Missional community coaching in the Coal region

In an effort to combine the power of coaching with a missional/incarnational approach to ministry, a fellow pastor and I have volunteered to provide free coaching services for a local non-profit group in our city. We are only in the second week of this pilot program but we are already sensing that this is something God is blessing. I believe this is fairly new ground and am optimistic that it will open doors to bring transformation in our community.

Most of the clients are in transition and dealing with poverty and unemployment issues; the goal is to bring them from dependence to independence in their lives. Some are from a group working to help young people get their GED, others are from a cash assistance program that provides some training, and others are from an employment placement program. The other pastor and I will each be working with four clients each for four months and then gathering a new group.

We developed a flier offering Free Life Coaching to those involved in the program. The response was immediate, with over a dozen candidates filling out the packets to apply for eight slots. Interestingly, several staff members at this organization were interested in the coaching and said they would be willing to pay for it.

The prospect of providing coaching for those in transition is very exciting. Although we have been asked not to “proselytize,” we are permitted to answer questions and spiritual issues are on the table. The opportunities to share Jesus have already been well received and there is every reason to believe that will continue.

great stuff on the 100 barrier anyone?

Leaders,

Does anyone have any truly great stuff on breaking the 100 barrier?

I have a number of leaders in my network who are up against this barrier, and are seeking any and everything I have on it. I am considering a conference on it at some point in the next 6 months, and would like to explore any great stuff you-all have found on it.

Thanks!

Gerry
717-398-9033

Leadership Principle

1. Do for ONE what you can't do for ALL

Often times leaders are reluctant to do anything when they cannot do it for anyone. This is a recipe for mediocrity in your organization and it will ultimately remove the leader from the very things that they need to be close to.

Here's how I apply this principle:
*I went and visited a church member in the hospital this morning even though I can't visit every member. I did for one what I can't do for all.
*I will perform only 5 marriages this year but that's all. I'll do some, but not all.
*I once gave a staff member a car who was in desperate need of transportation. I can't give all my staff vehicles, but I was in position to give one to one of them.

These are just a few examples of how this principle works. Don't let the naysayers and the masses determine what you do. Do for one what you can't do for all.

VFCC URBAN MINISTRY COURSES

Brian Bolt, Brad Leach, and Jeff Leake will be teaching two modular classes his fall. The dates are:
September 17-19 (Pittsburgh)
October 29-31 (Philadelphia)
November 19-21 (Pittsburgh)
December 3-5 (Philadelphia)

Urban Evangelism and Church Planting
Strategies for evangelism and church development are examined and applied through case studies, field trips, contacts with resource persons, and student-led projects. The course will incorporate practical application of evangelism and church planting in the urban context.

The City and Missions
This course is an overview and analysis of the urban
context, with attention given to the biblical theology of mission to the city. Old and New Testament themes are explored.

In these classes you will discover how much God really cares for our cities in a variety of outreaches, care and share God’s Good News one-on-one, introduce Jesus to those living on the streets, pray for the sick, believe God for transformational miracles, serve nourishing food to the hungry, accompany seekers to a brand-new church, capture a glimpse of God at work in the cities, and allow God to instill a new vision for reaching the cities of America through your time with Brian, Brad, and Jeff.

Go to www.vfcc.edu/urbanministry for more information.

ARE YOU WIRED TO PLANT A CHURCH?

If you are interested in knowing if you may be wired to plant a church I encourage you to check out the Church Planter Pre-Assessment Center to help you discern your aptitude and readiness for church planting quickly and easily in an online environment.

Here is the web link: http://churchplanterprofiles.com
The Agency you should select is: Pennsylvania-Delaware Assemblies of God

This FREE Online Initial Screening Assessment will help assess your readiness in the areas of Church Planting Experience, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Ministry Experience and Relational Evangelism.

LifeStone Church Grand Opening

LifeStone Church is celebrating a tremendous Grand Opening this past Sunday. Church Planter Jack Thomas says, "The energy was high, the excitement was off the charts, and the journey has just begun!"

Here are some key statistics that are worth celebrating from today’s service:

* 230 people in attendance
* 44 kids in our KidsLife Ministry
* 10 DECISIONS FOR CHRIST (GO GOD!)
* Many new faces from their community and surrounding communities!
* Many comments from people saying they loved church and are coming back next week!

Way to go Jack!

Click here to check out Jack's Blog.

Ideas so dumb somebody oughta be shot at sunrise

I know fully that we all care about the 83% of our communities that are lost. I believe we all love Jesus, and that there is no way to love Him without caring deeply about the lost.

But maybe we gave up. Maybe we don't believe that we can make a difference anymore. Maybe in our lack of ideas to fix it, we try not to think about it. Maybe we just try to quiet the raging sound of screaming souls slouching into Hell, by telling ourselves that we are doing our best. I know that I have personally struggled with each of these emotions.

But try as I may, I cannot keep myself from trying one more time to get something done about reducing the 83% to something less. I just can't. I hope you who are impatient with me, can forgive me for it.

So recently, I ask several more astute thinkers than me, to sit with me and help me come up with 10 crazy ideas that would create the sea change that would cause us to believe again, and get the job done with more efficiency.

I don't know that any of these ideas are great. But maybe if we start kicking around some reasonably bad ideas, God will have mercy on us and give us one truly great idea that has the potential to get it done. In that spirit, I offer some crazy stuff. You should know that the good ideas on this list, (if there are any) were not mine.

1. All of our churches gave at least 1% of their income to church planting

2. Re-structure our district slightly by creating an executive presbytery whose sole job was church planting and Kingdom growth.

3. Free school church planting school for those who are gifted to plant! Many of our college grads are simply too indebted to take a risk.

4. All Presbyters must have mothered a church in the past 3 years to be a presbyter.

5. New standards for 'sovreign' churches; missions giving, baptizing new converts every year, and supporting church planting. Otherwise they go back to Home Missions status until these things are solved.

6. Create a District Church Planting school to equip great church planters

7. District Superintendent's job is restructured to allow him to be a full-time Pastor. His job would be vision and leadership by example. District staff under him would serve the district at his direction, in the same way that as a worship leader or youth pastor serve the church under the direction of their Senior Pastor.

8. Only tithes of Senior Pastor would go to the District- all staff Pastor tithes would go to church planting.

9. All churches would be required to financially support a specific church plant. No exceptions.

10. No credential holders could renew credentials if they had not personally brought in and baptized a new believer themselves (apart from their leadership role) int he past year.

Do you think any of these might help us get going toward reaching the lost 83% of our communities? Which ones should be discussed further? Are any of them so bad that the person who thought them up should be shot at sunrise? What could you offer as an idea to help?

Tulsa World published about our church plant (site) there

An article in The Tulsa World newspaper today...


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Freedom Valley hopes to attract church dropouts

By BILL SHERMAN World Religion Writer Published: 5/29/2010 2:20 AM

Nine households in Gettysburg, Penn., 33 people in all, left their homes and jobs several months ago and moved to Tulsa to start a church.

They are the second group of people who have moved to Tulsa in recent months to start an Assemblies of God church, part of a national emphasis on church planting in that denomination.

"My philosophy is, if you're going to live for God, it's going to be an adventure," said the Rev. Jason Fitch, founding pastor of the Freedom Valley Church in Tulsa, a church plant of the Freedom Valley Church in Gettysburg.

"It's scary, but it's fun," he said.

The church meets at 10 a.m. on the first Sunday of the month at the Tulsa Cinemark Theater, 10802 E. 71st St., where they rent three theaters, one for an adult service and two for children's services.

(In July, they will meet on the 11th to avoid the July Fourth holiday.)

Fitch said he fell in love with Tulsa in the 1980s when he lived here from ages 6 to 16 and always felt drawn to move back.

He graduated from Valley Forge (Penn.) Christian College in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in Bible and went to work immediately at his own church, Freedom Valley, first as a youth pastor and then as executive pastor.

Freedom Valley's primary focus is starting other churches, he said, with about 30 church plants in that area. In March 2009, he said, he felt God told him it was time to start a church in Tulsa. As he told his plans to people in his home church, several families decided to come with him as part of a start-up team.

Team members are committed to helping launch the church, he said. When weekly services begin Sept. 12, the members will be free to leave. However, he expects many to remain, especially those who moved here with children.

The Gettysburg church provides financial help to the Tulsa church, their most-distant church plant.

Why start a church in Tulsa, which already seems to have a church on every corner?

"Tulsa has some of the best churches in the country," Fitch said. "I'm blessed and honored to be here.

"But we want to reach people who have given up on church, who have had bad experiences with church."

The Rev. Frank Cargill, superintendent of the Oklahoma district of the Assemblies of God, said the denomination has a renewed emphasis on church planting, a challenge that came down from the national office.

"It's our feeling that, in order to reach this generation, we must be renewed in our focus for evangelism and outreach," he said.

"We do our best to connect with the societal needs of the community so that we become, hopefully, the church that Jesus built, which was more concerned about people than about buildings," he said.

Cargill said both Freedom Valley Church and the new City Church, meeting at the Tulsa Ballet building in Brookside, were in communication with his office as they developed their plans to move to Tulsa.

Steve Pike is coordinator of the Assemblies of God's Church Multiplication Network, a new organization charged with equipping, funding and networking church planters and those who help them.

"Church planting has always been a part of our culture as a movement," he said, "but now it's more intentional."

"We've seen an uptick in plants" since the initiative started, he said.

For decades, the denomination has started about 270 churches in the U.S. each year. The goal is 500.

"We're not there yet, but we're starting to see acceleration," he said.

And new churches partnering with the network tend to be stronger in attendance, giving and numbers of baptisms, he said.

Pike said at least 70 percent of Americans are not involved in a worshipping community, and every study shows that the best way to reach those people is to start churches.

There are exceptions, he said, but generally in older, established churches, relationships are more developed, people know and love each other and reaching new people becomes more difficult, he said.

Deeper, Deeper

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Okay, so I'm challenged that our worship services go a bit deeper than this parody. What do you all think?

Could every generation's liturgical norms be parodied as pointedly?

Resolution number 3

As I recall, there were about 2 resolutions at District Council this year.

On one hand, it is very nice to have so much peace and agreement in our District. Unity and agreement is a very pleasant thing indeed, and something that is blessed of the Lord.

But in the past year, I again read the book (actually listened to it this time) 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.

If I applied some of those principles, I gotta ask; do we have enough spirited discussion and challenging debate over the things that really matter? One of the dysfunctions is not being able to argue passionately over the stuff that really makes a difference.

Years ago, we added a requirement to our system where resolutions must be submitted months in advance and reviewed carefully by a team of parliamentarians, and whatever other processes. This seemed good at the time (as I recall) because hotheaded and spontaneous- perhaps poorly thought through- ideas could not be brought to the floor at all.

The thing worked, and we now have relatively peaceful meetings. Yes, we do disagree and passionately discuss certain details about the resolutions presented, and that seems fine I guess. But is there room for a resolution to be brought up spontaneously "for the good of the order", just because the Spirit is moving and someone thought up something good right there on the spot?

We get together and pray for God's leading, but how can He move? And how can we be a healthy team when there is no room for any resolution that was not thought up 800 years before (exaggeration intended for humor of course)?

Maybe this is just for me, because I am not the world's best planner. But after I read Tom Rees's report on the 83% of my friends and neighbors who will end up in Hell, and David Crosby's report that we have about the same amount of churches (and that we had when I started ministry in '83), I wanted to repent of lots of things, including but not limited to our issue with autonomy of the local church.

For example, I wanted to weep about the fact that I cannot think of a resolution to bring to next year's Council that really addresses the 83%. How would we, what would we, who would we, and where would we start? I have no serious ideas. The 83% should not expect anything good from me as it pertains to the rescue of their souls. They should get ready for a hot eternity, because I am bankrupt.

I was thrilled with the Decade of Harvest in the 90's. I was thrilled with Pastor Steve's idea to bless and give room for Catalyst leaders to work in the C3 plan. And I was thrilled with a lot of other ideas that better minds than mine have come up with over the years.

Yet, we are still about 360 churches, and close to the same amount of adherents here in PennDel. In my ministry lifetime, we have zoomed downward from at least 45% church attendance in America, to less than 20%! Yes, I think we should repent!

Minister friends, we have failed. We have failed our culture, and failed the Kingdom of God. We are losing the battle and from Penndel northward (the North East), we have failed the most of all! I do not wish to point to anyone else- I have not made a discernible difference myself.

In Romans, the Apostle Paul indicates that repentance is a gift that God gives. As I understand repentance, it is not a gift He has given me yet, (or us), yet in Penndel, as measured by our ability to reverse this horrible decline in percentage of people who will spend eternity in Heaven because they know Jesus. Oh God, have mercy on us an give us this treasure! We may not deserve it, but surely you love this 83% too much! If we in the PennDel District of the Assemblies of God are too hard hearted to receive it, please give it to some other group before more of our friends are lost forever!

I am not kidding around here, and not being light hearted. Seriously, does anybody have a reasonable idea to make the 83%, 82%? or 70%? Anybody? Anything? Yes, I know we are planting churches, and if we all live to be a hundred and fifty, MAYBE we will gain a little on it. (not that past performance would indicate that any of our plans will do anything, because since 1983, I and my fellow colleagues have NOT GAINED ONE CHURCH!)

Could there have been a resolution 3 this year that would have addressed the 83%? Does anybody even care? Or shall we come back next year and argue for three more hours about whether the word repentance is too strong for our national leaders to stomach? (sorry, my flimsy take on the little bit of this that I got to be part of)

My sons want me to teach them everything I know about ministry, they tell me. "Gotta be honest", I told them last night, "based on my performance since I got into ministry in '83, I got nothing for you. And don't read anything from anyone my age", I told them. "We are not prevailing. I pray that your generation will, but if you do, it will not be from what you have seen us do, for we have lost half of what we have been given!"

Excuses to make in front of Jesus

In our Creating Outreach and Evangelism class this morning, Tom Rees opened by directing us to the Southern Baptists' report on the Great Commission. (here) It is sobering and challenging stuff.

Here are some findings: 83% of people in Northeast are lost. The population of these states (basically Pennsylvania and north) is 55 million. 83% of this population will be in Hell unless we do something. Currently, there is no growth in numbers of people in this area attending church, so it seems unlikely that we will reach them in my lifetime. They are likely to remain lost.

What will I say when I stand before Jesus, and we talk about the sad fact that in my lifetime, church attendance has slidden to far less than half the numbers that there were when I started ministry?

What will Pastor's say when they stand in front of the One who gave everything to get them to eternal life? What might be the top ten list of excuses that we mumble out to "Him with whom we have to do"?

1. It was too hard.
2. I didn't know what to do
3. I was busy doing church stuff
4. My church wasn't yet large enough to plant another one
5. Really, there are lost people in America?
6. I didn't have the money
7. My church needed me!
8. I tried to reach some, but I'm not very good at it.
9. That other church tried some stuff, but it was a joke.
10. My fellowship didn't tell me what to do!

I am sick to death of my own stupid excuses. Jesus gave it all, so the least I can do is give more, work harder, stop doing stupid religious stuff, and resolve to flounder my way toward some kind of progress.

Any body with me?

Only well-planned, healthy babies wanted..?

It's a beautiful thing when a healthy young couple plans carefully, saves money, and prepares well for a wonderful new child. Baby things are gathered, the financial cost is counted and prepared for, and the extended family is carefully informed.

But for whatever reason(s), babies don't often come that way. Some come unplanned, even to the c couple who plans carefully. Some come when many things are not right and maybe even the parents did not prepare even a healthy parental relationship (marriage) for the new child to be born into.

But however they come, all children are a heritage of the Lord, and a blessing. As believers we celebrate the little life and rejoice that God sent them into the world to care for it and make it better, as Genesis tells us we were created to do. As we know from simple life experience that many who were "unplanned" by the parents, are nevertheless huge blessing to their world!

Maybe churches are like that too. Some are well-planned, beautifully orchestrated, and well put together. Baby things are gathered, and finances are well prepared. The extended family is carefully informed and everyone is happy about the birth. Right?

But then there are those churches that came about the wrong way. Not so well planned, without enough finances and a shock to many people around them.

Yet God uses them.

Acts has all kinds of examples. The Bereans studied, the Jerusalem church exploded, and so many others seemed so well done. Then along comes Ephesus, born out of a riot, lies about the founding Pastor, and all kinds of ugliness.

But each one, however they come, have potential to become a house of great repute, and a recycling station for hurting lives. They are God's idea to rock the world, and create new disciples.

Outreach magazine last month quoted Ed Stetzer: The American Church is on birth control". It is unnatural and wrong, Stetzer went on say, that most church do not procreate. He said they seem to worry too much about doing it right and making every effort a success.

I like his way of thinking. Maybe we should be more desperate about being barren, than we are about doing everything perfect.

Discipleship Dare

Fellow A/G pastor (Potomac District) and VFCC grad Jess Bousa has written "The Discipleship Dare" - a great way to activate yourself and your people in following Jesus. It is unusual in that it actually works, and can be used for new believers as well as more mature believers.

Jess provides video intros, and sermon outlines for your church as well as the ability to read the book online for free. www.thediscipleshipdare.com

There are currently some bloggers posting everyday for 40 days as they go through the Dare. Follow Jess on Facebook or visit the website to find out more.

I began posting on this today. www.goodground.blogspot.com

Have a great new year of ministry!