Your Journey Blog

How to Build Your Launch Team - Free Webinar

Over 300 people have signed up for these free Church Planting webinars and the response has been encouraging.

Join us for Part 4 of the FirstSteps webinar series with Gary Rohrmayer as he provides a deeper look at another critical step of planting a missional church: Building Your Launch Team. We will be providing insights on:

• What is a Launch Team?
• How to build agenda harmony
• How to design your launch team meetings
• Building an Advisory Team
• Keeping the evangelistic temperature high in the launch team phase

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 2 pm Central (3 pm Eastern/12 pm Pacific)

Register Here

Find out more about the FirstSteps Network

FirstSteps for Planting a Missional Church Manual

Excellent Generosity Series from GenerositySummit.com

Below are some video clips from the "Pirates" series done at Sun Valley Community Church. We hope you can incorporate these messages into your generosity talks at your church...

 

Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four | Week Five

Generous church ministries strive to help churches maximize their potential by helping leaders create a generous culture in their local church.  The generous church strategy is simple:

Expose church leadership to generous living principles from God’s word
Coach them in developing plans and practices that create a generous culture in the church
Resource them through partnerships with organizations that add value to their ministry
Reproduce generous cultures in other churches through intentional mentoring in local church peer groups

Our goal is to help each local church maximize the generosity potential of their congregations while creating a network of local church generosity and stewardship teams that share best practices, resources and ideas which result in greater kingdom impact locally, regionally and globally.

Scott Ridout, Director of Generosity for Converge Worldwide, facilitates the Generosity Summit.  Scott has been Lead Pastor at Sun Valley Community Church in Gilbert, AZ for 10 years and serves on the Boards of Vision Arizona (www.visonarizona.org), a local church planting movement, and Vision Abolition  (www.visionabolition.org), which is committed to the  prevention, rescue and restoration of victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation worldwide.

Generous Church Summits are a ministry of Converge Worldwide.    (HT)

Bring More Focus into Your Spiritual Conversations

Many of you would agree that the majority of your spiritual conversations lack focus and direction. The reason I developed this spiritual conversation tool was to bring more focus and direction into my evangelistic conversations without being pushy or overbearing. The Spiritual Journey Guide provides an
opportunity for personal discovery and spiritual assessment through a relationship and will revolutionize the way you share the gospel.

Many pastors are using this in their visitation program, handing them out in their small groups and giving them out to their entire congregation through their weekly worship services to generate more focused spiritual conversations throughout their
congregation.

The holiday season is a great time to engage people spiritually. In order to serve you this holiday season, as you bring more focus into your spiritual conversations, we are drastically reducing the price of the Spiritual Journey Guide until December 15th.

The Spiritual Journey Guide is a simple conversational guide that helps people self-assess where they are on their spiritual journey while providing guidance and direction for taking the next step towards spiritual discovery and spiritual maturity.(Click to see a Sample Version)

Save up to 40% Take Advantage of this Special Price by Ordering

For Canadian or international orders go to ChurchSmart Resources

Networking Basics: Living Missionally

After doing a Google search on the word "networking" I realized that there is definitely a generational disconnect.  I see networking primarily as a highly relational activity, face to face meetings, personal contact, meaningful engagements...but I think the younger generation sees networking primarily from a technological perspective with a relational component...thus the phenomenon of social networking.  Now, I am not opposed to technology, for the last two years I have aggressively entered the world of "texting," "blogging", "tweeting" and "face booking".

Here is my concern; it is a rule of life that I have seen worked out in many ways...good things can become bad when there is an over-dependence on them.  Social networking is a supplement for our relationships; it should add value to our relationships, not be the replacement of our personal engagement.

The mission that God has given us is a highly relational mission.  Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" John 20:21.  Jesus came into this world, lived in obscurity for 30 years and then spent three years relationally investing in twelve men, whose charge was to do the same thing by relationally investing in others. This strategy has worked for 2000 years each of us has been touched by someone reaching out to and investing in us relationally, thus advancing the gospel and the mission of God.

Missional leaders understand the power of connecting relationally in their community through personal networking. Ray Bakke offers this recommendation, “Pastors who network their communities, especially in the first year of a pastorate, may end up knowing that community better than any other person.  This upfront investment of time should pay rich dividends and provide the opportunity to help people…” (The Expanded Mission of City Center Churches, p 53-4)

Here are ten insights to help you as you enter the world of relational networking:

1. Trust in God’s provision. Live with a humble dependence on God.
2. Take the posture of a servant. Be known as a servant leader.
3. Be an effective listener. Talk less and listen more.
4. Be an initiator. Get out and meet people weekly.
5. Make a memorable first impression. Dress appropriately for the setting.
6. Take every referral seriously. 
7. Try something new.  Join something in your community.
8. Develop partnerships.  Build alliances with service groups
9. Keep accurate records.  Know the people you meet.
10. Always follow up.  Email or write a note after every meeting.

Excerpt from FirstSteps for Planting a Missional Church

Free Church Planting Webinars

In a desire to get critical training materials into the hands of church planters earlier in the process, I have taken up the challenge of providing a one hour, free, webinar each month that will bring some of the key principles found in the FirstSteps to Planting a Missional Church manual.

We will go through the Six Stages of a Missional Church Plant.

• FirstSteps Overview - Recording Available
• Stage One - Relating with God and Your Supporters - Recording Available
• Stage Two - Networking and Gathering - November 11th @ 2pm CT
• Stage Three - Building a Launch Team
• Stage Four - Designing Your Public Worship Services and Initial Ministries
• Stage Five - Launching Your Public Worship Services
• Stage Six - Establishing the New Community

To keep informed on upcoming webinars 

Teaching Your Children About Jesus

Life's Biggest Adventure: Guiding Your Child on their Spiritual Journey

Life's Biggest Adventure is a tool for parents to use with their grade school aged children as they guide them through the following questions:

• What is the gospel?
• How do I know I am a Christian?
• What is baptism?
• Why do we take communion?
• How do I start reading the Bible?
• How do I pray?
• How do I deal with temptation?
• How do I tell my friends about Jesus?

"I wanted to thank you for the children's discipleship tool, Life's Biggest Adventure. Recently I took my 8 year old son through it and was able to watch him take noticeable steps with Jesus! Very powerful!"

Aaron Story
Lead Pastor
Indy Metro Church

50% Discounts Available through November