Anglican1000: The Rev. Canon David Roseberry Plenary Session #1
Tuesday afternoon, March 6. Canon Roseberry gave the first plenary session talk today and it was stellar. Not memorex,or a recording but as close as I could get it. Lots of good content here for old and new parishes. Hope you enjoy this. Cheryl M. Wetzel reporting from Plano, TX
The Rev. Canon David Roseberry, Plenary Session # 1. Introduction to Church Planting
25 years ago, Fran and I moved to Plano to start new congregation. There were 13 of us. We met at our house on Friday night. We met 5 weeks in a row and then put an ad in local paper about new Episcopal Church that was starting in Plano and we grew! The next week, we moved to Sunday evening to a larger home with a “Young Life” format of testimony, Bible study and song. We met for 12 weeks. We grew so much that we then moved into a school and after 2 years bought this piece of property in West Plano and built our first building that you are in now. There are 6 buildings now - a ten year back-to-back building program. Now we open these buildings up for all of you.
When we think about the call upon our lives to start a new parish, we must think about that call and how to respond to it. Some of you heard it 25 years ago in TEC and worked hard and built a great congregation. Some of you are new and some of you have never seen TEC . You are part of the new generation that doesn’t remember those days and now thinks only about what is ahead, not what lies behind. You are here because your heart beats faster when you hear about church planting. It’s your call and you know it.
Luke 5: At the Sea of Galilee. Jesus stood on shore and watched some men fishing in their boats. They would throw out the net and then wait, eventually drawing in the net and then clearing the catch. Jesus said he would make us fishers of men. You know you are called to go fish. You have a pastor’s heart and are to come along side the sheep Jesus has given you. “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
Many websites have wonderful pictures of single persons casting a hook for a single fish. We’ve taken that and imposed it on the real gospel story. [Photo of a guy with cowboy hat, standing in a stream all by himself.] A man with a rod, a hook and a fly, trying to catch the “right kind” of fish. This is an example of individuals, doing individual ministry trying to establish individual relationships. Jesus was thinking about a net, a net of rope intertwined, that was cast into dark, deep waters of the sea. Not a single hook, lure, fly. Not trying to catch “a fish”. A church planter knows you cannot fish for one fish at a time. Must be a process/community/ that can be built to grab people out of the world and draw them into the light of the local church. That is what this conference is about.
The task we have in church planting is not one hook at a time, one lure at a time, for one fish at a time.
Remember the old Cursillo mantra: make a friend, be a friend, bring your friend to Jesus? A church planter will starve if they try that mantra. We are to cast a net, not a single line. Jesus said that this is a transferrable skill, this fishing stuff, that he saw on the Sea of Galilee. I’m not being critical of single relationships, because you and I were all caught by Christ and drawn to him. But we were brought into the church by a community. What is the shape of that community to be?
Back to Luke 5: Christ at Lake watching men in two boats, washing their nets. Christ goes out and gets into the boat of Simon and asks him to go out a little from the land. This was not Jesus’ first encounter with Simon. This was the second time Christ called Simon. Jesus told him to put out into the deep and throw out your net. Simon said, “We toiled all night long and caught nothing. Captain, at your word I will let them down.”
He closed a large number of fish and the nets were breaking. When you obey Christ and he tells you to cast your net and you obey, you will bring in a large batch of fish. And next, with the breaking nets and the flopping fish, there was chaos in the boat. That is the sign that you have a successful church plant: Chaos. Some will come and stay. Some will come for a small amount of time; you won’t know.
The single line of fishing. That’s a call on each of our lives, too. Single person ministry. But the call of the disciple is that of the net. Team work. Hard work. Guess work, Slow work, Long work, Cold work. Quiet work. Repeating work.
You throw the net and every Sunday you will wonder how many people will come back. You stand there and wait and the parking lot is empty and there is not a single car and then there is a second car and they come in and you are still waiting to see if anyone will come. Sometimes you call your wife and say please come early and park your car so there will be another.
Church planting is the most fun, most terrifying, most rewarding job in the world. If you are having fun, you are called. If you are not called, it is the worst job in the world. When they come on Sunday morning, you are surprised; when they leave, you hope you have not said anything that offended them so they will not come back. That’s church planting.
Sometimes a service is touched by the Holy Spirit in a unique way. At Bob Duncan’s consecration 3 years ago here in this sanctuary, energy rose up out of the people and there was an upwelling of applause. Everyone at the altar was surprised. I saw that touch of the Holy Spirit one time prior, when we read the the Cardinal
Ratzinger letter at the Plano Conference in 2003.
That muggy night of Bob Duncan’s consecration in the end of June, 2009 changed the subject in Anglican talk. That night, Bob called for us to plant 1000 churches. One Thousand. So many people at that service were trying to get out of their predicament in their own parishes. That reminds me of our friends in Virginia who enrolled in this conference and could not come. They are home tonight, meeting with their vestries, trying to figure out where they will be come April 2nd.
I wish he had called for 100, not 1000. Many of us could say we have done that. Like the old Cursillo line: make a church, be a church, bring your friend to church. Maybe that’s the way older people think about church planting.
I can’t plant one church and be done. We have to hear about the multiplication of congregations. All the lessons I’ve learned in the last 2 years are found on the You Tube video my son sent to me. It’s the way that young people think about church planting. [Will try and get the address tomorrow. The video showed one man, dancing in a field. He was the leader. He danced alone until a follower came then a second follower. Then the followers came in droves, anxious to join in the dance. Momentum gained as more people jump in. Soon, most were dancing.] The lesson: Leadership is an open door policy. There is no movement without the first follower. Have the guts to stand up and be the first person who leads AND the first who follows.
Turned to Bob Duncan: “So Archbishop, lead the dance.”
He did lead the dance the night of his consecration. He stood up and called for something crazy that would transform Anglicanism in North America. Creating from us a Net that Works. A network that the Lord can throw out into the broken world and help others find Christ. WE are to be that network.
OK, so you have a new plant. There is one requirement: you have a website at your church. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it must have contact information, phone number, email address, location. [Map of Canada appears on the overhead.] Each yellow dot (on map) in Canada are new churches. Now map of US with yellow dots. Each is a new church. Some states there aren’t any yellow dots. We placed a web tool over the populated areas i.e., Dallas, 9 new churches over the last 2 years.
We can’t check what kind of shape these churches are in. Some may have closed because it is hard work. We don’t run away from failure, we want to learn from it. It is very hard work. 211 new plants in the last 2.5 years. Some speed bumps and potholes mark the way. When we put the pedal to the medal in ACNA and formed these new plants, there were some loose ends, some things that didn’t come together in the net. We all know about these.
The AMiA situation is a situation that has slowed us down. How do we remain United, Biblical and Missionary - the three essentials of Anglicanism – when our brothers in Christ are no longer in fellowship? We need to hold our comments and opinions while these things are worked out, for the greater good. There are crews working on these potholes. Like Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, CT and the 7 parishes in VA that are facing more litigation and they don’t have the money to do it. So we can’t carelessly press on.
We have a polity, a demand that you be connected to someone. You have to have a bishop, who sends you, or a rector that sends you. No lone rangers. We don’t have the freedom of autonomy to just press on without consideration. There are people above our pay grade trying to patch things over and smooth the speed bumps, so we can welcome other like-minded Anglicans into our midst. Chuck Murphy said that there are 150 million unchurched in North America. Given Canada, there are far more than that. It is our intention that we do it together.
AT Anglican 1000: I don’t work alone. Staff introduced.
So who are we, gathered in this room? 393 registrants as of 1:00 PM today.
We are from 35 US states, 4 Canadian provinces. 76 planters joined since Jan ‘09 and 69 planted before ‘09
25 clergy spouses at 100% scholarship
100 more people will plant churches before 2014
66 people here are trainers
35 are seminary students
18 seminaries are represented
IF my math is right, we should have 276 church planters in the room, some already employed and some who will be employed in a future new church plant.
Anglican 1000 is moving. We have had great success, run out of Christ Church, and my office. It has such momentum for the rest of the province that it needs to be a wholly owned program/movement of the Province. I realized this through conversations with my staff and Abp. Duncan over the last two months. The very best thing for this movement is to find its permanent home in the structures of ACNA. Plus individual regional training bases in US and Canada . We have our next Provincial Assembly in June; let’s kick Anglican 1000 into the second phase of its expansion. A lot of you will be called to serve in many ways. You may be called to focus on Anglican 1000, to be the new person who will take charge of this program and take it into the future. I believe the new vicar of Anglican 1000, who will report directly to the Archbishop, is in this room, today.
IF you are that person, see the Archbishop. If you feel the pitter-patter in your heart, and believe in this amazing opportunity, see Bob Duncan.
Other things you need to know: it is very hard work. Old saw: easier to make babies than raise the dead. But it is also true that it is easier to make babies than to raise children. Getting that new start to grow and have a system and worship, etc. that’s really what makes it difficult. Most used graphic about church planting is small little plant with 4 green leaves. It’s the most misleading graphic on the web. Each new plant needs all these jobs done: ( long list) In other words, it is rocket science. What we have to do as rocket scientists is to form a network . How these things look and work together is what we will talk about at this conference. Now, it’s important to pause and pray. (20 minute intercessory prayers)
There is a difference between being a puppet and a puppet master. One desire is to create a beautiful, but lifeless creature that will do everything you want it to do, such that those who come will go out into their communities and neighborhoods and bring the “right people” into the church. Leaders have to spend the time to develop relationships that will accomplish this. Leaders should be able to give directions and make phone calls, and see results, right?
So when you think as a rector, or vicar or planter you have to think about how this thing is going to operate. Here’s the story of Pinocchio. He became a real boy, from something stiff and wooden to something real and alive. What we want to create in a congregation is a community of people that function with the love of Christ that has a life and energy of its own. Not a puppet, a wooden puppet with the right movements but no life.
That’s what we see in the 1st book of Acts: The Holy Spirit of God comes in and the Church acts like a real boy. They found Jesus to be God and found the Holy Spirit to be God. Their heart reached out to people because of this belief. Acts 2:42, “Everyone continued in the Apostles teaching, in the prayers….”
Yet they found the time for sitting down with others and communicating. We see extraordinary communication practices in the early church: letters. Sitting with parchment and pen and writing these elaborate, meaningful letters. First, Communication practices and then administrative practices: collecting money to be carried back to Jerusalem to minister to the people there. Then there are pastoral practices: It isn’t just looking at a verse. It is a much wider way to look holistically at the first chapters of Acts.
I’ve been here 26 years. Over the last 20, everything is one of 6 areas. We will look at these 6 areas together:
This is distinctly Anglican. Worship is our highest function. It is the leading edge of the congregation’s work. We gather to worship. Out of that worship flows two critical functions: internal and external focus: The twin engines of the plane. Internal focus is baptism, discipleship, all the programs that build community. External focus is what you do in the community. I have seen Anglicanism work in the poorest slums in Peru and the wealthiest parts of Dallas. It is universal.
At the bottom: administrative functions, communication and pastoral care.
Here are a few principles that we have found at Christ Church:
1) The pulpit leads the church. Every church is led by worship and worship is led by the pulpit. Some say the altar leads the church, and I can agree partially. But the strength of the church happens on Sunday morning. Preaching is an essential element. Don’t do it routinely, that only dulls the knife edge. People join a church because of the top of the triangle, not the bottom row. Not the newsletter or website. And, they don’t join a church to be baptized. They join a church because of the top three. From the top, the strength flows. When things are on and you feel the Spirit of God as people come together to worship, that’s what a church has to have to have an impact on the community. Weak worship = weak pews. IF you as the leader are uncertain about what you have to offer your community, it will show in your worship. Lead at the top, assign the bottom.
Many I have spoken with say that worship is what they want to lead, but spend all their time in pastoral care and communication and administration. Lead at the top, assign the bottom.
2) Church planting begins at the bottom with communication, and pastoral care. Most common reason churches fail is that they start at the top. Worship is the most important and that is why you put it off, you wait for it. There are exceptions, but pastoral care and communication and good administration lead you to preparing people for baptism and discipleship programs and cell groups. These elements all lead to worship. Talk to Steve Wood at All Saints, Mt. Pleasant. They built it from the ground up.
3) This is not the “Field of Dreams” philosophy: If I build it, they will come. With a new plant, the bottom row takes precedent. Administration: understand your vision, understand who you are. What is a member? Are you a 501 (c) (3)? How do you deal with money? who is going to account for the money? Establish a bank account; at Christ Church, we had to build all these things from the ground up. Every new plant does.
4) Set your budget for your church along these 6 lines, you will have a cohesive budget that you can explain to your parish. What is worship? How much will authentic, exciting worship cost? Make that the top goal of the budget. Remember to add in time for pulpit ministry/sermons/teaching. No one else can do this. And on down the triangle, with each area getting proper budgeting. Remember, new plants need to climb up the triangle.
Communicate, determine how to administer what you have and who you are; give generous pastoral care. This leads to a desire for internal focus: baptism, youth groups, terrific Sunday School classes, discipleship and Bible studies. Outreach flows from internal development. Worship is the culmination of all of the other segments. Truly, authentic Anglicanism. That’s what we are about and what you will hear about at this conference. Welcome!
The Rev. Canon David Roseberry, Plenary Session # 1. Introduction to Church Planting
25 years ago, Fran and I moved to Plano to start new congregation. There were 13 of us. We met at our house on Friday night. We met 5 weeks in a row and then put an ad in local paper about new Episcopal Church that was starting in Plano and we grew! The next week, we moved to Sunday evening to a larger home with a “Young Life” format of testimony, Bible study and song. We met for 12 weeks. We grew so much that we then moved into a school and after 2 years bought this piece of property in West Plano and built our first building that you are in now. There are 6 buildings now - a ten year back-to-back building program. Now we open these buildings up for all of you.
When we think about the call upon our lives to start a new parish, we must think about that call and how to respond to it. Some of you heard it 25 years ago in TEC and worked hard and built a great congregation. Some of you are new and some of you have never seen TEC . You are part of the new generation that doesn’t remember those days and now thinks only about what is ahead, not what lies behind. You are here because your heart beats faster when you hear about church planting. It’s your call and you know it.
Luke 5: At the Sea of Galilee. Jesus stood on shore and watched some men fishing in their boats. They would throw out the net and then wait, eventually drawing in the net and then clearing the catch. Jesus said he would make us fishers of men. You know you are called to go fish. You have a pastor’s heart and are to come along side the sheep Jesus has given you. “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
Many websites have wonderful pictures of single persons casting a hook for a single fish. We’ve taken that and imposed it on the real gospel story. [Photo of a guy with cowboy hat, standing in a stream all by himself.] A man with a rod, a hook and a fly, trying to catch the “right kind” of fish. This is an example of individuals, doing individual ministry trying to establish individual relationships. Jesus was thinking about a net, a net of rope intertwined, that was cast into dark, deep waters of the sea. Not a single hook, lure, fly. Not trying to catch “a fish”. A church planter knows you cannot fish for one fish at a time. Must be a process/community/ that can be built to grab people out of the world and draw them into the light of the local church. That is what this conference is about.
The task we have in church planting is not one hook at a time, one lure at a time, for one fish at a time.
Remember the old Cursillo mantra: make a friend, be a friend, bring your friend to Jesus? A church planter will starve if they try that mantra. We are to cast a net, not a single line. Jesus said that this is a transferrable skill, this fishing stuff, that he saw on the Sea of Galilee. I’m not being critical of single relationships, because you and I were all caught by Christ and drawn to him. But we were brought into the church by a community. What is the shape of that community to be?
Back to Luke 5: Christ at Lake watching men in two boats, washing their nets. Christ goes out and gets into the boat of Simon and asks him to go out a little from the land. This was not Jesus’ first encounter with Simon. This was the second time Christ called Simon. Jesus told him to put out into the deep and throw out your net. Simon said, “We toiled all night long and caught nothing. Captain, at your word I will let them down.”
He closed a large number of fish and the nets were breaking. When you obey Christ and he tells you to cast your net and you obey, you will bring in a large batch of fish. And next, with the breaking nets and the flopping fish, there was chaos in the boat. That is the sign that you have a successful church plant: Chaos. Some will come and stay. Some will come for a small amount of time; you won’t know.
The single line of fishing. That’s a call on each of our lives, too. Single person ministry. But the call of the disciple is that of the net. Team work. Hard work. Guess work, Slow work, Long work, Cold work. Quiet work. Repeating work.
You throw the net and every Sunday you will wonder how many people will come back. You stand there and wait and the parking lot is empty and there is not a single car and then there is a second car and they come in and you are still waiting to see if anyone will come. Sometimes you call your wife and say please come early and park your car so there will be another.
Church planting is the most fun, most terrifying, most rewarding job in the world. If you are having fun, you are called. If you are not called, it is the worst job in the world. When they come on Sunday morning, you are surprised; when they leave, you hope you have not said anything that offended them so they will not come back. That’s church planting.
Sometimes a service is touched by the Holy Spirit in a unique way. At Bob Duncan’s consecration 3 years ago here in this sanctuary, energy rose up out of the people and there was an upwelling of applause. Everyone at the altar was surprised. I saw that touch of the Holy Spirit one time prior, when we read the the Cardinal
Ratzinger letter at the Plano Conference in 2003.
That muggy night of Bob Duncan’s consecration in the end of June, 2009 changed the subject in Anglican talk. That night, Bob called for us to plant 1000 churches. One Thousand. So many people at that service were trying to get out of their predicament in their own parishes. That reminds me of our friends in Virginia who enrolled in this conference and could not come. They are home tonight, meeting with their vestries, trying to figure out where they will be come April 2nd.
I wish he had called for 100, not 1000. Many of us could say we have done that. Like the old Cursillo line: make a church, be a church, bring your friend to church. Maybe that’s the way older people think about church planting.
I can’t plant one church and be done. We have to hear about the multiplication of congregations. All the lessons I’ve learned in the last 2 years are found on the You Tube video my son sent to me. It’s the way that young people think about church planting. [Will try and get the address tomorrow. The video showed one man, dancing in a field. He was the leader. He danced alone until a follower came then a second follower. Then the followers came in droves, anxious to join in the dance. Momentum gained as more people jump in. Soon, most were dancing.] The lesson: Leadership is an open door policy. There is no movement without the first follower. Have the guts to stand up and be the first person who leads AND the first who follows.
Turned to Bob Duncan: “So Archbishop, lead the dance.”
He did lead the dance the night of his consecration. He stood up and called for something crazy that would transform Anglicanism in North America. Creating from us a Net that Works. A network that the Lord can throw out into the broken world and help others find Christ. WE are to be that network.
OK, so you have a new plant. There is one requirement: you have a website at your church. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it must have contact information, phone number, email address, location. [Map of Canada appears on the overhead.] Each yellow dot (on map) in Canada are new churches. Now map of US with yellow dots. Each is a new church. Some states there aren’t any yellow dots. We placed a web tool over the populated areas i.e., Dallas, 9 new churches over the last 2 years.
We can’t check what kind of shape these churches are in. Some may have closed because it is hard work. We don’t run away from failure, we want to learn from it. It is very hard work. 211 new plants in the last 2.5 years. Some speed bumps and potholes mark the way. When we put the pedal to the medal in ACNA and formed these new plants, there were some loose ends, some things that didn’t come together in the net. We all know about these.
The AMiA situation is a situation that has slowed us down. How do we remain United, Biblical and Missionary - the three essentials of Anglicanism – when our brothers in Christ are no longer in fellowship? We need to hold our comments and opinions while these things are worked out, for the greater good. There are crews working on these potholes. Like Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, CT and the 7 parishes in VA that are facing more litigation and they don’t have the money to do it. So we can’t carelessly press on.
We have a polity, a demand that you be connected to someone. You have to have a bishop, who sends you, or a rector that sends you. No lone rangers. We don’t have the freedom of autonomy to just press on without consideration. There are people above our pay grade trying to patch things over and smooth the speed bumps, so we can welcome other like-minded Anglicans into our midst. Chuck Murphy said that there are 150 million unchurched in North America. Given Canada, there are far more than that. It is our intention that we do it together.
AT Anglican 1000: I don’t work alone. Staff introduced.
So who are we, gathered in this room? 393 registrants as of 1:00 PM today.
We are from 35 US states, 4 Canadian provinces. 76 planters joined since Jan ‘09 and 69 planted before ‘09
25 clergy spouses at 100% scholarship
100 more people will plant churches before 2014
66 people here are trainers
35 are seminary students
18 seminaries are represented
IF my math is right, we should have 276 church planters in the room, some already employed and some who will be employed in a future new church plant.
Anglican 1000 is moving. We have had great success, run out of Christ Church, and my office. It has such momentum for the rest of the province that it needs to be a wholly owned program/movement of the Province. I realized this through conversations with my staff and Abp. Duncan over the last two months. The very best thing for this movement is to find its permanent home in the structures of ACNA. Plus individual regional training bases in US and Canada . We have our next Provincial Assembly in June; let’s kick Anglican 1000 into the second phase of its expansion. A lot of you will be called to serve in many ways. You may be called to focus on Anglican 1000, to be the new person who will take charge of this program and take it into the future. I believe the new vicar of Anglican 1000, who will report directly to the Archbishop, is in this room, today.
IF you are that person, see the Archbishop. If you feel the pitter-patter in your heart, and believe in this amazing opportunity, see Bob Duncan.
Other things you need to know: it is very hard work. Old saw: easier to make babies than raise the dead. But it is also true that it is easier to make babies than to raise children. Getting that new start to grow and have a system and worship, etc. that’s really what makes it difficult. Most used graphic about church planting is small little plant with 4 green leaves. It’s the most misleading graphic on the web. Each new plant needs all these jobs done: ( long list) In other words, it is rocket science. What we have to do as rocket scientists is to form a network . How these things look and work together is what we will talk about at this conference. Now, it’s important to pause and pray. (20 minute intercessory prayers)
There is a difference between being a puppet and a puppet master. One desire is to create a beautiful, but lifeless creature that will do everything you want it to do, such that those who come will go out into their communities and neighborhoods and bring the “right people” into the church. Leaders have to spend the time to develop relationships that will accomplish this. Leaders should be able to give directions and make phone calls, and see results, right?
So when you think as a rector, or vicar or planter you have to think about how this thing is going to operate. Here’s the story of Pinocchio. He became a real boy, from something stiff and wooden to something real and alive. What we want to create in a congregation is a community of people that function with the love of Christ that has a life and energy of its own. Not a puppet, a wooden puppet with the right movements but no life.
That’s what we see in the 1st book of Acts: The Holy Spirit of God comes in and the Church acts like a real boy. They found Jesus to be God and found the Holy Spirit to be God. Their heart reached out to people because of this belief. Acts 2:42, “Everyone continued in the Apostles teaching, in the prayers….”
Yet they found the time for sitting down with others and communicating. We see extraordinary communication practices in the early church: letters. Sitting with parchment and pen and writing these elaborate, meaningful letters. First, Communication practices and then administrative practices: collecting money to be carried back to Jerusalem to minister to the people there. Then there are pastoral practices: It isn’t just looking at a verse. It is a much wider way to look holistically at the first chapters of Acts.
I’ve been here 26 years. Over the last 20, everything is one of 6 areas. We will look at these 6 areas together:
- Worship of the Triune God
- External Focus and outreach to the Community
- Discipleship training and Apostolic teaching
- Communication practices
- Administrative practices
- Pastoral practices
This is distinctly Anglican. Worship is our highest function. It is the leading edge of the congregation’s work. We gather to worship. Out of that worship flows two critical functions: internal and external focus: The twin engines of the plane. Internal focus is baptism, discipleship, all the programs that build community. External focus is what you do in the community. I have seen Anglicanism work in the poorest slums in Peru and the wealthiest parts of Dallas. It is universal.
At the bottom: administrative functions, communication and pastoral care.
Here are a few principles that we have found at Christ Church:
1) The pulpit leads the church. Every church is led by worship and worship is led by the pulpit. Some say the altar leads the church, and I can agree partially. But the strength of the church happens on Sunday morning. Preaching is an essential element. Don’t do it routinely, that only dulls the knife edge. People join a church because of the top of the triangle, not the bottom row. Not the newsletter or website. And, they don’t join a church to be baptized. They join a church because of the top three. From the top, the strength flows. When things are on and you feel the Spirit of God as people come together to worship, that’s what a church has to have to have an impact on the community. Weak worship = weak pews. IF you as the leader are uncertain about what you have to offer your community, it will show in your worship. Lead at the top, assign the bottom.
Many I have spoken with say that worship is what they want to lead, but spend all their time in pastoral care and communication and administration. Lead at the top, assign the bottom.
2) Church planting begins at the bottom with communication, and pastoral care. Most common reason churches fail is that they start at the top. Worship is the most important and that is why you put it off, you wait for it. There are exceptions, but pastoral care and communication and good administration lead you to preparing people for baptism and discipleship programs and cell groups. These elements all lead to worship. Talk to Steve Wood at All Saints, Mt. Pleasant. They built it from the ground up.
3) This is not the “Field of Dreams” philosophy: If I build it, they will come. With a new plant, the bottom row takes precedent. Administration: understand your vision, understand who you are. What is a member? Are you a 501 (c) (3)? How do you deal with money? who is going to account for the money? Establish a bank account; at Christ Church, we had to build all these things from the ground up. Every new plant does.
4) Set your budget for your church along these 6 lines, you will have a cohesive budget that you can explain to your parish. What is worship? How much will authentic, exciting worship cost? Make that the top goal of the budget. Remember to add in time for pulpit ministry/sermons/teaching. No one else can do this. And on down the triangle, with each area getting proper budgeting. Remember, new plants need to climb up the triangle.
Communicate, determine how to administer what you have and who you are; give generous pastoral care. This leads to a desire for internal focus: baptism, youth groups, terrific Sunday School classes, discipleship and Bible studies. Outreach flows from internal development. Worship is the culmination of all of the other segments. Truly, authentic Anglicanism. That’s what we are about and what you will hear about at this conference. Welcome!
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