Had a great meeting this afternoon with Matt Mahaffey, a student Pastor from Indy that wants to plant a church in South Florida. Matt’s a sharp guy with a heart for this area. I’m glad he met with Travis, who’s getting it done in Homestead. Plus, Matt’s coming to the National New Church Conference in April and is going to check out my pre-conference workshop on portable churches. I love talking shop. I love hanging with guys that are taking steps of faith. I feel like I get built up whenever I’m around guys who want to lay it all … Read More

For those of you that are planting churches, Nelson Searcy is hosting a free conference on launching a church from scratch in New York City on January 22-23 2007. You can get more info on Nelson’s website. Nelson’s stuff has helped us tremendously. I’m sure this is going to be well worth the time spent! Nelson is also going to be one of our keynote speakers at our Momentum Conference in March.

Doug over at Desert Father is doing a cool series of posts about Church planting and he asked me and a few other guys a few questions about our story. Mine is the 4th, which means I’m batting clean-up (I need to break out my Manny Ramirez jersey). My interview is here for those interested…

My good friend Bill has a great post about what it means to send out church planters today. I’ve got so much to say on this subject, I’m going to keep my mouth shut for a while before I get myself into trouble!

Well, what was year 3 like for me?  It was a lot the hit show "24".  I got to be "Pastor Jack Bauer" and go 24/7 as well.  Why?  A couple of reasons:  #1 – I didn’t take my own advice of not starting things too soon – So when things didn’t go as hoped, I had to become involved.  Just like Jack, I was running around like a madman trying to solve every problem.  #2 – People were bringing nuclear bombs into the church – OK, that might be stretching it a bit, but they had some pretty explosive … Read More

I’m following the blogs of a few guys who are getting ready to plant churches or have started in the last few months.  So I hope what I’m sharing is somewhat helpful.  Let me tell you how year 2 was for me in the church planting adventure.  If year 2 of Calvary Fellowship was a TV show, it would be "Alias".  Why you ask?  Because there’s a few things we could learn from Sydney Bristow:  #1 – You’re one person playing several roles – I remember answering the phone one day and someone asked for me.  So I said, "I … Read More

I’m glad to be hearing about a lot of guys feeling the call to go and plant churches. So let me give you a quick word of advice in a language all of us understand.  If church planting were a TV show, year 1 would could be classified as ABC’s "Lost".  Why?  Several reasons: #1 – Wherever you go, you’re basically going to crash land – I don’t know why we call it planting.  We should call it crashing!       #2 – You’re trying to figure out how many bodies survived the crash –  You may not know what … Read More

First off: if you’re not reading Mark Batterson’s blog – you’re missing the boat.  This guy is always writing challenging stuff.  Secondly, this post about 10 tips for church planters is great.  I totally needed to read this.  Enjoy…

John over at planterblogs.com (which is a really cool concept by the way) asked me a question about when a church ceases to be a church plant and just becomes a church.  I’ve blogged about this before, but I want to offer a new idea to the mix and see if I’m a heretic or not.  Here’s my latest theory:  Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Greg Laurie, etc… – all of these guys planted their churches that are now 30 years old and I think we can agree that their churches are no longer church plants.  They are established ministries that … Read More

After watching last night’s thrilling game 5 of the NLCS and watching Albert Pujols hit a monster shot that I don’t think has landed yet, I started to think about how Albert is getting most of the attention, but other people helped make him the hero. This is so true when we are leading our churches or ministries. There are other people who “set the table” for the leader to hit the ball out of the park. Not much is being said of David Eckstein’s 2-out base hit or Jim Edmonds walk. But it only becomes a 3-run homer if … Read More