Jeff Jackson Live

I just recently attended Innovate Church conference at Thomas Road Baptist Church and it was incredible.  If you are a church planter, pastor, youth pastor or leader you need to go next year.  But don’t worry you can watch all the main sessions on the Innovate website.  During one of the breakout sessions about church planting Brian Bloye, lead pastor, West Ridge Church along with Matt Fry, lead pastor, C3 spoke about their experience with church planting and multi-site churches.  Both men contribute some great advice and encouragement but one thing that stuck out to me was Brian Bloye’s spiritual checklist.  Brian used this list in the context of what church planters need to inspect everyday but this list should  be examined by anyone who follows Christ.  The following is Brian Bloye’s list with my comments on each area:

1. Desperation for God-our relationship with God is imperative.   If you want to see God move in a huge way you have to first fall in love with the Creator each and every day.
2. Holiness-“Holiness is next to Godliness” or maybe that is cleanliness?  Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 20: 7
3. Home-when we dedicate our lives to the ministry there can be a tendency to over commit ourselves to the work and neglect our family.  Our family is the most important advisory in the ministry that we have.  If our family is beat down, and they will take a beating, then we have forgot our second responsibility (God, Family, Ministry).
4. Honesty-I am amazed of the dishonesty that I have experienced in the ministry.  I am not going to say that I have never been guilty of “stretching the truth” but there has to be a point when when let our Yes be Yes and our No be No. (Mathew 5:37)
5. Happiness (personal plan for disappointment)-I have a real easy solution for this, Romans 5:3-5
6. Healthiness (emotional/physical)-this one really convicts me.  It is so easy to go go go and never rest rest rest.  This is so important because I can guarantee that if we are physical tired we will be emotional and SPIRITUALLY tires and ineffective.
7. Humility-Wow!  This is really hard especially for the church planting type.  We are so driven it is easy to take the credit for something good that happens in our ministries but we can’t forget that success does not exist apart for God.

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Here’s the top 10 from the list with some commentary from yours truly:

1. LifeChurch – No surprise here really. Their main campus is about 3 whole miles from my dwelling place. I’ve watched them do some incredible, edgy, out of the box stuff. Here’s my post on 8 Lessons Learned from their recent MySecret.tv site.

2. Granger Community Church – Again, no surprises. I think of them a lot when I think of “innovative churches.” Tim Stevens, Tony Morgan and Kem Meyer all participated in my Blogging 101 for Pastors series. Check out their Q&As. I’ve wanted to attend Kem’s Communications Workshop for a year now and just wasn’t able to make it. I’ve had the good fortune to interview both Tim Stevens and Mark Beeson for Pastors.com and loved it. I was telling someone the other day that “Granger gets it.” It seems like they’ve brought in the all-stars for ministry and freed them up to fly! Go, Granger, Go!

3. North Point Community Church — I read Andy Stanley’s Communicating for a Change and it was really inspiring to me and humbling. I really appreciate and respect his communication style.

4. Fellowship Church – Again, Andy Stanley and Ed Young are the young, hip leaders. I’m happy to know they are helping set the pace for the next generation. Attending a FC service is on my to-do list as they’re only about 4 hours from me in OKC.

5. Mosaic Church – I’ve heard from a friend that Erwin McManus is the real deal. I believe it. Love his communication style. And by the way, Mosaic’s website uses WordPress! WOW!

6. Seacoast Church – Don’t know much about Seacoast other than they use blogs as part of their communications method …

7. Community Christian Church — Again, don’t know much. I emailed Dave Ferguson for my Blogging 101 Q&A series but didn’t hear back.

8. National Community Church – Personally, and I am entitled to my opinion, right?, but I think they should be higher on the list. I have not heard a pastor so involved, interested and engaging in regards to using technology and marketing for ministry as Mark Batterson. His blog is HUGE. Tons of feedreaders. And I thoroughly enjoy hearing him and reading him talk about ministry. He puts things in ways that helps me communicate hard concepts (marketing) to other people.

9. Mars Hill Church — “Strategic chaos” is a phrase Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll uses in his excellent book Confessions of a Reformissionary Rev. When everything got good with his church plant, he shook things up — strategic chaos. That’s bold, baby!

10. New Hope Christian Fellowship O’ahu – Don’t really know much about this church other than the name of the pastor — Wayne Cordeiro.

Found at Church Communications Pro

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