"One pitfall of good church planters is that they are big-picture people.  This is great in most areas, but not for finances. When your people give you money, they are really giving it to Jesus. It’s special.  You are stewarding money others have tithed.  Taking good care of it is a sacred responsibility.

• Thank every new giver with a handwritten note…
• On Monday mornings, evaluate your giving. Compare Sunday’s giving to one-fourth of your monthly expenses…
• Please, hire a bookkeeper ASAP to balance your checkbook and reconcile your checking account…
• Always have a bookkeeper open and verify your bank statements…

If you are not accountable for the small things - paying attention to the spreadsheet on a weekly basis - then you will not be accountable for the larger things later."

(Excerpt taken from Community of Kindness by Steve Sjogren and Rob Lewin; Regal Books, 2003. pp. 50-2.)

I was so naive when we planted three years ago. The sheer metric tons of stuff I didn’t know then that I know now could feel volumes of books. However, there are a few things that come to mind as great lessons I learned the hard way.

1. Half of your core team will leave you in the first year. I heard other church planters say this, but I didn’t believe it. Going into year two I had already lived it. At present we only have one couple from our original core group. Some moved out of town…others lost the vision…others never got it in the first place.

2. Never pick staff from outside the church. I kept trying to bring in staff members from the outside. They were already "ruined" by other churches and just couldn’t grasp the concept of what God called us to do. We have had much better luck by recruiting staff from within Compass Point.

3. You can’t build a church on college students. Our first year we had almost 70% college students…almost all unchurched. They were great….they worked hard…they grew spiritually…they developed into good leaders…they left town when they graduated. Christmas and summer got pretty ugly around Compass Point the first year! College students are wonderful folks to have on a church plant team…just know they are temporary.

4. Never count on the money until the check arrives. We met with the pastor of a mega-church (the parents of one our core team went there) and he did the whole "dog and pony show" while we were there. He kept saying that the church "would help us out financially" to give him a call when we needed it. We called…no reply. After a bunch of calls, emails and a few snail mail letters I finally got a note from his secretary telling me that they were tight on money and couldn’t spare any. Two Sundays before she contacted me they had raised millions of dollars (it made the state denominational paper) in a single day to fund several satellite video-venues in order to perpetuate the pastor’s "cult of personality". Just a complete lack of integrity!!!

5. Recent church planters are your best resource. The greatest advice, financial gifts and friendship I have ever received is from guys that planted within the last several years. They will cry with you, rejoice with you and sacrifice for you. As long as I live I will remember the day that the pastor of local church plant (less than 3 months old) handed me their last $250 because another church (mentioned in answer #4) didn’t come through and we couldn’t pay rent (God bless you Hal). To this day other church panters are some of my closest friends and greatest source of inspiration. God uses them in mighty ways to speak into my life (God bless you Gary, Shawn, Travis and Adam).

6. You can always plant another church…you can’t always have another family. As much as I love church planting and shepherding people…I love my wife more. As a man with a divorce on his record, I can tell you nothing…I mean nothing…especially ministry…should ever get in the way of your family. That also reminds me…if your wife is not on board with planting a church….don’t plant!!!

7. Spend more time reading the Bible than other books. Church growth, church planting, church strategy and church leadership books are great…but I spent way too much time pouring into them (at the beginning) and not enough time in God’s Word. The best church practices, strategies and leadership ideas can be found within the pages of the Bible.

8. Get out of the freakin’ pulpit every once in a while. Pastors have this idea that the world will fall apart for their church if they don’t preach every Sunday. I gotta tell you…preaching week after week without a break will dull your abilities. Taking a break every now and then gives other leaders a chance to step up and you a rest to get fired back up. Nothing makes me preach better than being out of the pulpit for a week or two. Nothing grows our leaders like me being out of the pulpit for a week or two.

9. Don’t fall in love with some else’s community, vision or calling. I got fired up by reading books by Andy Stanley and Erwin McManus. Unfortunately, I fell in love with their calling…and their community. God didn’t call me to shepherd the people of Los Angeles or Atlanta…he called me to shepherd the people of Lakeland, Florida. I wasted way too many days trying to be Mark Driscoll and Ed Young. Jr. when God just wanted me to be Chris Elrod and to love on the people of Polk County.

10. Pray, pray, pray!!! When things suck…pray. When things go well…pray. When thing look hopeless…pray. When things look successful…pray.

There is a bunch of other stuff…but the answers above are probably the most important lessons I learned along the way. Ultimately, seek God and His Word for your unique vision, community and calling. What worked for others may not work for you!

If the church was a mission to the moon, and I was the commander of the mission, my call to Mission Central would be: "Oh God, we have a problem!" The problem is that when the vast majority of people think of the Church, or of a Christian, their thoughts are negative!

The Church in America needs to go through a re-branding process. By re-branding I mean simply this: We need to begin to work hard to reshape the association that comes to mind when the average person thinks of one of those ‘C’ words.

Contrary to what is spoon fed to us by the Christian media, the problem with the image of the Church is not a result of an inundation of negativity from the ’secular media.’ Please please, let’s retire that word, it is so ‘us vs. them.’ Jesus never thought in those terms. When we use terms like that we sound like victims, like everyone is out to get us.

The truth is we have an image problem that we have created ourselves. Mostly out of sheer, 100% laziness. Instead of living out the life of Jesus on a daily basis, we have sought the ‘good life’ like all of our neighbors. After decades and generations of doing that we wonder, ‘Gee, I wonder why no one listens to us? I wonder why no one takes us seriously?’ My response: ‘Gee, my foot!’ Laziness leads to no credibility. It’s really that simple.

If we begin to live out the lifestyle of Jesus we will begin to see the results, the fruitfulness of Jesus all around us. It pretty much boils down to that simple proposition.

On my main website, ServantEvangelism.com, I want to add a thought-provoking weekly feature for readers, entitled ‘The Wait Person of the Week.’ We will feature a photo of a person who waits on tables, then a short mp3 recording of this person’s take on the Sunday afternoon after-church crowd, specifically how they behave and tip. I have a few of these recordings and photos ‘in the can.’ They are both hilarious and heart breaking at the same time. But one thing is consistent: Church people are consistently widely known for being:

1. Mean

2. Demanding

3. Cheap

4. A caricature of over-doing it with religiosity. They usually pray long-winded prayers that are full of language that hasn’t been spoken on Planet Earth in several hundred years. As they prayed their ’special prayer,’ as one waitress put it, the Church people had no compassion for her as she held several plates of steaming hot food. They made no effort whatsoever to speed up their prayer.

5. Joyless

6. Passionless

7. Judgmental

In general, they seem convinced that if they leave a little piece of paper, AKA a ‘tract,’ that piece of information is far more worthwhile than something practical like a normal tip.

[There is no extra charge for the following information: In my book, a ‘normal’ tip is at least 25% - that’s at a bare minimum. As a leader in the Church I implore you, if you leave less than 25%, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not under any circumstances make all Christ followers look like asses and pray for your food in public. If you insist on being a cheapskate, first go home after church, get into something other than clothes that might cause restaurant personnel to connect you with having gone to church, then again don’t pray, and at least show the waiting staff great kindness, smile a lot and give them as high a percent as you have the faith to give. Then for Pete’s sake, get to the 25% level of tipping as soon and as fast as possible.]

The churches we have planted in southwest Ohio have survived for the most part. As I count them, I have sent out 53 churches. Not all of them have taken the name of my denomination. I love my group, but I haven’t insisted that they take that name. Roughly half of them have been a part of that group. That is 25 in total.

Of that total of 53, only 3 have failed to my knowledge, though I don’t have absolutely clear data on all of those churches, that number is pretty close to accurate, within a church or two. In any case, we have had a success rate of right around 95% in our planting. For some reading this that percentage means absolutely nothing. Hold on to your hats I’m getting to a great point momentarily.

By contrast, over the past 20 years, during the wave of church planting that has gone on since the early 1980s, right around 80% of all churches across the board have failed. Of those that have been deemed a ’success’ the number of attendees is 200 showing up on a once a month basis after 3 years. In other words, after three years and a tremendous amount of work, and in most cases a tremendous amount of money (most denominations spend on the average of $200,000 per church plant, many spend far more) ’success’ is seeing about 100 in total attendance on an average weekend.

If you knew me you would realize that I could never live with myself if that was my definition of ’success’ no matter what was happening with other pastors in the area. That may be fine and dandy for some, but my internal, mental, emotional wiring is not, was not ever made for that kind of ’success.’

If that were my experience I would either get into selling used Volvos or jump off the nearest tall bridge after leaving an eloquent note on my laptop journal (mostly kidding about the bridge!).

If you know the story of what happened in Cincinnati, after 15 years we went from 5 people to averaging 7,500 on weekends. But more importantly, we had all of those spin offs. Oh, one more caveat, those spin offs were not ‘average’ sized churches either. They were, as churches go, large.

We continue to plant new churches on a regular basis around southwest Ohio. It is common for our churches to launch with a minimum of 200 and often with 300 on week one.

I’m sorry for the mainstream terminology, but it’s called ‘Branding.’ In my time launching and leading churches, growing from 5 to 7,500, we served and served and served. With each bottle of water that was given out, with each pack of M&Ms, with each pack of Juicy Fruit gum, with each toilet that was cleaned, and with each act of genuine service, the works of Jesus were being done and we were telling people, "This is a practical expression of God’s love." "We are Christ-Followers." "We are from the Cincinnati Vineyard."

When the works of Jesus are done the results of Jesus soon follow. We were re-defining some old words to have completely new meanings. Instead of agreeing on a given word, we were, and this is very important, "showing what we were telling." For the rest of our lives, this is the way we will communicate, redefining words with our actions in a positive way.

We did the above a LOT. Many will agree with our message and our methods but they make the mistake of missing what I call the ‘Law of Inundation.’ In order for this to "work," we must plaster the ever-living daylights out of our communities with these acts of Jesus.

One church planter I know of thought he’d show the love of Jesus as he launched so he touched 10,000 people with practical acts of love. As he told me this he thought I would be impressed by this project. I kept waiting for him to finish the story. After a long uncomfortable pause I asked, ‘Are you finished with your story?’

The ‘Law of Inundation’ says that we must ‘love, serve to the degree that the entire city, area can’t possibly miss the living demonstration of the love of God in a practical way.’

Our plan as we plant on the east side of Tampa? There are about 500,000 who live in that immediate area, maybe 700,000 who drive through there on a regular basis. We are going to serve 250,000 on a one-to-one basis over a 5-6 week period. You may ask ‘How in the world are you going to do that? With a gigantic team? That will take all day, every day’ Details to follow, after we’ve done it. Actually we’ve done it before and it wasn’t that hard and didn’t take that long each day.

Let’s work like dogs and cats this week, by the power of God’s Spirit moving through us, to re-configure the image that comes to mind when our neighbors think of the ‘C’ words.

“Uh. . .Please. . .uh. . .I’m. . .Sorry.” Those are the exact words of one person in the past week in his attempt to make things right. Not a pro job, but a valiant effort.

People in the news have been falling all over themselves apologizing lately – have you noticed? They say that deaths of celebrities tend to come in threes. Maybe highly visible apologies come in groupings as well.

In New York, the disgraced broadcaster Don Imus has been apologizing for more than a week. His “Imus in the Morning Show” was pulled off the airwaves by CBS Inc. for racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

In Washington, DC Attorney General Alberto Gonzales apologized for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday. However, several administration officials and the House Republican Conference chairman said Friday that Gonzales should step down.

(By the way did you catch the reference to this in the parody on Saturday Night Live this past weekend? Simply classic! It will make it onto the “Best of SNL” DVDs eventually.)

In Blacksburg, Virginia – the family of Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho apologized on Friday, stating that they feel "hopeless, helpless and lost" and are "deeply sorry" for his "unspeakable actions." This statement released by his sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, was the first family comment since Seung-Hui shot and killed 32 people and then killed himself. "We are humbled by this darkness," Cho’s sister, said. "He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare."

Finally, in Los Angeles, California – Alec Baldwin apologized for his angry, scalding words to his 12-year-old daughter Ireland. I’m not sure if the 49-year-old actor’s explanation of himself Friday cuts the mustard – after all he called her a ‘Rude Little Pig.” But in typical Baldwin fashion, he said, "I’m sorry, as everyone who knows me is aware, for losing my temper with my child. I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand. (Although I hope you never do.) I am sorry for what happened."

I can’t help to see the contrast between Sun-Kyung Cho and Mr. Baldwin or is it just me? .

When is the last time you heard a sincere apology? A heartfelt, “I’m sorry, please forgive me” is p-o-w-e-r-f-u-l! Unfortunately, those who spend their existence inside the walls of the ‘Church’ are so often oblivious to this earth moving dynamic.

My favorite Starbucks manager is a PK [Pastor’s Kid] who hates – yes, I said hates the Church. Yet, ironically he loves to talk about Christ, spirituality, and serving (he has even helped us with Outflow service events).

Recently while we were rehashing Ted Haggard’s apology he said, “Please – he’s sorry? I tell you what; the Church should spend the next ten years asking for forgiveness. Then maybe I’d consider going.”

I said, “What do you think the Church should apologize for?”

He said, “For being so hypocritical and so irrelevant!”

Wow! Now that hits a nerve! You have to love it when someone is so honest.

And let’s be perfectly clear about this: I think he is right!

I have been chewing on what we should do about it 24/7 since then, like a broken record. I have been talking about it with most of my local leaders.

A couple of things stand out from my conversation with my Starbucks’ friend that are simply profound:

1. He is offended and feels “used” negatively.

One my co-conspirators has approached this dilemma head on. Steve Sjogren came up with the brilliant idea to print t-shirts that say, “Please Forgive Me” (patent pending) I love it – simple, concise, and to the point.

Here’s the thing – I bet many people would appreciate it. Just imagine the conversations you would likely inspire when people ask “Why the shirt?” and you simply say “Because we as the Church have failed enormously at just being the Chruch in so many ways . . .”

2. He spoke from his heart.

Another friend of mine, Bryan Johnston, bryan@tideschurch.org is a church planter and lead pastor of Tides Church in Lake Elsinore, California. He is currently preaching through an original series called, “WE ARE SORRY FOR . . .”

A few of things Bryan has been addressing are spot on:

• • Hypocrisy
• • Judging
• • Legalism
• • Irrelevance
• • Acting Holier Than Thou

I don’t know about you, but there are plenty of people I run into in my neighborhood, at my kid’s school, at the mall, etc. who would love an apology from the church for any of these.

I have always been in awe of Christ’s words from the cross – “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).

Steve & Bryan have given church planters a couple of awesome strategies. So let’s start wearing the t-shirt to Starbucks and humbly beg for forgiveness from our pulpits and watch God touch the multitudes of wounded hearts alienated by the Church.

Evel Kneivel – there’s a blast from the past. He put motorcycle daredevil jumping on the map a few decades ago. He once claimed to have broken every bone in his body during crashes minus the tiny bones in his ears! It takes a “special” person to make one’s living that way.

A few weeks ago he told his recent Jesus story at Crystal Cathedral at their televised service. The result? Over 500 present asked to be baptized! That is super. I think we are approaching “normal.”

Let’s be perfectly clear about this:

The pundits who sit off to the side with theoretical theology (by the way, that is a huge oxymoron) and proposed what happened on Palm Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral was a touch of revival are way off. (You can read the ChristianityTodayOnline story for yourself.)

We are so starved for a single drop of authentic spirituality, when we hear of something or see something, the media tends to show up with satellite trucks en masse.

What happened was really very simple.

I am a fan of Robert Schueller, Sr’s. He is an amazing pioneer in nearly countless areas of the expansion of areas of the way the local church does things – more practices than most of us realize.

What happened that day was what Peter referred to when he stated, "Be ready to give an account of the hope that lies within you…"

We are nearly addicted to the notion that if something significant happens there must be come sort of magic bullet effect that has taken place…

- let’s load up the busses and head there - some sort of amazing move of God taking place… let’s not miss the bless spout

- …for Pete’s sake, someone contact the publisher’s 800 number and get a ghost writer moving on this at double time…

- this has sales potential all over it!

A thousand times no!

A couple of things stand out from Kneivel’s story that are simply profound:

1. He told his simple story.

Back to Peter. Your – story – has – great – power! Your peoples’ stories have great power. Just start telling them. Great things will be released. No need to exaggerate. Jesus will shine through.

It’s simple. Drop the cute. Drop the memorized program. Start telling your story and watch what begins to happen. You will be amazed.

2. He told his story from his heart.

Evel Kneivel is a high school drop out.

He is simple.
He is unfiltered.
He hasn’t been "church broken" yet.

"I don’t know what in the world happened. I don’t know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just—the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me. … All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him! … I rose up in bed and, I was by myself, and I said, ‘Devil, Devil, you bastard you, get away from me. I cast you out of my life.’ … I just got on my knees and prayed that God would put his arms around me and never, ever, ever let me go."

You have to love it when someone tells their story or even prays from their heart, without guile, and uses colorful language!

He hasn’t been trained how to "church-speak" yet so he spoke from his heart – and it was p-o-w-e-r-f-u-l.

I’m certain a "volunteer" will inform Mr. Kneivel how he "ought" to rightly tell his story versus the way he has told it up until now.

Personally, I hope he doesn’t listen to that person(s) – for it will rob his story of part of its purity and power.

3. He gave glory to God.

If you look through Church history you will see that the truly profound conversions are nearly all just like Mr. Kneivel’s. Something happens in the heart that is unexplainable. C.S. Lewis got on his brother’s motorcycle on the way to the London Zoo not knowing Jesus. When he got off the bike he knew Jesus. How did it happen? He had no idea.

Conversions are the arena of the heart, not the mind.

Let’s invade hearts by doing the ministry of Jesus – loving, serving, showing generosity, meeting the needs of the next person he invites across our path. Sure, let’s answer questions. But we don’t need any more mental conversions. It appears we have plenty of those already.

The Discovery Channel ran a story about small-sized goat breed that is a bit rare now (just 5,000 left in the world — all in captivity). They are cute as far as goats go. Personally I’ve never entertained the idea of having an inside the house goat that would come to me when I called its name. Maybe that is your thing. If so, put the word “Fainting Goats” into Google and you’ll find more info on these little guys than you can absorb.

“Fainting” goats you ask? As it turns out these goats are rather emotional. They feel strongly. (Perhaps that is part of the reason for their demise and rarity…) As I watched the show I honestly thought, “Come on! These are goats…You know the creatures that eat anything. The image of them having emotional problems just doesn’t fit…”

When they sense any measure of above average
excitement,
depression,
fear,
… they simply fall over and faint.

This trait is not like possums who fake their death as a defense mechanism.

Faint Not!
I’m not a big fan of the King James Version in general. My style of teaching is to use several versions in the course of one message. But sometimes it is difficult to top the the KJV!

Perhaps the best King James phrase is the gut busting command, “Faint not!” Those two words appear time and again in the gospels as well as in Paul’s letters.

I have felt tempted to faint many times in the course of leading.

According to many repetitions of these same scriptures in the New Testament, we can choose to not faint.

“Don’t give up - never surrender!”
Those are the words of Winson Churchill in the midst of the worst part of the blitzkrieg bombing of London in World War II. Many in England were ready to throw in the towel. Approximately half of the general population were of the opinion, “Let’s cut our losses now and move forward in the new world with Hitler as our Fuhrer. German isn’t that difficult a language to learn…”

Go out each week — minimally every other week — with your spouse for a good two hours for an emotional downloading session.
I’ve heard so many people encourage planters and pastors to hold to a “date night” that I’m about ill. Those who give such counsel are either not currently in the midst of leading or planting a church,  or they have forgotten the true grit that is connected with the atmosphere involved in a leadership marriage.

The objective of this time together is to just spill what has been happening inside each of you. The emotional “hoodabada” ™ (a word coined by my friend Charlie Wear - all that is the opposite of love and thinking the best about others) needs to be exposed to the light of day. All that continues to be hidden will eventually come out. The longer you wait to deal with it, the more toxic and destructive it becomes.

Talk, plan for the future.
Keep perspective.
Don’t be limited to where you are now only.
God speaks to leaders in the future tense.

It is very easy to become bogged down in the here and now only. With that lack of perspective comes leadership depression very quickly - guaranteed!

Work in these terms:
- A three month plan
- A six months plan
- A one-year plan
- An eighteen month plan

The closer your view, the clearer you can realistically plan.
The further away you are looking at things, the more vague and looser your grip needs to be upon things.

If you are in the midst of a “boggle” limit the amount of time you spend on it each day to a very short duration each day.
In the midst of planting, you are guaranteed going to face numerous “boggles” (situations that are beyond your control — the kinds of situations that are made more powerful as you think, talk, write, etc. about them…) Therefore, it is imperative that you set a time limit on how much time you will spend on “boggles” each day.

For the first three years of each of our plants thus far, we have had at least one boggle going at all times — sometimes as many as three at a time.

To stay sane, Janie and I set a time limit on each of these issues (they are actually people, but we’ll just call them “issues” to be polite). Most of the time we set a time limit of 10 minutes a day, five days a week.

After those 10 minutes are used up and someone brings up the Boggle again, we simply stop them with a smile and say, “We have established a schedule for how much time we will discuss that situation each day. I’m sorry but we have already used up all of today’s time on that. Let’s set an appointment on the phone for tomorrow or the next day early on so no one will have taken up the time on that by then…”