Church Planters Quotes

I coach church planters to look at the ethnic diversity of schools and neighborhoods they are near. This will be an indicator how ethnically diverse their congregation can become. ~ Derwin L. Gray

One of the landmines that church planters never dodge is the landmine
of leadership development. I will never forget the day when I realized
that there are no such things as 'ready-made leaders'. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Keep at it! Remember marketing is building a relationship! If you use marketing for a year and stop, you cut off your relationship with the larger community. Then you will have to re-start the relationship all over again. The old adage "it takes six to stick" is proven true over and over again. I realized this in year three of our church plant. I think of the hundreds of people that came to our services that had no connection with me or our people because we were willing to build a sustained relationship with them through marketing. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Every church has a marketing plan! The only difference is that some are better than others! When I think of marketing I think of building a relationship with those within reach of your ministry who know nothing about your church or are disconnected from your people. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Missional leaders know that their church will only grow as large as its capacity to provide ongoing care through a network of small groups and ministry teams. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

For church planters, the motivation is not about the romantic or heroic venture ... it is because you realize you can't not plant one. ~ Dan Kimball

Missional leaders not only feel the burden of God's mission but they also act on the burden and act upon it sacrificially. Leading a missional church is not for the faint of heart. It takes courage to push yourself beyond your comfort zone and to lead the church beyond it personal limits. Brokenness, inner turmoil and sacrifice will always be part of the missional leader's life. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Never treat your launch team like a core group. It's not. Your launch team is a time-limited, purpose-driven team. It ends with the debriefing session following your launch. At that meeting, release the launch team members to join a ministry team of their choice. Your launch team will not stay with you over the long haul. Many church planters make the mistake of thinking that the people from their launch team (whom they have grown to love) will be the same people who will grow the church with them in the long term. That is seldom, if ever, the case.

While it's sad to see people go, it's part of God's process in growing your church. So, expect it, be prepared for it, and be thankful that you have the opportunity to serve with so many different people at different points along the journey.

Preparing a launch team to maximize your first service is first and foremost a spiritual enterprise. Pray and fast - a lot.

Don't be fooled into thinking that being a solid leader undermines the spirit of teamwork. You can lead a team, hold people accountable and ensure that things get done in a way that fosters teamwork and gives glory to God. So get ready.

show people your heart before you ask for their hand. People want to know that you care, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. If you can articulate your vision in a way that excites people, they'll want to be on your team.

The launch team is not a democracy. D ~ Nelson Searcy

We're not church planters. We are community planters and, as we work in our communities, we join local churches. ~ Shane Claiborne

As the church get older and older it becomes harder to keep evangelism on the front burner because of all the competing issues that keeps pushing it back. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

The mission that God has given us is a highly relational mission. Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" John 20:21. Jesus came into this world, lived in obscurity for 30 years and then spent three years relationally investing in twelve men, whose charge was to do the same thing by relationally investing in others. This strategy has worked for 2000 years each of us has been touched by someone reaching out to and investing in us relationally, thus advancing the gospel and the mission of God. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

An angry leader is a scared leader or a hurt leader or a frustrated leader but most of all they are a vulnerable leader. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Effective networkers know how to make a positive first impression. They understand their environment and know want is acceptable and unacceptable conversation and attire. They know how to get people to talk about themselves, their business, their desires and dreams. They know how to tell who they are and what they do in twenty-five words or less, in a way that draws questions out of others. There is nothing more annoying than someone who just talks about themselves and shows little interest in others. Networkers are effective listeners and continually learning about the nuances of their communities and the leaders who serve them. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Our enemy attacks the conscience little by little seeking to wear us down and then wears out a leader's resolve to fight the good fight. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Having a good definition of spiritual leadership is critical to development
of leadership cultural throughout your church. You need to know what you are
shooting for if you are going to hit the target. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Where will Christian feminists go for spiritual nourishment if the church itself fails to reflect the feminism of Jesus? If tradition becomes a reason for churches, for synagogues, for mosques to refuse to change in the light of new insights and understandings, on what grounds can we expect change from other institutions? ~ Joan D. Chittister

An error in the doctrine of God will have inevitable consequences in the sphere of action, of moral behaviour, of the polity of the Church, and of basic culture and social organization. A change in the doctrine of the Trinity in either of these directions cannot help but have political consequences.

Farrell, commenting on Nazianzen's connection between Trinity and Holy Monarchy ~ Joseph P. Farrell

At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God. ~ Rob Bell

There the great Planter plants Of fruitful worlds the grain, And with a million spells enchants The souls that walk in pain. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa. ~ Henry Louis Gates

Governor Winthrop despised democracy, which he brusquely labeled "the meanest and worst of all forms of Government." For Puritans, the church and state worked in tandem; the coercive arm of the magistracy was meant to preserve both public order and class distinctions. ~ Nancy Isenberg

Joseph's vision of the Father and the Son opened this dispensation. Then came the Restoration of the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the same organization that existed in the primitive Church, built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets. ~ Boyd K. Packer

In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism[28] as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.[ ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Moving forward implies MOTION when in all actuality it may be simply standing STILL and seeing the salvation of the Lord. ~ John Paul Warren

My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead. ~ Barack Obama

Neither Christ, nor his Apostles have left us a single preceptor example of Infant Baptism. This is a conceded fact. The very first Pedobaptists in history Cyprian of Carthage and his clergy, (A. D. 253,) did not plead any law of Christ, or Apostolical tradition, for infant baptism. They put the whole thing upon analogy and inference upon the necessity of infants on the one hand, and the unlimited grace of God on the other. Their own language is an implied and ab solute confession that their "opinion," as they call it, had no basis in any New Testament law or precedent. It confesses, in a word, that in advocating the baptism of literally new-born babes, they were introducing an innovation into the Church of Christ and they defend it only on the ground of necessity. ~ John Newton Brown

I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we're not doing it for God - I mean, that's one way to look at it - we're doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we're happy. That's the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God really. You're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy. Amen? ~ Victoria Osteen

The church is a home for all to come together, regardless of the depth or the height of our testimony. I know of no sign on the doors of our meetinghouses that says, Your testimony must be this tall to enter. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

The church belongs at the very heart of the world, to be the place of prayer and holiness at the point where the world is in pain - not to be a somewhat "religious" version of the world, on the one hand, or a detached, heavenly minded enclave, on the other. It ~ N. T. Wright

Too often scholars have thought and even suggested that what happened during and after Constantine was that the church sought to replace the pagan temples, priests, and sacrifices with their own. This is at best a half truth. If this had been primarily what was going on, we would have expected to find priestesses showing up in the mainstream church in and after the time of Constantine, since there were certainly priestesses in the pagan temples. But this we do not find in the historical record. This is because the church of that period was not merely trying to supplant pagan religion with Christian religion, though some of that was going on. More to the point, there was a rising tide of anti-Judaism, and one of its manifestations was this Old Testament hermeneutic. The Torah had been claimed as the church's book, Jews were being ostracized and then later ghettoized, and a hermeneutic of ministry was being adopted which co-opted the Old Testament for church use when it came to priests, temples, and sacrifices, and indeed sacraments in general. Thus ironically enough while the structure of the ecclesial church was becoming more Old Testamental, the church hierarchy was not only becoming less tolerant of Jews, it was forgetting altogether the Jewish character of Jesus' ministry and his modifications of the Passover that led to the Lord's Supper celebration of the early church in the first place. ~ Ben Witherington III

The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of Heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus are the objects of their admiration; and they express an uncommon reverence for the works of Galen. Their errors are derived from the abuse of the arts and sciences of the infidels, and they corrupt the simplicity of the gospel by the refinements of human reason. ~ Edward Gibbon

Stop praying. Get off your knees and do something. There's only one particular need that can be effectively addressed while in the kneeling position. If yours pertains to anything else, then please, seek help elsewhere. 'God helps those who help themselves' is just the Church's way of telling you that it's all a sham. You're really on your own. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion. ~ Brennan Manning

Hey!"

"What is it, Eggers?" Dad walks out of the kitchen in his windbreaker and running shorts and looks up the stairs.

"Do I have to walk around with Church and Sully for Halloween this year?"

Dad frowns. "Church and Sully are doing Halloween this year? Are they too old for that yet?"

He asks it honestly, because he really doesn't remember. He knows they're in the same grade, and that they're under fourteen because they play on all U-14 sports teams, but anything beyond that is details. Sully is fourteen, Church is thirteen; born elevenmonths apart exactly, and most people think they're twins.

"They're kind of too old for it, yeah," I say.

"Oh. Well, ask your mom."

"Is she home right now?"

"No, she took Davy for her quick 10K with her marathon students."

"What? Davy can't run a 10K!"

He holds his hands up in surrender. "They're jogging, and the slow students always take care of him anyway. He's fine. ~ Francesca Zappia

Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other religion, really. There's no orthodoxy, as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like ... We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy. Right practice rather then right belief. That's all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it's not important in the way you think. It's just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. ~ Hyam Maccoby

You wonder what had happened, when a feller like that, in a place like that, talked of a childhood that might have as easily belonged to a millionaire, a lawyer, a schoolteacher, you. You had to think he was defective somehow, or had fucked up not once, not twice, but again and again, a peculiar resolve to his life. That was the thing, that resolve. We didn't credit it. You looked at him and your brain said he was on the losing end of one of the two bargains that America made with you. There was the romantic one, that of the rambler, the man out seeking his destiny, living by his wits, all that horseshit. Then there was the classical American dare, that you could risk all, take an internal grudge and make of it a billion dollars and get a monumental tomb in the bargain. But the truth was neither. America was a grindstone. She used those notions as twin abrasives to wear you down into a dutiful drudge walking the straight and narrow. But there was something in the hearts of the some men, some of whom became Fritz, that wouldn't accept that. These men in crummy bars, some of them, most of them, they were main-chance fellers. You could take ten of these wrecks and offer them a salesman's job, a dozen white shirts and ties, forty Gs a year and perks, a neat house on a quiet street, a yard, a car, a dog, a wife, an expense account, a Chinese laundryman, membership in a church, grandkids who'd bounce on their knees, and you'd be lucky if one or two took you up on it. And those two ~ T.D. Badyna

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. ~ Philip Yancey

Since the church life is the proper life, it brings in God's blessing. Peace, joy, love, sympathy, kindness, normal living - all are signs of such a blessing of life which comes by the experience of Christ through the cross. ~ Witness Lee

Remove the centrality-of-Jesus-Christ message from ministry and meetings, and you can forget church life or organic meetings. He must be the center of everything ... not in lip service, but in the dynamic experiential whole. ~ Gene Edwards

He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." Bob ~ Charles Dickens

I don't think my church's teachings were incorrect, just incomplete. ~ Francis Chan

How can we have revival when we value a book the early Church didn't have over the Holy Spirit they did have? ~ Kris Vallotton

Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that
"order of love," as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: "Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the
husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church." This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in lov ~ Pope Pius XI

BC is not going to replace the hierarchy, and BC is not going to lead some major reform in the Catholic Church - that's got to come out of the whole Catholic community. ~ William P. Leahy

Woodrow Kroll is dead-on in his assessment of the church's lack of engagement with the Word. ~ Howard G. Hendricks

Father, help me focus on my strengths and trust others to fill the gaps of my weaknesses"

Every leader knows the skills in which they excel. They also are aware of those tasks that they maintain a certain level of competence along with those duties they struggle in accomplishing. In my experience there are "want to's" and the "have to's" of leadership. The "want to's" energize a leader and the "have to's" zap the leader's creativity and time. The quicker a leader can find those around them that will fill the gaps of their weaknesses, the more effective they will be in achieving God's mission. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. ~ Emile Durkheim