When Amber and I began this new journey a year ago, we knew that we couldn't do this alone.
This isn't our first time starting a new church from scratch. We've been on this rodeo before and learned what not to do. Trust me, I can write that book: "How Not To Plant A Church with Bonus Section: Pizza-Delivery and/or Family Video Can Be A Lucrative Back-Up Job."
Wisdom is simply knowledge plus scars.
The three biggest lessons from planting Catalyst in Ohio were:
- Don't plant alone - have strong relationships with other pastors
- If you don't have it in writing, you don't have it
- Be very slow to appoint and empower leaders
Long story short, God has graciously led us toward a network that will help us in those three key areas.
We are announcing that Life Church Michigan has strategically partnered with Converge Worldwide!
Converge is one of the leading and innovative networks in the church-planting movement sweeping across North America. Dr. Ed Stetzer calls Converge “one of the leading church planting organizations in the United States.” Converge is a movement of about 1,200 churches with a strong reproducing church-planting focus. Over the past 20 years, Converge has doubled the size of their network solely through church start-ups!
Amber and I spent a week in Chicago a while back being assessed by 15 Converge pastors and some Fortune 500 psychoanalysts -- personality profiles, stress-enducing-simulations, 360-degree interviews, the works. It was awesome (I'll blog more about that soon).
The end result was that Converge endorses us and found our church planting scores to be in the top-tier nationally. Which absolutely floored us; it was a very redeeming experience for my wife and I after the year we've been through.
To help get Life Church off the ground, Converge is generously offering us a matching grant:
they will match every single dollar donated to our church start-up.
So you really should donate 20 bucks. Or 20,000 bucks (seriously).
Because Converge will match it, Life will launch, people will meet Jesus, Life Church will multiply, and our region will be transformed for the better.
I've invited Norm Byers (pictured left), Converge's State Director of Church Planting in Michigan, and Jeff Forester (not pictured, because trying to catch him on film is like staking out Sasquatch), senior pastor of Heritage Church in Sterling Heights, Michigan, to serve as our initial Board of Directors at Life. Norm and Jeff are sharp pastors who have gone above and beyond in pouring into our family, fully vetting our past ministry experiences and cheering us on toward the future with Life Church.
Over the next couple days I'll share more about how our path converged with Converge, what we learned through the Chicago church planting assessment, and encouraging stories of life-change that are building up into Life Church Michigan's eventual launch.
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