Down-to-earth Book Born of Hard Knocks May Change Forever How Church Planters Do Their Work

CHURCH IN THE MAKING
A new book by one of Christianity’s creative lights, Ben Arment, from B&H Publishing Group

The majority of all new churches fail, which leaves thousands of dazed and discouraged church planters wondering what hit them. Ben Arment felt like he’d talked to half of them, and he identified with and anguished over their plight. Church in the Making is the result of Arment’s search for answers.

After eight years as a church planter and his research of scores of church stories, Arment identifies three conditions that make for a successful church plant even before it gets off the ground. “The truth is that we can’t plant a successful church on our own initiative,” Arment says. “God must bring together the critical factors long before we arrive. Our job is to identify where there’s already a church in the making.”

Arment adds: “Great faith is not enough. Clear vision is not enough. Passion and money aren't enough. There's a mysterious X-factor that eludes most church planters... and I'm convinced this is it.”

The “X factor” in Church in the Making includes:

• We must gauge the spiritual fertility of our community before we can plant a church. If they’re not open to the Gospel, our job is not to plant a church, but to cultivate people’s hearts.

• If God truly builds his church, then our job is not to initiate the work of God, but rather to identify where he’s already bringing a new church together.

• Whenever there’s a church in the making, God provides a group of leaders who can fulfill the mission. Lone planters have a slim chance of succeeding, let alone surviving.

Released by B&H Publishing Group April, Church in the Making has been written primarily for church planters, denominational and church planting leaders, strategy-minded ministers, and established pastors who want to reproduce their own churches.

Ben Arment is an innovator in the often sterile field of church planting who seems to spawn a new idea every day. After a stint as innovation and experience director at Catalyst, the largest community of next generation church leaders in the world, Arment has now launched three new projects: Dream Year, a year-long personal coaching program; The Whiteboard Sessions, a roll-up-your sleeves one-day session about ideas in ministry; and STORY, a boutique conference with a focus on creatively telling the greatest story ever told--the gospel.

Media Notes: Ben Arment is available for interviews beginning in April. To schedule an interview, please email Jim Jewell at jjewell03@msn.com, or call (678) 458-9837. Additional media materials are available.

50 Leaders of the Evangelical Generation: #40 Russ Reid. Fundraiser

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#40.Russ Reid. Fundraiser b.1935

Follow the money. When you do in the evangelical sector over the last generation, following the money that it took to launch and support many of the great ministries and missions and projects of the time, the trail would take you to and through the offices of a fast-talking Californian with a sparkle in his eyes and many new ideas for funding mission: Russ Reid.


For many today, Russ Reid is the name of the firm, with little notice that it is also the man who launched the firm and remains a fascinating study. Russ Reid is the founder and leader of the first of the large fund development agencies that became partners with Christian organizations, using direct response fundraising to find support for their work. Russ said: “There is no shortage of money, only a shortage of well-articulated causes.”

Russ Reid has helped articulate a lot of causes.

Originally he had trained for the ministry, but finally realized that he was more of a marketing guy than a pastor. In the late 1950s he went to work for Word Publishing in Waco, Texas. There he learned all about direct response through book-of-the-month clubs and by marketing books through direct mail. Along the way, he noticed some wonderful organizations doing great work to help others, but they didn’t know how to tell their own stories, or how to raise money.

Russ had a vision—to start a company that would help nonprofit organizations make a bigger difference in the world. He founded the Russ Reid Company in 1964, and Word Publishing became his first client. Later he moved the company to Park Ridge, Illinois, and worked with small ministries as he got up and running. In 1966, Russ was able to get a project from World Vision. At that time, World Vision was conducting projects around the world on an annual budget of about $5 million (today they’re approaching $2 billion in annual revenue).

In 1972, as his work with World Vision increased, Russ decided to move from Chicago to Arcadia, California, near World Vision’s Monrovia headquarters. At that time, the way World Vision acquired sponsors was by speaking at churches and showing a film about the plight of children in the developing world.

Russ had an idea. He approached World Vision EVP Ted Engstrom and proposed that they film Art Linkletter traveling around the world and meeting these children in need, bring that film back, and instead of going from church to church, put it on television.

Ted Engstrom got approval from the board for this expensive, risky project, and reportedly said to Russ afterwards, “What will we do if this doesn’t work?” Russ laughed and said, “Ted, we’ll have the most expensive church film in history.”

It did work, beyond expectations, and the World Vision television specials were born--the first major television fundraising of their kind. Many of followed, and Russ Reid has been involved with many of them.

Over the last 40 years, Russ Reid’s little company has grown from one guy with an idea about helping people who help people, to what is now the largest agency in the world exclusively devoted to helping nonprofit organizations grow.

Russ says: “Giving life and health and hope to children in poverty, to the homeless, to people with cancer is significant work. It’s life-changing work. For me, it’s part of what gets me up in the morning, excited about coming to work.”

50 Leaders of the Evangelical Generation: #46 Philip Yancey. Literary Plumb Line

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#46 Philip Yancey. Literary Plumb Line b.

One of the most popular evangelical writers of modern times, Philip Yancey is the product and victim of a hyper-fundamentalist upbringing. He considers himself a survivor of the church, and today he is a literary plumb line for believers being dragged to the abyss of legalism.

Yancey tackles the difficult questions of the Christian life and explores the richness of deep faith through his many books and as editor-at-large and regular contributor to Christianity Today magazine. Yancey’s books have won 12 Gold Medallion Awards from the Evangelical Christian Publishers’ Association and two Christian Book of the Year Awards--for The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996 and What's So Amazing About Grace in 1998.

Yancey was born in Atlanta and grew up in a strict, fundamentalist church. He viewed God as an abusive parent-—rigid, legalistic, angry, ready to bring the gavel down for one wrong misstep. His only window to a larger world as a young man was reading. So, he devoured books that opened his mind and challenged to teachings of his church, books such as 1984, Animal Farm, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The more he read, the more frustrated he became.

"I was an angry, wounded person emerging from a toxic church, and I've been in recovery ever since," says Yancey. "I went through a period of reacting against everything I was taught and even throwing my faith completely away at one point. I began my journey back to faith mainly by encountering a world that was quite different than I had been taught about; a world of beauty and goodness. As I experienced that, I realized maybe God had been misrepresented to me. So, I went back, warily circling around the faith."

"I write books to resolve things that are bothering me, things I don't have answers to,” Yancey says. “For those who struggle with my books, I just say, ‘Then you really shouldn't be reading them.' But some people do need the kinds of books I write. They've been burned by the church or they’re very upset about certain aspects of Christianity. I feel called to speak to those living in the borderlands of faith."

--Jim Jewell

Making Good Coffee Good for Everyone

My name is Jim and I am a coffeeholic. Yes I do love coffee, and although I enjoy the various combination drinks at Starbucks, I regularly enjoy a good, rich, dark roast.

Since I've begun working in environmental stewardship, I've been learning more about not just what makes good coffee, but what makes coffee good--as in fair and just, a positive impact on those who grow it, and gentle on the environment. But all of the labels--such as shade-grown, fair-trade, and bird-friendly--have been confusing to me, as they may be to you.

A post on coffee and community at the Flourish Blog is very helpful in sorting out how individuals and churches can make coffee hour a truly redemptive time.

On the church coffee hour, it reads:

The church coffee hour is already a ministry—a time of fellowship, connection, and service for people who need the love of God and the love of our brothers and sisters. Drinking conscientiously-produced coffee and tea simply extends that ministry to brothers and sisters we may not be able to meet and greet, but who are no less deserving of love and justice. When this service is viewed as a ministry, and not just a perk or an expectation, options open up for making it work

.

Check it out.

--Jim Jewell

50 Leaders of the Evangelical Generation: #29 Ron Sider. The Liberal

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

Ron Sider. b. 1939

Since Ron Sider published Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in 1977, he has provided direction and support for evangelicals focusing on poverty, social justice, pacifism, and the environment. Sider, both personally and through the small and lightly funded organizations he founded, has represented the northstar of the small group of evangelical liberals that from time to time prod the right-leaning community with a necessary nudge to include the last, least, and lost in the outreach of the church. One thing Sider has never done is deviate from both the core doctrines and the central cultural issues of the movement; he demonstrated this by signing the Manhattan Declaration in 2009. This was consistent with his lifelong pro-life stance. In fact, Sider’s Completely Pro-Life, published in the mid-1980s, calls on Christians to take a consistent stand opposing abortion, capital punishment, nuclear weapons, hunger, and other conditions that Sider sees as anti-life.

As Tim Stafford wrote in Christianity Today:

Ron Sider doesn't seem the type to upset people. A short, balding seminary professor with a quick smile and thick glasses, he talks in a relaxed, low-voltage way. Professionally he is a hybrid, a historian who teaches theology and talks and writes about politics and economics. His academic credentials are exemplary: a Ph.D. in Reformation history Yale; articles published in prestigious journals. Theologically he is a heartland evangelical, deeply committed to an inspired Bible, to a passionate communication of the gospel and to a transforming personal faith. Politically he is mainstream Democratic party except for conservative stances on homosexuality and abortion. In short, Sider is no flaming radical. Yet it would be hard to think of another evangelical who has been more ardently criticized for being "radical." In reality, Sider takes flak from both the Left and the Right, particularly when he upholds evangelical positions at ecumenical meetings. "I've been picketed twice," he says, "by theonomists [who believe in applying Old Testament law today] in Australia, and in Minnesota by gay-rights [advocates]."

Sider has published over 22 books and has written over 100 articles in both religious and secular magazines on a variety of topics including the importance of caring for creation as part of biblical discipleship. Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was published In 1977. Hailed by Christianity Today as one of the one hundred most influential books in religion in the twentieth century, it went on to sell 350,000 copies. He is often identified by others with the Christian left, though he personally disclaims any political inclination. He is the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, a think-tank which seeks to develop biblical solutions to social and economic problems.. He is also the Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.

House of Democrats Passes Health Bill

The U.S. Congress did not pass the bill realigning the health care system: the Democratic caucus did.

As the NY times opines, until yesterday:

Never in modern memory has a major piece of legislation passed without a single Republican vote. Even President Lyndon B. Johnson got just shy of half of Republicans in the House to vote for Medicare in 1965, a piece of legislation that was denounced with many of the same words used to oppose this one. That may be the true measure of how much has changed in Washington in the ensuing 45 years, and how Mr. Obama’s own strategy is changing with the discovery that the approach to governing he had in mind simply will not work.

Partisanship is today the only game in town, but this is not at all surprising. We are a deeply polarized nation of opposed echo chambers diving deeper into ideological extremes, with little dialogue that advances compromise, cvility, or balanced policy. Our politicians are downstream from this cultural crisis, using it and feeding it, rather than providing moderation and statemanship.

--Jim Jewell

Brand Is What Brand Does

Fascinating article on brand and brand consistency by Edward Boches at Creativity Unbound.

Boches writes:

"I’m not sure consistency – at least in terms of messages and a look – even matters anymore. It’s more important to be present, visible, searchable and useful. But what does matter is this: making sure that customers and prospects have a clear sense of a brand’s promise and what they can expect from it. Think Apple (elegant and creative), Target (affordable design), Volvo (safety), Zappos (service), Panera (breadness).*

The brands that prosper in a world of abundance all have something in common. They are not defined by their messages, but rather by their behavior and actions. On the other hand, brands whose actions fail to reinforce a singular promise (Comcast, United Airlines, Dominos) are all subject to being defined by content created by others. I think of Comcast as a cable giant that’s notorious for bad service; United as an airline with a hub in Chicago and a tendency to break guitars; and Dominos as an unhealthy fast food chain trying to improve the quality of its pizza after customers complained and disgusting employees did rude things to the pizza. Perhaps if they delivered consistently positive products, service, behavior and content we might think differently."

"A brand isn’t what a brand says; a brand is what a brand does," Boches says

--Jim Jewell