Top Blog Post of 2014
Added 38 posts to the old Blog this year. Here’s the Top 10:
- 8 Things You’ll Never Hear An ON Mission Christian Say
- Before and After: The Way Church of Denham Springs
- 5 Things You Must Do Before You Plant A Church
- 5 Ways to Have Fun and Reach Out This Fall
- Believing for the Hard to Reach Areas: Church Planting in Avoyelles Parish
- “The size of a church does not determine its health, but…”
- 5 Things You Must Do the First Year of a Church Plant
- Stillwater Making Waves through Church Planting and Multiplication
- The Importance of Initiating New Relationships
- Outreach FAQ: “What if we’ve tried that already?”
Thanks for reading.
#Devo – The Messy Reason for #Christmas
With the Beauty of the Christmas season, don’t forget the MESSY reason that it came about.
Here’s some verses we’ll be sharing around our table on Christmas Eve:
- 1 Timothy 1:15 – “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…”
- 1 John 3:5 – “Jesus came to take away our sins…”
- Luke 7:34 – “The Son of Man came eating and drinking… a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”
- Luke 19:10 – “the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
- Matthew 20:28 – “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
This Christmas, celebrate the fact that God was willing to enter the world to take on the messiness of our sin that we might know Him & experience His presence.
#ChurchPlanting as Incarnational Engagement
“The Word became flesh & moved into the neighborhood.”
John 1:14 MSG
The Way Church, 4 years old, worships in its new facilities. 200+ now have space to seek God b/c of church planting efforts in Denham Springs.
This time of year I love seeing the different ways churches reach out to their communities & the world. Christmas shoe boxes, Angel Tree’s, gifts to local at-risk kids, Christmas festivals & Block Parties, Special Christmas Musicals & Worship Gatherings, Christmas offerings for missions, etc., etc. But seeing new churches do these things really helps drive home the truth of the incarnation in my heart. The Incarnation is the truth that God became flesh & blood & dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ, in order to meet our deepest need in a way that had never been possible. When a new church begins to reach out in a community, we can realistically think about the day in the not too distant past, when that service or ministry was NOT available to those people. The word of God has “moved into the neighborhood”
Church Planter Josh Holland prays with a man on the streets of New Orleans as Level Ground Community Church, 2 years old participates in a gift distribution.
to bring the truth & be the hands & feet of Jesus. That’s why I tend to get goose bumps when someone says, “If it hadn’t been for Hope Church or Bridge Church (two church plants that I’ve been a part of), I don’t know where I’d be…” Because I can remember when there was no Hope Church or Bridge Church. And I can remember times when I almost gave up because of hard soil & my own discouragement. But through his grace we were blessed to be a part of bringing Jesus & being Jesus in these neighborhoods.
Grateful for those who are incarnation-ally engaging this Christmas season.
This truth can also apply to individual Christians in your neighborhood, workplace, or extended family. How can you bring Jesus & be Jesus to those around you who need light this Christmas?
And what people group in your community does not have an active witness to the light of Christmas this year? How could church planting bring the gospel to new neighborhoods around your church & through your church?
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- A member of Bridge Church delivers a fruit basket to elderly residents of their community.
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- United Outreach in Shreveport, two years old, provides food boxes for hundreds of families in the Shreveport area.
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- Christ Church in Lafayette holds a Christmas Festival at its new location which launched in September.
Stillwater Making Waves through #ChurchPlanting and Multiplication
Every believer is a church planter.
This is a lesson that I learned from Lonnie Tucker, pastor & church planter of Stillwater Baptist in Ponchatoula. And this is a lesson he’s teaching his congregation regularly. But it’s not just words to Stillwater. This year Stillwater has sent out three teams to start new churches in neighboring communities of Hammond, Slidell, & New Orleans. The result has been 118 professions of faith & 43 baptisms in 2014 & 301 professions of faith & 111 baptisms since 2012 when Stillwater Ponchatoula began receiving Cooperative Program funding. And another new church is planned in 2015. So one church plant has blossomed into five in a matter of 3 years! That’s the kind of rapid multiplication that will reach Louisiana & the world for Christ. Grateful for Lonnie Tucker & his team.
Believing for the Hard to Reach Areas: #ChurchPlanting in Avoyelles Parish
Before & after Life Point’s new Worship & Compassion Ministry Center was built in Mansura
Life Point Church in Avoyelles Parish is a favorite Louisiana church planting story of mine. Jacob Crawford started Life Point in 2010. They began receiving cooperative funding in 2012 and since then have baptized 104 in a traditionally hard to reach part of Louisiana. Life Point has grown from an average attendance of 65 in 2012 to 118 in 2013 to 165 this year. 75% growth since their first month of Cooperative Funding. Another remarkable thing about Life Point is that the congregation is 60% white & 40% African-American. That’s remarkable for almost any church in the South for one thing, but it’s also significant because it mirrors the racial makeup of the community. Life Point has used Compassion Ministry as a way to connect with people in the low income communities of Avoyelles, including thrift store, food distribution, Celebrate Recovery, Jail ministry & festival outreach. This year, construction was completed on a new Worship & Compassion Ministry Center in Mansura, LA. And now, as Life Point “rolls off” Cooperative Program funding, they are taking on the planting of a new church in the neighboring community of Plaucheville.
If anybody had said in 2010, that you could plant a church that would be 40% African-American & 60% white, & that church would grow to 200 in the heavily Roman Catholic, farming communities of low-income Avoyelles Parish, many would have doubted. But thank God Jacob & his team have kept believing in the power of the Gospel & today lives are being changed.
Connect with Life Point on Facebook. Get to know Jacob, especially if you’re planting in a rural area. And pray for Jacob & his team as they continue to plant seeds in Avoyelles Parish.
Listen to Jacob tell part of their story in his own words in these videos:
Not Life PLUS Mission, Life ON Mission
the secret to increasingly living our lives together on God’s mission is to move away from seeing discipleship as something that needs to be tacked onto an already busy schedule, toward seeing all of the normal stuff of life as full of opportunity for discipleship and growth in the gospel.
This is not a call to life plus mission; rather, it is a call to life on mission.
If life on mission, a life of discipleship, is too hard, or seems impossible with your schedule… Choose a different rhythm.
Ceasar Kalinowski, in Small is Big Slow is Fast: Living and Leading Your Family and Community on God’s MissionLoving this book!
#ChurchPlanting Partnership Leading to Changed Lives in NE Hammond
In the process of a self-assessment, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Hammond faced the fact that a sizable population of African Americans near their church was unreached & that they had been unable to reach them for years. That’s when the pastor, Kent Newell, called Lonnie Tucker, Pastor of predominantly African-American Stillwater Baptist Church in Ponchatoula. Together they saw that what was needed was a new congregation. Stillwater sent Elltore & Tomesha Austin to began ministering in the area & Ebenezer opened its doors for a Tuesday evening Bible Study. Six months later, 65+ gather for Worship & Bible Study & lives are being changed by the Gospel.
Grateful for this partnership that blossomed out of the needs of the community & desire for unreached people to have a gospel witness. One congregation SENT qualified leaders for the work. Another congregation WELCOMED a new congregation onto its campus. More Great Commission, Church Planting Partnerships like these needed! Grateful for Stillwater & Ebenezer!
The Need: Healthier and Riskier #ChurchPlanting
Healthier church planting means church planting that is led by churches with a heart to multiply and reproduce themselves for the sake of kingdom expansion. So, what’s needed for healthier church planting is healthy mother churches with a heart to reproduce. As Bob Roberts says in his great book The Multiplying Church, “The future of faith in America (and anywhere in the world, for that matter) is not tied to planting more churches, but in raising up of mother congregations of every tribe, tongue, denomination, and network that are reproducing… The hope is in pregnant mother churches.”
Riskier church planting would be multiplication that targets hard to reach areas and unchurched pockets of our population. Missiologist Alan Hirsch suggests that current church models are reaching out to smaller and smaller segment of the population, with possibly as much as 60% of America untargeted by our evangelistic and outreach efforts. Multi-housing residents would be one potential segment that is underserved. Others may be those in their early 20’s with very little understanding of religion in any form. We need some church plants that go beyond planting a worship service that looks similar to others in the community, but will ask the question “Where is the church not?” and go there with the gospel. We need some church plants that have different scorecards and different expectations, but will faithfully deliver the message of Christ to unchurched people.
Before and After: The Way Church of Denham Springs #ChurchPlanting #MultiplyLA
Congrats to The Way Church of Denham Springs on the grand opening of their new building. The Way is in their 3rd year as a church plant & have already baptized over 100! AND they are already serving as a primary sponsor for a new church in a neighboring community! Grateful for Planters Scott Cheatham & Josh Spinks.
The new location of The Way was formerly Calvary Baptist Church. As the Way grew, Calvary continued to face severe decline. David Brown, Director of Missions for the Eastern LA Baptist Association, led the two to begin to converse about merging. Zoar Baptist Church, North American Mission Board (NAMB) Legacy Church Program, Louisiana Baptists Georgia Barnette State Mission Offering each contributed to the remodeling. Look fwd to seeing what God does through the Way Church in the future!
Church planting is about BEFORE AND AFTER. The after affect should be lives changed & God’s kingdom expanding. And that’s what we see in Denham Springs because of the starting of a new church focused on evangelism & the decision of an existing church facing decline, to die to themselves so the kingdom can grow.
“Gift of Heaven, Our Savior” #worship
From the top of the Playlist…
VERSE 1:
There’s a song in the air, there’s a star in the sky, hear a mother’s deep prayer, and a baby’s loud cry
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles the King
CHORUS:
Gift of Heaven, our Savior, the word in flesh has come
VERSE 2:
There’s a choir of joy and a marvelous birth, for the virgin’s sweet boy is the Lord of all the Earth
BRIDGE:
This baby boy will be our only victory, on the cross, on the cross
Sweet Jesus you will be our only victory, on the cross, on the cross
This baby boy will be our only victory, on the cross, on the cross
TAG:
You’ve come to save the world
Emily Ward, Aaron Ivey, Caleb Price, Kyle Lent, Jimmie Ingram, Jimmy McNeal, Chris Collins, Justin Cofield.
© 2012 Austin Stone Worship (ASCAP) / 2012 Bird And Minion Music (BMI) / 2012 JCO Music Intl (BMI) (adm. by Austin Stone Music)
From the album A Day of Glory by Austin Stone.
Lane Corley 