Monday, May 19, 2008

Church Plant

Today's blog is not about the giant fern that we have near the sanctuary. It's actually about a seminar I am taking at Ashland Theological Seminary this week. I am on lunch break of the first day and I am just wrestling through some crazy thoughts. I have not given church planting a huge deal of thought but I have imagined from time to time and Shaina and I have had multiple people speak into our lives about this topic.

Everything is sort've rising to the surface this first day as I begin taking in the very challenging task of planting a church. It has to be a God ordained business or it will fail. Here are some stats covering the first half of the first day.

*3 out of 5 church plants will fail.
*Most churches die around 50 years after their birth (25 years in-they usually experience the climax of their ministry.)
*Evangelistic outreach in the first year of the church is the most effective and oft-used...Every year after the first, evangelism declines.

I am challenged and really yielding to God on this topic. One intriguing twist. My mentor has a blog (www.johnmulpas.com). I happened to visit his site, click on one of the members of his blog roll (this was a couple months ago), and it turned out to be one of his former mentors who had helped plant a church together. The day I visited that site, he had posted a blog saying that he believed the person who would plant their next church would read that blog. The one time I visited the site, I read that post...hmm.

Help me God.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ben, I am very anxious to hear more about this seminar and sit down with you once you've had time to process it all. We're having you and Shaina over for dinner!