Tim and I wrote a few books not too long ago sharing some of the strategies we learned that are helpful to growing churches. The first book has the strategic basics. The third book was probably my personal favorite because it reflects my heart for evangelism. But it’s the second book that seems to have the most legs for continuing to impact churches for the long haul.

The second book is all about empowering volunteers for ministry. It’s written with both staff leaders and volunteer leaders in mind. I guess every church is like NewSpring and Granger–we’re always hoping to connect more people in ministry. Because of that, Simply Strategic Volunteers continues to be the book I get asked about the most.

With that in mind, Tim and I want to share the love. We’ve worked things out with our publisher to offer bulk quantities of Simply Strategic Volunteers for leaders to equip their teams. This is a fun resource to read through with staff and volunteers because the chapters are only one or two pages at a shot. (In other words it’s a great toilet read.) Have your team read a handful of chapters. And then gather together and talk about how the strategy might be applied in your ministry setting.

If you’re looking for a sweet deal on 20 or more copies of the book, email me at "simplytony AT gmail DOT com."

Here are the notes from Perry’s main session at the church planter’s conference:

• "I still have no idea what I’m doing."
• Exodus 33
• Relook at your calling.
• "If you’re a pissed off youth pastor, don’t go start a church. If you’re a disgruntled staff member, don’t go start a church. You have to be called by God."
• "Church planting is not safe. It’s not easy. God always calls us to things that are unsafe. If you want to be safe, get out of ministry."
• Relook at your people.
• Make sure you have the right people on board. "God, if you’ve called me to do this, who have you called to do this with me."
• "If you are afraid to ask people for serious commitment, then you don’t need to lead your church."
• Relook at your vision.
• Exodus 33:13
• "If your vision is to be like someone else, that’s not a vision. That’s an admonition."
• Relook at your potential.
• Exodus 33:14-18
• The glory of God is not found in committees and voting.
• "If you’re preaching the Gospel, it can’t be watered down."
• "It’s only beginning. God can do more."
• Eph. 3:20 > God’s potential is unlimited. So, for his sake, don’t give up.

Perry is speaking at a church planter’s conference today at Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, Georgia. These are some thoughts he shared during his breakout session:

• The leader must champion the vision.
• God does not give visions to committees. God never gave a vision to a committee in the Bible.
• "The Internet is a place for cowards to hangout." They hide behind their blogs and their email addresses.
• The leader cannot please everyone.
• As leaders, there’s a deep desire in us to make everyone happy. You can’t please everyone.
• Just in case you’re wondering, "NewSpring will start a Christian school when Hell freezes over."
• Some people will ask, "When are you going to start a men’s ministry?" We do men’s ministry every Sunday. Four services. And where there are men, there are women. There’s women’s ministry too.
• Some people will ask, "When are we going to go deeper." You can go deeper right now. Open your Bible. There’s some deep stuff in there. Read it.
• Sometimes you just need to let people leave your church. The space shuttle, as an example, has to lose some of its parts in order to make it into orbit.
• You can’t please everyone on your staff either. Make decisions according your vision.
• Leaders must fully trust God.
• "If you’ve never had a sleepless night, you’re not really in ministry."
• "There’s a fine line between faith and stupidity."
• "If you know how to play the G, C and D chord on the guitar, you can play any country song ever written." (That’s true.)
• "There is more stress and anxiety in my life than there has ever been." Getting bigger doesn’t take that away. It increases.
• "Make sure you’re having that daily time with God. If you’re not getting that fresh word, it’s really hard to trust him."
• Leaders cannot do everything.
• The bigger your church gets, the less people are going to be able to interact with you.
• "I used to print my cell phone in the bulletin. That’s stupid. Don’t do that." You can’t solve everyone’s problem.
• "I have A.D.D. People come to me for counseling, and I’m looking at the birds. Look. Hummingbird. They know how to back up."
• Leaders are not that smart.
• "The worst thing that can happen to us is if we start to believe we’re good."
• As a church planter, read through the book of Nehemiah. It’s packed full of leadership principles. Read the Gospels. Hang out in Acts. Get in Scripture.
• Seek wisdom from others. I network with others. I blog. I learn from the other guys on the senior management team.
• I listen to people who have a heart for God. They have to love the church. They have to love me. They have to do it in that order.
• Create a leadership environment where people can be very honest with you. Behind closed doors, there has to be passionate debate. Outside the room, there has to be complete unity.

As a pastor, I want people to become Christ-followers. I want them to fall in love with God’s Word and experience the joy of gathering with other believers in both home groups and corporate worship, as well as the fulfillment of finding a place to serve in ministry.

But I face one big challenge. Every time Christians step inside a church, it can remove them from the place where they have the greatest impact for God’s Kingdom—the world. It’s sad, but I wonder if we’ve inadvertently designed our ministries to isolate Christians from the places where God really wants us to be…

For the rest of the article, visit Outreach Magazine.

My partner in crime, Tim Stevens, recently posted on a teaching he heard from Bill Hybels at Willow Creek Community Church. I just wanted to make sure you caught it, because I think it’s an issue every church in America needs to wrestle with. Essentially, what Tim shared (and something we had been talking about for quite some time while I was at Granger) was the role of the church in people’s spiritual development. The concern is that Christ-followers seem to grow too dependent on the church for their spiritual growth. Here’s what Tim had to share:

"The goal, Bill says (and I agree), is to slowly make believers
independent. We (as a church) should focus our attention on introducing
people to Christ, and then helping them grow to a certain point. After
that–they should feed themselves and focus on helping the church
introduce more people to Christ."

The challenge, of course, is to try to figure out how to balance teaching and equipping the believers without encouraging them to become dependent on the church for their spiritual growth. We should ultimately become dependent on God’s Word, the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the encouragement of fellow Christ-followers, etc. for our growth. How do we as the church accomplish that mission?

You can read the rest of Tim’s post here.

This week’s edition of Rick Warren’s Ministry ToolBox includes an article adapted from Simply Strategic Volunteers on the difference between empowerment and delegation. The premise of the article is that we can learn a lot about working with volunteers in our church if we study how Jesus modeled leadership with the twelve apostles. Among other things, Jesus:

• Prepared them for the challenges they would face by inviting them to
  hang out with him and learn from his teachings and interactions with
  others.
• Encouraged them to continue reaching more people by sharing the Good News and preparing others for ministry.
• Asked the apostles to provide care for the people they were trying to reach.

You can read the full article at Pastors.com.

(I’m going to have to get my friends at Saddleback a new picture. My hair is too short in that shot.)

Perry linked to the video below in his post earlier today. You have to check it out. The guy who shot the video attends NewSpring and has been trying to get his dad to go to church for years. His dad finally agreed to go. This video documents the first time he has stepped foot in a church in 20 years. As you watch the video, ask yourself the question are we ready for guests to show up at our church every weekend?

The question was prompted by John’s excellent post regarding Gap at Brand Autopsy. John cited three questions from Mavericks at Work (one of three books I’m currently reading). Here are the questions retooled for ministries. We should probably be asking ourselves:

1. Does my church provide such a unique experience and ministry to our community that it can’t be provided nearly as well by any other organization?

2. Has my church created a place to serve that’s so dynamic that most employees or volunteers would be hard-pressed to find a similar environment somewhere else?

3. Has my church forged a uniquely emotional (dare I say spiritual?) connection with guests that other organizations can’t replicate?

So, would anyone miss your church? Why?

The folks at Outreach Magazine just refreshed their web exclusives. You can catch my most recent article on the myths of growing churches featuring NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. After reviewing the article, you may want to share some other myths that you see.

Joe Schimmels, the lead pastor of Blue Sky Church in Loveland, Colorado was recently listening to George Barna speak. He relayed this:

"As I sat hearing him speak he said, ‘Our research shows that transformation does not occur in the church.’ In context, he was referring to all of our events, programs and activities."

What a challenge! In our desire to help people become fully-devoted followers of Christ, we tend to think we need to encourage people to experience a ministry program, retreat or class at the church, and yet research is showing those activities don’t lead to transformation. Barna is focusing his attention more on home church/group experiences. Again, in my mind, this suggests that relational connection must be the key ingredient. The problem, of course, is that encouraging people to step into those types of relationships is much harder than just inviting people to show up for an event at the church.

Is anyone else frustrated by realities like this? I desperately want people to experience life transformation. I want people to pursue Jesus and be radically committed to him. Yet, when we try to create experiences at the church to help people along that path, the research shows it’s not going to help. Argh! Frustrating!

Why can’t people be transformed using methods that work best for me? Life would be so much easier.