Clear Springs

I was blessed to attend the New Church Leadership Institute (“NCLI”) a few months ago. The setting was Mt. Sequoyah in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is a beautiful retreat center and conducive to study, discernment and learning. It was also cold and snowing like crazy, so we were not tempted to goof off very much outside. The purpose of the institute is to help pastors discern if they are really well suited to plant a church, and if so, how to go about it. To that end, the folks in attendance went through a Personal Discernment Inventory (“DISC Profile”) to assess if we have the personality and leadership traits which are proven successful for church planting pastors. After years of research, the data has revealed some fairly obvious conclusions:
• Not every pastor has the talents and gifts for church planting. It is critical to identify and encourage those that do.
• Properly and intensively educating, training, coaching and equipping the church planting pastors greatly increases their likelihood of success. NCLI is a big part the process, followed by a “boot camp” for pastors who have demonstrated the talents that will be required.
• The best church planting model is that of a mother-daughter church, not the old fashioned “parachute drop”. Having a parent church and its resources and support is critical for the daughter church. Simply dropping a pastor into an area with instructions to start a church does not work very well. The success rate for a parachute drop, on a national average, is about 20%, whereas the success rate climbs dramatically to 80% using the mother-daughter model.

By now, you might be wondering what I was doing at NCLI. A lay minister is not going to be assigned to start a church. The General Board of Discipleship website for CLM does, however, include “Deploying qualified CLMs for missional leadership in new church starts or redevelopments” as a proper assignment. Otherwise stated, a CLM might be assigned to assist a church planting pastor. First United Methodist Church of Seguin reckons that it is 169 years old this year. We have never planted a new church and we decided a few years ago that it was high time to do so. We bought some property in the Clear Springs area because it is in the center of a dynamically growing region. A team was selected and it has diligently been planning for at least two years. We submitted our grant application to the Conference. Finally, Senior Pastor Steve Purdy and I packed up our winter clothes and headed to Fayetteville. We wanted to know what a church planting pastor would go through and how the parent church could best support him or her.

The major question I had going in was how a CLM might best assist a new church planter. I learned that the leadership skills for a successful new church planter are well complimented by someone who scored high in pastoral, administrative, analytical and organizational skills. That profile probably fits most CLMs quite well. It did in my case. We recently learned that the Conference grant we applied for last fall had been favorably acted on and that we would be assigned a church planting pastor in June, 2010. What was something of an academic exercise back in February has quickly become a reality. We will have our new pastor and all of the work and planning we have done is beginning to bear fruit. I suspect that future “Reflections” will include updates as this exciting new ministry progresses.
I do ask for your prayers for the new pastor and her family, for our church, for the launch team and most of all, prayers for the new church God will plant over in Clear Springs.

Joy!

Bill