"But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me." Ps13:5-6 6 hours ago
This past Saturday, I did a breakout session at a local ministry training event called the Equip Conference on the topic of “Community-Driven Ministry”. Below I shared the brief steps from my session to becoming Community-Driven:
(A few of the thoughts below are from a great training tool called ‘Compassion by Design‘)
1. Identify Needs
Step out of the church walls and get into your community:
Pay attention to what you hear people saying – take time to listen.
The most important thing this does is not to just identify needs, but helps you build relationships.
This takes time. Don’t rush this. Identifying needs and building relationships will not happen in one evening of walking the streets of your community.
Most often, your distant assessment of a community’s needs, even if you’ve lived there a long time, will be very different then an unchurched resident’s assessment.
It’s difficult to see the needs in the marketplace when you’re sitting in the comfort of the church.
Engaging the community benefits you more than just identifying needs, but meeting the people you are trying to reach.
Before you can be community-driven, you have to know what you’re driving towards.
What are the pressing needs in your community?
How is this done?
Through informal community surveys.
Through conversations with community officials.
Through interactions and involvement in community projects.
2. Involve Your Church
This should not be done by just one leader or pastor. For Community-Driven ministry to take hold in your church, it must be a value held by the whole church.
It takes time for those in your church to come to value this – but the more they are out in the community, the more they will value ministry to the community.
We can run this risk of mentally ‘dehumanizing’ the “lost”. Your goal is to help your people personalize the need of the community. Put faces to it…it’s not just ‘their problem’ – it’s our problem.
Benefits for the church:
Helps build relationships in the community
Gives understanding to the potential need of adjusting ministry models
It drives home the vision of reaching a community to your people
3. Impact Your Community
Once you’ve identified the needs in your community and built relationships. You need to pray and decide where your organizations’ “sweet spot” is:
MOST SIGNIFICANT NEEDS:
Where are the most critical needs in the community?
What need groups are already present the congregation or team as either overcomers (those walking faithfully while they struggle with life-controlling challenges) or potential leaders?
Among which need groups do you sense a readiness for assistance?
RESOURCES & GIFTS:
What resources has God provided?
What resources might be available in the community?
What are the unique gifts, talents and people that God has placed in the church or on your team?
CALLING & PASSIONS:
What needs in the community fuel a God-authored sense of compassion?
What are the unique callings of the church/leadership team?
What is the history of compassionate service in your church?
Welcome! It is a pleasure to have you in our wonderful city!! We as a city do not take the privilege of hosting this Summit lightly. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been praying for these two days of decision. Here are a few items we have been praying for…
We pray…
…your stay is not only profitable, but full of the wisdom and favor of God.
…your agendas will be ones that glorify God and are for the good of His creation, most notably mankind.
…for the protection of all our guests this week, both those here with good motives, and not-so-good.
…that during your stay here, you will see that even in the most difficult times there is hope.
…your return home in a few days will be one of positive reflection and excitement toward the future.
…for you, the protester – that wisdom will rest upon you as your voice is heard in a peaceable manner.
…that the watching world will see more than just a city rising from despair, but a city awakening to a loving God.
…for the nation you have come from – that the leaders and citizens will know the blessings of God.
…for you, the Pittsburgh resident – that your eyes will be opened to the true privilege it is to live in such a great city!
Through all our prayers for you our guest, know that we value you and appreciate the platform we as a city have been given. May your stay be full of joy, achievement and the blessings of God afforded to this great nation!
To finish my series of posts on ‘What to Do Following a Preview Service’, I’ll be addressing the final component of ‘Correction’. In case you missed the last few posts, here’s the four-step list:
Celebrate
Follow-Up
Analyze
Correct
Once your preview service is complete, you’ve celebrated what God has done, you’ve followed-up with all your supporters, you analyzed the various service components, the final step is fixing, or correcting, the problems you’ve encountered. Correcting problems is one of those things that is always easier in theory than reality, but in this case it is crucial. For this to happen most effectively, here are a few tips:
You need someone at the top driving excellence. This is usually the senior pastor or a senior leader. Without this, those on the team will not naturally have the motivation to correct problem areas.
Have a good idea of what the various components should look like and be willing to probe. Statements like “I don’t know what’s wrong, I just don’t like it” don’t fly. Dig deeper and identify why something isn’t working. Temporary fixes are just that, temporary. You want to establish your church on good processes that work.
Don’t get discouraged if after a couple preview services things aren’t perfect. Remember, this is why you have multiple preview services. Also, you’re working with people not robots. Things will never be completely perfect (sorry to break it to you!).
As you walk through the process to fix broken processes or problems with your service, do so in love. Don’t use a cannon to kill a fly! The fact that one of your greeters stood inside the doors instead of outside is not worthy of a 5 minute tirade. Correct and express the need for correction in moderation.
Well, that’s it! As you go through your preview service process and do these four steps each time, by the end of this stage of a church plant, you should be ready to launch big!!
If you’re in the middle of this process now as a church planter, I’d love to hear how it’s going! Also, anything you would add?
Oh, my brothers and sisters in Christ, if sinners will be damned, at least let them
leap to hell over our bodies; and if they will perish, let them perish with our arms
about their knees, imploring them to stay, and not madly to destroy themselves. If
hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one
go there unwarned and unprayed for. (Charles Spurgeon)
Continuing my posts on what to do following a church plant’s preview services, I’d like to address the third step, Analyze. To read the previous two posts on Celebrating & Follow-up, click here or here.
One of the core purposes of preview services is to help a new church establish and refine quality processes for their weekend services. With this being one of the core purposes, the step of analyzing following a preview service is very important. The goal in analyzing is not to take a negative approach to your services, but rather look at key components of your service and identify ways you can improve. To do this effectively, you want to include the key leaders of each of your ministry teams. Each of those teams will correlate with the list below of the areas you’ll want to analyze. Your church plant might have additions or subtractions based on your style and approach:
Service Programming: The structure, flow and execution of the service plan.
Media: Video, sound, graphics, etc.
Worship: The flow of worship, the quality of the overall worship experience, and musical excellence.
Hospitality: Welcoming and connecting guests and creating a relational environment.
Kid’s Ministry: Nursery, Preschool, and elementary.
Set-up/Tear-down: This pertains mostly to portable church settings.
Facility, parking & signage: The flow of the crowd, parking availability, quality signage inside and outside.
In each of the areas listed above, ask yourself these four questions in your analysis process:
What works?
What’s broken?
What’s missing?
What’s confusing?
In my final post, I’ll discuss the final step, correction.
I apologize for the length between this post and my last, but wanted to finish my series on what to do following preview services. In case you missed the first post, you can read it here. Here is a review of the four key things a church planter should do following each of their preview services:
Celebrate
Follow-Up
Analyze
Correct
In this post, I will address the step of “Following-Up”. As is true with most church plant services, at each of your preview services, you will have guests. Throughout your preview services, you will most likely also have supporters attend. Each of these two groups are different, but still very important. In this step, I will address the need to communicate and follow-up with these segments of your preview service attendance.
First, we’ll look at the latter group, the supporters. These are individuals that believe in your church plant invest time, finances, or possibly both but do not necessarily feel led to be part of your church. Those in this category will most likely attend a few of your preview services, your grand opening and then be gone. Regardless of the frequency of their attendance, though, it is still crucial to follow-up with them. I would recommend a nice hand written note and possibly a person phone call thanking them for coming. This is not a means to ‘butter them up’ but rather to show appreciation for their support, both with their finances and their presence.
Second, is the most important group long-term, your guests. These are individuals that are from your community and are ‘checking out your church’. I can’t stress how important your follow-up is for this group. Here are some steps to having effective follow-up for your guests through your preview service phase:
Establish a workable plan for follow-up
Create a process that shows guests you value them, appreciated their attendance, and hope to see them again.
Do not let this process rest completely on the senior pastor. This needs to be delegated out – if it is resting on the senior pastor, the chances of it being done in a timely fashion diminish.
Execute the follow-up plan.
Make sure this process is workable in a short time period. Although preview services are usually once a month, don’t take that whole month to follow-up with them. This should be done within that week.
I will not necessarily say what you’re follow-up plan should be, as that can differ depending on your community, I would strongly echo Nelson Searcy’s advice in Launch by saying include a ‘Comeback Event’. These events are easy-invite events that you can encourage guests to attend and meet others who are part of your new church. Events could include bowling, a cookout, Monday Night Football, etc.
Evaluate your follow-up plan.
This partly ties in with the 3rd item I will be discussing in my next post of ‘Analyze’, but still felt it important to mention here.
After you execute your plan, get your key leaders involved with this process and evaluate if it worked. If something’s broken, fix it. What better time to identify a broken process then in your preview service phase. If you fail to do this, you will launch with ineffective systems in place.
Here’s a few questions to ask in this step:
Are guests returning? Why or why not?
Is our process workable with our situation?
How can we fix what’s broken? How can we improve what’s working?
In my next post, I’ll address the 3rd thing a church planter should do following a preview service, Analyze.
In 2006, Nelson Searcy released his first book entitled “Launch“. It is one of the most practical church planting books on the market today. One of the concepts he fleshes out in the book is the idea of holding ‘Preview Services’ once a month leading up to the grand opening of a church. We have since adopted this process for our MCM church plants. In the book, aside from holding monthly ‘comeback’ events, it does not provide a lot of info regarding the follow-up of a preview service. With that said, I would like to take the next few posts to explain the process I have our planters go through following each of the preview services. Here are the four key things that are done the week or two following a preview service:
Celebrate
Follow-Up
Analyze
Correct
In this initial post, I’ll discuss the ‘Celebrate’ portion of this process. Church planters will often have various people supporting them in different ways: a prayer team, a team of people financially supporting them and possibly a church family that is mothering the church plant. The celebrate step is really about sharing with each of those groups, including the launch team, the wins of the preview service.
This is an opportunity to ’shine the light on the flower not the dirt‘. The services are called ‘Preview Services’ becauase they won’t be perfect. It’s a work in progress, but it’s important for a lead planter to keep in focus the progress and wins that do occur. Tell a story, a stat or an exciting thing God did in the service.
I have this step first, because it can often be the one we push aside the quickest. Celebration can happen in a number of ways: on a blog, through an email, in a video, or maybe at a service for the mothering church. How ever it is done, following each of the preview services, it is key to celebrate the victories with both supporters and the launch team. This will set the church up for greater success as the planter establishes what a win is and the fact that their team is capable of one.
In our MCM Pastor’s Meeting today we discussed such a valuable topic in ministry: how to be healthy and survive in ministry for the long hall. Here are a few thoughts that were shared:
Be careful not to over-analyze criticism. If left on it’s own, this can develop into paranoia.
Don’t be too happy when people come, and don’t be too sad when people leave.
Spend valuable time with God that is completely unrelated to ministry. Just spend time to hear from God for you, not just for your ministry.
Be intentional about managing your time and schedule. Take breaks and realize you’re not a machine.
Last night I popped into the sanctuary at Allison Park Church for the end of the Worship Night that is held there each Wednesday through the summer. I was actually just stopping in to talk to a friend real quick, but decided to hang around and enjoy the presence of God. While I’m in the back, I noticed an older woman sitting along the back wall of the sanctuary with a walker sitting in front of her. She was probably in her mid to late 70’s in age, but her passion for God was remarkably vibrant. As I observed her worship, I was so inspired! She was sitting in her chair with her walker in front of her worshipping God with such passion and zeal that seemingly made the walker a sidenote. I was actually waiting for her to get up and start running around. She would occasionally stand and then sit, but regardless of her position, it was evident that she was not just filling time. She was doing something she had done many times before…spending quality time with her Savior. Her love for God was more real and genuine and most experience with over coffee with a close friend.
As the worship team sang “…and right now, in the good times and bad, You are God alone…” I saw her with hands raised high, oozing the passion and innocence of a child.. What a goal to strive for. Maintain passion for God through the various stages of life. If ever I’ve watched something that depicts what I want to be, that would be it.
Lord, let me age with wisdom. Let me maintain a sense innocence. Let me grow with an ever-increasing passion. Let me live a life that is pleasing to you and inspiring to others.
Last night we celebrated my parent’s 30th Wedding Anniversary by having a vow renewal for them with one of the pastors that helped perform the original ceremony back in 1979. It was an awesome time that just further reminded me what great parents I have! Anyways, below is the video I put together commemorating their last 30 years…enjoy!!
On a side note, here’s a link to one of my favorite moments of the whole night.
