The folks over at A Gospel-Planted Life were kind enough to share their experience at last week’s North American Church Planting Conference. You should check it out!
Posts Tagged ‘Tim Brister’
A Gospel-Planted Life Blog Reviews GCA Conference
Friday, February 5th, 2010GCA 2010 Conference Attendee Tweets
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Culture + Gospel + Church = Transformational ministry. #gca10
“Beneath the demographics of your community are the lifestyles that are an expression of beliefs.” -Bob Orner #gca10
Allender: If you don’t need the Gospel more than the people you are sharing it with, you ought not to be sharing it with them #gca10
Half of the fun of #gca10 has been meeting people. There are a lot of great people here!
Round 3. “who will pray with and for us?” #gca10
With Bob Orner thinking through the “whom” and “where” of church planting focus. #gca10
“If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word — prayer.” C.H. Spurgeon #gca10
Dear Presbyterians who are (like me) into God using appointed means: prayer is one of them. Gospel effectiveness depends on it. #gca10
I’m really encouraged that my prayer life doesn’t always have to be as mediocre as it often is. Thankful for this session at #gca10
Church Planting: Using Technology and Social Media #gca10 Very informative and helpful.
It’s the beginning of another busy day of sessions at #gca10. Please pray with us and for us!
day 2. round 4. “developing a philosophy of ministry” #gca10
“The work of faithful evangelism is to identify with the world without losing your identity in Christ.” – Stott #gca10
Great training session on philosophy of ministry tailored to local context by a guy with lots of story-arc similarities as me. #gca10
Seminary student Casey Johnson shares his thoughts with us on last night’s Worship module taught by Jason Sears. http://bit.ly/bI5fk2 #gca10
“When you do church planting, you can’t blame the previous pastor for your church’s problems.” -Bob Orner // Humorous and humbling #gca10
Why do church planting anyway? #gca10 listening to this Guy right now
Hotel excitement. These are burglars posing as pizza marketers w/ fake flyers looking for unlocked doors http://twitpic.com/1039pu #gca10
Doing some hard thinking about ministry style contextualization led by a black pastor, Andre Rogers from Columbia. #gca10
Hilarious. There’s a white pastor’s wife in a cross-cultural church here. The black attendees call her the First Lady. #gca10
“Your first 20 people will dictate your next 100 people.” – Andre Rogers #gca10 //very-true church planting statement.
@andrerogers I’m not @RickWarren but I’m glad to follow you. Good word at #gca10
Looking at ministry models—how church ministries in a plant will work together—with Bob Orner. #gca10
Great lunch-time panel…#gca10
“Giving always comes back to forgiveness of sins and life eternal.” Fred Marsh #gca10
“Too often the church is composed of a consumer-driven clientele.” – Fred Marsh #gca10-
Benevolent and missions budget allocations do not keep pace with operational and building expenditures as churches grow. #gca10
“I’m firmly convinced that God calls the church to bless the poor. It’s still hard for the rich to enter heaven.” – MNA $$ guru #gca10
Really enjoying my first conference experience at #gca10. Meeting with Ted Powers and @ARStager in 10.
Just finishing up our last sessions of the day. Looking forward to Steve Brown tonight! #gca10
Listening to Dr. Steve Brown (Key Life) for the 1st time. Sounds like God. Topic is “3 Free Sins.” #gca10 http://twitpic.com/108asv
If pastors think their job is to keep their people from sin, then you are playing a sick game that will eat you alive. -Steve Brown #gca10
Brown: I’m so screwed up I can hardly stand myself, and Jesus loves me, and he’ll love you too. #gca10 (via @PlantInBoston)#fb
gearing up to finish out the @_gca conference. ten sessions down; two to go. #gca10
Tools and diagrams are helpful, but it never works out the way you plan. Every church plant is a unique work of the Holy Spirit. #gca10
Ted Powers: Diff B/W Planter & Pastor: Planters gather those who are 2 be shepherded, Pastors Shepherd those who have been gathered. #gca10
Powers: Small Churches, 150 & Down are 1600 times more effective evangelistically than mega churches. #gca10
Most churches do not go beyond 200 because of the natural change from relationship to program driven #gca10
Powers: What is critical to a church plant is not only the people you attract and keep, but the people that move on. #gca10
A church is more than a bunch of people gathering for worship. A church is a biblical functioning community. – Ted Powers #gca10
Great truth frm #gca10 Lead people to have general conversations with unbelievers and they will eventually beg you to teach them how to do evangelism
Powers: the goal of church planting is not to get a church up and running. It is to reach people with the Gospel. #gca10
Notice how Jesus planted a church… 12 (Matt 4) > 72 (Luke 10) > 120 (Acts 1) > 3,000 (Acts 2) #gca10
Wishing I had attended #gca10 when it was #gca09… good stuff, lots to process
It’s amazing how a conference can both energize and drain you all at the same time! #gca10
Whether you realize it or not, you have a specific def. of personal success. It greatly affects your life…(LK 10:20)-Steve Childers #gca10
“Your joy in life must not be found in what you do for Him, but in who you are in Him” @stevechilders #gca10
“Jesus knew the time would come when his disciples would feel subject to the demons, not vice versa” Identity in Christ essential #gca10 #fb
It is THE best CP event/class/conference I have ever been to. It’s a bootcamp on gospel steroids. #gca10
Visionary church planters: what’s your vision for your marriage? For your family? – @stevechilders via his wife. #gca10
Church planters/pastors (every1 4 that matter) R in danger of offering to their “idol of success” their children, wife, time & sleep #gca10
“In repenting and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling. Is 30:15 #gca10
it’s one thing to start your ministry well; it’s another thing to finish it well. – @stevechilders #gca10
“Take a nap, REST! The Kingdom of God will go on. You may be surprised to find Jesus on his throne when you wake up.” @stevechilders #gca10
Sleep, sun, solitude, sabbath, sex, sweat, sustenance. Steve’s 7 S’s of success. Funny and true. #gca10
Differentiate between goals & desires. Desires you cannot control…goals you can. Work for goals, pray for desires. #gca10
Is God a means of grace in your life, or is grace a means to God? – @johnpiper via @stevechilders #gca10
“Don’t merely see God as useful, see Him as beautiful” – Bill Bright via @stevechilders #gca10
God will never really use you until you renounce your reliance & dependence upon God’s gifts & humbly rest only in God Himself #gca10
“God’s grace is like water, always flowing to the lowest place.” Puritan Statement #gca10
Church Planter & wife, like 2 people on a roller coaster: 1 puking over the side, the other hands in the air – roles can change daily #gca10
“Don’t let your living for tomorrow slay your living for today.” -Elisabeth Elliot via @stevechilders #gca10
(My wife) and I were just discussing the church plant, her comment: “I hope you have a green thumb!” me too, me too.
Welcome back to the real world–low in orlando 63, in boston 11 #gca10
Church Planting: Using Technology and Social Media
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010This year’s conference consists of 13 sessions. In keeping with past years, there are two tracks. The Foundations track is for church planters who are just getting started. They may still be in the planning stages, or in the first year or two of planting. The “Essentials” track is for planters who are a little bit further along (3-5 years) and is designed to help them determine the next steps in the development on their churches.
I’ll be blogging my way through the “Foundations” track. Because of the density of the material and the pace at which we’re moving through it, there’s just no way for me to cover everything. So I’ll only be sharing one module with you today. I’ll try to cover two on both Wednesday and Thursday.
Technology and Social Media
This session was presented by the duo of Tim Brister and Drew Goodmanson. It’s actually not part of the “Foundations” track proper. But it seemed like such a unique module that I couldn’t resist sharing it with you. (And, of course, as a blogger I’m probably a little biased!)
Technology is changing. It’s more immersive. It’s all around us. And if we want to reach the culture around us, we will have to learn to speak in their technological language. In other words, the Church needs to be using all avenues of communication to share the gospel. In America today, this means websites, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs just to name a few.
This doesn’t mean we should accept technology uncritically. What it does mean is that we shouldn’t react against it per se. We know that technology – and social media in particular – impacts the amount of time we spend directly interacting with one another. So what we need is to have a theology of presence such that we can understand the positives and negatives of technology and its affect on relational intimacy. Where this hasn’t been done, we have yet to fully comprehend our relationship with the gadgets that surround us.
With regard to social media, church planters need to understand that they have four audiences that they are trying to reach: non-Christians, new Christians, regular church-goers, and church leaders. In some sense, it’s unrealistic to expect a one-size-fits-all approach to reach and inform all four of these groups. So a good approach to a church’s online presence is going to be multi-faceted. It just has to be.
The project of managing any organization’s online presence is called Internet Presence Management. T
his involves first figuring out which online services are being used by the people you want to reach (be they an un-reached group that you want to evangelize, or the average attendee at your church). There’s no doubt that there are a lot of options here: Facebook ads, clever domain names, and private member portals (e.g. the “unifyer” service) only scratch the surface. It’s easy to get exhausted trying to consider all of the options. I could feel a collective sigh of relief as Drew stressed that the goal isn’t to keep up with everything going on here. Just find out where the people are that you want to reach online and do those things well.
If you’re willing to put in some time (or hire an expert), search engines make it possible to speak to people who you otherwise wouldn’t. Instead of finding them, they might come into contact with your message on Google. Doing this well entails presenting your material in such a way that it will rank high in search engine results. For example, a church in Orlando would do well to tailer their website such that it ranks highly (i.e. within the top five results) for someone searching “Orlando church.” This process is called search engine optimization (SEO), and it’s a process best left to the experts.
Here are some interesting tidbits that Tim and Drew had to share. Traditionally, web site design has convinced almost no non-Christians to attend a particular church. For Christians new to an area, on the other hand, the website has replaced an ad in the phone book as the first filter in determining what church to attend. 43 seconds is the average length of time that a visitor spends on a website. That means that, if all of the important information on your website can’t be reached quickly, then visitors will simply move on. Aside from the homepage, the most popular page visits tend to be “I’m new” pages. Visitors will not come if your website is outdated (77% say this is somewhat to very important).
Talking with Tim and Drew after the session, it was clear that they do not support the use of all of this technology for its own sake. Rather, they recognize that these are the media that people are using today to gain and share information. As church planters, leaders and evangelists, who naturally want to seek the lost, we need to go where they are. As it turns out, they’re online. That being the case, the gospel needs to get online. And it needs to “go viral.”
Connecting with Global Church Advancement (GCA) by Tim Brister
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
Posted on Provocations & Pantings, April 27, 2009 by Tim Brister
As I mentioned in my last post, I was unable to attend the Gospel Coalition National Conference. However, in God’s kind providence, I was able to go up to Orlando for a couple of days to network with other church planters and network leaders, most notably Scott Thomas (Acts 29), Gary Rohrmayer (ConvergeUSA), and Steve Childers (GCA). These three men I have much to learn from and am grateful the opportunity the Lord gave me this past week.
If you can remember back in January, I attended the GCA National Church Planting Conference in Orlando for a week, and it was by far the most thorough and helpful church planting training I had ever received. What is different about GCA conferences than typical bootcamps is that they are very hands-on, practical, and seeking to engage your church planting needs in the context of where you are. Bootcamps are really important to attend as well, but they generally tend to focus on core values and guiding principles of a network rather than targeted training. In other words, bootcamps shape the culture of a network, and GCA training provides all the nuts and bolts for a church planter. Both are certainly needed!
During my time in Orlando last week, I was able to attend Steve Childer’s 3-session seminar on developing church planting networks. That seminar, along with a host of other free resources, are available here. At the close of the final session, I endeavored to ask Steve a question about the beginnings of something I’ve been a part of which ended up in six hours of fellowship, most of which was enjoyed at a local Panera.
It is often joked that GCA is “the best kept secret” in the church planting world. I told Steve that it is not right to be kept a secret when so many guys could and should benefit from their training. As a result, I am working to help them get networked online, beginning with social media. If you are on Twitter or Facebook, let me encourage you to get on board with GCA and follow the developments in the future. Here’s the links:
@stevechilders (Steve Childer’s Twitter) @_gca (GCA’s Twitter) GCA Facebook Fan Page
Furthermore, if you are in the church planting process–pre-launch or post-launch–let me encourage you to check out the GCA National Conference coming up July 21-24, 2009 in Orlando, Florida. The pre-launch track called Foundations is specifically geared to address all issues pertaining to the start of a new church, including the development of a solid church planting proposal. The Essentials track is a post-launch track addressing crucial components to a healthy, reproducing church.
Whether it is on Twitter, Facebook, or at one of their training seminar’s (or all of them!), let me encourage you to connect with GCA and benefit from years of gospel-centered labors of Steve Childers and his solid staff. You will be blessed with their passion for the gospel, their love for the church, and their commitment to train men for the mission!