We made it through. 11 teaching sessions. Breakout sessions. Q & A. Various discussions with our regional director of church planting. A meeting with the national director. Talking with other planters. Lots of note taking. Endless PowerPoint. Eating. Coffee. And occasionally stepping outside to see the sun.
Tomorrow we can actually sleep in, pack up and get on a plane. And we'll head back to Helena and have dinner with the rest of our core launch team.
Okay, we're all feeling a bit punchy after another drink from the fire hose today. Even the leaders of our training call this a big data dump. It's a lot of information. But it's been good.
Today we spent time focusing on developing those strong roots that will support our church plant. A huge realization for us was that we don't need to be ashamed of taking the time needed to develop a solid team of people to make sure that we launch well. It's very tempting to want to jump right into putting on a worship service. We heard story after story of church planters who took four, five, six months or more to get their core launch group developed and ready to go public.
We looked at the importance of truly understanding our community and its needs. We looked at having people with a variety of spiritual gifts. We looked at the kinds of people attracted to new churches. We looked at problems that can arise early on. We looked at criteria and benchmarks will help us determine when to take next steps. And on and on.
We also took time to get away from the big group and talk and pray together just as our team. This was huge. With so much information, we were starting to feel like we were swimming into deep waters, waters that were threatening to overwhelm us. It was a lot to take in. So it was good to step away, take a breath, pray, and encourage one another.
So now--time to get some rest and hit it again tomorrow.
What happens at church planting training? I'm glad you asked. I'm in Denver with three members of our new church's core group. There are about 15 other groups like ours from other Covenant church plants around the nation.
Our opening session was on the nature of the gospel. An hour-and-a-half on the gospel. Wait a minute? Isn't this a room full of pastors and committed Christians who should know what the gospel is all about?
True. Nevertheless, it was a great session to once again get ourselves focused on what the gospel is all about. The profound message of the saving grace of Jesus can get drowned in the million details of administrating church life. Jesus’ victory over Satan and the powers of darkness can be neglected in our scientific and rationalistic age. His work to change our hearts can be overshadowed by our culture’s proclivity toward self-help and pop-psychology. His call to minister to the oppressed and marginalized can be neglected as merely a social gospel and not really important in the face of eternal issues. And his establishment of his church can be belittled in our individualistic approach to spirituality.
The gospel is about more than just going to heaven when you die. The gospel is the forgiveness of sins. It’s the defeat of powerful spiritual enemies that seek our harm. It’s the change of hearts. It’s bringing blessing to the hurting and wounded, the outcast and oppressed. It’s the creation of new and true community.
So that’s how we got started. Our second session focused on prayer. This, too, was a great reminder, a wake up call. We can do all our research, get organized, and have the best plan, but it means little without prayer. Our team discussed ways we might commit to prayer and fasting as we proceed with our planting efforts. It was great to get motivated to make this a priority.
Session three put us face to face with the state of the church in America. Put bluntly, it’s not a pretty picture. The mainline denominations are hemorrhaging members and churches. Catholic churches are in decline. Evangelical churches are barely hanging on. Meanwhile, population is increasing, so the actual percentage of churches to population is in a kind of free-fall.
This dire picture quickly led to the case for church planting. This was kind of preaching to choir—virtually everyone at this training is either proceeding with or preparing for church planting. Still, it was great for all of the teams to see the case for what we’re doing.
We moved from the big, depressing, national picture to a look at our local contexts. We focused on how to look at where God has put us: what kind of people can we reach? What are the needs in the community? These and dozens of other questions can help us hone in on what our community is like and what kind of church God is calling us to be.
Our fourth and final session of the day was on outreach. If we relearned what the gospel was in the morning, we relearned what evangelism was all about in the afternoon. So often we think of evangelism as persuading someone to make a decision. Like it’s getting a hard drinking, wife-beating, tax-evading, atheist to fall on his knees and pray the sinner’s prayer. We so easily focus on that moment of decision to the exclusion of everything else. In this session we focused on helping people take one step closer to Christ—from wherever they are. Good, challenging stuff.
After these four sessions we met for prayer with other teams from our regions. And then we wrapped up with a big, gnarly Mexican dinner at Casa Bonita, which has to be seen to be believed. Cafeteria style Mexican food, complete with mariachi bands, high divers, and cheesy dramatics. Ole!
I am the church planter for Headwaters Covenant Church in Helena, MT. I'll be posting thoughts and news about our endeavors to forge a new community of people who are following Jesus and living lives of faith and influence in Helena.
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