class, an 8 week course where I teach about the theology and mission of The Resolved Church. The course ends with the signing of a Covenant Membership which includes a promise for regular financial giving.
In additon to these things, it occured to me a couple months ago that there are two main areas within our church that need some more focus to make us strong and able to receive those we reach out to within the city of San Diego and that is developing our community sense of planting together and developing the manhood of the men in the church.
So, on the evening of December 9th at 7pm we will have our first monthly “Church Plant Meeting.” We will meet at our building, sit in a circle, have a few dicussion items about how we are doing as a plant, and pray together for the plant. These meetings will be designed to build our community in our attempt to plant a church together. They will be short (less than an hour) and will be a good chance to get to know people in the church better.
For the men, The Biblical Manhood Group with Pastor Duane will begin December 4th. The group will meet every other Tuesday night at Frank Johnson’s house. There will be three parts, each week a look at one of the Biblical qualifications of manhood, we will discuss our personal lives in being men, and review a chapter from Douglas Wilson’s book “Future Men.”
On another note, a big thanks to everyone for giving Amy and I some time and space during the first two weeks after Adina was born. It was a great time to just focus on our family. But now we’re back from hibernation and you guys are welcome to stop by and meet Adina, just give us a call.
Much love to you all,
Pastor Duane