[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday: Peer Network. Tomorrow: Launch Team / Core Group.]

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday: Advisory Board. Tomorrow: Adopted Parent Congregation(s).]

The primary rationale for church daughtering is that a church community should follow the human form established by the Lord. This means that a congregation should be born, grow rapidly, attain maturity, serve a use in the world, and eventually reproduce.

Note that this will over time shift primary responsibility for church planting in the General Church away from the denominational center and more and more to individual societies. As one of the first General Church plants using this new model, we are using seed money from the General Church central budget to cover 50% of startup costs; the long-term vision is to have one third of startup costs directly from parent society budgets, one third raised by the church planter candidate from individual donors, and one third paid for out of either the General Church office of Outreach or from a special New Church affiliated para-church organization to be formed for the explicit purpose of training, funding and supporting church planters.

An additional consideration behind taking a church daughtering approach is its effect on the culture and direction of the parenting church congregation. A typical pattern in church starts is to focus on the establishment of a permanent physical location (see above, under, “No Permanent Real Estate”), as the major long-term objective for the community. Additionally, in the General Church, the establishment of a local church school is often a major goal for small congregations contemplating growth.

However, as noted earlier, goals that are inward focused and terminal (as opposed to ongoing) have a tendancy to deflate the momentum and neighbor-focused drive of a congregation once such goals are attained. By recognizing from the very birth of New Way Church, however, that all of us who participate in and benefit from its existence have a responsibility to give back by “paying it forward”, we will build into the DNA of the community’s culture an ongoing impetus for looking outward toward the neighbor.

Church planting is a sacrificial endeavor. We don’t start new churches to serve ourselves, but those whom we have not yet met that the Lord is nevertheless working to form His kingdom from. Selfless giving from outside of Austin will help make this happen, so selfless giving from New Way Church will contribute to future church congregations that have not yet been imagined.

To this end, a minimum of 10% of all revenue, straight off the top, beginning day one, will be put into a dedicated church daughtering account. The funds in this account are to be solely for the purpose of returning the gift given to us by sponsoring future church plants, locally, regionally, and (eventually) internationally.

You can see this fund in the accompanying budget workbook, as well as a separate line item, under the heading of “tithes”. Under this heading, in addition to the minimum 10% starting on day one, put aside for future plants, another flat 10%—once self-sufficiency is attained—will be given back to the General Church Office of Outreach budget. The GC Outreach tithe is a flat 10% starting in 2014; the daughtering “tithe” starts immediately (before self-sufficiency) at 10%, but may grow depending on the financial health of the congregation in future years.

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday I posted on Ratios. Next week I'll post the section on Contingencies.]

Most systems, (social networks, commercial markets, entertainment media, etc.) naturally tend toward a long-tail distribution pattern. Only when there are artificial barriers to distribution (limited shelf space, for instance) does this natural distribution pattern get truncated in a way that favors the investment in “blockbusters”, “best sellers”, “top 40 hits”, etc. The church world is no different. Church is essentially a local cultural phenomenon, and is becoming more so. These days, with new generations growing up with greatly increased expectations with regard to choice, variety, and customization brought on by the long tail effect of digital distribution, we will see a move away from megachurches akin to the de-urbanization trends caused when a society moves from industrialism to post-industrialism.

Going forward, young people will choose faith communities the way they would like to ideally choose restaurants: “fresh, seasonal, local”. In church terms, this means they will prefer congregations that are vibrant (as evidenced by an active engagement with the world), culturally relevant (and aware of current trends and issues), and distinctly local. Denominational affiliation has been increasingly meaningless, or even detrimental to church growth in the Christian world, and there is little reason to expect it will be different for Swedenborgian churches.

For these reasons, the optimal growth strategy for an organization like the General Church is to invest so as to maximize not the size of congregations, but the overall number of culturally varied congregations. Provided that such congregations are large enough to be self-sufficient, the portion of the Lord’s kingdom that the General Church represents will grow best when spread across as many different cultural niches as possible. This strategy also diversifies risk.

Other advantages of pursuing a multiple-congregation growth strategy include: diversification of risk and increased cultural variety within the body of the General Church. In fact, it is this last that is potentially most beneficial.

The General Church is a stuck system, largely due to cultural inertia. We can strive to change the established culture of the existing groups in order to grow them, or we can add new groups that have no pre-existing church culture. The latter takes less effort (and does less damage) than the former, yet still adds significantly to the overall cultural transformation of the body of the worldwide movement.

Consider also, this, from Heaven and Hell:

It is worth noting that the more members there are in a single community and the more united they are in action, the more perfect is their human form. This is because variety arranged in a heavenly form makes perfection, as explained above in 56; and variety occurs where there are many individuals.

Every community in heaven is growing in numbers daily, and the more it grows, the more perfect it becomes. In this way, not only is the community perfected, but heaven in general is perfected as well, since the communities constitute heaven.

Since heaven is perfected by its numerical growth, we can see how mistaken people are who believe that heaven will be closed to prevent overcrowding. Actually, it is just the reverse. It will never be closed, and its ever increasing fullness makes it more perfect. So angels long for nothing more than to have new angel guests arrive there. (HH 71)

Earlier in the same work, it says this:

Variety in worship of the Lord from the variety of good in different societies is not harmful, but beneficial, for the perfection of heaven is therefrom. …Unity, that it may be perfect, must be formed from variety. Every whole exists from various parts, since a whole without constituents is not anything; it has no form, and therefore no quality. But when a whole exists from various parts, and the various parts are in a perfect form, in which each attaches itself like a congenial friend to another in series, then the quality is perfect. So heaven is a whole from various parts arranged in a most perfect form, for the heavenly form is the most perfect of all forms. That this is the ground of all perfection is evident from the nature of all beauty, agreeableness and delight, by which the senses and the mind are affected; for these qualities spring and flow from no other source than the concert and harmony of many concordant and congenial parts, either coexisting in order or following in order, and never from a whole without many parts. From this is the saying that variety gives delight; and the nature of variety, as is known, is what determines the delight. From all this it can be seen as in a mirror how perfection comes from variety even in heaven. For from the things that exist in the natural world the things of the spiritual world can be seen as in a mirror. (HH 56)

From this it is perfectly clear how each society of the church can be further perfected through the addition of new members. It then does not take much of a stretch to see how the church as a whole will be greatly improved through the addition of new congregations.

[This continues the serialization of the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. It continues the Rationale section, started last week. Tomorrow: why Austin, Texas.]

So over the next few weeks, here is a list of topics I’ll be posting on:

• New Way Church: Launch Strategy for Austin, TX
  • The Point
    • Core Values
    • Purpose
    • Mission
    • Our Mantra
    • Aspirational Goal
    • Vision
  • Rationale
    • More Societies
    • Austin, Texas
    • Mac Frazier
    • Church Systems
    • Crowd to Core
    • Street to Kitchen
    • No Premature Real Estate
    • Marketing Philosophy
    • Service Evangelism
    • Ratios
    • Daughtering
    • Contingencies
  • People
    • Target Demographics
    • Initial Leadership Team
    • Advisory Board
    • Peer Network
    • Adopted Parent Congregation(s)
    • Launch Team / Core Group
  • Major Objectives
    • Calendar
  • Finances
    • Funding
    • Budget

As I post on these topics, I’ll link them back to this outline to help you navigate among the sections.

Why am I doing this? To satisfy curiosity. To solicit support. To stimulate thinking. To encourage others to come up with their own, better plans, for their own, better projects. And especially to start a conversation. I am happy to answer questions as they come up. So if you know someone who is interested in the topic of church planting in the New Christian (Swedenborgian) context, invite them in. I’d love to hear from you all.

Ethan Daum Band rehearsing, Charter Day Sunday

As I write this, it is the Monday morning after Charter Day weekend. I am still feeling very happy from my experience at the ANC Charter Day Sunday Worship at 10 a.m., yesterday. In particular, the music from that service has been echoing in my heart, reminding me of how wonderful I felt as I opened the Word, having heard great music from the Ethan Daum band, Malotte’s version of The Lord’s Prayer by the high school choral group, and Psalm 62 sung by the entire congregation. By the time I opened my mouth, it felt to me almost like I could just read from the Word, say a prayer, and be complete.

But I really enjoyed the topic, too. We kicked off the second week of Living Courageously with the story of Elijah being fed by the Widow of Zarephath. Elijah told the widow to feed him first, and only afterwards herself and her son. She obeyed, and rather than hastening her starvation, it ended it. Sometimes it feels as if we, too, cannot afford to serve the Lord first, when in reality, we can’t afford not to! In the Old Testament, the Lord commanded that the first tenth be given to Him, not because He needed to receive it, but because people need to give it, so we could be reminded that everything good–all of it–belongs to the Lord.

True Christian Religion 746:1 begins with the statement, “To live for others is to perform useful services.” When we live for others, we are living for the Lord; what greater gift can we as a church give our heavenly Father than to usefully serve His children? Every parent wants their children to be loved, the Lord more than any other.

I talked a little bit about how the Academy was a movement before it was an institution. And a selfless movement, at that. A handful of people determined to serve the Lord, the world, and future generations through the growth of New Church schools and churches. The Academy was founded for the sake of training a new priesthood, translating and publishing the Writings, writing and publishing related books, furthering New Church education, and establishing a library. And not for themselves alone! I challenge you to count up the number of lives transformed by the Academy movement since its start. Or the number of people positively changed as a result of the planting of a church here in Bryn Athyn.

Creating institutions and planting churches are selfless acts. These things take sacrifice and hard work that can never show a “return on investment” for those who do them. And now, how can we repay those who gave us what we have–the Academy of the New Church, the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and New Church congregations scattered across the world?

All movements fade in time, and successful ones leave behind communities, institutions, and other organizations. Our churches and schools are good things, gifts from the Lord through the agency of people no longer living. I believe it is time to “pay it forward”–to recognize what we have freely received and find new energy for passing even more on to the next generation, and to the larger world around us. It is time for a new movement.

Just something to think about this week, as we contemplate what it means to put God first, and to live for others.

[This is also appearing as this week's "Pastor's Box" in the Bryn Athyn Post.]

I actually have ten reasons the GC should start a systematic church planting strategy right away. The short version, in rough descending order of importance (except number 10 should be higher, I guess): 1) Follow the Lord 2) Transform our culture 3) Evangelize 4) Fill more niches 5) Reduce risk 6) Survive, grow, reproduce 7) Fight death by attrition Stop losing members who move 9) Solve our biggest financial problem 10) Develop new best practices Some of these need some explanation to make real sense. I’m hoping to post a video presentation explaining them all, soon.