Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Leadership

Why Your Church Needs to Multiply

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After the disciples received the Great Commission before Jesus’ ascension, they began to preach the gospel, first in Jerusalem and eventually expanding into other cultures. The book of Acts details early efforts to obey Jesus’ command. The letters of the New Testament give us an inside view of the establishment of Christianity in new territory. It may seem obvious to us now, but we should continue to contemplate the fact that everywhere Christians have gone to share the gospel churches were formed.

Church planting should not end with the establishment of one church. The process can repeat itself when a new church matures to the point of becoming a sponsoring church. The kingdom is best advanced through multiplication and not just addition. Reproduction is in the biblical DNA of churches.

Church planting should not end with the establishment of one church.

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Percentage of Churches that Multiply

In Viral Churches, Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird shared research from an interview of senior pastors in various denominations in the United States. In that research project, they discovered that 28% of those they surveyed indicated that they had directly participated in helping a new church. While that number may sound good, upon further investigation, they discovered that only 12% of that 28% were actually churches that acted as a mother church or accepted direct financial responsibility for a new church as a primary sponsor.
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How Do You Find Launch Team Members?

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The process of gathering a launch team is not an easy task. With the right training almost anyone can plan the launch, mail appropriate advertising, and prepare for people to come on the launch day. But molding an effective launch team is another story. There are several ways to find such people committed to starting a new church with you.

1. Recruit Members from the Sponsor Church

One possible source for launch team members is a sponsoring church, which can appeal for volunteer families (sometimes called “extension members”). Bob Roberts, pastor of Northwood Church and founder of GlocalNet, has started over 180 churches out of his church (and many more in partnership with GlocalNet). Their local church is directly involved in training, mentoring, and coaching twenty-five church planters each year. In several cases, he has sent out members to start these new churches. Bob explains:

When we sponsor a daughter church, each church is different. Generally for a new plant, sending out three to eight families from our church is the most. We sometimes send staff as well. We don’t recruit this much because we have found that core groups from established churches can slow a plant down. A planter will start a small group and multiply it while being an intern at Northwood. If they can’t do that, they can’t plant a church. I give them a 100 percent fishing license with those people.

This presents both positives and negatives. A strong positive is that the planter has a launch team almost overnight, and the length of start-up time decreases considerably. The church can begin services while developing one-on-one relationships. In addition, the planter usually finds that these volunteer families are solid believers who can assist immediately in the development process.

On the negative side, not all of these people come from strong churches like Northwood Church! These “experienced” believers may have strong feelings about the form of worship, leadership style, and other matters. Such convictions, if different from the vision of the church planter, can create significant conflicts in the early development of the congregation. These conflicts may quickly put at risk the continuation of financial support from the sponsoring church. We recommend using this recruiting method for launch team development only if the sponsoring congregation is highly similar in philosophy and style to the new church and the planter and the context of the new start are similar to the context of the sponsoring church.

2. Develop a SWAT Team

In settings where extension members are unavailable or their use would be unwise, several other means for recruitment are possible. One alternative has been termed a SWAT team, an acronym for Servants, Willing and Temporary. SWAT team members commit themselves to the new church for a short time, usually six months. These volunteers staff the nursery, teach small groups, serve on set-up teams, or fill other roles in the first months following the launch.

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Seismic Shifts and a Missional Response

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There have been two seismic shifts in the church and culture in the English-speaking Western world over the past few decades. The first shift is predominantly a good one, while the second shift has mixed reactions.

Seismic Shift #1: An Increased Focus on Church Planting

Recently, I came across a tweet from my friend, Jeff Christopherson, who leads the North American Mission Board’s Send Network.

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I love this! In the Southern Baptist Convention, church plants baptize almost four times the number of people than existing established churches! I agree with the hashtag, #plantingworks.

Statistics like this are one of the reasons that denominations are placing a greater emphasis on church planting. The dynamic long-term growth of many church plants has helped as well. Consider Life Church with Craig Groeschel, Saddleback with Rick Warren, and Redeemer Presbyterian with Tim Keller, among many others. Compare that to a few decades ago, when church planting was on the periphery and seen as a ‘suspicious activity’ to most.

Seismic Shift #2: The Church Moving to the Periphery

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My Seminars for Exponential West 2016

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I’m excited to be speaking this week at Exponential West 2016!

If you are at the conference, I’d love for you to join me at one of my seminars. If not, then be sure to tune into the livestream that we at NewChurches.com are hosting for Exponential.

Thirty Network Pre-Conference: Initiative and Vision

  • The Thirty Network believes that Asian American pastors have something valuable and unique to contribute to the Church with the very essence of who they are and who God has created them to be at this time in this generation. The Thirty seeks to facilitate conversations, provide resources, and make connections that will actively strengthen the mainstream evangelical church. I will be speaking at their pre-conference at Exponential West on the topic of Initiative and Vision.
  • Time: Tuesday, 9:30-12:30pm
  • Location: Port Mariners Kids room #237

Workshop Session 1: Using Residency Programs to Develop Leaders that Multiply

  • Learn about five different types of residency programs, the spectrums that each are built on, and how to start one in your church. Are your residents fully funded? Are they full-time? Do you pursue partnership with a seminary? These questions and more will be answered in this workshop so that you can develop homegrown leaders in your church that multiply.
  • Time: Tuesday, 2:30-3:30pm
  • Location: Life Development Building – Room 203

Workshop Session 2: How to Create a City Multiplication Movement

  • Learn how to create a church multiplication movement in your city. Whether you’re a church planter, a staff member, a campus pastor, a lead pastor, or a denominational leader, you will glean insights to help you cultivate a multiplication movement in your city. When this session is done, you’ll leave with a strategy to employ in your city to see multiplication happen.
  • Time: Wednesday, 8:45-9:45am
  • Location: Life Development Building – Room 203

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Campus Pastor Skill #4: How to Lead Up

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Campus pastors who never lead up will always hit a ceiling in their development.

Think about the team that you lead. When in a meeting or working on a project, how do you feel when everyone always agrees with you and never offers another suggestion? Or, how about when someone disagrees with you or offers a better idea? How do you feel then?

Refusing to lead up can either be seen as a lack of competence or a lack of care.

When you always seem to agree with those who are leading you, this is often viewed as a lack of knowledge or skill. After all, there’s no way that your boss can be more competent than you in every area, especially if you’re hired to be a specialist in a particular area. For example, how would you feel if you always knew more about children’s ministry than your children’s director? It’s one thing if you were more of an expert in their area when they started on your staff (this is referring to S1 in Situational Leadership, as we addressed in the previous post), but you wouldn’t want them to stay there.

In addition, repeated silence or unconditional agreement is typically interpreted as a lack of initiative or a lack of care. After all, if you truly cared about the project or the task at hand, wouldn’t you have been thinking about it, researching it, and trying to bring your best ideas to the table?

Now don’t misinterpret me. I’m not saying that you always need to have something to say, nor that you should play the devil’s advocate. There’s definitely a balance needed here, but what’s not an option is repeated silence.

When you do speak out and try to lead up, this can either be seen as a challenge to authority, or allegiance to the organization.

Let me explain. If those leading you are authoritarian and have big egos, they typically see ideas other than theirs as sub-par, and as a result, a challenge to their authority. When team members speak up, leaders like those are typically thinking, “How dare you say something other than yes? Do you really think you’re better at this than I am?” Or, if the presented idea is actually better than theirs, they will probably find a way to minimize it, and then secretly implement it, while taking all the credit. If that’s how the leadership is at your church, then consider asking the Lord for an opportunity to leave. This is not a healthy environment to be in.

What if your idea is taken into account? What if your idea is actually better than the leader’s? And then, what if your idea is actually the one that gets implemented? In a healthy organization or church, this wouldn’t be seen as a challenge to authority; instead, it would be seen as allegiance to the organization. The fact that you brought a good idea demonstrates that you are all-in, and want everyone on the team to succeed.

When you present a better idea, alternative solution, or even initiate a brand new idea, you need to think about the way you present it, as much as the content of it.

After all, the fate of your idea, and the fate of your future in the church, ultimately depends on your level of emotional intelligence, how you present the idea, and the amount of relational capital and trust that you have built with others. This reminds me of that often repeated phrase in relationships, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it!”

So instead of saying, “No, I don’t like that. I have a better idea. Listen up!” Next time you have a better solution than the one that the lead pastor presents, try saying something like this. “I love __________ (find an aspect of the leader’s idea that you appreciate). What do you think if we did this as well? __________ (present your idea).” Or, if your idea is completely different than what has already been presented, then try this, “I have an idea that’s pretty different than what’s been suggested, but I think it might work, or at least aspects of it. Do you guys want to hear it?”

Leading up can either be seen as a challenge to authority, or allegiance to the organization.

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When you lead up, you are demonstrating your leadership capacity and competency, while also declaring your your love and allegiance to the vision and mission that your church is trying to accomplish.

Here are four areas that campus pastors NEED to lead up in:

1. Preaching

Effective multisite churches coordinate preaching across their campuses. If you consider yourself a multisite church, but aren’t doing this, then you’re missing out. More than a common budget and a vision statement, it’s coordinated preaching that keeps multisite churches together and in unison. Whether you do this via video, or with a live teaching team, it’s important that every campus is hearing the same core set of points on a weekly basis. There is definitely room for Campus Sundays where the campus pastors are preaching unique messages to their campuses, but this is more of an exception than the norm.

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