Church Planting Q&A - Aubrey M. Malphurs, James Womack, Michael Pocockand Rod Macllvai

you are listening to dallas theological seminaries chapel podcast thank you let me introduce our speakers this week in our panel actually want to say panel we're going to ask a question or two and then we're going to open it up to you and let you ask questions and you can see our mics on either side and that's what we're really after we want to know what your questions are and we'll probably stay around just a few minutes afterwards if you want to speak to any of our chapel speakers for this week James Womack is on my right and James spoke on Tuesday and Rob McIlvain is next to him and I've asked Mike Pocock to sub in for John Bryson John had to go back to Memphis it's called back some kind of family issue so we pulled in Mike Pocock Michael thank you so much for being here let me begin with the question suppose someone has been sitting out here this week and they say I think I'm interested in church planting I'm sensing a call whatever that term means how would you advise me in terms of where I would go from here what would be my next move what would be the next series of moves rod why don't you jump in well there are a number of church planting organizations that are out there right now and those church planting organizations these days are doing a really good job of providing testing materials to people who think they might want to plant a church and some of those organizations are Kaleo they're out in California the what Bob Raleigh is with the Evangelical Free Church there but there's some really good organizations out there and I think it's really helpful to plant with an organization if you can because the organization can provide a lot of resources a lot of materials a lot of expertise from people who have done it before these days you know there's not just one kind of church to plant there are many different kinds of churches out there and so you may feel like you've got a desire to plant one of a church but you get around somebody who's got an expertise in different different sorts of churches and you can get ideas about how to plant a niche church that's really relevant to to your needs but one of the best things that these guys do is they do testing and the testing really helps to refine that call because if I have a passion for church planting and I take a test and that test suggests that I'm not the pioneer that I thought I was maybe I could be part of a team with a guy who is a pioneer and that can really empower me to make the best use of my gifts I mean a lot of guys have got a passion for church planning they're not pioneers and entrepreneurs but they still make outstanding church planners when they're part of a team yeah thanks what we're going to do is I'm going to continue to ask questions and as I see you if you move to the mic and I know that you'll have a question so I'll continue to ask until that takes place in terms of going it alone parachuting into a situation in particular culture some fellows have done it that way others have come alongside a church and found a church that will sponsor them and work with them sometimes they'll bring them on staff maybe for a year or two and cultivate them and develop them and encourage them and train them and then back them as they go out into the community which one of those two would you favor and what are the advantages of either I think that both options are there and available for church planting I concur with my brother said as far as being assessed and going to an organization to be assessed upon people who are doing church planting I would also add to what he said is to really stay the different models of church planting which leads into this question if you go in and you just parachute into a community and you go but as an individual or you go as a team now I really would recommend going as a team because church planting is is difficult to ministry is difficult and doing ministry as a long Ranger is an old paradigm and so a biblical paradigm Ecclesiastes for two are better than one they have a greater return for their labor y'all know rest that passage I think it's important to plant as a team and then go and be part of a team to where you fit and you bring a unique gift set as part of that team whether you're behind the scenes person you're a technology person you're discipleship person you're an evangelistic person we're going to become part of a team having a unique part in place on that team I would also recommend if you're fresh out of seminary or hadn't had a lot of ministry experience I would recommend partnering on staff with another church if possible for a year a year and a half that would be an intentional year of learning learning about doing ministry so you can have great Bible knowledge but you need biblical wisdom to start a church and do ministry so I would encourage someone to go and be mentored be discipled be encouraged there are some groups out there like Fellowship Associates Little Rock Arkansas who bring guys in for a year pay them a small small salary but offering them a lifetime of training and investment in doing leadership putting together your plan doing your demographics and things like that and I would add to that I planted a church my first church I planted was it was very frustrating very difficult I had been in a parachurch ministry for 10 years and I thought I've been in parish ministry I can plant a church no problem and I got into that situation and there's a lot that I did not know and so I pull back regrouped got mentored by Bill counts at Fellowship Bible Church of Park Cities at the time and that's what I needed to go back out and plant a church in a way that was much more informed so I think you're coming to it that really good mentioning Bill counts just in our church planning class I just met dr. Rodney or actually had on his list of people who really mentored him at the beginning of his ministry while he was still here in Dallas studying at the end of the 80s and early 90s was bill counts and so you do find I think while you're in seminary that you if you can get to know local pastors who have a vision for their community or for multiplying churches you know to know them well while your students really really helps I think in my case I was going to Venezuela to start church just later on - to teach in a seminary and while in seminary I pastored a little church that was manageable it'd be like a startup some people wouldn't even have called it a church it was two storefronts on the south side of Chicago and it had about 35 people that were meeting but what that did was give me a manageable opportunity I think they could pay me enough to pay my rent that was all it was and but what I learned was I learned Latin American people there in particular and I was going to Venezuela in any case my wife and I so that it was manageable and yet all the issues of family life of worship of teaching and preaching all came up in that so that when I got to Venezuela and start a little bit more on my own that you know that background with all of us challenges and successes really helped I was told by one of my professors because I actually got got to think at the end of seminary maybe I shouldn't go anywhere else maybe I shouldn't go to Venezuela to stick with this church these these couple of storefronts here but a professor said to me Mike I'll tell you the history of storefront churches I don't care how good a preacher you are 20 years from now that's going to be two storefronts so whatever you thought God wanted you to do before you got here go on ahead and do it so I did but those people in that church we had really bonded during those three years and they sustained us and helped us all the time that we're in Venezuela and finally another fella came along named mark job and mark Jobe then took that little little two storefronts and they have about 5,500 people in 13 satellite churches in Chicago today and he's the kind of person who knows how to develop other workers so everybody who is pastoring one of the churches there is a sort of Center Church have started every one of those was developed in the context of a relationship with that with mark job so I think you know getting somehow another getting together with a leader who has a passion to multiply and can develop you and show you how to do it that's really key don't necessarily try to be a lone wolf I think that I had not even thought about whether I wanted to work alone or not I just didn't know enough about the whole project to do that never took a course in church planting or anything but I got two single women to work with my wife and I in Valencia Venezuela and all of my stereotypes about why I wouldn't want to work with a single woman were all swept away these were grand women and together we got something going that really was a blessing so I firmly believe in church planning teams not too big but with cohesion and power one also mentioned that this next semester well we have two church planting courses here one with more of the missional international emphasis and then we have in the PM department one that I teach with a little bit more of a local emphasis and we're offering ours in the spring and missions are you offering church planting the spring okay and this going on right now feel free to come sit in I would think also a number of pastors around town are very interested and are taking time out lunch breaks to work together with students to talk more about that if you're interested in that touch bases with me and I can tell you who they are yes sometimes church planning can be seen as a competitive with churches that are already established in certain areas what steps are you taking to ensure that you're working with and not against fellow churches I just start off with it number one I might go sit down with them and visit with them take them for lunch take them for coffee and tell them that you feel God is leading you into that area and that you're not there to compete or to take their people some have even gone so far as if people have left the church to come to their planet church of saying now look we want you to go back and talk with that pastor and make sure that he understands that we're not taking you away that this is your choice and so some have chosen to go about it that way when we plan a Grace Community Church in in 1995 it was a fairly churched area and and yet the people that were with me and planning the church told me that that there were no churches it had a thriving small group ministry and no churches that were doing active discipleship now whether that was true or not that's that that was the research that they had done as I was becoming involved with them and so we had a particular niche in the community that was that was really unique and when we started with with 5 to 7 small groups and everybody in our church work was was in a small group that caused a lot of buzz around around our community and people saw what we were doing as as a niche that was different than what they were doing when we switched into the missional direction it was clear that the churches were not doing missional ministry in our area and so our idea was to equip those churches to do missional ministry if we had an area of expertise we wanted to help them in that area so that it was clear that not only were we not competing but we were trying to equip other churches in the area to do things that we had found to be very successful and that that gave us a tremendous amount of goodwill and continues to give us a tremendous amount of goodwill within the city we've started a celbrate recovery in another Church we're starting our second celebrate recovery in another Church we started in apples of gold ministry for women in a church we're doing that in another church as well and the idea is that if we're doing something that's successful and it works and other churches hear about it we want to we want help equip them even if that means we don't get additional members and so as I mentioned on Wednesday our buildings paid off God has really blessed us in many ways so we kind of feel like we want to mission lead riveted within the community and help people who who need help not thinking about our numbers but thinking about how we can have spiritual influence I would add to that that it's not just competitive in the church plants its competitive among the stablished churches as well and depend upon the people you're dealing with that elements going to be present but the issue is what are your what are your values what's your character and do you how do you how do you deal with that so you're going to have people who come to your church say well from such-and-such Church and then how do you deal with that how do you interact with that person how do you interact with someone who comes from a friend of yours Church and now they're coming part of your church what are your next steps on that so I think being intentional about your communication been intentional about connecting with the other pastors in the community but the element of competitiveness among churches is not a church planting issue it's just a human nature issue and so as long as Romans 7 is true we have this thing called the flesh you're going to have competition out there the people who perceive it as such but then you be careful to make sure that you're not promoting that and propagating that you know we say in fishing that you you can't beat local information you know the best thing you can do when you pull up to a river is to go talk to people they're already there and see what they've been doing and what's been working for them on the other hand those same people would probably not appreciate it if you walk right up alongside of them because you saw them catch a fish and and start casting you know that'd be crowding them out there's a decent space to be apart from from them and I think this goes is very true church establishment and it answers the question of this matter of is there competition if you do is our brother mentioned you go into a community and talk to who's already there you know which churches are there go talk to them ask them what they think is the most unreached area ask who they don't seem to be reaching and you're going to find that those conversations establish a bond between you and them they're always going to say in the future you know that guy was a pretty decent guy he came and talked to him before he started he didn't just start up down the block without it you know sort of giving the impression that what they were doing just didn't count that what you are doing is the true thing and the real thing that really bothers people and you don't want enemies in that community you need friends and allies so talking to people helps when team my wife and I worked with team from for some 16 years and I was on a team to go to Italy to establish whether or not northern Italy needed a mission like ours and we talked to Pentecostals Brethren and Baptists and also established missionaries from interdenominational groups and we spent several weeks just talking to every one of them and finding out what do you think is the most unreached and needy area of Italy well they were able to point the area out which is where team is today but most importantly all of those groups are like our allies they all feel good about us and that really helps because those same churches from other parts of Italy will send somebody to you that move to your city and say you know I need someone I need a church that I can relate my people to I got somebody who just came to know Christ and they need help like Marc jobs from Chicago called me up on his way to into the office the other day and said Mike I've got a couple here that work with Univision and they came to know Christ up here in Chicago they developed beautifully but I want to be sure that they are plugged into a good Bible preaching church down there so could you just give them a call and talk to them and see what's happening and I got in touch with them and lo and behold they're part of Fellowship Bible Church I've been here in North Dallas they've already found it it's not far from their home well that's easy to do and the Bible Belt to find a good place not so hard not so easy in other places but relating to other leaders really will help then of a church plant for a little over a year I didn't plant the church Brian Bellflower who's a graduate of Dallas seminary planted it graduated in 2002 and the church was formally launched a little over a year ago up McKenney Frisco area and to your point about the personality types he certainly fits that and I'm not saying anything that he and I haven't talked about or that he wouldn't say himself he's an entrepreneur he's amazing in terms of his creativity in terms of breaking new ground all of those kinds of things but as he has said and I would say it's been a tough year and even the preview services were fairly tough as well his goal was to target D churched and unchurched people and it's very missional in terms of his design his intent the thing that's surprising even if with that intent is the mindset of people who come so there is some success in connecting with those people but it's almost like it's a post Church culture and I'm wondering as a question how pervasive you think that is so as an example of a post Church culture D Church Dunn Church you have somebody come and then they don't come for another two weeks or another three weeks and you call them let's say they came five weeks later six weeks later and very irregular so you call them because in your mindset that is inconsistent attendance it's nothing pejorative here I'm just being descriptive from their perspective the fact that they came once every five weeks or every six weeks is evidence of huge commitment on their part so you know one of the things that we wrestle with me more vicariously Bryan directly is just the whole frame framework the mindset and I'm wondering how that's challenging churches today and maybe I can take back some encouragement to Bryan that's a great question dr. McLaughlin I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna read a text to you good morning how is your soul how are you doing spiritually praying the best for you but need your help call me and so that was a note to a person who is a member of our church part of our church but has only been there once in six weeks here's the response soul equal great exclamation point spiritually equal great and then they go into some physical illness that they've been having so their conclusion that their soul is doing great and they're doing great spiritually but have only been to church the church family once in six weeks and I think that's part part and parcel to where we are in our course today I must be with someone on yesterday and one of their team members called an accident their volunteer schedule because it interferes with their tea time on Sundays twice a month smile at me and I think that's the reality of the milieu that we're dealing with and I think when you're reaching people who have not grown up in traditional Church and people who are just coming to Christ today their church attendance patterns are much different from a historical persons a historical Christians Church patterns so what I'm learning is that people consider normal church attendance now two or three times a month and that's considered normal and then they don't see any problem with not showing up or calling somebody if they're not showing up or staying connected so I think that's the new reality and I think we have to adjust to it and adjust our assimilation systems and adjust our connection systems because I think that's the part of the course now and I might add I think it's also good to adjust maybe our discipleship expectations because one of the things I've found is that when I would teach on the value of corporate worship that I would have people who would be very surprised at that and and you know I would I've done this on a number of occasions taught about corporate worship as a discipleship value why do you do corporate worship and I would go back to the that you know early on it was the Sabbath which was Friday night to Saturday night why did they what do they mean on Sunday was it a cost to meet on Sunday well that was a workday that was our Monday if I'm getting right and why would they do that why would the writer of Hebrews said don't forsake the assembling together as is the habit of some and when I would when I would disciple people on the value of corporate worship they would think oh you know I I never thought about it that way whereas the under the christened a model the Christendom model was I got to do this or there's something wrong with me and so I'm guilty and I feel bad about this and so Christian Liberty is I don't put up go to church whereas in the post Christendom model people are thinking oh really okay nuts oh I see that it matters that I gather with other people for corporate worship because it's it's good for me it helps me to see the greatness and the majesty of God that I might not see if I was just doing this Christian life alone yes my question is um you know as you approach the like the 10 or 15 year mark on a church plant can you kind of talk about the transition from maybe the church planter mindset to now I've got these people who are coming and I need to Shepherd the flock do you ever do you ever get bored with you know just shepherding the flock do you miss that you know the drive or the excitement of actually getting to creates you know something new how do you I don't know if that makes sense how do you maintain that or do you always see yourself as a church planter even you know 15 or 20 years into a church plant so well I can - I love being an entrepreneur but I like being an entrepreneur as part of a team and so our church has constantly had entrepreneurial ventures that have been very exciting raising raising you know 90,000 pounds worth of medical supplies to send to the Democratic Republic of the Congo planning churches in Cuba things like that so a lot of my church planner passion really got got channeled in both the missional direction and in the international missions direction and so that for that for me was really exciting so the fact that I had the privilege of planning the church that I'm at for 17 years has given me a lot of leadership leverage to be able to you know pioneer some entrepreneurial things and I have I have loved that that that has been the thing that is really charged me up about long term ministry in in the same place and every once in a while something new will come up and and you know we'll do this new project that will last us three years and it really gets me excited I would be bored if it was maintaining and I would add that that shift comes before 15 10 or 15 years because if you're in a dynamic visionary Great Commission Church you always challenge yourself to reach people for Christ and keeping your congregation motivated people for Christ finding new and innovative ways to continue sharing the gospel and being a missional community at the challenge and then it suggests I think there's Peter Drucker that each time your church double changed your structure so if your church is consistently reaching people and making new disciples then you're growing and then as you're growing you've got a restructure and retool how you do things if you're equipping leaders you've got better equipped leaders so now you can do more because your capacity is greater and so I think your church is always changing and evolving that's what I was a been planning out for six years and been involved which plans just for years but I think that we've had to make that shift a couple of times already as a church and so it doesn't get boring if you don't if you're maybe the size of it doesn't get boring I like to challenge church planters I tell them don't plant a church they say what are you talking about say plant churches we want to plant churches that in turn plant churches if I were to go back into pastor ministry again and I were to come here to Dallas I would come as a church planter and my strategy would be to plant churches as much as possible all over Dallas because that's a movement and that's what we need right now is a movement so I don't challenge them to plan a church but to plant churches to become a church planting Church among other things yes dr. Pocock you mentioned working with a couple single women um if I'm a woman who has a passion for church planting what is the role of women in this whole thing and we know that women make up the majority of churches and how do we had a women play a specific role in this kind of project well thank you very much for that and the in our case the two women who helped us one was a had been a specialist in Christian education and you know I'm not for organizing perhaps anything I'm a very spontaneous person but what she knew was she knew sound educational principles and organization so you know our church grew rapidly and we needed that organization and we needed the seee part and so Marsha gave us gave us that actually had two marshes and the other one was really good with university student evangelism and cell group growth so we benefited a great deal from a lot of outreach to the local university and then they just being Latin America Latin America thinks a little bit differently than Americans where you know we are so much more individualistic but a university student in Latin America still loves his mom and dad and his brother and his sister and is probably going to get them involved if they are local at all and so we discovered that University students who are being led to Christ by Marsha Stevens that they were being developed by her and coming into the church and then also they would bring with them older and younger and brothers and sisters they worked very well together so a small group development and discipleship of women which I think was appropriate for Marsha and my wife was able to join her in that as well and then the other Marsha working on Christian education you know that really put our package together very nicely now you can be dissed sometimes as a woman and I can remember one of our partners in that ministry you know being very disappointed at one point where we have to do some negotiations with a local group and I suggested that Marsha could do that while I was out of town and a brother got up and said Don Miguel that's not women's work that's a man's work wait till you come back and do it you know and I could just sort of see her shrink you know that that she was not regarded by Venezuelans as an authoritative person to do a business deal with with other people so there is some great sides to being a woman in ministry by sometimes you can meet up with some very distinct ideas in in male-dominated cultures I just say one more thing about about the women in ministry we we started a church planter training school in Bogota Mambo Cuba and that training school graduates 17 church planters a year and we our philosophy is to let the National leaders make the decisions and roughly one-third of our graduates are female church planner senior pastors and and I've often asked you know the folks in Latin America about that you know how do you how do you deal with some of the passages and they've wrestled with first Timothy and so on and basically they said was look if we didn't have female church planners we would not have churches and so so we we we look at that reality as being our guiding our guiding light and we do encourage men to step up but we would not have new churches if we didn't have a significant number of female church planners and you know I don't have the translates into the u.s. but it should sure is that way in Cuba yeah I think that's cultural you can go into the mic I think that's cultural when it comes to the role of women in ministry and I would I would encourage you guys both male and female to really think through and document research and write your position on women ministry and then specifically how that looks so I think we find a hard position of what they can't do mention can do ministry I don't think it's a issue of if they can or cannot do ministry think it's an issue of where and how can they do ministry and so I think it's important really think through that as a male and a female I think since you made the comment that in the church that you're around a lot of them are females who are populating the ministry there are huge opportunities for women in ministry and so I really think through how can i minister the women and how is God unique to me how us got uniquely equip me to minister to women in your instance and then think through what are some solutions that you have for ladies is it is it working moms who need help in the evenings is it stay-at-home moms is it moms we're trying to do ministry are they widowed so what a group are you trying to minister to and how can you organise ministry for them and other pastors I know they would love to have somebody come by and say I'm available whether they're male or female and they would love to get you involved in ministry if you can't find one in Dallas come to Fort Worth and just wondering whether there are organizations like one of the speakers said that's helped plan churches whether there are such that believe in women ministry some of us I believe I've seen myself God using me to start a lot of things in different areas even before I came here and since I've been here but I know I'm a teacher by profession but I still believe I need to start things natural it happens I don't know how but do we have people that can help women most muscle international people to do what they believe God wants them to do yeah I think that what's already been pointed out that you know women are ready capable and desirous of being used in in significant ways in the Lord's work and if you're from North America or you're from say the Bible church movement or a general evangelical movement you probably are not thinking about women as as primary leaders in the church or like a being a lead pastor in fact the seminary says we are not planning to to prepare women as lead pastors and yet we have 25 percent twenty four twenty five percent women at the school and so obviously that's an indication that we do believe that women and are incredibly significant and in fact do discharge major ministries once again in Rodney or actually gave us a list in class just before we came here of everybody that made a difference in his life at the very earliest stages of becoming a believer and I noticed that Henrietta Mears was in there and I thought that's interesting see Henrietta Mears actually was a premier Christian education specialist he founded gospel life publications I believe in California and she had a Bible class of four hundred university students in which bill bright got saved of Campus Crusade Richard C Halverson was saved and developed in the context of that class Bob Boyd monger who wrote my heart Christ home you keeps go on down the line and mention major leaders over the last 20 years that came to know Christ or were developed in Henryetta mears's classes but I think that your question was how can we help women start ministries kind of grab the reins and do something in ministry that's a great question I'm not dead sure or that I know the answer to how women can help other women to get started or how men can get help women to get started in ministries but a lot of things for us men I think we need to remember is you don't have to do everything you have to but you may need to give the green light to people and I think sometimes women do not know that they have a green light to do something unless you encourage them and give them that green light so that's one thing if you have a desire as a woman to inspire other women to attend great things for God just challenge them just tell them if you ever thought of yourself doing this or that and it's amazing what could happen in my own personal case I've made mistakes in this regard I do I do love seeing women at work in ministry they are very effective but I'll still make big mistakes like going to a pastoral luncheon in Japan and I saw a lot of women there and so among other things I said I want I want to tell you men all you pastors how much I appreciate the fact that you brought your wives here today and so then somebody had to whisper over to my translators they are not wise doctor Pocock they are ministers they are pastors oh okay okay okay just hadn't thought about that before but then going over to China you'll if you go to China you'll find the same thing I mean about fifty percent maybe more than 50 percent of the pastors are women and some of them have incredibly large churches one of them I asked her you know how bigger church was she's about 4,000 or so on the weekends I said oh okay and how did that church get started my mother started it I said wow she must have been quite some woman well she was a very humble woman and I said oh you must be quite a good preacher too that you can hold 4,000 people together on a weekend no she says not really she said actually everybody ministers to each other and I'm just the person who raised the flag up the pole and said let's do this and and everybody jumped on board so you know my experience and to discover that women have much greater roles in general outside North America than they do inside North America relative to ministry so I think we can encourage each other along those lines yeah I would add to that I think I think there's even a lot of opportunity within America that maybe beyond a DTS construct for for doing ministry and this is a very sensitive issue when it comes to women and ministry but I think is highly cultural so when you go into many many mainstream denominations now they the role of women in ministry is not an issue and so you can pretty much do whatever you want to do and so without proposing or endorsing what people do outside of a DTS construct there are many opportunities to just to do ministry I would encourage you from a practical standpoint to number one define what God's given you as it relates to ministry and calling and gifting too I would encourage you to take classes with the seee Department and really taking seriously on putting together your ministry program your ministry platform or prospectus I would encourage you to take the church planting class with dr. mal first is going to look at all the ins and outs of doing church planting most of time you have a visionary a visionary is good with the big picture and the end result but doesn't have a clue on how to paint the picture in the middle and so they would love to have somebody come along who may not be at the forefront it may not be the figure here for the organization but has somebody who can come and add infrastructure to help detail policy procedure how we're going to set up our structures internally within our ministry structure and very often the Bible doesn't restrict that from being then restrict that from females so I would encourage you to really know what you're capable of doing to find that and then just go do it Paul we have run out of time if you will come up afterwards we'll take you first we will hang out here for a while so please feel free to come up here afterwards I want to thank our panelists they came at their own expense we have no budget for doing this you're dismissed thank you for being with us

Channel: Dallas Theological Seminary

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Length: 39min 18sec (2358 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2012