1. Bookmark our website: NewWayAustin.org.
2. Subscribe to our website’s feed: feeds.feedburner.com/NewWayChurch.
3. “Like” our facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-TX/New-Way-Church/134013309972335.
4. Follow our twitter account: twitter.com/NewWayAustin.
5. Subscribe to our youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/NewWayChurchAustin.

All four are in the early development stage–especially the website. But in the coming little while, you should see them all bloom into great sources of information and inspiration!

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday: Launch Team / Core Group. Next time: the Calendar.]

Family members of Leadership Team.

Local New Church recruits: Roughly 50 to draw from, most of whom are in their 20’s and 30’s, but other generations are also represented. Many talents (music, advertising, technology, education, business, et al.) to draw from within this pool.

Locals that made contact with the General Church, via NewChurch.org and other gateways.

A number of possible New Church young adults may be going to U. T. Austin and other area schools around launch time.

Additional launchers will be recruited from among newcomers at each preview service.

“Ninjas” imported from other congregations, possibly just for the summer or for a semester/year at a time: Bryn Athyn College of the New Church, Laurel (and other) campers, via New Church Young Adults / Pulse, Nexus, congregations friendly to or connected with launch team members (e.g., Bryn Athyn, Boulder, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Chapel Hill), maybe mission teams from Charity in Action via Anders Hyatt, etc.

Biggest needs: music, greeters, ushers, AV, children/nursery, setup, breakdown.

[This closes out the People section of the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday: Adopted Parent Congregation(s). Next: Major Objectives.]

[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).]

Rev. David Lindrooth – General Church Outreach Director

Rev. David Roth – Pastor and past church-planter, Boulder New Church

Dr. Chuck Ebert –General Church Outreach Committee

Dain Kistner – General Church Budget and Audit Committee

Amy Bruno – South east Austin.

Cedric Williams – North east Austin (Georgetown).

Martha Brown – South Austin.

Jeff Jackson – North west Austin. Likely treasurer, once board of directors is formed.

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Last week we looked at the Initial Leadership Team. Tomorrow: the Peer Network.]

• Congregational leadership.
• Preaching.
• Teaching.
• Executive management of staff.
• Board chair.
• Volunteer recruiting and management.
• Program development.
• Outreach and marketing.

Worship/Music Leader:

Ethan Daum – talented musician and dedicated church member, currently working in Stuart Hall. Current studies show that successful church plants are started by two full-time staff, assisted by one or two volunteers in leadership positions. The failure rate of church planters is significantly reduced when they have a full time partner to rely on. In addition, the culture of Austin is deeply rooted in music—the city’s claim of being “Live Music Capital of the World” is not hard to justify. One of the early challenges for New Way Church will be to build and maintain excellence in its worship services as quickly as possible. In this town, sub-par music is unacceptable.

Ethan is not only a talented musician and budding composer with a successful history of collaborating on worship services with Mac Frazier (e.g. the 2009 Academy Charter Day Sunday service at the Asplundh Field House), but he has a proven track reccord of successfully recruiting and leading a wide variety of young adult musicians in worship settings.

Duties will include:

• Leading worship music.
• Leading and managing musicians.
• Directing technical aspects of worship gatherings.
• Co-developing worship programs with founding pastor.
• Writing original worship music.
• Recruiting volunteers.
• Outreach.
• Assisting founding pastor as appropriate.

Teen Program Leader: Ethan Daum (see above). Ethan will be doing double-duty as both Worship & Music Leader and Teen Leader. Ethan is a half generation younger than Mac, and so extends the demographic outreach of the leadership team. He has worked with teens at both the ANC Secondary School and at the Laurel church camps.

Duties as Teen Program Leader include:

• Developing teen programs.
• Directing the overall teen ministry.
• Recruiting volunteers.
• Co-developing and sometimes leading service projects.
• Outreach.
• Advising the founding pastor.

Volunteer Children’s Program Leader: Heather McQueen Jackson, experienced educator, life-time New Church member, and Austin resident. Duties:

• Develop children’s programs, including Sunday morning.
• Liason with General Church Office of Education.
• Recruit and manage volunteers.
• Advise founding pastor.

Volunteer Community Leader: Still under consideration.Duties:

• Direct worship service environment systems (signage, greeters, welcome table, communication cards, etc.).
• Direct assimilation and followup systems (followup emails, newcomer gifts).
• Co-manage small group programs with founding pastor.
• Recruit and manage volunteers.
• Outreach.
• Advise founding pastor.

Part-time paid administrative assistant: Duties:

• Office management tasks.
• Administrative assistance to founding pastor.
• Support for Worship/Teen/Children/Community program leaders.
• Miscellaneous outreach and marketing tasks.

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday: Target Demographics. Next: Advisory Board.]

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday began this section on People. Next we'll continue the theme with a post on the Initial Leadership Team.]

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Last Friday we wrapped up the Rationale section with a post on Contingencies. Today begins the People section, so tomorrow's post will be on Target Demographics.]

Secondly, it is important for the General Church and for everyone involved to recognize not just that one in three church plants “fails”, but that there are good and bad forms of failure. A “bad” failure results in the General Church and/or one or two major donors continuing to carry the load of financially supporting a static or shrinking church for perpetuity. A “good” failure results in the end of the current project, an objective assessment of what went right and what went wrong, followed swiftly by a new startup incorporating the lessons learned.

It should be recognized, also, that all kinds of error will involve numerous successes with eternal ramifications. Such intermediate outcomes more than justify the risk of loss of startup capital, time, and energy. For example, the “No Exit Café” no longer exists in the natural sense, and yet there are people all over the country who spent time with that church plant and are forever changed by it, including several who are currently members of still existing congregations elsewhere in the body of the General Church. Did that church make mistakes and eventually close its doors? Yes. Did it permanently advance the cause of the kingdom of the Lord God Jesus Christ? Yes.

Theologicaly, we are a process-oriented church that teaches and believes that the Divine plan for humankind in this world involves iterative cycles of long periods of error, assessment, and hard work, regularly alternating with short periods of victory and rest. This means that we should not focus on being error free so much as on properly processing our errors so that we may “fail forward” in a way that allows the Lord to improve us. Western educational systems unfortunately train us to fear failure and error, to always seek to get “the right answer”, or else to not raise our hand at all. Any truly creative process, on the other hand, requires a willingness to experiment, to stumble, to try crazy things now and then, and to jump in with full knowledge that you may well delete the first chapter of that novel or the opening scene of the movie, once the whole thing is complete. We—the General Church of the New Jerusalem, New Way Church, and the Lord’s church worldwide—will be more successful if we are willing to take risks for the sake of bringing new things into the world in the Lord’s name.

That said, how do we know when it is time to stop the current experiment, evaluate, and begin again? By checking key measures at predetermined times. Measuring too soon and too often will stifle the project and crush the spirit of those on the ground in Austin, while measuring too infrequently or too late will not help correct the course if things are good but turning bad. So it is our intention to work with the General Church, the Board of Advisors, and with our other supporters to cooperatively review the status of the church at certain key points leading up to launch, and then afterward on a semianual basis until New Way Church is firmly established as a free standing, self-supporting church with healthy prospects for surviving and thriving for generations to come.

At each of these checkpoint times, key measures will be evaluated against the established plan, budget and expectations. Based on these reality checks, components of the plan will be adjusted in either minor or major ways, as appropriate.

The following are the key checkpoints:

[This is from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Last Friday I talked about Church Daughtering as a key strategy. This post on Contingencies concludes this section of the plan. Next I will publish the start of the People section.]