My second conversation this week was with a guy who is planting a cool new church in Nashville. He is part of the denomination I mentioned in the previous post, and he was a great help to me. He answered questions about his church, shared his experiences with the denomination and the church planting coach that I had spoken to earlier, and offered to help us out anytime we needed it. He's a great guy who gave us alot of peace about joining a denomination instead of being non-denominational and I'm looking forward to getting to know him.
Later, I had a long conversation with a guy who had earlier expressed an interest in being part of our launch staff. Although this dude and I haven't talked extensively in forever, I would be honored to have him join us. He and I were roommates in college and he was in my wedding. I really had hoped that he would want to join our staff, and then be our first supported church planter when we hit the 3-year mark of our church.
To make a long story short, this friend of mine shared that he had been praying about the possibility of joining us, but that he felt led by God to do a "replant" of an existing church. I have heard about this concept, but I didn't know anything about it. My buddy told me that it basically involves stepping into an existing "dead/dying church" situation and removing the people who are left for an extended period of time (there are usually about 20 or so peeps remaining). Then, you "replant" a church in the existing building, and as your church gets on its feet (in 6 months to a year) you allow the "old" members to reintegrate, if they so choose, under a new membership covenant.
This may be a great new idea for helping a dying church to become vibrant again. Not much stays the same, except the location and the building, but at least the "old members" get a chance to be part of the solution of creating a new place for people to meet Christ. I'm sure there are members of dying churches all over our country who'd love to get involved in a new plant, but they have difficulty leaving their family and friends to do so. This may give them that opportunity!
Church restarts sound like a lot of work for the "replanter" and it remains to be seen how well they will work out in the future. It's not for Emily and me, but I wish my friend the best!
Finally, I have an important phone interview with a church planting network guy on Tuesday. I am in the appliation process with this network; being part of it would give Emily and me a solid group of dynamic church planters who would serve as advisors, peers, and co-workers in the planting process. We are excited about the possibilities of being part of this group. They have a rigorous application and assessment process, but if God wants us to join them, he'll work it out!
Well, patience has been the name of the game in our church planting journey this week... Neal McGlohon's words of wisdom are not forgotten: "Spend this time waiting on God and journaling."
God has been working out all kinds of stuff for our future church plant behind the scenes while I've been touring New England with Emily and her parents. Wow. God's awesome!
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