It’s hard to believe, but over the past couple of years about 50 guys (no women…yet) have participated in coaching networks I’ve hosted at NewSpring, West Ridge and on the Web. I’m opening registrations for two new coaching networks that will begin in August. One of them will meet in Atlanta at West Ridge Church. The other coaching network will either meet in Dallas, Texas or online. (I haven’t decided yet. Maybe you can sway my opinion.)

Who will participate?

This network is designed for leaders and strategists who serve in a local church. Typically, that has included lead pastors, executive pastors and leaders who report directly to one of those positions in larger church settings. The network will be limited to no more than 12 participants. In the past, partipants have been from churches of all shapes and sizes — churches ranging from 200 to over 20,000 in attendance. I’ll try to create an environment where you can experience the coaching but also learn from your peers. And, frankly, I’m looking forward to being challenged and learning from all of the participants as well.

What will you receive?

• Six days of coaching sessions beginning August 2010 (9:00 am to 3:00 pm each day)
• Focused training on a variety of ministry strategies topics including staffing, leadership development, communications, financial stewardship, volunteer team development, weekend services, ministry structure, discipleship, multi-site and more
• Tools, exercises and best practices to implement after every session
• The opportunity to network with and learn from like-minded leaders
• Dedicated time in every gathering to talk through the pressing issues you are facing
• An invitation to join an online forum limited to network participants for continuing dialogue between sessions
• Several free resources and books including a copy of Killing Cockroaches
• Plus other fun surprises and guest appearances!

What are the expectations?

• Attend all six coaching sessions on the following dates:
  • Dallas or Web: Aug 19, Sept 30, Oct 21, Nov 18, Dec 16, Jan 20
  • Atlanta: Aug 20, Oct 1, Oct 22, Nov 19, Dec 17, Jan 21
• Invest $1,500 per participant payable within 21 days of acceptance
• Cover your own travel expenses as needed
• Commit to reading a book and completing exercises between sessions

What’s next?

Complete the coaching network application by Friday, July 9 and submit it for review. If you are accepted into the network, we will notified by July 16.

Questions? Contact me.

For those of you who haven’t been directly to the site in recent weeks, you may have missed out on some helpful new resources. Here are the folks that are making things happen at TonyMorganLive.com this month:

igniteCRM – powered by faithHighway, this is a web-based church management software to empower your leadership for healthy growth

Ragamuffin Soul – the newly released album from Carlos Whittaker and the kids over at Integrity Music

Clover – provides websites for growing churches and ministries

Collision Media – a creative design studio that provides web design and other media related services for churches

I was broke. Now I’m not. – equipping people to accomplish far more than they ever thought possible with their personal finances

Rockbridge Seminary – 100% online program for earning your seminary degree without leaving your current ministry assignment

StreamingChurch.tv – delivers everything you need to broadcast your services live on a web campus

If you’re interested, we still have advertising spots available for your organization. Email me for more details. I’d love to have you join our team!

In case you missed them, here are the posts that generated the most traffic last month in order of popularity:

1. Sunday’s Coming
2. The 100+ Blogs I Follow
3. Introducing MinistryStrategies.com
4. God is Still God, and God is Still Good.
5. If Jesus Called the First Disciples in Today’s Church…
6. What You Don’t Know
7. Strategy, Systems, People, Buildings or Vision?
8. Is it Time to Revisit Your Staffing and Structure?
9. What’s Your Next Step?
10. Whiteboard Session Notes

This top ten list is brought to you with the help of Google Analytics. It’s the easy, free way to track stats for your website.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of social networking tools available to your church? I mean, how can you prepare a Sunday morning message, update your Facebook status, write a thought-provoking blog, check all of your emails, and Tweet about the wreck you almost had because you were Tweeting and driving?

Meet Ben Forsberg and the SoChurch team.  SoChurch is creating products to simplify church communication. After surveying hundreds of church leaders, Forsberg and his team identified what practices contribute to ineffective church communication. Here’s a quick rundown:

• most churches communicate in one-way broadcasts- receivers do not have an opportunity to respond.
• there is a lack of integration between social networking tools.
• many leaders don’t know how to leverage social media and don’t have time to manage all the different channels.
• church leaders rarely use research-based practices or feedback mechanisms to evaluate their communication.
• community-style church websites become another place for members to check  and administrators to manage, rather than communicating via the tools their members already use.

To address these problems, SoChurch is developing a kind of “master dashboard,” where administrators can easily control the integration of multiple communication tools and change privacy settings. It looks like this:

Be sure to check SoChurch’s website for new products, and join in the conversation about what other technology you would like to see SoChurch integrate. Or, participate in their survey for church leaders.

__________

By the way, that’s me on the SoChurch advisory board. I hope to share more about what’s happening at SoChurch in the coming months. In the mean time, feel free to play around with their new intermediary site.

About four months ago, we set out to find a leader to become the executive director or “chief launch officer” of a new church planting network that West Ridge and several other great churches are launching. We talked with a number of folks about the role, but we ended up finding the person who we believe has been perfectly shaped for this position.

I’m very excited to introduce Mac Lake as the Chief Launch Officer of “The Launch Network”. You’ll eventually be able to read more about the organization at LaunchingChurches.com, but, honestly, Mac’s first job is to help us launch the network that will ultimately launch hundreds of churches across the world.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mac’s story, he’s currently the Development Pastor at Seacoast Church, a multi-campus church based in Charleston, South Carolina. Mac oversees leadership development with the Seacoast team. Prior to that, he was a church planter. He actually launched Carolina Forest Community Church on the exact same day that Brian started West Ridge. You can read more about Mac on his website, but, needless to say, we are excited that Mac comes with the perfect mix of church planting and leadership development experience needed for this new role.

West Ridge has helped plant over 50 churches through the years. We’re grateful for those stories, but we’re confident that if we can partner with some other great ministries like Oak Leaf Church, Lifepoint Church, The Summit Church, Freedom Church, Mosaic Church, Hillside Christian Church and other churches including possibly yours, we might be able to impact people’s lives across the country and the world. What would it be like to plant 1,000 new churches in the next 10 years?

Do I have your attention? Then consider partnering with us to launch a movement. Like I said, we don’t have a fancy website yet, but we’d still like to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form if you’re interested in learning more about The Launch Network. If you’re a church that wants to network with other leaders and help us plant 1,000 new churches, let us know. If you think you may be called to plant a church sometime in the future, then contact us.

In the mean time, welcome Mac to this new adventure. He’s ready to launch something big!

I had a couple lunch conversations last week with guys that have been doing student ministry for years — lots of years. Both of them shared a few simple strategies that I thought might interest those of you in the student ministry trenches.

Let me first introduce you to Bill Kagey. He’s the student ministry pastor over middle school at LifePoint Church in Tampa. LifePoint’s student ministry is amazing. Typically, if a church’s student ministry attendance is 10% or more of the overall attendance, I consider that to be very healthy. At LifePoint, they’re well over 20%.

I also had lunch with Tom Shefchunas, the middle school pastor at North Point Community Church. I’ve gotten to know Tom over the last several months because he’s in one of my current coaching networks. Great guy!

Here are a few things the guys shared that have led to success in their ministries:

• Bill encouraged churches to shift summer camps to the end of the summer. Instead of students going away for a great week of camp at the beginning of summer and then having a couple of months without any ministry connections, camps at the end of the summer become a launching pad for fall ministry. Rather than being the culmination of a year of ministry, they become the start to new momentum.
• Tom said North Point has gone a step further. They focus overnight experiences for students during the school year rather than the summer. Again, this breaks from tradition, but it has proven to help them connect far more students into ministry.
• Bill also said he’s careful about how he invests ministry dollars connected with camps. As an example, rather than buying every kid a camp t-shirt that’s really only significant for one week, he encouraged leaders to invest money in resources that will attract students all year long. LifePoint doesn’t charge more for camps, but they’ve purchased all kinds of equipment and games for their student ministry space using fees from camp registrations.
• Tom shared a great insight for ministries that are compelled to buy t-shirts. Rather than giving the t-shirts to students when they show up for camp, give them out at registration. For no extra money, the students become walking advertisements for your upcoming event. Of course, that’s much more effective if they’re wearing the t-shirts at school to promote something during the school year.

If you’re in student ministry, you may want to begin following these guys. They both offer practical advice for reaching students for Jesus.

What other free or near-free ideas do you have to help churches grow their student ministries?

For those of you don’t have the opportunity to join us for services at West Ridge Church, I have some big news to share. Last Sunday, Brian announced that we’re launching our newest campus in the West Paulding area. Here are the details:

• The new campus will meet at Poole Elementary School. That’s about a 20-minute drive west of the West Ridge Dallas campus.
• We already have a staff team in place. We’ve hired a campus pastor, worship pastor, part-time kid’s ministry director and a part-time administrative assistant. They’re ready to go.
• The teaching will be delivered by streaming video. Everything else including the worship, kid’s ministry and first impressions will be led by staff and volunteers at that campus.
• We’ll launch on September 12. That’s the 13th anniversary of West Ridge Church.
• That’ll be the first of five new campuses we are planning to launch in the region in five years.

By the way, just because we are jumping into multi-site doesn’t mean we’ve given up on church planting. In fact, we’re ratcheting that up. I’m going to have some big, BIG news to share related to church planting in the coming weeks. West Ridge has planted over 50 churches. We’re about ready to partner with many other churches to help launch hundreds more. Stay tuned.

If you do live in the Atlanta region and want to partner with us to launch this new campus, feel free to shoot Kay a message and let her know you’re ready to jump on board.

Our family moves into our new home next week. That’s pretty exciting for us. We’ve been renting a home for a number of months. We’ve been staring at blank white walls for too long. It’ll be good to have our own place again.

In the process of getting ready to move, I found a collection of business cards from my pre-ministry days. The stash included my business cards from all the local government positions I had before taking my job at Granger Community Church. (Hard to believe that was almost 13 years ago.) I pitched all those old business cards, but here’s a snapshot of my life before ministry:

I don’t have business cards from my ministry years. They’re pretty much obsolete. The last stack of business cards I had, I shipped to Chris Elrod. I’m sure he put them to good use.

Just thought I’d share a little highlight from my walk down memory lane.

Eric Geiger just contributed a new article over at MinistryStrategies.com. He addresses an issue that’s consistent with just about every church I walk into — churches “need” volunteers. Here’s what Eric at to share:

Typically pastors or staff persons are hired to minister to people. The number of children increases, so the solution is another staff person. The number of sick people is on the rise; therefore, someone is hired to visit people in the hospitals. The typical approach is both illogical and unbiblical. The view is illogical because a church will never be able to afford to hire the entire ministry away. The view is unbiblical because it violates the essential doctrines of the priesthood of believers and spiritual gifting.

Check out the rest of the article.