I recently was interviewed by the organizers of Assembly 2012, the Anglican Church in North America. annual meeting at which I will be speaking later this summer. They recently published the interview, and, since much of the content isn't specific to the ACNA event, I thought I would share it here as well.

Q: What message do you hope to share with members and friends of the Anglican Church in North America at the upcoming 2012 Provincial Assembly?

I have three messages, I think, so there will be a variety of themes: transformation, gospel, church planting, revitalization, etc.  However, the central point will be that we need to join Jesus on His mission.

When Jesus proclaimed, "As the father has sent me, so send I you" (John 20:21), he declared that we are participants in his mission.  Our call is not to go do what Jesus did--died on the cross, for our sins, and in our place.  But, our call is to do what Jesus said--he told us to live out the Great Commission and the Great Commandment--to share and show the love of Jesus.  So, the church joins Jesus in his mission.

Q: Why does church planting matter and what is the best way to get involved?

It matters because, upon hearing the words of Jesus in the Great Commission, the disciples responded by planting churches.  So, when Jesus said "go," they thought "plant."  That's a fascinating response and worth emulating.

Churches can get involved in a couple of ways:

1. Parenting: taking direct responsibility to "mother" a "daughter" church from their own congregation.
2. Partnering: teaming up with others in church planting by sponsoring a new church.

I think every church can be a parent or partner.

Q: What, have you noticed, are some particularly unique ways of spreading the Gospel today?

I certainly think that social media would be one.

Another we found in our research for Transformational Church is a desire to engage in ministries of mercy as a way to show the love of Christ--giving us the opportunity to share Christ. 

In this research, the largest project of its kind ever done, we surveyed 7,000 Protestant churches in North America and searched for characteristics of transformation.  Then, we followed up with those in the top 10% and sought to discern what made them who and what they were.  The answers were fascinating--and one of the factors that showed up was a passion for the ministries of mercy I mentioned.  However, there was much more--seven elements to be exact--including missionary mentality, vibrant leadership, prayerful dependence, relational intentionality, worship, community, and mission.

Q: How do you think the Lord is working through you today and how can the Anglican Church in North America continue to pray for your ministries?

In addition to my full time role as President of LifeWay Research, I recently planted a church on the weekends.  I am an unpaid volunteer, but also the lead pastor--so pray I can balance that out well.

Q: When you're not writing, blogging, or giving public speeches around the country, what are some of your favorite hobbies?

I only really have four hobbies: one wife and three grade-school age daughters.

I plan to pick up hobbies when they are all at college!

Q: Are you working on any projects, or books, that we can be on the look-out for?

The newest book will be out in May.  It's called The Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation and also have a video curriculum by the same name.  I'm pretty excited about it.

This summer I will be part of the inaugural Send North America conference put on by the North American Mission Board on July 30 & 31.

Here is some information about the conference:

Send North America (SNA) is NAMB's evangelistic church planting strategy and is designed to:

• Mobilize churches, church planters and other missionaries to plant churches.
• Equip church planters and sending churches for evangelistic church planting.
• Plant churches within defined regions and large population centers (cities).

The Send North America conference will help individuals and churches understand where they fit into the SNA strategy and provide an opportunity for convention leaders, pastors, planters and others to connect with potential partners for church planting.

If you'd like more information about the Send North America Conference, you can visit the website here. I hope to see you there-- pray we make much of Jesus and God's mission!

Over the past few years I have had many opportunities to work with both the Assemblies of God as well as the Foursquare Church on their movement's church planting efforts. I was pleased to see their work highlighted in a recent Charisma Magazine article.

Though not mentioned in the article, the Assemblies of God is now planting one church per day, up substantially over the last few years. Early on (and several years ago), we had a two day meeting in Nashville to plan out what became the Church Multiplication Network. Steve Pike led the charge and I was glad to be a part. Now, it is encouraging to see the fruit of prayer and planning become evident-- and a reminder that, if denominations take church planting seriously and with priority, they can see church multiplication fruit.

Here's a short excerpt from an article by Charisma highlighting their work:

According to the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Life, Pentecostals make up more than 25 percent of all Christians. This group also accounts for more than 8 percent of the world's total population. And the numbers continue to grow as charismatic church planters forge into new territory.

The Assemblies of God (AG) is leading the church-planting charge among Pentecostal denominations. The AG recorded its second-highest ever number of new church openings in the United States in 2011, planting 368 new churches to bring its domestic count to 12,595. The AG's Church Multiplication Network (CMN) helps church planters wade through the challenges of opening a new church through training, mentoring and matching funds.

Meanwhile, Foursquare Church is seeing a surge in ethnic church growth. Widespread population shifts and immigration--Hispanics accounted for 56 percent of the U.S. population growth during the past decade, according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau--are introducing new realities to Foursquare.

Foursquare launched a new leadership network called the National Hispanic Council to reach out to this growing demographic. So far, there are about 250 Hispanic Foursquare churches in the U.S.

You can read the full article here.

I appreciate my Pentecostal friends and I am looking forward to preaching at Foursquare Church national meeting in May and the Assemblies of God headquarters chapel in August of this year.

I've been in a series of articles about how Christians, by thinking differently, can see a Church Multiplication Movement here in the West--those parts of the developed world where the church has slowed in its growth and multiplication. Over the context of several posts, I've discussed things that we should and should not do in order to lay a foundation to see this happen. Today's characteristic is that we should "open more lanes."

• Part One: Multiplication Movements
• Part Two: Multiply Everything
• Part Three: Model Multiplication
• Part Four: Let the Churches Lead and Welcome the Planter
• Part Five: Include Planting in Your Missional Purpose
• Part Six: Plant by Multiplication, Not Funding: Viral Churches
• Part Seven: Be Born Pregnant

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As a general rule, I try and avoid making trips to Wal-Mart. If I have to go, however, besides the pure entertainment value in people watching there, I inevitably end up getting frustrated at the check-out counter due to combination of a long line and my short attention span. We have a Super Wal-Mart near our home, so when I go to check out, there are about sixteen lanes at the front of the store to make the process as efficient as possible.

The problem is, that for whatever reason, nearly every time I go there are only two of them open. Sure, there are those self-service lanes, but no one ever uses those because they know that they don't work. Instead, there usually are about twelve of us (somehow it always works out that everyone finishes at the same time) that end up waiting in those two lanes and we're all thinking the same thing. "Open up some lanes!"

All too often I feel that same frustration when I look at the state of church planting today. We've adopted a mentality of "clergification," believing that the only people who can plant churches are full-time, paid pastors. As a result, we have a long line of prospective planters (because church planting is definitely the hot thing right now) all waiting for someone to say, "You're clergy. You're full-time. Here's your money." And there's not enough money for all of them. We've bought all the church planting that we can buy, and that's not enough to start a church multiplication movement. So there they are . . . thousands of planters, stuck in line waiting for their turn and their funding. Unfortunately, many times, we let one's funding determine one's calling.

The solution is the same as Wal-Mart's. We need to open more lanes. I'm not saying to get rid of the fully-funded lane. We need to keep that lane open while we redirect some other people towards other lanes. For example, we need to create a strategy that helps some pastors become bi-vocational. We need to help them find other jobs and teach them how to lead a church while doing it. Another lane would provide permission to ethnic leaders to go ahead and plant churches rather than having to walk through several layers of Anglo hierarchy to do so.

Strange as it may seem, permission is all many people need. They need some way to say, "What I am doing is legitimate." Granting new people permission to step into church planting, especially in low-polity denominations, should be a commonality, and yet so many have an unspoken understanding of not thinking it proper for new people to plant churches.

Yes, I think that there are qualifications for the office of pastor (though not all churches need to be planted by pastors--that could come later). Passages like 1 Timothy 3 lay out those qualifications--but they do not list a full time salary and a seminary education.

Baptists and Methodists did not wait for permission in 1795 when they launched a Church Planting Movement in Kentucky and Tennessee. Nor did the Pentecostals in the 1920s. Or, the Vineyard in the 1980s. Pastors were MADE, not called--they raised them up from the harvest, gave them permission, and they planted churches. So it should be with us--and then seminaries can partner with us to train those planter/pastors "just in time."

Permission is something that needs to be continually renewed. Left alone, the permission-giving structures of a former era become the traditional parameters of the next. Baptists gave lay people "license to preach" and plant churches in the midst of their massive multiplication movements in the nineteenth century. Now a "license to preach" means that someone has permission to preach in a Baptist church, not plant one. That's quite a shift, but that is what happens--lanes get more formal over time. We need to constantly open new ones.

Beyond giving permission, we need to celebrate when people leave our church to plant another. They're not betraying us; they're following Jesus on His mission. We need to abandon territorialism and set aside our own egos and usher people from our own church into new lanes. As we do so, we will create systems of permission, letting people see others similar to themselves doing the same thing they're doing. The system might be small at first, but it can grow over time into something revolutionary.

So, find ways to MAKE, not just FIND, new church planters. It's be done before and most of the groups see that as their "golden days" (just ask a Methodist about a circuit rider). Those golden days can come again if we will just live on mission, and give permission, like they did then.

Two weeks ago, my friend Matt Chandler made a visit to Seattle on his way to Nashville for our Gospel Project webcast. The reason why is now public. Matt will be the new Acts 29 president.  You can read the announcement and other information here.

Mars Hill has invested much time and resources in Acts 29, building on the partnership work they had with David Nicholas (a good friend who died last year) and Spanish River Church. Mark Driscoll shares a bit of the history of Acts 29 in his statement here:

As a young church planter I wanted a tribe to belong to. So, I started gathering a few other young church planters for mutual learning, accountability, and encouragement. Before long, Mars Hill Church was formally supporting church planters in both the U.S. and India. Then, I met Pastor David Nicholas, whose Spanish River Church had generously supported church planters for many years. Together, we founded the Acts 29 church-planting network.

For the first years, the network offices were housed in Florida, as David served as our president. Then the offices were moved to Seattle when I assumed the presidency. Since that time, David has passed on to see the Jesus he loved face to face, and Acts 29 has grown rapidly, now totaling more than 400 churches in the U.S., as well as international church planting involvement. Since then, other qualified men have taken the reins of Acts 29 and run with the vision David and I had years ago.

Mark then shared that Matt Chandler will be the new President of Acts 29.  Matt is a tremendous brother and I pray for him and for my Acts 29 friends as they take the next steps together.

I've been in a series of articles about how Christians, by thinking differently, can see a Church Multiplication Movement here in the West--those parts of the developed world where the church has slowed in its growth and multiplication. Over the context of several posts, I've discussed things that we should and should not do in order to lay a foundation to see this happen. Today's characteristic is that we should be "born pregnant."

• Part One: Multiplication Movements
• Part Two: Multiply Everything
• Part Three: Model Multiplication
• Part Four: Let the Churches Lead and Welcome the Planter
• Part Five: Include Planting in Your Missional Purpose
• Part Six: Plant by Multiplication, Not Funding: Viral Churches

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I'm currently working through a series based on my book Viral Churches. If you've missed any of the past posts, you can catch up here:

• Part One: Multiplication Movements
• Part Two: Multiply Everything
• Part Three: Model Multiplication
• Part Four: Let the Churches Lead and Welcome the Planter
• Part Five: Include Planting in Your Missional Purpose

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I'm in the middle of a series of blog based partly on the ideas in my book with Warren Bird, Viral Churches describing qualities necessary for a church multiplication movement in America. While my first two points (parts 2 & 3 below) were focused on mindsets and actions that pastors had to embrace, I believe the next two points, which are focused on denominations and networks, are just as important.

Let me make it clear that I believe in denominations and networks. I am a leader in my own denomination, and I think denominations can be great assets to church planting. In order to be so, however, I think there are two mentalities they need to adopt: let churches lead and welcome the planter.

• Part One: Multiplication Movements
• Part Two: Multiply Everything
• Part Three: Model Multiplication

---

Last week, I began a series through my book Viral Churches. Today's post examines the increasing need to multiply not only churches, but disciples, groups, and ministries as well.

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LifeWay Research conducted a study in 2008, interviewing senior pastors in various denominations. Of the 1,004 individuals in the sample, almost all (85 percent) of the Protestant churches indicated that their churches are involved in a missions in some way, from things like congregational prayer at least once a month to conducting short-term mission trips.

When it came to the mission field of church planting, however, only 28 percent indicated that they directly participated in helping a new church. Because that is a fairly broad description, further clarification was needed. Of that group, 52 percent explained that they gave a one-time gift, provided ongoing partnership, equipment, rent, or a mission trip to a new church plant.

Only 12 percent of that 28 percent, however, were actually churches that acted as a "mother church," or accepted direct financial responsibility for a new church as a primary sponsor. That means that in the previous twelve months, only 3 percent of the Protestant churches surveyed accepted primary responsibility for starting a new church. That's definitely a cause for strong concern.

Back in March I blogged about "What You Celebrate You Become." I wrote about meetings I led in Los Angeles, Dallas and Nashville with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church.

I said:

At the beginning of the meeting, I was introduced by Bishop Chris Thompson. He mentioned a pin he was wearing. Actually, he asked some of the other denominational leaders, "Where is your pin?" (For the record, my friend Rick Fountain did not have his pin. You are welcome, Rick.) 

Anyway, I was intrigued by the pin comment. You see, in their movement, if you plant a church they celebrate it. And, one way they do that is that those who have planted a church get a pin. And, those who sponsor church plants get a pin (and if you sponsor several church plants, you get a cooler pin!).

That might seem trite, but let me tell you why it is not. In many denominations, when you plant a church you get scorned. I have seen and heard it, particularly in stagnant or declining denominations.

Denominational leaders are suspicious, other pastors are critical, etc. And, the result is that the church planter does not feel welcome.

These pins are a symbol of recognition, welcome, and appreciation. And, most denominations could use more of that when it comes to church planters.

I tell denominational leaders regularly, "What you celebrate, you become." For too many years, my denomination was focused what we were against (though I see that changing). Other denominations did the same. And, it should not surprise us, that when we did not celebrate church planting, we were not strong in church planting. What you celebrate, you become. There are things to be against, but we must be FOR church planting.

On the other hand, the last two decades have been the best decades for the IPHC. There are many reasons, I am sure, but one is perhaps symbolized by a couple of pins: for planters and for those who sponsor them.

Now, I am glad to see others jumping on the idea and learning from others. My friend Tom Cheyney is doing the same in a Baptist context. Go, Tom and Orlando Baptists, go.

I hope your movement is encouraging planters and churches toward planting.