Category: Church Planting

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SABOTAGE

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In France, the efforts of the French Resistance were significant enough to make a significant impact on the outcome of the war. They dismantled tank treads, put sand in the grease of vehicles, and stole ball bearings.

Sabotage.

It’s the enemy’s oldest and favorite tactic. He sabotaged Eden. He infiltrated the children of Israel by seduction when Balaak’s army couldn’t defeat them in a head on confrontation. In the early days, his tactic is to sow tares among the wheat making it clear that “An enemy has done this.” He is trying to derail the carriage of the troop transport off course. In WW2, my grandfather who served in the 101st airborne was delayed from crossing the Atlantic, but the ship he was originally scheduled to be on was sunk by a German U-boat.

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ACTS 1 & 2

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Acts was not written to show us how to do church. It was written to show us how to do churches. Acts was written to show us how the church expands; how the West was won. From day one at Pentecost, Peter as a wise leader knew that the vision of what was going to happen would be shared. God was going to speak to, inspire, and move through everybody. Part of the miracle of tongues on the day of Pentecost was to the ears of the hearers.  Peter tells them that the activity of the Holy Spirit would cause old men to dream dreams, and young men see visions. Both of these groups of people aren’t taken all that seriously, but the bottom line was this; inclusion.

Church plants are the place to dream.

The reason that Acts 1 & 2 are so important is that most people want to be an Acts 2:42 church. But if read properly, the reader understands that in order to be an Acts 2 church, you must first be an Acts 1 church. Getting on your knees, and seeking Him for His presence is the chief business of your core team. As they do that, the Holy Spirit will begin to speak to each of them, burdening each of them for the work. When that starts to happen, a leader knows that God is in the house, and he’s merely a servant, serving as a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord. Just keep holding that door open church planter so that the presence of the Holy Spirit can come in and lift up Christ in your midst! That’s what happened on Pentecost!

Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.

reaching-the-unreached-book

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BEING THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD

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Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Until churches change, their members will remain the same. That starts with leadership. You can’t steer the Titanic unless you’re the Captain – that’s one of the reasons we’re planting to begin with. A planter sets out to be the change he wants to see in the world. That change begins with the church planter nailing down the values of the gospel that are in stark contrast with the culture he’s exegetes.

If the world is going to be reached, we are going to have to be able to relate to them. There is a lot of talk about the church becoming relevant, but I think that this is barking up the wrong tree, confusing the real issue. The real issue is making your church a mission outpost, and perhaps that’s the language that all could accept. People react to the word “relevant” as if we’re snake oil salesmen trying to pull the latest methodology over the eyes of the church. The church you’re planting in its essences needs to be a missionary endeavor.  If it is, then like any good missionary, it must be

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COMMANDO SCHOOL

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There are a few essential bits of training that a core team must have before they are deployed. Over the months that you will be training your core team, you need to emphasize the following resources, scriptures, and key concepts.

  1. The Book of Titus
  1. Acts 1 & 2
  1. The Gospel-Centered Life
  1. Jump School Film

REMEMBER THE TITUS

Titus is one of my biblical heroes. He was the stud apostolic trainee of Paul.  This is evidenced by the challenging nature of the missions that Paul handed down to him in contrast with Timothy who had to be told to “do the work of an evangelist”.  Titus was frontline all the way.  His Mission Impossible manila folder contains the letter of Titus with a photograph of the isle of Crete. In that briefing he was told that his mission, should he choose to accept it, was to church plant in every major city. How was he to do that? By establishing leadership in every city (Titus 1:4)

The method: discipleship “teach men who themselves can teach others”

In effect, that’s what you’re doing with a core team. You’re training them to be a crack commando unity like the Dirty Dozen.  In the same way that Jesus took a small group and poured his all into it, you’re pouring into the core team with the hope that they will, in turn, pay it forward when you’re taken out of the picture. Eventually, you’ll be sending them out as innocent as sheep, but as wise as serpents which can be translated as a dangerous combination to the kingdom of darkness.

Discipleship is at the heart of the book of Titus. If Acts is the narrative church planting book of the New Testament, then Titus is the church planting epistle! It’s not by accident that Paul writes to a serial church planter with discipleship directives. The key to the book is in 1:9  teach, exhort, and

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PLANTOLOGY

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Take a desk, soldier, this briefing will be brief, but crucial to your training. The dossier in front of you is labeled Plantology.

Plantology is the study of the science of church planting. Mission Briefing. Studying of maps. Reviewing of objectives. If we analyzed modern church planting under a microscope, we would observe an unusual practice of hiring a building, creating a website, designing a logo, and inviting people to a phantom church that exists only in our minds. You’ve heard it said before that God never commanded us to plant churches. Instead, he commanded us to:

  1. Go – that means spread out from where you were before; to where the gospel isn’t
  1. Preach the gospel – this needs to be re-emphasized in the current climate of church planting where “just be the church” has become a theological platitude for shirking responsibility. Search your feelings, you know it to be
  2. Make disciples – this means to reproduce yourselves, but before your people reproduce themselves, they need to be people worth reproducing; people who resemble Jesus. They become this on mission…

When these things are acted out, people get saved. When people get saved, churches are naturally planted by the apostolic planter. Paul traveled to an area, opened his mobile business, preached privately and publicly, and when people got saved, he reproduced himself, leaving disciples in his wake. The science of plantology is not rocket science. Welcome to the team.

Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.

reaching-the-unreached-book