Thirty Years of Fuller Training For LCMS--->Stetzer Worship

Stetzer-Vision. Why is anyone listening to a Babtist without a pulpit?

Welcome to Missional Journey

...thoughts on Missional churches, missional people and how a church planting movement might be fostered in the Texas District, LCMS.

Some have been gleaned from others who are writing, speaking and living with church planting everyday. Some are my own thoughts from my own experience with church planters and missional churches. Your comments and reactions are welcomed.

God's Blessings as you continue on your own missional journey.
Paul Krentz
Mission Facilitator
Texas District, LCMS

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Facilitating Church Planting Movements #4 - Factors for Higher Attendance in new church plants
Stetzer has done significant research into factors that contribute to higher attendance in new church plants. Here is what he found

Factors for Higher Attendance

• Meet in a school for first year
• Meet in a school or theater in subsequent years
• Conduct special children's' events (e.g. fall festival)
• Mailing invitations to services, programs, events
• Conducting regular new member classes
• Use a membership covenant signed by new members
• Plant at least 1 daughter churches within 3 years of initial church plant
• Having a proactive stewardship development plan enabling the church to become financially self-sufficient
• Having multiple staff members (can be volunteer or part-time) rather than a single staff member at beginning of church plant
• Financial compensation for planter (from a variety of sources)
• Planter receiving health insurance, whereby majority of premiums were paid by church plant, sponsoring church, and/or denomination
• Conducting block-party as outreach event (in neighborhoods)
• Working full time over part-time or half-time as church planter
• being assessed prior to planting the church as the church planter
• Having the church planter's expectation realized

What Stetzer says does not work: You do not get a church planting movement by creating non-reproducible models. i.e. - you can't reproduce a plant in which you invest $500,000. The denomination can't do it and the planted church can't do it. Planters and churches reproduce in the way that they were produced! If the investment is too high – expectations for next plant are so high that reality can never match (Ed Stetzer has planted 5 churches and never received more than $20,000 from the denomination)

Probably no church plant has all of the factors that Stetzer has found contribute to higher attendance. Some of them are out of the control of the planter or planting congregation. But, many can be done no matter what kind of plant is being pursued.

In the Texas District, LCMS we have been saying that the right person, the right place and the right plan need to be in place in order to receive funds from the Board of Mission Administration. Stetzer's list affirms those three criteria.
Posted by Paul Krentz at 4:02 PM
2 comments:
pastorp said...
As I read the "higher attendance" insights, I was genuinely amazed at how perfectly they lined up with our own personal experiences at Water's Edge (mission plant in Frisco). Paul, you're right, this dude knows what he's talking about!

September 28, 2007 3:32 PM
Paul Krentz said...
I'm glad Ed Stetzer has been researching and writing. People like you know intuitively what needs to be done. Stetzer's research affirms it. The good news is that his work also helps those who don't have that intuition to benefit from his work and not have to reinvent the wheel every time a new mission starts

September 29, 2007 8:00 PM

Only a Futurist Could Claim This

Two hundred years from now, he will be voted one of the 50 most influential Christian thinkers in America. True. Read it below.

From his own bio page:

"One of the church's most important and provocative thinkers."
Voted "One of the 50 Most Influential Christians in America" (2006, 2207)

"No church leader understands better how to navigate the seas of the 21st century."

"A writer of vast imagination, poise and charm."

"I can't imagine a Christian leader in America who hasn't read one or more of Leonard Sweet's books."

"Some statistician-types will drown you in doom and gloom. Sweet's message is uplifting, hopeful and relevant."

These are but a sampling of responses to Len's three-ring mission: as a historian of American culture; as a futurist/semiotician who "sees things the rest of us do not see, and dreams possibilities that are beyond most of our imagining;" and as a preacher and writer who communicates the gospel powerfully to a postmodem age by bridging the worlds of academe and popular culture.

Pass the Smelling Salts

Methodist New Ager Leonard Sweet has been featured at a number of LCMS gatherings, including a recent youth conference and a gig at Our Lady of Sorrows Seminary, St. Louis. Sweet is a favorite at The Love Shack (WELS) too. Both synods also pay big money to hear Babtist Ed Stetzer. So there is doctrinal agreement - hatred of Luther's doctrine.

The Great Salt Gathering

Featured Speaker Information


LCMS President, Rev. Dr. Gerald Kieschnick will lead the gathering worship service and will be a featured speaker multiple days, LCMS C-N-H District President Bob Newton will be a featured speaker and will lead scheduled Bible studies, and theologian Leonard Sweet will be a featured speaker and address the entire assembly at the banquet.

Rev. Dr. Gerald Kieschnick, President, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

The Rev. Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick was elected to his third three-year term as president of the 2.45-million-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in July 2007, an office in which he has served his Lord and Church since September 2001.

Just prior to becoming LCMS president, Kieschnick had been president of the Synod’s Texas District for 10 years. He also served that district as a circuit counselor from 1978-81 and as director of public relations from 1977-86. Prior to his Texas District presidency, Kieschnick was director of development of the Lutheran Foundation of Texas from 1986-88 and then served as its executive director from 1988-91. From 1998 until his election as LCMS president, Kieschnick chaired the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations, and served on the executive committee of the LCMS Council of Presidents.

Born in Houston on January 29, 1943, Kieschnick attended Texas A&M University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1964. He is a 1970 graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, IL, obtained his Master of Divinity degree in 1977 from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN, and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1996 from Concordia University, Austin, TX.

After his ordination in 1970, Kieschnick served as pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Biloxi, MS, until 1973; pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church, Beaumont, TX, 1973-81; and mission developer and pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, Georgetown, TX, 1981-86.

Rev. Robert Newton, California-Nevada-Hawaii District President

A 1977 graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Robert served as an evangelistic missionary to the Kankanaey people in the Philippines from 1977-83. He and his family lived in a remote mountain area of northern Luzon, the largest island in the Philippine archipelago. The ministry involved planting new congregations and outstations along with training men to serve as pastors, elders, and evangelists.

The Newtons returned to the States in July of 1983 in order for Robert to pursue graduate studies at the School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. While there, he assisted the Pacific Southwest District in developing a cross-cultural leadership training program. He completed his doctorate in education in 1993 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL.

Robert served as professor of world missions at Concordia Theological Seminary from 1985 until 1998. For the 1996-97 academic year he was on sabbatical with his family serving the Gutnius Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea under the Board for Mission Services. In 1998 he accepted a call as senior pastor to First Immanuel Lutheran Church, an urban, multi-cultural congregation in San Jose, CA and continued in that ministry until being elected president of the CNH District in 2003.

Robert and his wife, Priscilla, grew up together in Napa, California and have been married since 1971. They have six children (Matthew and wife Sheila, Rachel and husband Adam, Alicia and husband, Eric, and David) and five grandchildren, (Jessica, Patrick, Timothy, Jack and Kiahna).

Leonard Sweet, “theologian, author, and futurist” [GJ - WELS Church and Change Keynote Speaker, until the sect woke up]

Currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School (Madison, NJ), and Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University (Portland, OR), Leonard Sweet is the author of more than one hundred articles, 600 published sermons and thirty books, most recently The Gospel According to Starbucks (2007).

Sweet's web-based preaching resource UWikiletics.com is the first open-source preaching resource on the web. Founder and President of SpiritVenture Ministries, Sweet is a frequent speaker and conversation partner at conferences both in the US and around the globe. In both 2006 and 2007 he was voted "One of the 50 Most Influential Christians in America" (Uwww.thechurchreport.com). His current projects include a preaching text entitled Giving Blood, The Leadership Myth (with Joe Myers), Pay Attention: Every Bush is Burning, and later in 2007, Outstorming The Perfect Storm. His weekly free podcast is called "Napkin Scribbles," and a longer subscription-based weekly podcast is available from WiredParish.com.

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Continuing Education in False Doctrine, Our Lady of Sorrows Seminary, St. Louis
MAY 2, 2007 (WEDNESDAY)
Day of Homiletical Reflection
Main Presenter: Dr. Leonard Sweet

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GJ - Sweet was president of the school which trained Jeremiah Wright, Obama's previous preacher, famous for "God d____ America!"