Posts Tagged plan

Advisory Board

The following people, drawn from different areas, make up an advisory group that is consulted on various aspects of this plan on an ongoing basis.

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.]


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Contingencies

So: what if things don’t go as planned? First of all, they won’t. That’s the nature of plans, and especially of startup plans. This plan is a starting point from which course corrections and new plans will be derived as reality unfolds. Think of it as the center line in the middle of a thirty degree arc. We need to be ready to swing fifteen degrees to the left or right as obstacles arise and new lessons are learned, while maintaining overall fidelity to the essential spirit of the vision.

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:

Date/Event Evaluation Contingencies
Sep. 20, 2010
(After 1st Comeback Event)
Connection card returns, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust location, worship format, worship style, budget.
Nov. 1, 2010
(After 3rd Comeback Event)
Connection card returns, worship participant numbers, volunteer numbers, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust location, worship format, worship style, worship environment (greeters, signage, etc.), launch date, budget.
Dec. 21, 2010
(After 5th Preview Service)
Connection card returns, worship participant numbers, volunteer numbers, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust location, worship format, worship style, worship environment, launch date, marketing, budget.
Mar. 21, 2011
(Approx. one month after Launch)
Connection card returns, worship participant numbers, volunteer numbers, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust worship format, worship style, marketing, newcomer integration, budget.
May 11, 2011 Connection card returns, worship participant numbers, volunteer numbers, small group participant numbers, contributor numbers, total contributions, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust worship format, worship style, worship environment, marketing, newcomer integration, stewardship plan, budget.
Nov. 14, 2011 Connection card returns, worship participant numbers, volunteer numbers, small group participant nubmers, contributor numbers, total contributions, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust worship environment, marketing, newcomer integration, stewardship plan, budget.
Ongoing semiannually until self-supporting in 2014 Connection card returns, worship participant numbers, volunteer numbers, small group participant nubmers, contributor numbers, total contributions, actual expenses vs. budget. Adjust worship environment, marketing, newcomer integration, stewardship plan, budget.

[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.]


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Rationale

This plan has built into it a number of assumptions. In addition to the Core Values already listed, we are assuming the following:

  • The world and the church will mutually benefit from the creation of more New Church societies, and in fact will benefit more from many medium-sized congregations than from just a few large ones;
  • Austin, Texas is rich soil for church launching in general and for the New Church in particular;
  • The Rev. Glenn McKinley Frazier (a.k.a. “Mac”) is the right person to lead this project;
  • Church launching, using the crowd-to-core model of church growth, has advantages over church planting, using the core-to-crowd approach;
  • Many church starts jeopardize their ability to be financially independent, and thus their ability to grow, by getting into real estate ownership too soon;
  • Effective evangelism involves honest marketing, and effective marketing strives to demonstrate how a brand is the leader in its own unique category, not a latecomer in an already established category; and
  • Best practices from the old Christian church growth world are a useful starting point for making projections and setting benchmarks, but it must be remembered that our unique theology may prove to invalidate some of them as we go forward.

The following is additional rationale behind some of these assumptions.

[Excerpted from the New Way Church Launch Plan. Yesterday we wrapped up the first section (“The Point”), and today we begin the second section, “Rationale”. Next week we continue with the Rationale section, with “More Societies“, “Austin, Texas”, “Mac Frazier”, “Church Systems”, and “Crowd to Core”. If this is interesting to you, please post a comment. And if you know someone else who might have something useful to contribute, invite them into the conversation, too!]

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Core Values

The following twelve values are the foundation of this plan and will remain as constant principles guiding our goals and activities from the proposed congregation’s inception onward. The first five define our faith and purpose, and the remaining seven represent the qualities that define a healthy spiritual community in the human form.

  1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only God, and the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Heavenly Doctrines are His Word, and the foundation of all we do.
  2. We teach truths, and use those truths to help people to live good and useful lives.
  3. We love and serve one another, so that together we may love and serve the rest of the Lord’s children.
  4. We value marriage between a man and a woman and honor the unique, complimentary nature of each gender.
  5. We launch new, healthy congregations that share these values, and we inspire, instruct, support and advise others who are also called to do so.
  6. Survival – a healthy congregation has the ability to continue on despite outside events, despite the change of pastor, and despite the change of culture within the group.
  7. Growth – a healthy congregation has the intent to grow, in depth of involvement and in numbers involved.
  8. Reproduction (Fruitfulness) – a healthy congregation will eventually spawn, sponsor, and/or support additional fledgling congregations and missions, and will become a net producer of future ministers and pastors.
  9. Sovereignty (Freedom) – a healthy congregation is not financially beholden to other organizations, denominations, corporations or individual benefactors, although it may associate freely with them.
  10. Harmony – a healthy congregation has a focused purpose and unified mission around which there is a small harmony of goals that its membership organizes itself around and clearly agrees to.
  11. Service (Use) – a healthy congregation is outward focused and service-oriented, leading to a compassionate dedication to serving not just one another, but those outside the organization.
  12. Integrity – a healthy congregation keeps a fearless, unapologetic adherence to the principle teachings of New Christianity regarding the Lord, the Word, and the life of charity.

[This is excerpted from the Launch Plan for New Way Church in Austin, TX. Yesterday we posted “The Point“. Tomorrow: “Purpose“.]

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New Way Church: Launch Strategy for Austin, TX

This is the plan for the launching of a new New Church church (sic) in Austin, Texas, named “New Way Church”. This is will contribute to the General Church Strategic Plan, which calls for (among other things) the planting of new church societies on an ongoing basis. Although this plan, if successful, will result in the creation of multiple congregations, it is not intended as a complete solution to the General Church plan. Rather, it is just one suggested model that ought to be tried at least once, and then modified and reused, in other locations, for future General Church sponsored church starts.

[As announced yesterday, I am serializing my launch plan for planting a church in Austin. Before getting into the meat of things (tomorrow), we’re starting (above) with the 30 second intro to give you some context. Remember to share this with interested New Church folks who want to learn more about church planting. Tomorrow afternoon: “The Point“.]


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