Developing a church planting team

i want us to talk about that today what does it look like to develop and to form and to foster a church planting team family multiplication restoration i'm dahaty lewis join me noah odom and haydn radner as we come to you from atlanta st louis and las vegas as we seek to add value to your church planning journey we'll have real-time authentic conversations that are relevant to the life of the church planner and pastors join us as we hear from leaders of this movement from across north america and discover what it really takes to plant churches everywhere for everyone the world tells us our differences should divide us but the gospel it has a different story our mission our calling his command is a mission that unites every christ follower in a way that stands out a way that doesn't make sense to the world join us june 13th and 14th at send conference to be refreshed and celebrate the church together on mission a free event hosted by the international mission board and north american mission board of the southern baptist convention learn more at sendconference.com welcome to another episode of the we are send network podcast my name is noah old i'm the lead pastor of august gate church in st louis joined as always by dahaty lewis the lead pastor of blueprint church in atlanta and haydn ratner the senior pastor of walk church in las vegas nevada brothers good to see you how we feeling feeling good feeling good good glad to have dr lewis back on the call today some good stuff we're going to jump into yeah i'm excited to be here i know you guys are just trying to replace me but you know i'm kicking the door back down that game excited yeah man it's been uh it's been tough missing your voice a couple of these episodes this last last month or so man excited for your wisdom today i know you have a lot of experience in that hey before we jump in how's the weather where y'all are at hmm it's february high and it's it's probably always warm where you're at right well it's not it's not always warm we've actually had some windy days but i don't want to make anybody else feel bad um and wherever they're at because i'm seeing a lot of snowy pictures on social media and whatnot but man we are today is a breezy kind of high 60s low 70s good vibe out here in las vegas to be honest i'm glad you said i'm glad you said good vibe because i was just like i know you're not saying 60 and windy is like a bad day you know so but out here it is frosty like so we have ice you know school is delayed you know in georgia if you get a little ice school's gonna be shut down all that so there's a lot of that going on i think i you know don't quote me on this but i do think that they said there's only like seven states out of all 50 seven states that did not have snow today you know so like snow or ice or something so this is happening across the country so yeah yeah it's crazy yeah man everywhere for everyone there's snow right now except for vegas where it's always beautiful yeah i i shoveled about 10 inches of snow back at home and in our church parking lot today so um it's been a lot of fun but you're here though this is what i'm saying this is the commitment to to be here to to do this like we're here so let's go that's it we got some time we got that shirt we got that church planning mentality whatever it takes we're going to do it hey so if you're looking to plant any of our cities las vegas is looking good right now maybe god will send you there hey hey brothers as as 2021 rolled in the new year we announced at my church that we're going to be planting a church out of our church one of the guys on my team god called him to to change over from being a pastor of discipleship and to a church planting resident so he has a number of things to do this next year in his residency but not the least of which is the important call of developing and fostering a church planting team super super important and so i want us to talk about that today what does it look like to develop and to form and to foster a church planting team but as we jump into that i don't want us to take anything for granted i don't want to assume anything and so first and foremost is it important for a planter to have a team what do you think haydn yes i think it's it's greatly important it's essentially important i once heard a church planner say that if you try to plant a church without a team it's church planting suicide it's not a good look and and i think that there's also theology behind this point let me go ahead and bring it back all the way to the trinity right with the father-son and spirit on display doing work together in the beginning i like the verse in ecclesiastes 4 12. that just says it simply two are better than one come on right uh but we even see jesus the original church planter start with a team when he starts his work in ministry in his public ministry so i do think there's so much value in it um but i would say for for us at walk church being a church planting church we coach our church planters to to really have three different types of teams on the church planting journey i'll just go ahead and list them and then maybe we can dialogue more about them but number one is the home team your family has to be called to this journey with you your spouse uh your kids got to be on board whatever that necessarily looks like i don't think that we got to make too big of a deal on that especially or not necessarily with your spouse i would say needs to be a big deal because you don't want to be planting this church alone or dragging your spouse behind you uh to just follow your journey but a mutual call to this thing i think is is huge it's helpful uh but a home team and then what we call a core team a core team of disciples that are bought in that are our co-owners with you on the vision these are these are these are core team members this doesn't have to be a huge team but it has to be the right team and then the third level of team that we would coach toward is a launch team a team of people that may not be in the core group but are there on launch sunday and want to be a part of the church and say hey we'd like to serve as greeters we'd like to serve as um as on the count team or on the worship team or on the the tech team whatever the different teams are they want to be a part of it but they might not be a part of the original court those are the three levels of team that i think are valuable and essential to every church planner what do you guys think i think that's i think that's great distinction between what you're saying and i love when you talk about the home team the home team core team and then launch team and i and i would even say like we use very similar language if someone were to come to us and say hey i would love to see a church plant in our in this part of the city or this part of the neighborhood or whatever um i think that's one of the things that we take you know very seriously at blueprint because the idea of planting with a team is to me that is a non it's a non-starter if you you're not able to play with a team basically you're just living as a missionary and every covenant member in our church is called to live as missionaries where they live work and play so if you're just looking to do the work of the lord so we kind of take it from a kind of uh you know both perspectives so we want to partner with where god is at work and we want to come alongside so we also have we would say we have a our a core team then we have our launch i mean our i'm sorry we have our qualified leaders every city got to start with a qualified leader and we said that you got to meet the standard you know early on we said you got to meet the standard of at least the deacon moving towards an elder like we won't even start if you're not meeting the standard of a deacon right and then we said we want that core team to be or that that leader to multiply himself to be a core team and that core team is a group of six to eight people you know that you have with a clear mission right right this is what we're rallying around so you got the six to eight with the clear mission and then we moved from a core team to a city group and a city group is what we would call anywhere between 20 to up to about 50 people that are you know in a city group that is meeting and then we would say from a city group to a cluster of city groups so they they would then go from one city group to launching all a core team with a qualified leader out so we would say that there's a couple of city groups that are in a neighborhood that will then form a church and that's really kind of our format that we that we have so even and that's and so a lot of times the way that is fleshed out at blueprint is that literally we have had like an apostolic leader move into a neighborhood go through that process but then he was just like but i don't feel called to be the pastor of this church and then so often times it would be we would see the people of god on mission and then we would say hey we need someone to pastor we got to raise up elders to go and so that has happened actually um two times um locally out of the churches that we've planted two times where it started off with the family of god being on mission winning the neighborhood and then we have to find the leaders that came um that came after and so i so yeah so i think but the idea of nobody plants alone we're not sending out the soul person to go do it yeah that's core to what we do and that's baked into our story as well that's huge yeah i think as you said uh haydn that this scripture speaks to that it's going to give testimony the fact that there's a plurality of leaders you know the church in jerusalem had a plurality of leaders the church in antioch had a plurality of leaders and i think that all of our churches would benefit from having a plurality of qualified leaders it may take a qualified leader reproducing himself into a team of leaders like we see paul and barnabas do there in antioch by acts 13. uh and so the next question then is what are we looking for in that team it sounds like you call it a a core team haydn dahadi you might call it that qualified leader who's multiplied himself out before the city team is fully formed or by the time a city team or multiple city teams are formed what do you what does a planter need to look for in that core i look at ephesians chapter four and i see that it looks like paul's saying that god gives a varied number of gifts in order that the church can grow up into maturity by having this this diversity so talk to that a little bit what is a planter looking like who does he need to surround himself with as he develops his core team yeah i think that the go go ahead dottie no no i was just gonna add on to what you were saying i think very similar to us you know because in our process when we think about our you know a qualified leader that's moving on every one of our city groups which you know you would know um in this but every one of our city groups has four key leaders right we have what we call you have the the leader that you know the husband and his wife that are the leader of the group and then we have basically our cares leader and they're kind of responsible for our shepherding we have our kind of missional leader and they're responsible for the the missional dynamic and then we have an equip leader and they're responsible for kind of the you know the other kind of growing people of the content and they're coming to work alongside and so that's a way one we get everybody more people involved in there and then there's those are the core and all of our city groups but then they're also in that process you have other like you know hospitality and so like different other different gifts so when as these people are growing they're launching with these kind of already kind of that apex gifting baked into our core so when they launch they already have people who have already experienced these kind of that apex as you talked about giftings that's taken place in that core team and it's not people who are learning a new skill because they've been training and disciplining using their gifts already in that way and on micro level all the way to the macro i love it yep yep yeah i was gonna go ahead and take it just a little bit of a different direction but i'm gonna need to go revisit this podcast because i need to jot down all those different team leaders that you just described to honey that was good um one thing that i was thinking in the the question that you posed noah is um when it comes to shaping a team and core team launch team and home teams already shaped um unless you're single on and you're listening to this you gotta you know be be wise to find just your you somebody who can partner with you on this journey um but i would just say you know i'm looking for people in the city that are here first that um in in many ways have a have a call have a call to me and my leadership into my wife nina and i have a call to our church plant and say you know what i really feel called to this church i want to be a part of this church even before its birth and having sunday meetings but i feel called to this thing um and and and third i feel called to this city i feel called to this city i feel like this is where god has placed me and and i'm locked in i say that because in our church planning journey we've seen the people that haven't stayed the course with us um were because we realized either one you weren't called to us or you weren't called to our city or you weren't called to our church and you just thought the idea of it was good i really i really believe that what a church plant doesn't need is the wrong people on the team yeah and i've found that if you have the wrong people on the team that could actually hinder and derail the vision quicker than really anything else because church planning is so relational and you need relationships to to drive this thing and to reach other people and i found that you know toxic people attract toxic people and all of a sudden you could wind up having a church planting team of people that are causing more work than actually the mission and so um i was going to also say that there's a a few different frames of thought here and i think all of the thoughts could actually be helpful in their own way a helpful book for me was the book kingdom first by jeff christopherson church planting goat in the toronto area right but he says hey start with all lost people don't start with any believers and man that is some of the most challenging direction that i've felt but one there's something to that that makes it like you know what we're reaching people and these people that we're reaching are now joining our team and we're planting this church together and so anyways again just some different thoughts to have when it comes to lost people people far from god that we're reaching we like to have those people start on our launch team we want to get them into a serving position into into a charge group into a connection moment but people that are a little bit more mature and seasoned in their faith we want them to be on our core group of disciples and then go from there so those are just a few people that who we're looking for when it comes to team recruitment team development yeah it's good you know i've worked as the sun city missionary in st louis for nearly a decade and during that time working with a lot of planters and helping them to establish like who are you and who do you need to have around you based on who you are and one of the helpful tools that that i use through this process uh was the apes tool that um alan hirsch created or adapts from scripture obviously but you know according to ephesians 4 verse 11 that god has given apostles prophets evangelists shepherds and teachers and what hirsch would say in his book the forgotten ways is that those apostolic prophetic evangelistic gifts have kind of been pushed out of the mainstream church and we really equip shepherd teachers seminaries built to equip shepherd teachers on and on and he calls it the forgotten way saying we need to make sure we equip those people because they are our missional leaders in this next generation so what i sit down with planters every time someone says i feel like god's called me to plant i hear their vision and i ask them who they are on that apes scale and usually there's you know they're one or two gifts but i've seen a number of people kind of get tripped up by that language apostolic or apostle and prophetic or prophet because it's charismatic language they're not used to and so what i've done is i've kind of created a grid of renaming those based on the gifting that i think every team should have on their core team and i think that you're going to see this further along into your church as you get larger you're going to have people maybe running in those lanes but i think all those gifts need to be necessary so here's how i've renamed them instead of apostles i call them pioneers you need people on your team that are willing to be pioneers into new areas areas of the city neighborhoods relationship pioneers they believe god for new things uh next is is purists uh the prophets you need those people who are purists who are willing to hold on to the word of god as the pioneers are pushing us into further limits the purists are like hey hey let's hold on to the word of god let's not go too far let's make sure that we're not diving into things that god would say are unbiblical evangelists i call those promoters those are people that are promoting the cause promoting the message promoting the mission everywhere they go um and then the shepherds i call them protectors they're there to protect the people and to protect the vision to make sure that we're we're doing what we set out to do to plant a church and care for people and then lastly the teachers i call those professors those are people who love the word of god and want to study the word of god and want to create avenues for the word of god and so when you have pioneers purists promoters protectors and professors i think the church is going to grow itself up in love and maturity yeah yeah that's spot on yeah it's good good piece yeah i was i was gonna say that literature was great another i was just saying the alliteration was great like like i was just like yes um no but i think that that is a really good and i think the biggest thing is that people have a desire to belong and matter right yeah and by and you creating language that gives people is like man because there's one of those p's you know jumps out like yeah i love pioneering new things i love being a part of that or i love promoting you know uh and being able to take that and show how that um goes into kind of the kingdom building work of the lord's you know specifically in this case the lord building the lord's house and you know and kind of framing that i think is is i think it's amazing so i love that yeah i love it too i i definitely think that's the way to see ephesians 4 12 happen right which is the body built up and equipped for the work of ministry and i would encourage the lead planter to assess core team and say okay who am i as the lead planter and what are the areas that maybe i'm missing in my own leadership that i can pray toward and go find so for example we're working with we're working with a church planter who's not a natural people gatherer it's just not his his he doesn't have the evangelistic bent like others may have when it comes to gifting and function and so what we're saying is hey you you can do this thing but you got to make sure you have those people on your team to make up for some of the areas that you're more stronger in and so yeah i think that you can use the apes ephesians 4 11 model as an assessment tool to say okay what are the areas that we're missing to to strengthen our team at the end of the day that's good noah thanks for sharing that bro yeah i think what we're finding no matter what our model is whether it's this citigroup model or it's this ephesians 4 model whatever model we we look at we've got to create a team that a church player's got to find people pull them around alongside him and his his family and and make sure that they're moving in the same direction because as you said haydn if you're not moving in the same direction you have the wrong people on the team oh man that can mess things up more than anything yeah yeah absolutely because because how we look at the core team the the core team for us ends up becoming almost like department heads so like the core team could potentially be like hey so this the worship team leader is part of the core team the greeter team first impression team leader is part of the court team but those are the people that are gonna then then disperse the vision coming from the top and yeah having the right people on the right team is is key i think we should do a part two podcast on just how to give the team feedback just do a whole session on feedback and correction and encouragement and growth because i think there's so much value i know i've learned a lot of what not to do uh throughout the years but those are just some thoughts that i think could could add value in the context of explaining so no before we wrap up i would love to hear like this answer this question for us do you um allow the body to assess those giftings do you have them actually take the test like how how do you go about doing that as we wrap up i would love just to give them some practical steps of how people they you assess to making sure that they have these fully developed teams yeah so i would say starting that with your core team getting getting on and googling that five questions or apes with alan hirsch there's an online eight dollar assessment tool that you can take and you can find out what your really top two gifts are and how those function within the body i actually had my team do that recently again just to see where everybody was at and then i take those and look at them kind of graph them out on the wall and make sure hey we got everything or where are we light where do we need to find people with these giftings so i'd say take those assessments chart it out have those conversations and then see how god's put you together for the the most beautiful function most powerful function of the local church hey guys great episode thank you guys for joining us for another episode of the we are send network podcast as always if you want to know more about church planting with the send network you can text the words send network to 888-123 it's 888-123 or check us out at sendnetwork.com we'd love for you to subscribe and share this podcast keep throwing those ideas our way we're excited to help our network level up and keep planting churches everywhere for everyone love you guys we'll see you next time we are send network you have been listening to we are send network a resource of the north american mission board for more information about today's podcast and other relevant resources visit [Music] sendnetwork.com you

Channel: North American Mission Board

Views: 670

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: chXMzYi6kfs

Length: 23min 26sec (1406 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021