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Troy McMahon on Planting Restore Community Church

  Troy was on staff at Community for 10 years after leaving a job at General Mills.  Troy was sent with 20+ people from Community to start a Restore Community Church in Kansas City.  It launched with 423 people on March 2nd of this year.  The surprise was the high number of students who were there on the first day.  Eleven weeks later the kids and student numbers have increased and Restore is now averaging little over 300 people.  Here are some key learnings that Troy gave us at our NewThing Gathering.

• Did fund raising from multiple sources (churches, individuals and church planting organizations).
• Did 18 service projects in the community before the launch of the new church.  This included raking leaves, servant evangelism, Troy being Santa at a local mall and more!
• Highly recommends converge with Passion 4 Planting.
• Interviewed lots of community leaders:  principal of schools, business leaders, civic leaders.  And learned lots of good information that they didn't get from demographics that they purchased.  This was very valuable.
• Started small groups before the opening day.
• Started a turbo group from the beginning with fourteen people and eight of them started a small group with two of those groups already reproducing new groups.
• Every person on the staff was challenged to do a block party.
• Keep fund raising after the church was started.
• Follow-up on newcomers relentlessly - send them a hand-written note.

Tim Keller on International Church Planting

One of the cool things about being asked to be the President of the Exponential Conference is getting to connect with some remarkable Christian leaders.  We had an unbelievable line-up of speakers this past year which included Tim Keller.  I had not met Tim, but was able to work both our schedules so that my brother Jon and I could spend about an 90 minutes with him the night before he was to speak.  His reputation for being an intellectual is right on target.  But Tim is also very approachable and has a keen understanding of the practical side of ministry and what it takes to get stuff done. 

Whenever I set up an appointment to meet with other leaders I will write up a list of questions and bring them with me. I am always surprised when someone makes an appointment with me to talk about church planting, multi-site or leadership and then they have no prepared questions. It feels like we are wasting both our time.  I believe leaders are learners and the best way to learn is to ask good questions. So anyway, I had a written list of questions and one of the topics that we discussed was Redeemer's vision for international church planting. Here is my summary of their strategy

1. Target key international cities. Tim believes that the key cities in the world today are New York, London, Hong Kong.  However, he said that Hong Kong will soon be replaced in the east by Dubai and Shanghai. (I'm sure Chicago is also in that category, he just assumed I knew that!)


2. Don't send a church planter to those cities, go to those cities to find a church planter.  I found this fascinating and counter-intuitive.  Most church planting organizations or church planting churches send church planters into new context; but Redeemer's strategy is to send some of their people to these cities who will search for the best church planters in that context already.


3. Provide training and money. Tim said that when they first approach potential church planters in these international settings they don't believe them or think it is some kind of bait and switch.  But once trust is earned this is the best way to attract church planters; to improve quality of the church plant and ensure that it still has the proper DNA.

While Keller and Redeemer are all about reproducing sites (they have 3) and church plants (helped start more than 100) my favorite quote of the night from Keller was this warning about the reproducing church:  "cell reproduction without a purpose is called cancer."  Comments?

Great "Behind The Scenes Video" From Exponential

I had a great time at Exponential.  And some of the most fun I had was some of the behind the scenes stuff:  meeting Andy Stanley for the first time; getting to spend an hour or so with Tim Keller at his hotel asking questions or just watching Rick Warren work the room at our NewThing Pizza dinner.  Good stuff! 

But as much fun as I had, no one had more fun at Exponential than Todd Rhoades, Chris Elrod and my blogging hero, Scott Hodge.  They got to interview some amazing people and totally cut up.  In the process they also got some great video of some terrific Exponential leaders:

• Alan Hirsch
• Dave Ferguson (me!)
• Greg Surratt
• John Burke & Vince Antonucci
• Ed Stetzer
• Rick Warren

Each one of these is really worth checking out.

Alan Hirsch at Exponential Conference

One of the highlights of the Exponential Conference was getting to do this session with Alan Hirsch on Organizing for Reproduction. I believe that Alan is a prophet for our generation.  His current book Forgotten Ways has really encouraged us at Community to experiment with new forms of church, like our 3C Communities.  I think every church should be experimenting so that they can better determine where God wants them to go next.  Alan is going to be hanging out with all the NewThing Lead Pastors at our next Gathering in a few weeks.  That will be a blast!  If you would like to hear a podcast interview I did with Alan before the Exponential Conference, click HERE. 

Andy Stanley or Jon Ferguson??

Got a moment to hangout with Andy Stanley, the Lead Pastor of NorthPoint Community Church at Exponential 08.  Andy did the opening main session on Apostolic Vision.  It was the best talk I've heard on how to communicate a clear vision.  If you want the notes check out Vince's site.

Now is it me or do you think Andy looks like my brother Jon?  One time we were at a Willow Conference where Andy was speaking and while Jon and I were in the bathroom someone came up to Jon and told him he did a great job on his talk.  The guy was referring to the talk that Andy had just given.  Andy Stanley and Jon Ferguson - twins separated at birth?  Wow, imagine how awesome Community would be if I had another brother and it turned out to be Andy Stanley?!?

Hundreds & Hundreds Commit to Church Planting

This was the closing moment at Exponential 08.  It was awesome as hundreds and hundreds of leaders came forward committing to start new churches/sites or committing the new church they are starting to God. 

In this pic Rick Warren (seated on the stage) is praying for all these new church planters and reproducing church leaders asking God's blessing on their efforts.  What you see here has the potential to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches!

Church Planting & Basketball!

Like peanut butter & jelly OR Pippen & Jordan…it’s the perfect combo:  basketball & church planting!  My two favorites!!  The genius team that I’m proud to be a part of at the Exponential Conference has put together the ultimate fun in March Madness.  There are over 100 church planting leaders already participating and lots of bloggers (but still no Scott Hodge…c’mon Scott, do you know anything other than java…let’s see if you can pick a final four!?!) that are all trying their skill at bracketology.

And if want to get in on the action…it’s open to everyone….just SIGN UP HERE.  You can also keep up with all of the trash talking and results by going over to the Planting Space blog.

Tim Keller... on being brilliant!

I've been fortunate enough to get to meet and even know a lot of the people that I really admire who are in the ministry.  But one of the people I have never met and really admire is Tim Keller. I admire the church that he leads - Redeemer; I admire his commitment to church planting and I admire how smart he is!  (And I plan on connecting with him at the Exponential Conference - don't miss it!)  I had a chance to meet him last week for dinner, but it was last minute and I already had stuff planned.  Ugh!  However, here is an interview with Tim in First Things where he talks about his new book (The Reason For God, which I just ordered and it is currently #18 on the New York Times bestseller list), C.S. Lewis, "seeker churches" and being a Presbyterian.  Check it out.

Why Existing Churches Need New Churches

I have been thinking again about innovation.  Ed Bahler was challenging me with the idea from the Innovators Dilemma (which I have just ordered).  The basic concept is that even the most innovative and best-managed companies (or churches), in spite of their attention to customers and continual investment in new technology, are susceptible to failure because these companies (or churches) tend to continue to do business the way they always have done business.

It seems to me that the only way to break out of that innovators dilemma is to continually surround yourself with innovators and people who are inventing the new tomorrow.  And the best way to do that in the church world is to become a reproducing church.  Start new sites with young emerging leaders and listen to their new ideas.  Start new churches and get close enough to them that you can learn from them and break out of your old paradigms.  Begin a church planting network and find yourself immersed in a conversation of new and innovative thinking about reaching people far from God.  I think we need to be reproducing churches not only so that we can start new sites, churches and networks to help people find their way back to God; we also need to be reproducing churches so that our existing churches remain relevant to an ever-changing world!  Agree?  Disagree?

Don't Be Afraid Of Reproducing

Some leaders are secretly afraid of reproducing new sites or new churches.  And if you could get inside their brains this is what you would hear them saying, "But if I send a hundred people to go start a new site, I'm not sure the existing church will be able to take that kind of hit" OR "If I encourage some of my best people to leave and go be a part of a church plant, I'm not sure our church could recover from that kind of loss."  We have got to let go of that fear; the church was made to be a reproducing organism and designed to be a missional sending agency.

We had about 25 people move from Chicago along with Troy and Janet McMahon to Kansas City to start Restore Community Church.  This past weekend they had a great start with over 400 people at their launch.  We also sent out about 190 people mostly from our CCC-Naperville and CCC-Romeoville to go and start  CCC-Plainfield.  And if you are a reader of this blog you know that we had a great first weekend with well over 600 people at that new location.  So, what about the existing church that lost some of key leadership?  What about the existing sites that sent 190 of their very best out to start this new site?  How are they doing?  Are they going to make it?  I was looking at the stats that David Girdwood sent me and our attendance this past weekend was up by more than 1000 over the previous four week average.  Our attendance at CCC-Naperville was up by over 200 and CCC-Romeoville was up by almost 100 over the average of the previous month despite sending 190 people out as a part of the launch team at CCC-Plainfield.

I definitely don't mean this as a boast, but only as a grace - it seems that God blesses Community when we reproduce and send people out to accomplish His mission.