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What Does It Take To Create A Movement?

All the NewThing Network Lead Pastors are flying into Chicago to hangout for a couple days for our NewThing Gathering.  We have leaders coming from right here in Chicago and from as far away as San Pablo, Philippines. It is going to be an fun and productive couple days!

The mission of NewThing is "to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches".  Since the comments I get on this blog are often better than the posts, I thought I would ask you - WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CREATE A MOVEMENT?

I have been reading a lot of what Alan Hirsch has to say in Forgotten Ways (Alan will be hanging out with us tomorrow - that will be great stuff!) I have also have been thinking a lot about the content of The Starfish and The Spider.  But I'd like to know what you think.  Leave me a comment - it could impact the future of our Network and maybe a movement of reproducing churches!

NewThing...new website...new look!

NewThing has a new look and a very cool new website with lots of new stuff you will definitely want to check out!  Kudos to Tom Greever for working overtime to make this happen before the Exponential Conference.  Thanks Tom!

I think the coolest new part of this website is the blog aggregator that constantly updates all the latest posts from blogs within the NewThing Networks. Check it out by clicking HERE.

Other cool stuff that you will definitely want to check out:

• Discover how you can partner with some of the best church planters in the world by becoming a part of NewThing as an Affiliate Church.
• Articles on church planting, multi-site and reproducing churches, such as: What Every Follower Wants In a Leader or Three Challenges For Every New Church or The Reproducing Church.
• Get the latest news on upcoming NewThing events like the Exponential Conference, The Reproducing Church Experience or The Big Idea Practicum or Multi-Site Practicum and more!
• Learn how to get coaching or training in becoming a multi-site church.
• And tons of resources...free!

This is just phase #1.  Take a look and leave me a comment and tell me what you think.  I will pass along the compliments and I'd like to hear your suggestions.

Great Night for NewThing Networks

We had a great time on Saturday at our first ever NewThing vision dinner.  It seemed only appropriate that we have it at our new CCC-Plainfield location, which is in a school.  It sounds kind of crazy, but there were lots of people from Community that were just getting introduced to the NewThing Networks. We had people who had become Christ Followers at CCC several years ago coming up to us and saying, "I had no idea about NewThing..."  The pic is Jon telling the people about our affiliate churches and our plans to start a church in San Francisco.

If you want to get more of the detail on the night check out Greg Lee's blog.  Greg is one of our Apostolic Network Leaders and came over and did a great job on his talk in front of our home crowd.  Sherry Gossman is a NewThing employee and fan and she gives her take on the night on her blog.

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.

Great Start for CCC-Plainfield and KC's Restore CC

I spent part of the morning teaching at Community-Romeoville and part of it on my  blackberry getting the latest updates from the launch of our ninth site, Community-Plainfield and the launch of our NewThing Network church in Kansas City.  And the news is great!!!   I don't have all the details, but I got some numbers:  we had 642 people show up for the first service at Community-Plainfield!  Amazing!!   Troy and the gang had 418 at Restore Community Church for their first weekend!  Awesome!!  God is very good and very kind.  More details to come...

BIG DAY (2x)!!

Sunday, March 2nd is going to be a big day in the life of Community!

We are starting our ninth location here in Chicago in the southwest suburb of Plainfield, Illinois.  We partnered with the CDEA, CIEA and Stadia for the launch of this new site.  I have already told Brad Prunty, our Campus Pastor to call me as soon as he can with a report on how the first day is going. 

And our NewThing Network is celebrating the start of Restore Community Church in Kansas City.  More than 20 people moved from Community to Kansas City including Troy and Janet McMahon to help start this new church.  Troy promised me that I would be the first person he'd call with details.  Can't wait to hear the good news!

Nothing in the whole world is better than starting a new Community site or a new church...unless it's starting both a new site and new church on the same day!  This is a big day for this reproducing church!!

Outreach Magazine Interview about Innovation (part 2)

In the upcoming issue of Outreach Magazine they interviewed a number of people to discuss innovation in the church.  Since I spent some time answering all these questions and only some of them are in the article, I thought I would go ahead and post my response to their questions in full here.  This is the second part of  the interview.

OUTREACH: Tell me about the impact you've seen/experienced--metrics (if you have them), inspiring anecdotes, personal experience.

DF: In some cases we have seen significant impact and in other cases we are just beginning to see what I believe will be a huge impact from these innovations.  I’ll comment on each:

• Multi-Site to Poly-site:  In addition to the “regular” sites that we have, Community has also reproduced a site that is meeting in a 55+ gated golf community. This site is one of our most healthy locations: we are seeing people become Christ Followers at the age of 75-85. This location is on a good growth curve, and has 20% more people in small groups than at their weekend services! We also have a growing and dynamic site that is in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago; a community that is made up of first generation Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants. In the coming year we are looking forward to starting another Spanish-speaking site and beginning to experiment with 3C Communities. 3C Communities will be sites of our church that do not meet at a church facility. They will meet in “third places”; offices; health clubs and other locations where our leaders can assemble them. We are estimating that at least 35% of the current population will never under any circumstances enter into a church people. These 3C Communities will go to them. 
• Network to Networks: Two years ago we had four churches in this young church planting network. Last year we had eight churches in the NewThing Network. This year we have doubled again and now have sixteen churches and are going international. As the network continued to expand it was becoming increasingly obvious that a movement will not be made up of a single network. So, this last year we reproduced two more networks and now NewThing has three networks led by apostolic leaders. What is inspiring is seeing the ownership of this network shift from one church and a few leaders to many churches and many high-capacity leaders. All of our new churches have plans to go to multiple sites (many this year) and all are involved in reproducing other new churches
• Partnership with under-resourced public schools: We have become a church that knows you    can’t call yourself a church unless you care about the poor.  We still have a lot of growth to do in this area, but regularly we challenge our congregation to give of their time and resources to be involved in the lives of people different than themselves.  Our relatively resourced and primarily Caucasian church has partnered with the public school system in a neighboring community that is almost 90% Hispanic and where nearly 70% of children are considered low-income. Through the schools, we have built relationships with teachers, administrators, students, and parents.  From the beginning our focus has been on relationship building and “community development” rather than simply providing hand-outs and donations.  We provide such things as tutoring, ESL classes, and community events such as a Christmas Gift Mart, parent mentoring programs, teacher support, and internship opportunities for students.  We have taken the approach of SHOWING the love of Jesus before PREACHING the love of Jesus.  As wedevelop relationships in the community with other churches, non-profit organizations, the city government, and the schools, we are building a base of support for a church or site we will plant in the community.  Before the church opens its doors, it will be seen as a church that is highly invested in the community. We challenge people to start by helping at a big event and then moving to more regular, consistent service, and even to the point of relocating their families to    under-resourced communities . . . to do as Jesus did and live incarnationally among the poor.  We’ve seen parents empowered to get involved in their children’s school, students make academic progress they wouldn’t have made without extra support, people who have seen faith in God as a rigid set of rules start to question what it means to have a personal relationship with Christ.

OUTREACH: What were the challenges and risks involved in innovating in one of these areas? How did you overcome them?

DF: The risks and challenges almost always involve: fear, finances and finding the right leadership.   Here are the details as they apply to specific innovations:

• Multi-Site to Poly-site: It is definitely a harder work and there is a greater rate of fatality when you start sites that are not the same as the “successful” site you are already operating. We      even had one site that failed. But we have always believed that if we don’t have some sites that fail that merely means that we are not trying enough new things. So you overcome the fear of failure by assuming that part of the price of innovation is failure. And as followers of Jesus we are not called to success, we are called to risk and as a leader that sounds like innovation to me!
• Network to Networks: The greatest challenge in moving from a single network to reproducing networks is relinquishing control and putting your trust in other leaders. We knew that control is really only an illusion and that our dream would never come true if we held onto the illusion of control. And then God sent us some great leaders in Dave Dummit (242 Community Church) and Greg Lee (SunCrest Christian Church) an we asked them to step up and lead one of our networks. We are just beginning to see the benefit of this; but it is clearly the right strategic move if we ever hope to see a movement of reproducing churches. 
• Partnership with under-resourced public schools: The biggest challenge we faced was      people’s fear: fear of working with people that speak a different language; fear of physical safety; fear of committing time and money to such a needy area; fear of moving out of      comfort zones.  We have had to provide people with lots of different opportunities to get involved at all different levels.  We make it very easy for people just starting out on this journey of working with the poor and culturally different to just show up and experience an activity      in a large group.  Making that first step is the hardest and then we have lay leaders whose primary role is to coach and guide people as they want to move deeper and deeper into a serving life-style.

(more to come...)

Outreach Magazine Interview about Innovation (part 1)

I did an interview with Outreach Magazine for their January/February issue on America's Most Innovative Churches. I got an advance copy of the magazine and there is some great stuff in this issue.  I also got to be on the panel that helped nominate churches for America's Most Innovative Churches list.  That was fun, and much more challenging than I thought.  I really tried to find innovations that were occurring in churches that no one had ever heard of and nominate them.  But if there is cool stuff happening out there, chances are someone has heard about it already. Anyway, that is another post for another day.  Some of the interview they used in their cover story and some of it they edited out.  So, over the next couple days I will post some of the Q & A from that interview.

OUTREACH: If you think of innovation as something new--something that hasn't been done before--what would you say are three of the most innovative initiatives/strategies your church is doing currently in the context of outreach or you're doing through your church?

DF:  There are a number of innovations in the works at Community, but three that seem to be gaining traction are the following:

• Multi-Site to Poly-Site: Our vision at Community is no longer just to be multi-site, but is to be poly-site and to reach out to more people and more different kinds of people. A Poly-site church reproduces not just sites, but many kinds of sites to reach many kinds of people.
• Network to Networks Community’s NewThing Network is now NewThing Networks.  NewThing is not only reproducing new churches but has made a shift to reproducing networks. It is the reproducing of networks that will allow us to be a catalyst for a movement of new churches.
• Partnership with under-resourced public schools. Community’s partnership with under-resourced public schools is helping transform a neighborhood, our church and provide outreach opportunities beyond our imagination!

OUTREACH: What prompted you to try these initiatives/strategies?  What was your motivation?

DF:  I don't mean to sound hyper-spiritual, but we really believe that these things are promptings by God's Spirit...God-things!  And our motivation is always to "help people find their way back to God" and to accomplish the mission of Jesus.  Here is some more on each of these innovations:

• Multi-Site to Poly-Site:  Most of the current thinking and application amongst multi-site churches is to reproduce new sites exactly like all the rest. At Community we currently have eight locations in Chicago  and our dream is to have two hundred sites. The dream forced us to ask ourselves, “how can we reach the growing senior population; how can we reach the growing ethnic populations; and how can we reach the emerging generation who may never come to a church facility?" Those questions and subsequent opportunities brought these initiatives. And our motivation is always: “helping people find their way back to God”.
• Network to Networks Our motivation comes from NewThing’s dream: “to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches.”  This dream requires that we move from a single network of reproducing churches to reproducing networks of reproducing churches!
• Partnership with under-resourced public schools. After over a decade of strategically focusing our outreach on people like us, we knew it was time to expand our focus beyond people like us and into places that were culturally and economically different from our own community.  We knew we needed to help our congregation live out the 3,000 versus in the Bible that talk about poverty and injustice and our responsibility as Christ-followers to do something about that.  Our motivation was a commitment to live out the whole gospel and serve and reach people in a wholistic way---by meeting physical, relational, economic and spiritual needs.

(more to come...)

Merry Christmas Miami!

On January 22nd, our NewThing Network will see the birth of yet another reproducing church - The Pursuit Christian Church in Miami, Florida.  Miami is currently the second least churched city in the United States and Matt Mahaffey and his team have a vision to change that!  And to help accomplish that vision they are saying "Merry Christmas Miami" and have put together a Christmas wish list for you! The items on the list range from $5-$500 and it is a great way for us to be generous!  Since Matt sent this to me, I thought I would let you guys in on the opportunity too!  So click HERE and be a part new church that will change Miami forever!