Things are coming along well for church planting. There is always a large task list and sometimes it feels like we will never finish it. My prospectus is completed (I’ll post a link for it later). Now we are in the process of seeking out partner churches. This week I received word from a church we met with back in April. They voted to pick us up for monthly support for two years. Words cannot express our joy at this news.

Along with seeking out partner churches, we are developing our outreach and leadership development strategies. I hope to have these finished soon. Please continue to pray for us as we seek the Lord’s will for this church planting. If you would like to receive our monthly prayer update, click here and let us know.

A few weeks ago my friend Aaron Coalson asked me to write a post on Church Planting for his blog. Aaron has become a great friend. God has been and will continue to use him for great things in this life! The following post is part one of his request. I hope you enjoy! Check out Aaron’s blog when you get a chance!

Church Planting is my passion! Next year, Lord willing, my family and I will relocate to Raleigh, NC, to plant a church. We are excited about this new endeavor and cannot wait to see how God will work in our lives.

Why plant a church? Tim Keller, pastor/planter of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, states it best,

“The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else–not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes–will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting.” (Source)

C. Peter Wagner in his book, Church Planting for a Greater Harvest, says, “The most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.” If we are going to reach America with the Gospel of Christ, it must involve church planting. The church is the mechanism God has chosen to carry out this task. Church planting is rooted in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) and its extent is given in Acts 1:8. The early church accomplished the Great Commission through church planting. It is the most effective means of baptizing and discipling new believers. That was true in the first century and remains true to this day.

On my personal journey, while in seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, I read a book entitled The Church of Irresistible Influence. The author, Robert Lewis, posed the question, “If your church were to close it’s doors tomorrow, would your community even notice you left?” Unfortunately, I believe many of our churches in America have become so inward focused that they have neglected their communities. They say they are interested in the lost, but they are not intentional about engaging them. Ron Sylvia, in his book Starting New Churches on Purpose, says, “Today’s churches must move outside the walls of the building and invade the community.” Unlike the Field of Dreams, we cannot have a “if we build it, they will come” mentality. We must take the church to the lost! Church planting is a great way to be intentional about engaging communities. It is my desire to plant a church that actively engages its community. Remember the statement, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

I challenge you to read through the book of Acts thinking specifically in the context of church planting. In doing so, you will see the book in a whole new light. It is the history of the church’s expansion, and it is the history of a church planting movement. I believe with all my heart that we can see a church planting movement in North America. If more churches catch the vision, and more Christians get on their knees praying for a movement of God, we can, in this generation, see the Gospel sweep through the United States and the world! My prayer is that God would use me in some small way in that movement.

I’ve also been to Israel and back since the last post. What a wonderful opportunity to see the Holy Land! Maybe I can post something on it later, but all I can say is that it was the trip of a lifetime. I’ll never read my Bible the same again. When you get over there and see where all the stories took place it brings everything to life. One lesson that stands out is how practical Jesus was in his teaching. If you read the Biblical passage standing where He would have delivered the message, you see how He used the world around Him as the illustrations for His teaching. It’s a great lesson for all teachers of the Bible to apply.

We’ve also moved closer to our goal of church planting. As many of you know, we are planning on starting a church in the Raleigh, NC area. Currently I am looking more specifically at a suburb outside of Raleigh called Knightdale. With the completion of a new section of the I-540 bypass around Raleigh, this sleepy little town has been the location of a massive influx of people. In fact, the Raleigh area as a whole has exploded. There are 167,000 people projected to move into the area between 2008-2014. This massive growth, combined with a general lostness makes Raleigh a prime spot for a church plant. Knightdale itself has grown 69.9% since 1990. It has attracted my attention not just because of the growth, but because no other church planters have been going there. In other news, about a month ago Jenny and I had our church planting assessment. This was a huge step to go through. With the completion of the assessment, we have the green light to continue through the planting process. As more developments arise, I’ll keep you posted, but continue to keep us in your prayers as we seek the Lord’s will for future ministry.

Lastly, I want to invite all of you to be a part of our prayer network. I know many of my readers are already on my e-mail list, but we need more. Prayer is the fuel for the journey! Without prayer we could do nothing! I will be sending out prayer updates about every other week unless an urgent need arises. I would like to ask all of you to pray for us at least once a week. If you would like to get our prayer e-mail click here to send me a message. You can also follow me on facebook or twitter. I update both of these daily, and you’ll be able to stay up to date with me there.

Bailey begins by stating, “God uses whom He chooses, and He equips whom He calls.” That one statement is packed with so much truth. If you look at my mentor, Dr Johnny Hunt, this truth is screaming. He was a high school drop out living in the projects. He managed a pool room, and made his living hustling pool. He was an alcoholic living with no direction and purpose in life. Then on a snowy Sunday night in January he met Jesus. God radically changed His life! Now the high school drop out went back to school, became a pastor, and is now the Southern Baptist President. That’s the abbreviated story, but if you want to read more I’ll send you a copy of his testimony just contact me. Trust me it’s incredible. If you would have seen Johnny in those days you would have written him off, but God had other plans. God called and Johnny obey!

I think about it often in my own life. Why would God choose me to become a pastor/church planter? Am I qualified? Is there something in me that He saw? No! God called me on no merit of my own, and now He is equipping me to become the man He wants me to be. There is nothing to note in my life other than God. It’s only by God’s Grace I am where I am today. I know the propensity of my evil heart. I know where that evil could take me, but God’s grace keeps me from it.

Bailey continues his devotion by stating that God chose us first and foremost to be obedient. Through that obedience He will make you into the leader He desires for you to be. You must stay submitted, surrendered, and obedient, and He will fill you with His Spirit. “It’s a heart hungry for wisdom that He chooses. It is a ‘want of wisdom’ that opens up the windows of heaven’s resources.” (Bailey) Remember John 15:16, God chose me and I must spend my life doing His work!

“It’s not the intellectually great that the church needs; nor is it men of wealth that the times demand. It is not people of great social influence that this day requires. Above everybody and everything else it is men of faith, men of mighty prayer, man and women after the fashion of the saints and heroes enumerated in Hebrews, who ‘obtained a good report through faith,’ that the church and the whole wide world humanity needs.” – E.M. Bounds

May I be a man mighty in faith and prayer! Lord help me!

Please continue to lift us up in prayer as we now turn our attention to the city God would have us plant. My desire is to find where God is working and join Him in that work. I believe we are at the beginning of a movement of God across our country. It is time and it is needed. Let us join together in prayer for God to pour out His Spirit upon us!

Please pray for us that we will have wisdom from heaven as to where to plant a church. It is my fervent desire to serve the Lord with my life, and I want so desperately to go where He would desire me to. I’ll post an update about our meeting later, but please remember to keep us in your prayers. Our meeting is at 11:45 tomorrow. Thank you!

• Lost and Found – Ed Stetzer
• Essential Church - Thom and Sam Rainer
• Leading with a Limp -Dan Allender
• High Stakes – Kathy Herman
• Liberating the Ministry from the Success Syndrome – R. Kent Hughes
• Crazy Love – Francis Chan
• High Call High Privilege - Gail MacDonald
• Building Your Leadership Resume – Johnny Hunt
• Voices Behind the Veil – Ergun Caner

If you have any other books you’d like to add to this list you can do so by leaving a comment.

“It’s been said that five years from now, we will be the same people we are today except for the books we read, the people we meet, the places we go, and the risks we take.”

As I think about this statement, the reality of it is glaring back at me. Think about it in your own life! Where were you five years ago? How did you view the world? Have you changed any of your views in five years? The difference in my own life is staggering, and I have to give a lot of credit to the many authors who have influenced my life. I have literally read hundreds of books in the last five years. Remember this is coming from a guy who didn’t like to read in High School. If I can learn to love reading, so can you!

This brings me to my next point. It’s not just about reading, but about reading intelligently. Reading at its core is an exercise designed to make you think. This sounds obvious, but rather than processing the truth and validity of what they are reading, many people store it away only to regurgitate a pre-packaged viewpoint. I am guilty of this in the past, but when we read, we must make an intelligent assessment of the literature before us. I want to recommend a great book from which I will quote to make my point. The book is entitled How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. It’s a classic book on reading comprehension and critical reading.

“The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements-all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics-to make it easy for him to ‘make up his own mind’ with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effective that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and ‘plays back’ the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having to think. – How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading – page 4

This quote alone is worth the price of the book, but if you desire to learn to read intelligently as well as increase your reading comprehension get this book!

I write this post because more and more I see this very thing happening. Adler and Doren tried to warn us about it, but it continues. It extends beyond the scope of reading to TV and Radio as well. It’s easy to take the pre-packaged thoughts that are presented to us and repeat them. After all, we even sound intelligent when we do so. I am challenging think! Think about what you read, think about what you hear, and think about what you see. There are thousands of opposing opinions in the world, and they cannot all be right. Check the facts! Think and pray over what you read, and I promise that it will be an exercise you will not regret.

And with that, I will close for today. I promise the next post(s) will be practical in nature. I’ll talk about what to read, how to read, and maybe list some advantages of reading. Some of the information will be from Between the Times so check it out if you haven’t already.

“Wait a minute,” you might say. “I do read!” Really! What? Are you reading magazines, journals, novels, fiction, non-fiction, theology, or a number of other categories? All those genres are good, but are you limiting your reading to just one?

I must confess that the idea for this post came from reading another blog entitled Between the Times. It’s a blog written by several of my former seminary professors at Southeastern. Dr. Bruce Ashford wrote a series of six blogs on Disciplined Reading. If you have the time, I encourage you to read them. I found them extremely helpful. Reading has been a personal struggle for me over the years. In my younger days, reading was not a priority for me. I missed out on so many great opportunities in my middle and high school days. However, in college, when I entered the Word of Bible Institute, I was forced to read, and read I did. At first it was difficult, but then I found that I enjoyed it. As I continued through my under-grad and graduate education that enjoyment turned into a love!

I want to spend the next few posts talking about what I learned from Between the Times, as well as some of personal thoughts or experiences. I will leave you with a quote that has stuck with me for quite some time. I have heard it quoted many times, and I’m not sure who the original author is but here’s the quote:

“It’s been said that five years from now, we will be the same people we are today except for the books we read, the people we meet, the places we go, and the risks we take.”