Though I’ve never planted a church, I’m frequently being contacted by guys who are considering that next step. If that’s you, I have an opportunity for you to consider. In January, Launch will offer church planter assessments. This is your chance to confirm whether or not you are wired up for planting.

Launch uses a two-step process of assessing potential planters. There’s an online assessment that scores an individual’s leadership, personality, strengths, evangelistic abilities and health of their marriage. Following the online assessment, potential planters and their wives attend an in-person assessment in Atlanta where they will meet with a counselor, be interviewed by an assessment team, interact with experienced church planters, face a battery of challenging exercises and develop a personal growth plan.

A team of assessors will provide honest feedback and insights into the individual’s growth plan. In the end, Launch assessors share their perspective on the calling on the potential planter’s life. Those who pass the assessment will be eligible to go through the Launch training process starting in February 2011.

If you believe God may be calling you to plant and you want this type of feedback, fill out the online application. For more information, email Mac Lake, the “Chief Launch Officer”.

Over the last six years, I’ve written four books. Three of them were written with a guy much smarter than I am. All of them involved a traditional publisher. Through that process I’ve made several good friendships with folks in the publishing industry. This isn’t about those friendships. This is about a growing frustration I have with a broken system.

The current book publishing system completely frustrates me.

• The author can’t initiate the process on his own. It typically involves engaging a literary agent to essentially pimp you and your writing services to publishers.
• Publishers are unwilling to tackle non-traditional projects on non-traditional topics because of the underlying fear they currently experience surrounding their ultimate demise.
• Once the publisher gets involved, the author begins to lose part of his voice as the publisher drives the content and branding of the project.
• Unless your name is Joel Osteen or Rick Warren or Andy Stanley or Max Lucado, then writing a book is very unlikely to profit you much more than the hourly wage of a Wal-Mart employee. It’s a lot of work for very little financial reward.
• The process of writing a book with a traditional publisher takes forever. If I started writing today, it’s very likely that you wouldn’t see the book on the shelves of Barnes & Noble until sometime in mid-2012. If your thoughts are time-sensitive, you’re out of luck.
• Traditional publishing requires lots of overhead expenses including agents, acquisition staff, editors, graphic designers, marketing directors and publishing executives. And, they are the middlemen who have the relationships with the printers, distributors and bookstores. Each of these people and entities grabs a piece of the pie leaving the author with a very small portion of the profit.
• In the current model, there’s no room for non-traditional formats. Books are expected to look a certain way and contain a certain amount of words. That creates barriers for those of us who communicate primarily through social media. My audience doesn’t show up at a conference to hear a keynote and then purchase a hardcover book. My audience is on Twitter and Facebook and very willing to share an idea if it’s presented in a format that can easily be forwarded to a friend.

With all of that in mind, I’ve been having some great conversations with Ben Stroup over the last several months. When our efforts to find a publisher for my most recent book project stalled, Ben and I began talking about doing something completely different. Since “we were on a break” with the publishers, we decided to start seeing other people. (Regrettably, only “Friends” fans will find the humor in that.)

We’re not waiting two years to get a book in your hands. In fact, it’ll likely be less than two months. (Ah, I love having agressive goals.) And, it’s very likely that instead of just one book being released in 2011, it’s going to be multiple books.

I’ve been wondering for several years if it’s possible to spread ideas and generate a platform without a book publisher. I’m tired of wondering. I’m ready to test the waters. My theory is that, without a publisher, I’ll be able to distribute my writing to more people and make more money than I would with a book publisher.

By the way, this little experiment has nothing to do with making money. Yes, I want to use this experiment to prove that a new process for distributing my writing will be profitable. Emily and I have decided, though, that we will be giving away 100% of the profits from this project. (More on that later.)

With that, I better get to work. The clock is ticking. My writing deadline is fast approaching. For the publishers who are reading, just remember…

We were on a break!

Over the last several days, I’ve been sharing my thoughts related to continuing research that shows big churches are getting bigger. You can see the links to previous posts in this series at the bottom of this article. Today, I’d like to address “The Reach Factor”.

I get to work with churches across the country on a regular basis. Within those churches, there are ministries that combine to form a church. Not every church has “The Reach Factor”. And, it’s not unusual for every ministry within a church to share “The Reach Factor”. Many times ministries and churches lean towards “The Keep Factor”. That’s a completely different approach to ministry.

When churches value keeping who they have over reaching people outside the church and outside the faith, their thinking, language and actions tend to look like this:

• They program for people who already attend the church.
• They create environments that assume only Christ-followers will be present.
• They use insider language that’s confusing to people new to the church.
• They assume any growth that happens will be initiated by a heart-change outside the church rather than one inside the church.
• They never stop ministries because that might offend someone inside the church.
• They are slow to do something new because it might offend someone inside the church.
• They think it’s a choice between “going deeper” and “reaching the lost” when it’s actually both.
• They choose personal preferences over potential ministry impact.
• They make decisions based on who they’ll keep rather than who they’ll reach.

There are a couple of ways to know whether or not your ministry has “The Reach Factor” in play. One way to think about it is to pretend someone is just hired to fill a student pastor (or any other ministry role) at your church. If one of the key objectives in their first days on the job is to try to get people who have left the church to return, that’s a good sign your church or ministry is more about “The Keep Factor”.

Also, when I’m working with churches, I have them go through this exercise. I have them list every single ministry environment at their church. Then create two columns by that list. One column is called “Reach” and the other column is called “Keep”. They go through their entire ministry list and determine if it’s more to “Reach” people outside the church or “Keep” people who already attend the church. I’ve noticed that churches that aren’t growing tend to have an overabundance of “Keep” ministries. Healthy churches need to have “Keep” ministries to help people take their next steps toward Christ, but it’s not healthy when almost every ministry is a “Keep” ministry.

Oh, and one more test… How you emotionally react to this post is probably also a good sign of whether or not you have “The Reach Factor”.

From your experience, what are some other indicators that a church is more focused on reaching people than keeping people? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

__________

Previous posts in this series:

• Why Big Churches Keep Getting Bigger
• The Adaptability Factor
• The Leadership Factor

If you’re reading my content through an RSS feed and haven’t been to the site recently, you may be interested in checking out some of the ministry resources that are available. Here are the folks that are making things happen at TonyMorganLive.com this month:

faithHighway – provides total marketing solutions to attract visitors to churches

Integrity Music – check out their new digital magazine that highlights worship albums available for Christmas gifts

dc – design and communication solutions that create raving fans, inspire people, and honor Christ

Clover – provides websites for growing churches and ministries

Orange – offering free curriculum that will revolutionize your children and student ministry

Outreach Events – specializes in dynamic, outreach-oriented events with people like Scott Rigsby that create opportunities for sharing faith

Shelby Systems – supplies the information technology tools needed to help ministries and organizations around the world thrive

StreamingChurch.tv – provides everything you need to broadcast your services live

Want to get the word out about your business or event? I only have a couple of advertising spots open. If you are interested, email me for more details. I’d love to have you join our team!

This morning I attended a training event hosted by Launch at West Ridge Church. Casey Graham helped us brainstorm a list of why churches are broke. Here’s the list Casey and the crowd of church leaders developed:

1. People aren’t tithing.
2. Pastors are afraid to teach on money, and, therefore, most people are uninformed of biblical stewardship principles.
3. Assuming growth will occur. (Casey shared that Church of the Highlands only budgets based on 90% of what they brought in the previous year.)
4. Churches have taken on too much debt.
5. Churches have budgets, but there is unwise spending and lack of controls.
6. Money is diluted and going in too many directions because of overprogramming.
7. People don’t make the connection between giving and eternal impact.
8. Leaders think financial issues will just go away someday.
9. Churches don’t plan their offering times.
10. There is no one who is thinking intentionally about increasing giving at churches.

What would you add to the list?

In case you missed it, the Grammy nominations came out this week. Here are my favorite songs for the “Best Gospel Song” nominees. The first video is “Beautiful Things” by Gungor:

The second video is Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman singing “Our God” from the Passion Awakening album.

Which song will win? What song do you wish was nominated? And, more important, why don’t Gospel artists make decent music videos for their songs?

I’m so not a fan of Christmas music, but it at least becomes bearable when it’s coming from Coldplay. Watch their new video for “Christmas Lights”:

Here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to download the song.

Our team at the Vanderbloemen Search Group has been retained to assist McKinney Memorial Bible Church of Fort Worth, TX in finding their new Executive Pastor.

McKinney’s trademark has been its strong biblical and relevant teaching coupled with a missional mindset that is relentlessly committed to serving the community through partnerships. As a result, McKinney has experienced strong and steady growth over the past 20 years and has experienced tremendous growth with new young families coming to the church. With Chris Freeland, a new and dynamic young Senior Pastor ready to take the reins, McKinney is poised to expand and deepen its ministry to Fort Worth and the world in the coming years.

McKinney is looking for a high capacity Executive Pastor to help take the church to the next level. A proven track record of leadership development, implementation of vision, attention to detail while never losing sight of the big picture and work in a growing multi-staffed environment is a must. Skills in project management, team-building and financial experience are also highly desired in the new Executive Pastor.

Interested applicants can upload their resume to our secure site or email William Vanderbloemen directly. All correspondence is held in strict confidence.

I partner with The Vanderbloemen Search Group, a retained executive search firm, to help churches find their key staff. I’m frequently helping large, fast-growing churches with a focus on reaching the unchurched. If your church needs assistance in this sort of search, feel free to contact me.

I just ran through the numbers for November, and the post on staffing strategy must have caught your attention. Here are the top ten posts that generated the most traffic in order of popularity:

1. 10 Keys to a Smart Staffing Strategy
2. Why Big Churches Keep Getting Bigger
3. Bromance Dream (Way to go James and Brad!)
4. Warning Signs that Your Legacy is at Risk
5. New Search for Creative Arts Pastor
6. Do you need a second chance?
7. Parenting Teenagers
8. Oak Leaf Church to Become Campus of West Ridge
9. What makes Steve Jobs unique?
10. A Missional and Attractional Christmas

In case you’re curious, one year ago the post that was grabbing the most attention was about West Ridge giving away money.