Understanding an Integrated Church Multiplication System
This one day workshop with the Judicatory Leadership team provides an overview of the ten big rocks of creating an Integrated Healthy Church Multiplication System on the Judicatory. We also spend time assessing the current reality of the district and help identify the appropriate next steps in creating an Integrated Health Church Multiplication System. Contact Lonnie Bullock for more information at office@newchurchspecialties.org.
Through trial and error out in the field, New Church Specialties has identified 10 critical elements of an Integrated Multiplication System. We agree that focusing on "NewStart" and "Parenting" are critical issues. But launching and sustaining a movement of healthy new churches requires more than these two components. We have found that a number of other components must be implemented and integrated if a movement of healthy new churches is to take place within a denominational family.
The launching of a movement requires "No Church Left Behind." This requires the building of "shared vision." Shared vision occurs when every church begins to see itself involved in a healthy church multiplication movement. Just talking about NewStart or ReFocusing by itself is incomplete. We must develop a "holistic" training system.
In addition, we must teach "movement loyalty" to both the judicatory and the denomination. People must be challenged to "fall in love with the church" (Ephesians 5:25-27) and "give themselves up" for her, even when she is imperfect. The church is God's plan to bring salvation to the world (Ephesians 3:10). Only when we have loyalty to our movement can we accomplish healthy church multiplication. Our teaching and emphasis on "movement loyalty" is another key factor that makes New Church Specialties distinct from other church training organizations and training systems.
We at NCS offer Integrated Healthy Church Multiplication to judicatories as a proven, holistic system of training that will ensure long-term denominational health and growth. Below is a summary of our IHCM system and the 10 components we have found essential to church multiplication:
- Leader(s) Training - Must orient district/judicatory leaders in their role of launching and sustaining a NewStart, ReStart, ReFocusing and Parent church movement of healthy churches.
- Agenda Harmony – District/Judicatory leaders, pastors and key lay leaders must work together for church health and church multiplication objectives, with a common purpose, in a common spirit. We have learned agenda harmony is a spiritual principle that must be taught to everyone within the district/judicatory.
- Recruitment - Must develop a “Farm” System for Recruiting both Church Planters & ReFocusing Pastors.
- Assessment - The district/judicatory must develop a good system of assessing leaders and churches.
- NewStart Churches - Must train NewStart church planters in the details of new church development and how to develop quality, New Church Action Plans.
- ReStart Churches - Current reality tells us that district/judicatories will have to involve itself in ReStart projects. While similar to NewStart churches in many ways, effective ReStarts require specialized training.
- ReFocusing Churches - Healthy church multiplication only flows out of ReFocused congregations.
- Parent Churches - Must train Parent Church pastors who have a desire to parent a new church, in the critical steps of parenting and how to develop effective Parent Church Action Plans. Parent churches are critical for launching a church multiplication movement within a denomination.
- Coaching - An effective NewStart, ReStart, ReFocusing and Parent church movement cannot be developed in isolation. Through trial and error, NCS and other organizations have proven the critical role that coaching plays. The recruitment, training and maintaining quality assurance in the delivery of coaching to churches doing NewStart, ReStart, ReFocusing and Parenting is critical.
- Church Health - While attendance, dollars in the budget and church buildings are important, they are a very imperfect and incomplete way to measure the health of a local church. At NCS, we use Natural Church Development as a church health analysis tool. We have found that the teaching and implementation of church health principles in our training processes bring about a sense of denominational unity and provides a highly credible way of measuring the health of large and small churches simultaneously. ReFocusing and ReStart situations require an accurate church health analysis.
