On December 7th-8th, I traveled to Knoxville, TN to attend a gathering of church planters, potential church planters, and church interested in partnering with the New Thing Network to plant reproducing churches. The whole team from New Thing, Community Christian Chicago and all the New Thing Affilate churches were great hosts. They were so interested in hearing your story, your dreams and also shared theirs with anyone who’d take the time to listen. Everyone was great and so easy to talk with it was like talking people you had known most of your life. It was really great to connect Eric Metcalf, director of New Thing, Pat Masek, Dave Ferguson, Lead Pastor at Community Christian in Chicago, Aaron Mounts, who just planted Ikon Christian Community in San Francisco, Matt Larson who just planted Anthem Church in Thousand Oaks, CA and Nate Bush who I went to college with who is launching New City Church in Albuquerque next year plus so many other guys and gals.
If you are thinking about starting a church you have got to check out New Thing to see if partnering with them might be right for you.
About New Thing
from a talk by Dave Ferguson
New Thing is a transdenominational catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches relentlessly dedicated to helping people find their way back to God.
Values: Reproducing, Relationships, Residencies, Resources
Their Goals:
1. Restore the foundation and acknowledgement of apostolic leadership. Ephesians 4:11
2. Develop apprenticeships for emerging apostolic leaders.
How: Infrastructure of a Movement
Apostolic Leadership
This was a very interesting discussion. In the past many have shied away from the word because of past abuses in the church. But in doing so we have lost visionary/ entrepreneurial leaders out of the church and in most church lack the gifts, talents and passions they bring to the table. Those gifted in these ways are able to see the future clearly, desire to start new communities of faith and embed and guard the truth. Dave said most of the time when we talk about apostolic leaders we talk about big names in big churches but he said every church needs leaders with these gifts and talents.
Shared Dream
There is a vision behind the movement that stirs in us and gives us a dream for tomorrow. We’ve heard it said people don’t give to an organization they give to a cause, well people won’t get behind a movement because of their mission statement but because they can see tomorrow through the vision being shared and they have a dream to cling to.
Common Ideology
“Our dream comes from Jesus Acts 1:8, and our ideology comes from the Apostle Paul. Paul is explaining to a young church planter, Timothy how to accomplish this big dream and he says, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” II Timothy 2:2. He explains that the strategy for accomplish Jesus big dream is to start small by continually reproducing. Paul lays out multiple generations of reproduction: 1. Paul – Timothy; 2. Timothy – reliable men; 3. reliable men – others. So the common ideology we share is helping people find their way back to God by reproducing at all levels.” -Dave Ferguson
Genuine Community
“These communities of Christ Followers will not be merely lifestyle enclaves that exist to further the betterment of the life of the community and their own lives. These communities will be a “communitas” (community with a cause); a coming together of Christ Followers who are willing to trade their life to accomplish the dream of God by following Jesus.” – Dave Ferguson.
A diagram Dave drew:
Community
+Trust
Communitas
Decentralized Reproduction
This is all about setting boundaries and letting go capable leaders to reproduce churches. We have to model it, give permission to these leader to reproduce, set expectation and hold them accountable. Dave talked about the difference between a spider and a starfish. Cut the head off a spider and it dies, cut a piece of a starfish and it reproduces.
When we align these things the result we get is: Reproducing Leaders, who reproduce churches, who reproduce networks all who impact the world.
Leadership Residencies
New Thing knows that reproducing successful leaders that are helping people find their way back to God through reproducing churches takes trained leaders who understand their values, their DNA and has time to experience leaders who are getting it done. So they have developed leadership residencies (like medical residences) 12 to 18 months in length to shadow and learn from New Thing Network pastors prior to launching their new church. Eric Metcalf spoke about how more and more church planting organization are coming to see the great benefit of church planters doing leadership residencies first and how the failure rate among churches where the lead guy went through a residency is substantial lower than those who do not. They know that a movement of reproducing churches cannot occur without more leaders being trained, they are seeing it makes the church planters residents serve under are better because the resident is there and with a much resources as it take to launch a new church it is more responsible for the church planter to participate in a residency program. Would you want a doctor fresh out of medical school operating and prescribing you medicine, no we know they go through residency programs to learn under great doctors and we to empower and offer opportunities to church planters for these kinds of leadership residencies.
