After a number of emails to our planters that included a small amount of guilt along with a heavy dose of appreciation, here’s what was gathered from 22 or our 27 plants that launched publicly between 2000 and 2008. The information is for the 2008 calendar year.

Avg. Weekend Worship Attendance in 2008- 227
Avg. High Weekend Attendance in 2008- 310
Avg. Monthly Income in 2008- $5353
Avg. Baptisms in 2008- 12

If you do the math, you will see that these Minnesota Baptist Conference church plants gathered almost 5000 people in weekly public worship. They collected almost $118,000 a month to resource life-changing ministry across the state. (That’s more than $1.4 million for the year!) But most important, these young Minnesota Baptist Churches baptized 264 disciples in 2008. This doesn’t take into account for the churches for which I did not receive information from, or for the 10 plants that were planted in the latter half of the 90’s.

When comparing this information to the 2007 snapshot, average weekly attendance was up 11% in 2008 and the average monthly income was up 27%. The only decrease was in baptism, down 9%. However, from the reports I’ve heard from a number of our plants, it looks like 2009 is going to be a great year for baptisms!

I’m looking forward already to what 2009 will look like. In 08 we launched four churches. Already in 09 we’ve had three church launch and this fall should see another three or four launch. Plus, another three are coming together for a 2010 launch!

When the information is compiled from the other Converge districts, I’ll pass along the “big” snapshot!

Blessings!

Joel Nelson
Minnesota Baptist Conference Church Planting

This video speaks to our value of churches planting churches.

Here’s a snapshot of what happened in some of our church plants in 2007 and some thoughts from a couple of our planters.

Thanks!

Joel

I was talking to a first-time attender who was a little new to our group and as I was sharing, I realized why this retreat is so important to our movement….the brief time that we’re together among the bluffs of the Root River Valley embodies many of the values that are a part of our church planting movement.

We value the church planter and their spouse. In an effort to make it easy for our planters to come (or impossible for them not to come!) we make it very affordable and we center the retreat around them. To be honest, the retreat is no cheap date. But we are committed to making it so affordable that the issue of finances are not even a consideration. Also, we have a schedule with different activities but we also make it very clear that if we never see you through the two days, that’s fine. Do what you need to do. Spend time with your spouse. Sleep. Canoe down the river. Stay up ’til 1:00 am playing hearts. We do this because we value the church planter and their spouse. This is a time for them to reconnect, re-energize, and renew at their pace, in their way.

We value being together. If you’ve never sat in a room with a bunch of church planters, then you’re missing something amazing. Stories are told. Notes are shared. Hearts are opened. Prayers are given. Laughter abounds. When you gather a bunch of people together who love each other, have nothing to hide, and truly enjoying hanging out with each other, ministry happens. We purposely don’t program a lot of elements into the retreat because we value being together and the result is ministry happens.

We value teamwork. Nobody should plant a church alone. Every planter has their core group of their leadership team. At our retreat, the value of teamwork is evident. Ideas are shared and encouragement is given….not because it’s the “encouragement session” but because we’re all on the same team.

We value the spiritual task before us. Church planters are often on the front line. It’s not often pretty. It’s a battle. We understand it’s a spiritual battle and a part of our time together is spiritual preparation for the battles that are yet to be fought…and won. We know the statistics of new churches and conversion growth. We live the impact new churches can have upon families and communities. That empowers us to the spiritual task before us.

We value fun. You know those times when someone you just met asks you  what you do? You’re a tad reluctant to tell them you’re a pastor because you fear that they are going to pigeon-hole you into some drab, lifeless, conservative, boring box? I wish those people could come and hang out with my church-planting-pastor-comrades in a wonderful little resort at the end of little road in small one-horse town in SE MN. It’s a hint of Heaven…though in Heaven I hope to win a game or two of Hearts.

Looking forward to next year….

joel

My day job at the Minnesota Baptist Conference held it’s Annual Meeting in Duluth the end of October. Among other things, this meant that the weeks leading up to this meeting was filled with scurrying around, putting things together, and planning for the two day conference. If only that were enough trouble.
I was unable to stay for the entire meeting. Friday evening I received a frantic phone call from my wife describing the rain…which was happening in our family room. Our house experienced a “perfect storm” of plumbing…on the second floor…which made it all the way to the basement. The basement, which by the way, was just recently finished. Needless to say I left Duluth early.

So, I’ve spent the past month living in a house that is undergoing some significant work. At one point, I had the entire kitchen and family room behind plastic, a dumpster full of carpet and old sheet rock in my driveway, the rockers taping and mudding, and the carpet guy doing whatever carpet guys do. While they were all there, the insurance adjuster stopped by to look at some new damage I uncovered. He had pity on our situation and offered to put us up in a hotel. (I declined because with three teens in the house, that would have been more burdensome.)

As I type this, I hear the sound of a saw as new window trim and baseboards are being put in. Next week, new carpet and linoleum. Then it’s a couple fixtures, a big check to Service Masters and dickering with the insurance company. I thought I heard someone say it’s moving into the Christmas season. You wouldn’t know that by looking at our house.

Add to this, I’m involved in some major league junk at work. A pastor who I’ve been working with has been accused of doing things that pastors shouldn’t be doing. I’ve done a little investigating and it’s disturbing what I’ve found. Then I started thinking of two other similar situations…pastors whose ministries are in going great guns, but they chuck it all by being somewhere they shouldn’t be…by doing something they shouldn’t do. Two of the three were new churches.

I’ve seen the damage to families, to churches, and to the Kingdom of God. And I say, “I would never do that.” I’m sure those pastors said the same thing at some point in their ministry and their career.

Then I started thinking about a class I took as a part of my D.Min at Fuller Seminary. The class was “Lifelong Leadership Development” taught by Dr. Bobby Clinton. At the time, Dr. Clinton was really the only person doing empirical studies on Christian Leadership. If you can make your way through his books (some of which read like the phonebook), he has a lot to say.

One of his themes of Christian Leadership speaks to the importance of finishing well. He identifies 100 prominent leaders in the Bible. Of the 100, 49 of them have enough information that speaks to how they finished. He identifies a couple categories of finishing:

• Cut off early (e.g. Josiah, John the Baptist)
• Finished poorly (e.g. Sampson, Eli, Saul, Solomon)
• Finished “so so” (e.g. David, Hezekiah)
• Finished well (Abraham, Job, Caleb, John, Paul, Peter)
• Can’t be sure

From his study, Clinton comes to the conclusion that in the Bible, less than 30% finished well. He offers 6 Barriers to Finishing Well.

Barrier 1- Finances: Their Use and Abuse

Barrier 2- Power: It’s Abuse

Barrier 3- Pride: Which Leads to Downfall

Barrier 4- Sex: Illicit Relationships

Barrier 5- Family: Critical Issues

Barrier 6- Plateauing

Which one or two or three of these barriers might be your kyrptonite that will get in the way of finishing well? Yes, you would never have an affair. Yes, you would never abuse the power of your position. We all say that now. But where’s your weakness? Where might the evil one attack?

Clinton offers some Enhancements to Good Finishes:

Enhancement 1- Perspective (Best available in Clinton’s most “user-friendly” book, The Making of a Leader.

Enhancement 2- Renewal

Enhancement 3- Disciplines

Enhancement 4- Learning Posture

Enhancement 5- Mentoring

Clinton also breaks down those whose story in the Bible reflects a strong finish. He identifies the following characteristics of those who have finished well:

Characteristic 1- They maintain a personal vibrant relationship with God right up to the end.

Characteristic 2- They maintain a learning posture and can learn from various kinds of sources.

Characteristic 3- They evidence Christ likeness in character as evidenced by fruit of the Spirit in their lives.

Characteristic 4- Truth is lived out in their lives so that convictions and promises of God are seen to be real.

Characteristic 5- They leave behind one more ultimate contributions.

I admit that I have taken a couple of Clinton’s books and a handful of his articles and compressed them into three relatively basic lists. But they are lists I need to revisit and camp-out on for a while. Why? Because I want to finish well.

Proverbs 22:3

A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.
The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences

If you want more, track down some of Clinton’s books.

My favorite show is Good Eats with Alton Brown, but that’s for another post.

Recently I was watching Iron Chef America. Iron Chef America is a cooking show with a game show like feel. Two chef’s have an hour to create five dishes using a secret ingredient. A panel then judges the dishes based on taste, creativity, and use of the secret ingredient. I happened to stumble upon “Battle Beets” where challenger Homaro Cantu took on Iron Chef Mashar Morimoto.

It was amazing. Cantu uses technology in his cooking. In “Battle Beets” he used a high end laser to caramelize edible packing material. Sushi was made with edible paper that had gone through a printer he had invented with pictures printed on each sushi roll. My favorite was his use of liquid nitrogen to create beet balloons.”

Fascinated with this, I dug a little deeper on Homaro Cantu. He’s a chef, inventor, and molecular gastronomer. He owns a restaurant and a design firm.

As I was watching the show, I was thinking that what Cantu was doing, while really cool, was mostly some high-tech bells and whistles. But, he wowed the judges over, not just with those bells and whistles, but the food looked great and tasted better. It wasn’t some stunt with the intent of over shading the food. It was good food.

Now, I consider myself about in the middle of the technology continuum. I’m ahead of some, but behind others. But going a little deeper on how Cantu used technology effectively in a meal got me thinking a little bit about using technology in the church.

Technology is out there. It’s constantly changing. It’s a tool with huge potential. But the problem comes when the technology overshadows the message…or when the technology becomes the message (with respect to Mr. McLuhan). As a result of my pondering, I came up with a couple thoughts regarding technology and the church.

1. Technology should compliment not just the message, but the mission and the values of the church. For Cantu, the design compliments the food. The liquid nitrogen balloon beet only added to the goal of having it taste good.

2. Use technology to tweak the usual. Cantu has three patent pending (along with hundreds of applications) where he applies new technologies and designs to the usual. He invented a fish-steaming box using high-tech polymers. On Iron Chef, he served one of his dishes with a spoon whose handle was twisted like a long corkscrew and in it, he inserted a large sprig of rosemary to add another sense to the experience. We do this in the church already. Instead of sermons on cassettes we have podcasts. The snail mail newsletter has been replaced with the email version. In what other areas can technology tweak and give new life to the usual?

3. How can technology help with thinking outside the box? If you fail to finish a course at his restaurant, you will receive a refund of sorts: a phony dollar bill flavored to taste like a cheeseburger and fried. He produces a printout of a cow that you can eat. It taste like filet mignon. He has even begun creating inserts for magazines that are edible. Eat your heart out Willy Wonka! What outside the box idea do you have? Is there some technology that can move you toward that?

I’m curious. All of you techno-church planters and pastors who are ahead of me on the technology curve…what piece of technology or design is helping you fulfill your mission and move toward your vision? What can’t you live without?

One of the tasks the church planting candidates completes is a presentation on their philosophy of ministry. In almost every instance, included in this presentation is the desire and goal to plant a church that is relevant.  What church planter will disagree with that?

 I’m a big fan of a relevance. I value it. Being relevant is important to me as a Christ-follower, pastor, friend, family member, and human being. But I think in many instances the value relevance in church planting is, at the best miss-communicated, and at the worst is misunderstood.

 Too often, relevance is viewed as an end and not a means to an end. Most of the church planters I hang around with want to biblical. That’s a goal to be valued. It’s way more than “bringing people to Christ.” It involves how we live and how our lives are structured. It’s about being people who love God’s Word and seeking to live differently because of it.

 Relevance is a means towards that end. Making sense to our culture does matter. Ministry models do change because the unchanging message of Jesus Christ is conveyed in a changing world. Our message needs to be understandable. Relevance is important. But it’s a tool…a means to the end of spreading God’s message.

Be careful how you use relevance. We all want to be relevant, but our goal as church planters should be so much more. Make your ministry and your life speak to whatever context God calls you. But don’t stop there. Don’t be satisfied with merely being cool, trendy, or cutting edge. Ed Stetzer suggests we wander through Athens and look at the cultural idols, letting them break our heart and burden our mind. Then confidently take the Gospel to those who’ll see its uncluttered message.

Top 20 Church Logos

A good logo design is…

Distinctive. Memorable. And timeless.
It is aesthetically pleasing.

It is scalable, looking good while as large as a billboard or as small as a dime. It looks good in color as well as black and white. And it is simple enough that it can be applied to a media spectrum as broad as paper to plastic and t-shirts to websites.

Most importantly, a good logo communicates the unique qualities of its brand.

Below are the top 20 church logos in alphabetical order. They are chosen for the reasons listed above as well as by my subjective opinion. I’ll be keeping the list updated as I come across other church logos worth sharing in the future. For now, enjoy the eye candy.

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