Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Orlando, FL with six other church church planters from the great state of Kentucky to the Exponential conference (or the National New Church Conference). It was the most encouraging week I have experienced since the start of our plans to plant Horizon. Not only did I get to share stories with other church planters, but I was reminded of why I am so passionate about planting this church; to see people who are lost in this crazy world come to know a God who loves them.

More than just the basics of encouragement I was also challenged by the ideas presented. You see, in many my mindset towards being a church planter has been this: “When Horizon ceases to be a church plant, I will cease to be a church planter.” And while my plans are to stay with Horizon long after it ceases to be a church plant, I learned this week that I can NEVER cease to be a church planter. Because the second I get comfortable with my situation, and the church I helped to plant, and stop focusing on creating more churches to do just what Horizon will be doing, then that’s the second that the devil wins.

Planting churches is not about being a part of something new, exciting, and inspiring (though it is all of those things). It’s about filling a gap and meeting a need that the people of this world have in one specific geographic region. And if we as ministers, pastors, and Christ followers ever stop trying to create that for more people, then we have blown the whole point for our existence. We exist to spread the Gospel message to the world.

Here’s a few questions directed straight at pastors, ministers, and church leaders that I think we all ought to consider: What is your church doing to ensure that real churches exist in every corner of this nation? How are you actively involved the process of church multiplication?

For about a month I have been singing the praises of the book Simple Church and today I found another person who is as struck by the revolutionary ideas presented in it as I was. His name is Tony Morgan and he is on staff at New Spring Church in Anderson, SC. Here’s a link to his post. I like his bulleted points from the book. I hope it encourages you to give it a read.

Ok, this is just a short one this morning. I was driving to Madison, IN yesterday and along the way somewhere in Nowheresville, KY along highway 42 there was a church with this message on their marquee:

“Walmart isn’t the only saving place”

I think we should just stop allowing American churches to have marquee signs. Obviously, some people don’t know how to use them.

As I read my new book, Simple Church I have become more and more aware of intentionally plotting out the process through which we will be encouraging people to travel as a church when Horizon launches in September. What we came up with is the diagram on the right, and we have also noted how these levels fit into our mission. What surprised me the most is how new of a concept this was for myself and my team. I mean we talked about a process and in our minds the process was get people to come to church and strengthen their relationship with God, but then we realized that we had to be more specific about our process. So we plotted out this course of action for that will be stressed to every member or regular attender at Horizon.

I have began to think that more and more people walk into churches excited and ready to run the race, but they have no idea what direction to run when they actually get involved. Too often, I believe that we as a church downplay spiritual growth and maturity. We preach that people should grow at their own pace and get to the next level we they are ready, and while I agree with that in some ways I think that we need to constantly have the defined process at the forefront of our church member’s minds so they can concentrate on where they are going and what they need to do to get there.

I’m not saying our process at Horizon is perfect or the standard by any means, and this process may need to be changed or tweaked as we grow and understand more about our church. But, I’m glad we decided to define it for our church members. I would encourage every church leader to ask themselves these questions because I believe it will revolutionize the way that your church develops disciples.

Does your church have a defined process? How does that process fit into the church’s mission? What can we do to make our process more tangible for our members?

This morning I was reading the swerve blog when one of the questions on their “10 questions” series caught my eye. It said this to church leaders:

“Is our vision so big that we obviously can’t accomplish it without God?” -Craig Groeschel

This statement really got me thinking about something my dad asked me this past weekend. We were sitting at a local restaurant having dinner and amidst normal conversation about Horizon’s upcoming launch he asked, “Do you have any goals or expectation about how many people you will have over a certain time line?” And as I started to give him the normal answer of, “we really have no idea,” I just blurted out what I felt God could do. I told him that I think we can launch the church in September with twice as many people as we have now, and that we expect to reach ten times that amount over the first two years.

As many people would have my dad responded, “Isn’t that a little too ambitious?” And my only response was YES! It is too ambitious for me! But it’s not to ambitious for God! If these last 6 months of planning and preparing have taught me anything it is this. My talents, my abilities, my connections, my knowledge, and my courage have NOTHING to do with the success of this church. It doesn’t depend on any person withing the organization. It depends only on God, and for that reason I will continue to plan for and expect God to do things that I perceive to be impossible.

Maybe we should spend more time planning for God’s power to move within our lives, and our churches and less time planning for what we think we can accomplish alone.

Last week my wife and I moved all of our stuff out of our beautiful home into a 10′ X 20′ storage facility until we make the final move to NKY this summer. We moved ourselves into the home of our good friends George and Mary Yokley who have gone out of their way to accommodate us for a few months until our relocation. There’s a lot of cool things that have come out of us living with the Yokely’s, but to me the coolest thing is that they own a Bowflex. If you don’t know what a Bowflex is then you need to get out from underneath your rock more often, but in short it is a revolutionary workout machine that can transform your body in just 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week! I know, it’s exciting stuff.

As we awaited our move into their home I found myself giddy with excitement to use the Bowflex to rejuvenate my once sculpted and athletic body to its former glory. I would constantly say to Jenna, “When I can use the Bowflex, things will be different and I will make it happen. I’ll finally stick with a regular exercise routine.” It didn’t matter than I have failed to stick to a workout routine since we have been married. The Bowflex was going to make things different.

Then, the other day we were discussing Horizon stuff and I uttered these words. “I can’t wait until we launch Horizon. Things will be different than they ever have been, and God will make it happen!” While I believe every word of what I said, and I believe that God is currently and will in the future do GREAT things through our work at Horizon I realized that we have to walk a fine line with this thinking.

We can’t present this church to people as a Bowflex. We can’t tell them that this church will solve all of their problems or revolutionize their commitment to God and the Bible. I REALLY think that this church will be able to help people do this in ways they couldn’t before, but no church is a Bowflex. No matter what church you attend, or what denomination you ascribe to God is still God, and our inability to commit to Him will stare us in the face no matter where we go.

Even though I believe Horizon will be a revolutionary kind of church that is more accepting, active, and committed to God than your average church, attending our services just because we are fresh and new will not be a magic potion to cure commitment issues with God. We have to be the ones to make it happen. We can’t expect a church to do it for us. No church is a Bowflex!

FYI - I have been on the Bowflex EVERY DAY since our move to the Yokley’s. Boo Yah!