Category: Missional Church

Church Planting Manuals

Posted on December 28, 2007

Here are some recommended CP manuals on the nuts and bolts of planting.

First Steps

Gary Rohrmayer has planted tons of churches and wrote a helpful course called First Steps: Missional Church Planting. First Steps is strong on the nuts and bolts and guides the planter through six stages of the first year of missional church planting. These stages include:

  • Relating to God and Others
  • Networking and Gathering
  • Building a Launch Team
  • Designing Worship Services and Ministry Strategies
  • Launching Public Services
  • Establishing the New Community and its Ministries

Another one of its strengths is that it is principle, not model driven. So, it accommodates a variety of models and encourages contextualization. Though the course is launch driven, some of the templates for budgets, position descriptions, financial accountability, etc are helpful jumping off points. You can also purchase a membership at CoachNet that allows electronic access to the entire workbook and PDFs and take the course.

Redeemer Planting Manual

Tim Keller’s Redeemer Church Planting Manual is incredibly strong on missiology and philosophy of ministry. If you really want to know how to become lead missionary that cultivates a church of missionaries, follow Tim’s approach. At times, it is overwhelming (and I have background in Anthropology!), but there are a lot of riches to be found in this manual.

Church Planters Toolkit

Bob Logan’s Church Planters Toolkit is a standby that offers a lot of pracitcal helps and is used by the Evangelica Free Church. Logan has actually transformed some of his personal convictions about methodology and is now planting more organically. He co-wrote an expensive book on this with Neil Cole called Beyond Church Planting.

Dynamic Church Planting Handbook

Dynamic Church Planting Handbook is built around strong theological and pastoral foundations, but with modern methods. I found myself continually challenged to rely on the Holy Spirit, plant in spirtual health, and plant for the Glory of God when reading this manual. Some of the nuts and bolts were disappointing, however.

Acts 29 Coaches Training

Posted on December 18, 2007

January 28-31 I will be heading out to TEDS for Acts 29 Coaches Training and church planter assessment. I am excited about learning how to coach others in this incredibly challenging task of planting churches. A noteworthy resource made available to coaching candidates is Coachnet. Check it out.

And for an potential church planters reading this, there is a A29 bootcamp that week featuring Mark Driscoll, Ed Stetzer, Mark Dever and Darrin Patrick, and potentially D.A. Carson.

Christ and Culture (Sanneh)

Posted on December 14, 2007

I am increasingly influenced by Lamin Sanneh’s work on gospel and culture. In his new book, Disciples of All Nations he well frames the gospel and culture issue as it relates to nationalism:

How can Christianity maintain its commitment to culture, insofar as culture embodies faith in a concrete way, while avoiding the sort of cultural idolatry that fuses truth claims and exclusive national ideals? How is cultural commitment compatible with religious openness? The history of Christianity, it has to be admitted, demonstrates an uneven record in balancing cultural specificity and theological normativeness, and the field is littered with failed attempts at reconciling Christ and culture.

This is particularly apropros during the Xmas season, when so much of Christmas is associated with national-cultural values and practices, straying far from the faith and truth of the gospel. How do you retain theological normativeness within our culture while avoiding idolatry?