Many of us have heard sermons or know that church outreach is very important to the health of a church and individual believers. The problem is that most of us don't even know where to get started. It is one thing to hear the pastor say we need to "evangelize" but it is quite another thing for us to translate that into actions other than knocking on doors, passing out tracts, or buying a tent and holding evangelistic meetings across the country. Most of those things are beyond our comfort zone or ability to do, so I thought I would do a post on church outreach ideas that neither cost any money, are not a program, and where anyone at any level of the Christian life can be a part of. Begin By Facing your Fear Blair Radney, our personal evangelism contributing author has already done a great article on dealing with your fear  in evangelism. I have found that focusing on 1 John 4:4 is a great way to overcome the fear of sharing your faith with someone else and also stir yourself up to… [more]

Funding for church planting is a subject that many church planters wrestle with as they are starting out with their new church plant. Having successfully planted 2 churches in my life and resurrecting a 3rd church, I have a little experience on this subject. Recently I read a question by a prospective church planter about how to juggle priorities when being a bi-vocational church planter. He was wondering how he could manage his job, family priorities, and a church plant. My reaction to the question surprised even myself. Here is what I said. Derek, you bring up a great question. Personally I am not a great fan of the bi-vocational model. I think we have taken Paul's example of tentmaking and made it into a doctrine when it was never meant to be so. Paul had other avenues of support besides tentmaking. The bi-vocational model caused great pain and lasting damage to me personally and my family. Now I totally understand that the choice was mine, thus the responsibility is mine. I… [more]

One of the great advantages of church planting (particularly if you are going independent) is that you get to re-write the rules. I don't mean you can be unbiblical, but what I'm saying is that there is a whole bunch of stuff that is either grey or the bible is just silent on that issue. Sometimes re-writing the rules can lead to getting back to being biblical in some cases too. As I pray, read, dream, plan and strategies about church planting (which I'm just about to do) I been thinking heavily about all things leadership. What is biblical leadership? What is best practice whilst remaining within a biblical framework? What will work in 2013? Should leaders be paid, should leaders tent make etc? So that being the introduction I ask the question : Why Do Evangelists Tent Make As Pastors? This post is really about the 'Five-Fold Ministry' that the Apostle Paul wrote about in Ephesians 4:11-12. I originally wrote about this at my personal blog 'Walk Like Enoch' a few months back and g… [more]

To Tent Make or not to Tent Make Well I guess, it’s not the question Shakespeare asked, but it is the question I’m asking. You see, in a few weeks I officially finish my current position, in which I’ve had the privilege in sharing Jesus with young people full time for a number of years. I’ve also seen the transformation of so many as I’ve partnered with God to bring Heaven to Earth and see the miraculous on a regular basis and I’ve had the bonus of getting paid to do it. So basically the question is (well the one I need to answer) : As I plant a new church in a new city, how do I feed my family and keep a roof over all of our heads? You see, no one goes to the church we are about to be the pastors of (yet)! Don’t feel sorry for us. We want to plant a church and we are choosing to do so. Why? Well stats show that new churches are so much better at reaching the lost than more established ones and I’ve got a major heart for the lost, so we've chosen to do this. … [more]

22 years ago I started  my first church in Gresham Oregon. I made many mistakes, and didn't follow all the rules, but in the end God was faithful to raise up a church that was not there before. In my ministry, I have planted 2 churches and resurrected one church that basically was an empty building. Just this last weekend I met another successful church planter named Steve Sjogren. He started the Cincinnati Vineyard Christian Fellowship which ended up becoming a church of 6,000 people. We hit it off instantly, partially because of our mutual love for church planting. It is because of this meeting and because we have started a church planting section of this website, that I decided to write a post on how to plant a church. 6 Steps To Starting A Church. In all honesty, there is no finite number of steps to start a church. I used the number 6 because of my warped sense of humor. There is a competing website that comes here all the time and gets ideas from us. When we started the chur… [more]

This might sound crazy, but I'm starting a dead church. I recently wrote a blog post titled 'why the church must die'. In that post I reasoned that too many churches spend most of their resources (time, energy and money) on themselves, often with the goal of surviving. Meetings are called, strategies are set, they pray and fast with the agenda, 'how are we going to survive another year?' Jesus said "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" - Luke 9:24. The common theme of 'dying to self' is what I'm talking about here. I hear lots about it in churches and small groups and conferences and blogs and podcasts ......... you get the point. What I don't hear a lot about, is churches dying to themselves. Actually, I don't recall ever hearing about it. There's lots about us, as individuals, dying to self but not much about us, the organisation, dying to self. The church needs to live in resurrection power! The church needs to start … [more]

Why Start A New Church? 10 years ago on a ridiculously hot, Sydney summers day, at a youth event called Soul Survivor, I sat on the edge of my seat, listening intently to what I was hearing. You see, I had just had a massive turn around in my life. I was an atheist and now ..... not. I had come to an intellectual decision, after 3 years of study that God was real and the Bible was true. So I gave my life to Jesus and the rest, as they say, is history. I was so new to this whole thing and so aware of how God, was what I was looking for all those years. Because of all this, I was just so pumped to share the gospel with anyone who would half listen. I knew people needed Jesus and the cross was the only way to receive forgiveness and eternal life. So at this event, Mike Frost (a little less known back then) was speaking and he said words to the effect that 85% of people come to know Jesus through new churches. He went on to talk about church planting. I had never heard of it, ye… [more]

Many of you may not know but I have planted 2 churches in my life. I started one at age 28 in a warehouse in Gresham Oregon. After raising it up to be a self supporting church I moved on to Pioche Nevada where I took the reigns of a struggling church in a very small town. Later I started a church in Ely Nevada and grew that church to over 60 people in a town of 5000. I love church planters and have a real heart to see more people step out and start churches. Statistically it has been proven that new churches win more people to Jesus than established churches. There is a life in a new church that is contagious. So when I read this article at the Christian Post it caused me to want to share with you just a few nuggets out of the article about church planting. What does a church planter look like? In the article in the Christian post, the author Jeff Schapiro is himself a church planter. He does an interview with a guy who is a church planting guru called Charles Hill. In that interview… [more]