CHURCH PLANTING & “Multiplying Church,” “Reproducing Church” and “Planted Church” defined & compared. #Stetzer #Bird #Bennardo

by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 12/30/19.

Terms describing “church multiplication” are tossed around with such frequency, that leaders are often confused about how to differentiate a planted church, a reproducing church and a multiplying church.

The best definition for a “multiplying church” comes from my friends Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird in their book “Viral Churches.”

A “multiplying church:”

A church multiplication movement is a rapid reproduction rate of 50% through the third generation of churches, with new churches having 50% new converts. To achieve such momentum, churches would need to plant, on average, a new church every two years with each church reaching at least half its attendees from the unchurched community.”

Stetzer and Bird, Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers (San Franscisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), p. 116.

A “reproducing church” would be, by definition and comparison, a congregation that is planting daughter congregations, but not with the frequency of a “multiplying church.”

A “planted church” would, by definition, be a church that has been nurtured by a mother congregation.

A “venue/campus church” shares some commonalities and dissimilarities with a “planted church” and you can read a comparison here: https://churchhealthwiki.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/multiplication-5-reasons-churches-should-balance-their-internal-external-church-planting/

Tom Bennardo in his excellent book, “The Honest Guide to Church Planting (Zondervan, 2019, p. 119) sums up the differences:

Good Planting a Church

Better Planting a Reproducing Church

Best Planting a Multiplying Church

I’ve listed further resources for church planting here: https://churchhealthwiki.wordpress.com/2018/02/07/church-planting-cost-effective-alternatives-to-the-customary-planting-strategies/

And this is how my colleague C. Peter Wagner is often misquoted about church planting (and what he really meant): https://churchhealthwiki.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/church-planting-why-an-emphasis-upon-conversion-is-the-best-way-to-grow-the-church-petewagner/

MULTIPLICATION & “3700 U.S. churches closed in the most recent year studied (2017), and over 4000 were started. More churches started than closed… all the while the culture grew more secular. We live in interesting (and challenging) times”

Ed Stetzer, Twitter, 12/10/19.

3700 U.S. churches closed in the most recent year studied (2017), and over 4000 were started. More churches started than closed… all the while the culture grew more secular. We live in interesting (and challenging) times.

You can follow Ed Stetzer on Twitter: @edstetzer

MULTIPLICATION & The 5 Levels of Churches Explained & the Percentage of Churches in Each Level. #NewResearch #Exponential

by Thom Rainer, LifeWay, 3/6/19.

…In addition to the categorization of churches as

declining/subtracting (Level 1),
plateauing (Level 2), and
growing/adding (Level 3),

the study looked at two other supplemental categories.

A Level 4 (reproducing) church places a high value and priority on starting new churches.
A level 5 (multiplying) church takes church planting to multiple generations of congregations.

… Here are some of the fascinating findings:

70% of churches are
subtracting/declining or plateauing. Only 30% are adding/growing based on Exponential’s categorization of churches which is defined above. This data is largely consistent with other research we have done. The period covered is three years.
There are relatively few reproducing churches. The research categorized only 7% of the churches as reproducing (Level 4). The numbers of churches considered multiplying (Level 5: multiple generations of church plants) was 0% in the sample, indicating a negligible number in the total U. S. church population.
The majority of Protestant churches had less than 10 people commit to Jesus Christ as Savior in the past 12 months. That’s fewer than one person per month. That’s not good. That’s not good at all.
Smaller churches are at severe risk.Among those churches with an average worship attendance under 50, only 20% are growing. That is the lowest of any of the categories of churches and is an indicator that these churches are at the greatest risk of dying.
Larger churches have a much lower risk of dying. Among the churches with an average worship attendance of 250 and more, 42% are growing. That is, by far, the largest number of growing churches in any category.

MULTIPLICATION & Instead of planting an independent new church, what about planting a new venue instead? Pros & cons considered.

by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 2/19/17.

A student once asked, “I am picturing a situation where a large church wants to plant an (independent) daughter church because they have a growing sub-congregation in the church that is mostly Hispanic, or Gen Y. Is that a better way to help them, by launching them as an independent church plant? Or can we help them better by offering to share the church with them as a venue or sub-congregation in the mother church?”

I replied …

What we often do when we launch a typical church “plant” is to create an “external” sub-congregation. And, this is okay. But, I think it is usually not the best way to proceed. Rather, the “internal planting” of a sub-congregation (fostering the growth of a sub-congregation that remains part of the church) is a better strategy.

This is because external plants have the following PLUSES (strengths) and NEGATIVES (weaknesses):

Short/long-term growth?

Pluses: External plants (in my consulting practice) grow quicker than Internal Plants (developing a sub-congregation and a venue), because they are homogeneous (i.e. largely attracting one culture).

Negatives: External plants (in my consulting practice) die quicker. They are smaller and often don’t reach critical mass for long-term sustainability.

Leadership?

Pluses: External plants have experienced leadership, because the leader has been trained in the mother church.

Negatives: External plants often lack good accountability and thus succumb to leadership/ethical weaknesses.

Attraction?

Pluses: External plants attract people who do not have a church home and/or who are dissatisfied with the church they attend.

Negatives: External plants often attract disgruntled people:

Who don’t like the church they attend
And/ or who do not want to rub shoulders with another culture (generational, ethnic, affinity, etc.). Thus, reconciliation does not take place.

More churches?

Pluses: External plants create more churches, though they may be smaller and not healthy for many years.

Negatives: External plants often kill existing churches, when the people who are attracted to the external plant leave the mother church, and other churches, weakening the churches they left. This is the main reason pastors of established churches don’t like external plants, it cannibalizes the people they need to survive.

Diversity?

Pluses: External plants cater to a specific cultural market. This creates a like-minded community that grows because of the things it holds in common.

Negatives: External plants don’t promote inter-cultural understanding. This would be like the second-generation Koreans wanting their own church. The first-generation Koreans would feel abandoned and disconnected. And the externally planted 2nd-gen congregation might develop distain (due to distance) for the 1st-gen culture.

This illustration highlights the differences between first and second generational cultures. But it happens in even a more damaging fashion between ethnic cultures.

The result of a good work, like church planting, can be that the cultures are distance organizationally and physically from one another by the planting of a separate congregation.

But it often makes the mother church feel good, because it can say, “We planted another church.” But in reality they often push them away because of their differences. This creates distance between them and us. In my consulting work, no matter how much churches protest they … “Will stay connected to our daughter church,” they never stay as close as they would if they were sharing the church as fellow sub-congregations.

Thus, if a church is really committed to reconciliation and multi-culturalism (as I am) then Internal Planting is the better choice. Thus, with Internal Planting the church becomes in a community the main avenue for building multi-cultural understanding and tolerance, e.g. unity building and changing biases.

A name for this type of church is The Multicultural Alliance Model.

See all five models here: MULTICULTURAL CHURCHES & 5 Models: A New Paradigm Evaluated and Differentiated #AICR #AcademyForInterculturalChurchResearch

NEED-MEETING & 5 ways to determine community needs

by Michael Fries, LifeWay, 4/16/18.

… We’re partnering with a local church to plant an autonomous congregation in our city, and we’re also planting additional campuses of our own church. In doing so, we’ve had to develop ways to pinpoint where to plant in our city.

1. KNOW THE SOCIAL MAKEUP OF YOUR COMMUNITY.

Learning about your community is simple. While it’s possible to spend a fair amount of money for detailed demographic reports, you can also learn valuable information while spending next to nothing.

Begin with the U.S. Census Bureau website. Use its free tools to identify what is happening in the immediate areas around your church and in the larger area that makes up your community.

2. KNOW THE RELIGIOUS MAKEUP OF YOUR COMMUNITY.

… TheARDA.com is a useful tool that allows you to research the religious affiliation of your area based on city name, zip code and other search parameters.

3. MAP THE MEMBERS OF YOUR CHURCH.

Missiologist Keelan Cook has made mapping a fairly simple process. His mapping tool uses Google Maps to let you quickly identify the geographic makeup of your congregation. You can access his tool at bit.ly/keelancook.

Once you have uploaded your membership database into the tool, it will produce a digital map that will allow you to identify your members’ areas of concentration.

4. MAP THE CHURCHES IN YOUR COMMUNITY.

It may require a bit more time to accomplish this task, as you will need to enter the addresses of every local church into a database. Then you can upload them into the tool mentioned above and produce a digital map pinpointing every church in your community.

Too often churches overlook this step. They simply look to identify pockets of need without carefully considering who else might already be working in those areas.

5. IDENTIFY GROWTH AREAS.

The final step is setting priorities based on growth projections.

Population movement is significant in evaluating the need for a church plant. Expanding areas need more churches, and congregations in those areas have greater potential to grow.

If migration patterns and growth areas are not easy to identify, this information can often be found by contacting your city manager or chamber of commerce.

These steps will help you develop a database of target areas and a methodology of church planting. But the value of studying your community goes beyond knowing where you should plant a church and what kind of church to plant.

MULTIPLICATION & Not 1 homogeneous unit but rather a heterogeneous organization w/ many indigenous cultural channels to communicate the Good News & through which to celebrate it.

“A key to respecting indigenous art forms is to connect the Good News via the most appropriate communication modality for the people we are reaching…

Biblically speaking, it thus seems best to see a worship gathering as a time of indigenous artistic expressions that draw people from an indigenous background into connection with God. This would suggest the more worship services we can offer, the more opportunities we can offer for people to connect with God.

by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 2/8/18.

I found that all church organizations, regardless of size, grow the quickest by multiplying their sub-congregations. So in other words, they see themselves not as one homogeneous unit but rather as a heterogeneous organization with many indigenous cultural channels to communicate the Good News and through which to celebrate it.

For example, a multiple sub-congregational model blooms when even a small church adds a youth program. The youth program has its own leader, it’s own style, its own music and its own outreach. It is a sub-congregation, of a different culture. Then, as the church grows over 100 attendees it can often begin to reach out to a different culture by offering a different service with a slightly modified culturally aesthetic.

Of course working against this is the concept that people want to be united. And when they say that, they usually mean they want to be united in the worship gathering. However the Hebrew word for worship means to come close to God as if to kiss His feet. It doesn’t mean fellowship.

So biblically speaking, it seems best to see a worship gathering as a time of indigenous artistic expressions that draw people from an indigenous background into connection with God. This would suggest the more worship services we can offer, the more opportunities we can offer for people to connect with God.

If we want to call them “fellowship services” instead of worship services, then we could see unity as an objective. But it’s hard to create unity in a sanctuary.

One young lady I interviewed for a book said it was hard to create fellowship in the sanctuary because, “The seats all face the wrong direction.”

So therefore, I see “sub-congregation multiplication” as a key to respecting indigenous art forms and to connecting the Good News via the most appropriate communication modality for the people we are reaching.

I’ve expanded upon some of the research in this area in an interview by LifeWay. Here is the link to that article: https://factsandtrends.net/2016/03/29/when-big-goes-small-how-large-churches-are-learning-from-those-with-less/#.VxDLWcj3aJJ hey sweetie how you doing

MULTIPLICATION & Church has no walls but many doors, accessible to seekers and skeptics

by Leadership & Faith Editorial Board, Duke University, 1/31/18.

…Mraz went to Taco Church, where a small group of men gathered for breakfast, Bible study, jokes and prayer. The group, started by an Episcopal priest and a few guys from his gym, shared vulnerability in a way that Mraz had rarely seen. Sometimes he had to step outside the fast-food restaurant to cry.

The priest, the Rev. Sean Steele, told Mraz that Taco Church was part of the newly launched St. Isidore Episcopal, a “church without walls” focused on small group discipleship and community service. The church didn’t have a building, and it didn’t want one, Steele said. Instead, it had a cellphone app, linking members to the church’s many parts.

As Steele explained, St. Isidore was one church embodied in many different ways. It wasn’t just Taco Church. It would eventually become three house churches, a pub theology group, a free laundry ministry, a food truck and more. It was all quite unorthodox, except the liturgy and theology, which were decidedly Episcopalian.

The Rev. Sean Steele leads Ash Wednesday services for commuters in a Houston suburb.

… This Easter, a little over a year after his first Taco Church, Mraz and his 6-year-old son were baptized in a service he helped organize as a member of the St. Isidore leadership team.

Finding new possibilities

As many mainline Protestant churches shrink and shutter across the United States, St. Isidore is finding new possibilities by marrying a denomination’s traditions with a decentralized structure drawn from the emergent-church playbook. It’s a mission church and “research and development” effort launched by Trinity Episcopal Church, a 1,500-member parish in The Woodlands, a suburb north of Houston.

“I am not trying to do something old in a new way; I am trying to do something brand-new in the old way,” said Steele, the entrepreneurial 38-year-old priest behind the experiment. “Many [church planters] feel they need to jettison the tradition. I actually think we need to be more church, not less.”

Steele holds tightly to Episcopal liturgy even as he brings it into novel settings such as breweries and laundromats. St. Isidore is aimed not just at unorthodox places, he said, but also at unorthodox people, like the formerly Daoist chicken farmer who now runs the pub theology group.

“I’m trying to think about the people who aren’t going to a church on a Sunday morning,” Steele said. “I’m not interested in getting Christians that are already Christian.”

St. Isidore (link is external) is a church with many entry points, many thresholds that even seekers and skeptics can easily cross, Steele said. St. Isidore is the patron saint of the internet (link is external) — part of the glue that holds Steele’s church together — and, as Steele likes to joke, the saint’s name conveys what the church is about: “It … is a door.”

What are the thresholds to your church? How can they be made easier to cross?

The Rev. Gerry Sevick, the rector at Trinity (link is external), hired Steele straight out of seminary in 2012 with the understanding that he would eventually plant a new church or start a missional community.

“There’s a population out there hungry for spirituality and hungry for a community of faith,” Sevick said. “While they’re skeptical about a traditional church, they are willing to explore an alternative way of being church.”

LEAD 558 multiplication

CHURCH PLANTING & Why the “Lean Start-up Movement” changes everything #video

Harvard Business Review, 1/16/18: “Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything”

New ventures are searching for a business model, not executing one. Download a customizable version of this video slide deck here or watch here:

For more, read “Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything.”

MULTIPLICATION & 5 Ways Too Much Money Can Rot Your Church Plant

Commentary by Professor B: As I research/write a new course on “church multiplication and growth,” I am encouraging students to think of creative new ways to fund church planting. Having planted a church myself, as well as having written/coached many church plants, I believe the usual funding model is inadequate and forces church plants to be less contextualized. In the past 25+ years, I have seen that reliance upon external funding and external contexts often rob a church plant of its contextual intelligence.

Here’s an article published by Missio Alliance about this problem. I will be using this article in my new course to encourage students to design innovative ways to address it.

“The Big Problem with Barna’s Study on Church Startups and Money”

by Jared Siebert, Missio Alliance, 5/9/16.

… 5 Ways Too Much Money Can Rot Your Church Plant

Planters and denominational folk, please pay attention.

1) Excessive external funding can kill a church’s feel for context.

… Church plant structures and expectations need to be tied to context. Intimately. The best kind of church planting is committing long term to a specific location among a specific people group. We’re at our best when we tie our fate to people and place. It worked for Jesus and it will work for His church. Your life, your practices, and even your finances all need to be shaped by context. This is fundamental to incarnating the gospel.

Too much external funding interferes with this process. Tuning your communal lives to your context takes feel. It takes tension. To do it right your church will need to live somewhere between what the people want and what the people can afford.

2) Excessive external funding robs us of creativity.

You’ve heard that necessity is the mother of invention? Excessive external funding robs us of necessity. Without the tension created by necessity you won’t be as likely to actively seek out novel contextual solutions. Forcing your church, as much as possible – to be here in this place with these people – creates irreplaceable fuel for your church’s imagination.

This lack of invention doesn’t just affect the local church either. It spreads to the broader church too. One of the great gifts that planting gives the broader church is inventiveness. Less local innovation means less denominational innovation. Calling us to double down on the same old models should be a sure sign that we have a growing imagination deficit. More money won’t fix that.

3) Excessive external funding robs your church of its survival instincts.

The will to survive properly resides within the plant itself. Denominational coffers should never house your church’s survival instincts. Instead, the will to survive should come from a deep collective sense of God’s calling, love for each other, and your deep burden for the needs of your context. Your survival instincts have to be built together piece by piece over time. Too much outside financial support messes with this process. It can also make people outside your church the owners of your church. Not good.

4) Excessive external funding can mess with your sense of calling.

Planters would also do well to check their own motivations for church planting. The kind of planting work we have ahead of us will not be for the faint of heart. Reaching the hard to reach peoples in North American culture is going to take time. The harder to reach the more fruitless years you may have ahead of you. Are you ready to put in 15+ years with next to nothing to show for it? That’s not an uncommon missionary reality. Google it. It may soon be our reality too.

And for even more about this problem (and some solutions with examples), check out the Abingdon Press book, Growth by accident, Death by planning: How not to kill a growing congregation. Three of the above five missteps with external funding mentioned by Siebert are addressed with solutions in my book.

MULTIPLICATION & Before You Even Think About Scaling Your Organization, You Need To Figure Out These 5 Things

by Bill Green, Inc. Magazine, 1/16/18.

Every entrepreneur wants to know how to scale.

The challenge, however, is that scaling requires both an unrelenting ambition to grow, and simultaneously, an extreme amount of patience. Scaling is not as easy as throwing money at a problem, or hiring as many people as possible. If anything, those kinds of decisions end up running you into the ground.

Instead, I like to think of scaling as the result of your foundation. The stronger the foundation, the easier it is to scale…

1. It’s all about the customer.

One of my favorite quotes is by Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club. He said, “There is only one boss, the customer, and he can fire everybody from the chairman on down by simply bringing his business somewhere else.”

That’s the absolute truth.

This is something I talk about extensively in my book for emerging entrepreneurs, All In. If you don’t have your eye on the client experience every minute of every day, you’re completely missing the point of why you are in business.

2. Fix mistakes fast.

If you can’t fix the small errors now, how do you expect to fix the big errors later on?

Repeat after me: it’s never the customer’s fault. When trouble hits, don’t be defensive about it. Don’t run around trying to assign blame. Just fall on your sword and do whatever it takes to fix it fast.

…I don’t count the screw-ups that happen in my companies as much as I keep tabs on how quickly problems are resolved. I always tell my people, “We’re all human, and we’re going to make mistakes. But the customer is going to remember how fast you fix the problem more than they’re going to remember the mistake itself.”

3. Underpromise, overdeliver.

You may demand perfection from yourself, your partners, and your employees, but you can’t let that carry over to how you talk to your customers.

Don’t promise perfection to them. Just don’t. ..

4. Tailor your experience to the customer–don’t expect them to adjust to you.

This is a hugely important lesson in today’s market.

You can’t make customers adjust to you. You have to tailor your experience to them, and make them feel like they’re part of your family…

MULTIPLICATION & Multiple Services Was a Key to St. Patrick’s Success #CharlesHunter

Commentary by Prof. B.: I am sitting next to Asbury Seminary’s Charles Hunter III at the annual meeting of The Great Commission Research Network (Asbury Theological Seminary, Oct. 19, 2017). Dr. Hunter is author of the popular book The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West Again and professor of church growth and multiplication at Asbury. We were discussing how buildings become money-pits for most churches because churches overbuild.

In response Dr. Hunter replied:

People don’t realize that a secret to Saint Patrick’s success evangelizing the Celts was his use of multiple service times in small chapels. They didn’t build big buildings that could hold everyone. This is because timber in Ireland was usually very short in length.

This resulted in small “chapels” which have three strategic advantages:

They had multiple small gatherings, and many of them every Sunday. They met almost all day long on Sunday, so everyone could have a worship experience.
This kept the focus from being on maintaining a large facility.
This also resulted in a lay-lead movement. You needed a lot of laity involved to have so many services.

Commentary by Prof. B.: Small chapels had the unexpected results of creating more lay opportunities to become involved, more times for attendees to fit church into their schedule as well as kept the focus from becoming the maintenance of a large facility.

#GCRN St. Patrick Celtic Celts Ireland

MULTIPLICATION & Want to Grow Very Fast? Get Mentors and Read Lots of Books

by Jordan Kastler, Inc. Magazine, 7/28/17.

…with the number of tools available today, the goal of becoming a profitable entrepreneur is more achievable than it was ten years ago. Today, it’s easier to connect with people, find mentors who have years of experience related to where you want to go, and read books to accelerate your growth.

I recently caught up with Tai Lopez to pick his brain… An investor, partner, and advisor to over 20 multi-million dollar businesses sums up his occupation…

He attributes his success majorly to mentors he’s had and books he’s read. Here are some excerpts from my chat with him:

Kasteler: Could you share your story of starting out as an entrepreneur?

Lopez: I really started at around age 19 when I partnered with my first mentor Joel Salatin. I was working for him on his farm, and a neighbor farm came up available for rent but Joel said he was too busy to do it.

So I said, “What if I take over the farm, you put the money in to start it, and I will split the profits with you?” He said, “Well, as long as you do all the work.”

I worked on that farm every night when I was done at Joel’s farm, I’d drive an hour and work late into the night on that other farm. My profit after one year was $12,000 after I split and paid back Joel. It felt as a lot of money at the time because I’d never seen that much money–it was a great start. One of the things I learned is that when you’re first starting out, it’s great if you can partner up with somebody who is more stable…

What lead you to reading a book a day?

I already started with that concept back when I was 19. Joel Salatin had a mentor named Allan Nation who was visiting from Mississippi and one day he came down to eat breakfast with us and he started talking with all these interesting stories and anecdotes and facts right off the tip of his tongue.

I was like, “How do you know so much about this subject? I do not even remember it.” Allan said, “Oh, I read a book this morning before breakfast.” This was on a farm, so we were eating breakfast at 7:30 in the morning. And I said, “What do you mean, you read a book this morning?”

He said, “Yeah, every morning before I eat, I read a book.” I asked him how long it takes him and he was like, about an hour. He just sat there and would read a book, had developed a great memory, and that was always a set impression on me. I didn’t always read a book a day, but I went in phases–I’d always have that as my goal and landmark of what was possible.

…put a book and a chair in a little room even if you want to read for five minutes a day…

It doesn’t really matter how long you do it. People make the mistake of reading a lot and burn out. They’re like, “I cannot do that, I do not have the time.”

Well, read a little bit and then build up to it…

MULTIPLICATION & 5 Reasons Churches Should Balance Their Internal & External Church Planting

by Bob Whitesel, D.Min., Ph.D., 2/19/17.

I want leaders to consider “external” and “internal” planting a bit more as they strategize the future of their ministry. External planting is a somewhat typical semi-autonomous church plant by a mother church. Internal planting is supporting sub-congregations of different cultural behaviors, ideas and styles within the mother church.

And, we need both. But usually when you hear “church planting’” you think of the former, the autonomous or semi-autonomous church plant: organizationally and locationally removed from the mother church.

But I want leaders to grasp the strategic idea of balancing external plants with internal plants. We should have both and perhaps even balance them: 50% internal plants and 50% external plants. To explain why, let me share some questions a student once asked about this.

The student said, “In the Missional Church course we learned that planting a church was one way to rejuvenate a local church’s lifecycle, and promote growth. Your response makes me think you disagree with that. I see how growing an internal sub-congregation will grow the main church, but isn’t the process of loosing members to the daughter church, and the daughter church having to learn to make its own way, what stimulates innovation, change, and growth in both churches? Perhaps I am just being too optimistic. I do not know the actual statistics for church plant survival, but I’ve read that it is anywhere from 50%-80%. People seem to get more excited about planting a church than adding a new service (even though adding the new service may cause more growth?). It may also be the denomination’s mindset. I get the impression that the number of churches (especially new churches) a denomination has is sometimes trumpeted more than the number of members. Which sounds better, ‘We have 100 churches with average attendance of 100 people at each’ or ‘We have 10 churches with an average attendance of 1000 people each.’ 100 churches could mean more communities being reached, while 10 huge churches could mean more work actually being done. When I read the core values and core scores of my denominational department of evangelism it seems more directed at planting new churches than growing existing ones.”

These are important questions. And here are my responses.

1. Yes, I disagree (as does Eddie Gibbs in I Believe in Church Growth, 1981, pp. 282-284) with solely external planting. As a consultant I see the damage it does on a local level when we create an external plant without regard to fostering an internal plant in a nearby congregation (external plant cannibalizes local churches, while birthing competitive and weak plants). I think you can see that internal planting is much better for the rationale I outlined.

2. Plus, an internal plant can have the same amount of innovation, change, and growth as does an external plan (look at how innovative youth ministries can be). The internal plants also create an “economy of scale” as a church grows into a larger church with multiple sub-congregations (creating multi-cultural acceptance too).

3. And, I think you are right that external planting is more popular from a denominational perspective where the number of churches trumps health. The Church of the Nazarene emphasizes internal planting more than Wesleyans and their churches are on average much larger than ours (creating sustainability and an economy of scale = they can do more).

4. You asked, “Which sounds better. ‘We have 100 churches with average attendance of 100 people at each’ or ‘We have 10 churches with an average attendance of 1000 people each.’ 100 churches could mean more communities being reached, while 10 huge churches could mean more work actually being done.” Because in my consultative experience I’ve found that you need on average 175 attendees for a church to have the range of ministries people have come to expect, those 100 churches of 100 people are likely struggling and not healthy. Thus, they are usually not reaching people anyway.

5. It seems to me that in 50% of these situations it might be better for the larger church to have a sub-congregational “venues” in these neighborhoods. The venue could be a culturally distinct sub-congregation, but would have all of the financial and staff backing of the larger church. The business world understands the importance of an economy of scale, but the church misses it and creates networks of struggling congregations.

A name for this type of church is The Multicultural Alliance Model.

See all five models here: MULTICULTURAL CHURCHES & 5 Models: A New Paradigm Evaluated and Differentiated #AICR #AcademyForInterculturalChurchResearch

MULTIPLICATION & Instead of planting an independent new church, what about planting a new venue instead? Pros & cons considered.

by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 2/19/17.

I replied …

This is because external plants have the following PLUSES (strengths) and NEGATIVES (weaknesses):

Short/long-term growth?

Negatives: External plants (in my consulting practice) die quicker. They are smaller and often don’t reach critical mass for long-term sustainability.

Leadership?

Pluses: External plants have experienced leadership, because the leader has been trained in the mother church.

Negatives: External plants often lack good accountability and thus succumb to leadership/ethical weaknesses.

Attraction?

Pluses: External plants attract people who do not have a church home and/or who are dissatisfied with the church they attend.

Negatives: External plants often attract disgruntled people:

Who don’t like the church they attend
And/ or who do not want to rub shoulders with another culture (generational, ethnic, affinity, etc.). Thus, reconciliation does not take place.

More churches?

Pluses: External plants create more churches, though they may be smaller and not healthy for many years.

Diversity?

Pluses: External plants cater to a specific cultural market. This creates a like-minded community that grows because of the things it holds in common.

This illustration highlights the differences between first and second generational cultures. But it happens in even a more damaging fashion between ethnic cultures.

The result of a good work, like church planting, can be that the cultures are distance organizationally and physically from one another by the planting of a separate congregation.

A name for this type of church is The Multicultural Alliance Model.

See all five models here: MULTICULTURAL CHURCHES & 5 Models: A New Paradigm Evaluated and Differentiated #AICR #AcademyForInterculturalChurchResearch

MULTIPLICATION & The Next Iteration of the Black Church

by Ed Stetzer, The Exchange, 11/22/16.

…In recent interviews with several African-American church planters, three core themes arose that can give us some insight into the characteristics of what successful Black pastoral leadership will look like in our racially awakening America:

The ability to be “culturally bilingual.” Now more than ever Black pastors have to be able to speak both the language of the surrounding (urban) community and the language of their often suburban members. A high cultural IQ is critical. Successful Black pastors must be able to walk and talk in both worlds, often simultaneously.

Unusually thick skin. Because of the deeply stressed state of race relations in America, Black pastors need to be able to bring a sense of calm when necessary and be prepared to field some very, very inappropriate (and even hurtful) questions. People of all races have been wrestling silently with how they feel about race for years—even decades. Many are now experiencing a renewed sense of freedom and courage to ask previously “stuffed” questions. Black pastors need to be a safe place for curious people to ask these questions without being penalized.

A systematic theology of race and justice. In essence, the Black pastor needs to be able to differentiate between social justice (defined by society, ever changing) and biblical justice (defined by God’s word, thus unchanging). America needs pastors that can articulate a clear case for mobilizing their local churches to be God’s change agents in the area of racial justice. Unfortunately, we may once again need more feet in the streets and in places of power, and those feet have to be connected to a theological rationale for why they are there…

CHRUCH PLANTING & When the Mother/Daughter Church Becomes Cultural Apartheid?

by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 10/3/16.

The following is excerpted from my upcoming keynote at The Great Commission Research Network Conference (Southern Baptist Theo. Sem., Ft. Worth, TX) and my article for The Great Commission Research Journal (Biola University, La Mirada, CA).

The Multicultural Mother/Daughter Church: Cultural Apartheid?

A multicultural mother daughter church often arises when a subculture becomes polarized from the dominant culture of the church. The dominant church often decides it’s best for the subculture to “start their own church.” And, in the name of “planting” a church, cultural apartheid occurs. While this does offer a community more church options, as mentioned above they are often too small to survive. And, this model does little to reconcile cultural differences, because the subculture is often seen as second class and as a result has little influence upon the mother church.

MULTISITE & How Trinity Anglican Mission in Atlanta Describes It Differently: “parish”

Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: Kris McDaniel is the pastor of an Atlanta megachurch affiliated with Anglican Church of North America says that “parish” is a better way to describe the venues of a multisite church. Parish historically indicates local shepherding and spiritual mentoring. I agree, for I have always felt the term multi-“site” emphasizes the location/facility in lieu of neighborhood pastoring.

Personal conversation with students at Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University DMin, Atlanta, GA on 6/20/16.

DMin ATL Kris McDaniel 2.jpg

Read more about Trinity Anglican Mission at … http://atltrinity.org/beliefs-and-practices/#

LEVEL 5 & An Overview of @EdStetzer ‘s Steps to a Level 5 Church #Exponential

by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 4/26/16.

The following in an overview of my colleague Ed Stetzer’s keynote at Exponential 16. He sees the need for churches to visualize moving beyond reproducing to multiplying congregations. Parallel to Jim Collins’ insights on Level 5 Leadership (which is more collaborative and visionary, see Helen Lee’s interview with Collins), Stetzer sees Level 5 churches as developing out of six practices:

Remind people we evangelize because we were evangelized.
Teach people how normal evangelism should be.
Utilize different approaches.
Celebrate and share the stories of members who have met Christ.
Make sure the leaders are cheerleaders for evangelism.
Teach the gospel well and consistently.

These are churches that attain 50% conversion growth. More more details see Ed Stetzer and Daniel Im’s book Multiplication Today, Movements Tomorrow: Practices, Barriers, and an Ecosystem (Nashville: LifeWay, 2016).

I came to the same conclusion in “Cure for the Common Church” seeing the “4th cure” as “N.E.W.” or a “Focus on Conversion” (you can download the chapter here). In healthy churches the average congregant knows how to share their faith and steps to salvation with their friends and acquaintances. I suggest healthy churches yearly have a 5-week sermon series on the “Four Spiritual Laws” with a fifth Sunday for a call to commitment.

Below is how I explained this in an article for Church Revitalizer Magazine, Oct. – Nov. 2015, pp. 44-45. Read the entire article here.

Focus 4: NEW. By this I mean cultivating an environment in your church where people’s lives are changed into new lives. There’s an excitement in a church when people expect to be changed there. Today when people need to a changed from an abusive life, addiction, depraved habits and/or self-centeredness they usually go to a psychologist, self-help group or read a self-help book. All of these are helpful tools. But I believe the most helpful and God-ordained tool is the Church. The Church is the place in a community where people should know that you go if you need to be changed. This is because there is supernatural power to change people whenever two or three are gathered in His name (Matt. 18:20).

Tool 4 to focus on NEW: Everyone learns a GOSPEL presentation. Every attendee should be equipped with a tool to share the Good News. The Four Spiritual Laws, The Four Steps to Peace with God, The Romans Road or another plan of salvation are the most important tool with which you can equip each congregant. Attendees should be trained in their youth, in their Sunday schools and during a yearly preaching series. Then they will be “ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, (1 Peter 3:15). A good tool to encourage this is a five-week sermon series every year, where each week focuses on one of The Four Spiritual Laws or The Four Steps to Peace with God. Then on the fifth week extend a call to meet Christ. If a yearly part of your preaching calendar, this sermon series can equip, reinforce and remind congregants how to share the wonderful opportunity and blessing of a new life in Christ.

MULTIPLICATION & Thoughts from #TheWesleyanChurch “Ignite” Pre-conference #Exponential

by Bob Whitesel D.Min. Ph.D., 4/25/16.

In partnership with the Exponential East conference, The Wesleyan Church holds an “Ignite” pre-conference sponsored by their Department of Church Multiplication and Discipleship.

Matt LeRoy (teaching pastor at Love Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill):

“Adding daily to their number daily (Acts 2:48) was not their vision. They wanted to stay small. The great persecution of Acts 8 scattered them” and made them a missionary people.

“The call (come follow me), the cost (lay down your life, take up your cross) and commission (go and make disciples).”

MOSIAX & Thoughts From the #Exponential Pre-Conference #reMIXbook #DisruptionBook

By Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 4/25/16.

As a member of the Mosiax Network (I would encourage you to join too) I learned a great deal from the dialogue of leading thinkers at the 2016 Exponential pre-conference. We are also launching an academic society (info here) to study best practices. Here are some gleanings from the pre-conference.

Mark DeYmaz:

Transformation is three things: “spiritual transformation, financial transformation and social transformation.” These three must be undertaken in balance or the organizational becomes silo-ed and unable to holistically transform the community. “We are preaching an isolated, narrow view of theology and practice.}

Strategies are lacking. “You ask people about diversity and people often say, ‘It’s just happening on Sunday morning’ or ‘We’re just letting it happen.’ But if you ask a growing church about evangelism or discipleship, they probably wouldn’t say ‘It’s just happening on Sunday morning’ or ‘We’re just letting it happen.’ We don’t ignore planning in other important areas.”

“What is the first question church planters get? ‘Who are you targeting?’ That is an nonbiblical and illogical question.”

“It’s not about a melting pot. As Soong-Cha Rah says it is a ‘salad bowl.’ You’ve just got to stop smothering everything in Ranch sauce.”

ChurchLeadership.wiki

A Wiki- on Church Health & Growth Curated by Bob Whitesel D.Min. Ph.D.

Tag Archives for multiplication

CHURCH PLANTING & “Multiplying Church,” “Reproducing Church” and “Planted Church” defined & compared. #Stetzer #Bird #Bennardo

MULTIPLICATION & “3700 U.S. churches closed in the most recent year studied (2017), and over 4000 were started. More churches started than closed… all the while the culture grew more secular. We live in interesting (and challenging) times”

MULTIPLICATION & The 5 Levels of Churches Explained & the Percentage of Churches in Each Level. #NewResearch #Exponential

MULTIPLICATION & Instead of planting an independent new church, what about planting a new venue instead? Pros & cons considered.

Short/long-term growth?

Leadership?

Attraction?

More churches?

Diversity?

NEED-MEETING & 5 ways to determine community needs

MULTIPLICATION & Not 1 homogeneous unit but rather a heterogeneous organization w/ many indigenous cultural channels to communicate the Good News & through which to celebrate it.

MULTIPLICATION & Church has no walls but many doors, accessible to seekers and skeptics

Finding new possibilities

CHURCH PLANTING & Why the “Lean Start-up Movement” changes everything #video

MULTIPLICATION & 5 Ways Too Much Money Can Rot Your Church Plant

“The Big Problem with Barna’s Study on Church Startups and Money”

… 5 Ways Too Much Money Can Rot Your Church Plant

MULTIPLICATION & Before You Even Think About Scaling Your Organization, You Need To Figure Out These 5 Things

MULTIPLICATION & Multiple Services Was a Key to St. Patrick’s Success #CharlesHunter

MULTIPLICATION & Want to Grow Very Fast? Get Mentors and Read Lots of Books

MULTIPLICATION & 5 Reasons Churches Should Balance Their Internal & External Church Planting

MULTIPLICATION & Instead of planting an independent new church, what about planting a new venue instead? Pros & cons considered.

Short/long-term growth?

Leadership?

Attraction?

More churches?

Diversity?

CHRUCH PLANTING & When the Mother/Daughter Church Becomes Cultural Apartheid?

The Multicultural Mother/Daughter Church: Cultural Apartheid?

MULTISITE & How Trinity Anglican Mission in Atlanta Describes It Differently: “parish”

LEVEL 5 & An Overview of @EdStetzer ‘s Steps to a Level 5 Church #Exponential

MULTIPLICATION & Thoughts from #TheWesleyanChurch “Ignite” Pre-conference #Exponential

MOSIAX & Thoughts From the #Exponential Pre-Conference #reMIXbook #DisruptionBook