Jan

8

Looking forward to 2008 - Part 4 (of 4)

Post Category: Blog Posts, Church, Church Planting 

In this, my final post in this series, I’m going to share a few of the more practical next steps for us in the Church launch. We’ve got a huge job in front of us that is going to take a lot of time, money and resources. At times it’s overwhelming to think about all that needs to be done, but as the saying goes, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Here’s a couple of our next small steps towards accomplishing this goal.

Selling Our House
For some reason one of the first things people associate with this new change for us is the sale of our house. And while this is an important step it’s not as crucial towards the overall outcome as it seems. I’ve written previously about the opportunities afforded us by living in a flat world and one of those is the ability to conduct business from anywhere using the Internet. We’re not letting the sale of our house stop us from beginning to work on the church launch. At this point we’ve had it on the market but will be marketing it more agressively as summer approaches with the goal of finalizing the sale and moving during the early spring or summer months.

In the meantime I’ve re-established my web & graphic design freelance work to provide an income stream. We also have a number of conferences we are planning on going to over the summer (here and here) as well as churches we want to visit (like this one). Any work on our part can be done from almost anywhere providing we have a phone and Internet connection. Don’t get me wrong, we are still praying that God will sell our house but we trust that He will do it in His time.

Church Launch Prep
As mentioned above there is a lot of work to be done. However no matter how passionate I am about launching a new church my first and foremost responsibility is to my family. I love the Church and I’m excited to take on this challenge but I will not sacrifice my family on the altar of ministry. Because of that commitment my first responsibility has been to ensure that income keeps coming in and food is on the table. Thankfully God has provided graphic design work for me to pay the bills and continues to provide. In moving forward I know that God will meet all of our needs but He has also made me a steward of my time and my family.

Another important aspect of our preparation has been visiting other dynamic, life-giving churches, both locally and out of the area. We’ve seen some great children’s ministries, heard some memorable messages, and worshiped in some powerful worship services. All of our experiences are helping to shape what do and don’t want to do with our new church. It’s important to learn from both the good and the bad. We have a lot of great churches we still want to visit and will share more about them as we do.

Our next big step in our preparation is the creation of our church “Business Plan” (for lack of a better term). While I understand that a church is not a business there are some very important business principles that help to structure and run a successful church. Crafting a business plan will help us to set definitive goals and timelines and better determine the demographics of the area we’ll be ministering in. A business plan also forces us to think through critical issues that will help us define our vision and values.

We obviously have plenty of work and challenges ahead that I’ll share more about in future posts. Your prayers, encouragement and support are so very much appreciated. I look forward to sharing with you over the coming years about how great our God is and what awesome things He can accomplish through those with faith enough to step into the unknown!

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