daveferguson.org

Dashboards: Keeping Track of How the Church is Doing

In my post last week, Focus on Spiritual Growth not "Discipleship" I talked about the dashboard at Community and how we track the number of 3C Christ Followers.  A number of people commented wanting to know more about the dashboard that we use at Community. 

This is an example of our current dashboard.  This pic shows the percentage of people that are connecting at each of our nine campuses and as a church overall.  We have set an expectation that we want 75% of our people connected in small groups.  As you can see in the diagram five of Community's campuses are beyond the 75% mark.  These are the campuses in green and they have between 84% and 120% of people connected.  The three in yellow have between 60% and 68% of the people connected in small groups.  And the one campus is currently in red is slightly below 60%.  We have several pages like this one that are updated on a weekly basis that show how many people are celebrating, connecting, contributing, giving, baptisms and more.  It is a terrific tool that helps you really understand numerically how you are doing as a church. 

If you want more on this topic I wrote an article titled: Golf Scores & Dashboards:  Keeping Track of How the Church is Doing.

Why Discover the Dream (part 1)

God brought together myself, Sue, Jon and 4 college friends to start a new church in Chicago.  God gave us a dream to not only reach Chicago, but a dream that goes beyond that.  I believe God’s dream was for us is to be a "catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches."  That dream continues to motivate us and COMMUNITY now has 9 locations with over 5,000 people in attendance.  But I believe that we are just beginning to fulfill the dream that God has for us.  Until now God has been introducing us to the world.  And I believe what God wants for us next is to impact the world.  The way that we will impact the world is through NewThing who is reproducing networks of reproducing churches reaching lost people around the world.  That is God's dream for us.

So how about you?  What is your dream?  What unique dream has God placed on your heart?  On your life?  Or as you read these words, do you find yourself saying, “I want a dream. How did you discover what your dream is?”

If you are wrestling with these questions, we would like to meet with you. NewThing is hosting an event called Discover the Dream to help you discover the dream God has placed in your heart.  Join us on Monday, April 20 at Exponential Conference in Orlando, FL.

To learn more about Discover the Dream, look for Part 2 of this four-part blog. If you’re ready to sign up for the experience, click HERE.  But hurry, space is limited to the first 80 people who sign up.  In fact, if you sign up because of this blog you get 20% off!  Email patmasek@communitychristian.org to take advantage of this discount.

Perry Noble on Entrepreneurial Drive OR Holy Spirit?

Since I am hosting all the Exponential Conference podcasts I got a chance to spend some time talking with Perry Noble today.  Perry is the Lead Pastor at NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  Since it was started it has seen amazing growth to 10,000 attenders at 3 campuses.  We talked about leadership, being a reproducing church and church planting.  Perry highlighted his 7 Huge Myths of Church Planting - good stuff! 

Perry is an entrepreneur at heart and loves to start new things. We have that in common.  I literally get an adrenalin rush when someone suggest a new idea.  So, my favorite part of our conversation was when he talked about trying to tell the difference between his entrepreneurial drive and a prompting of the Holy Spirit.  I asked him how he can tell the difference and he gave a three part response:

1. "Make sure it is an idea you can't get away from." - See if the idea sticks around and continues to surface in your imagination and conversation.  If you can't get away from the idea, it may be from God.
2. "Give it time." - Don't think you have to act on every dream.  Do what Moses told God's people do, "wait".  Wait for other people to confirm.  Wait to see it is confirmed in scripture. Wait for it to be confirmed in prayer.  If it is confirmed, it may be from God.
3. "If this fire is from God, He will poor gasoline on it." - Ask God to help you see the world the way he sees the world.  This can be painful, but it can also open your eyes to what God really wants.  If the spark turns into a flame, it may be from God.

My favorite line from Perry was when he said this about leadership:  "Leadership is as easy as listening to God."  Very simple, but true!

Tim Keller on Church Planting & Movements

Last week I got to host another podcast for the Exponential Conference.  This time it was with Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York City.  And Tim was simply brilliant!  At one point in the podcast (I have listened to see if they edited this out) I just start gushing and say, "Tim, I don't care if nobody else listens to this podcast, this is such great stuff, I'm glad that we got to have this conversation!"  So, click HERE and check out some great stuff on church planting and how movements are constructed by Tim Keller.

Focus on Spiritual Growth not "Discipleship"

I got a request from a friend of mine who is in graduate school to do a brief interview about discipleship.  Since we don't really use the term "discipleship" or "disciple" the answers I gave are a little different.  Take a look at the questions and answers and let me know what you think.

QUESTION:  How do you define "disciple" or "discipleship"?  

We don't often use the word "disciple".  It is not because it is a bad word.  On the contrary it is a good biblical word that has been ruined because the cultural definition focuses primarily on increasing ones cognitive content and not on direction, mission or biblical spiritual maturity.  So we use the phrase "Christ follower".  We challenge people to become 3C Christ followers.  We believe there are three over-arching experiences of any follower of Jesus:  celebrate, connect and contribute. 

• We encourage people to celebrate on a daily basis personally and a weekly basis corporately what God is doing and who God is.
• We encourage people to connect with other Christ followers and do life together in community.
• We encourage people to contribute with their time, talents and treasures.  

QUESTION:  How do you "make disciples" (strategies, methods, materials used, etc.)? 

We “make disciples” by encouraging people to continue to grow spiritually from spiritual infancy to spiritual adolescence to spiritual maturity. 

• spiritual infancy – people who need to be fed.
• spiritual adolescence – people who have learned to feed themselves
• spiritual maturity – people who feed others

This means that we take a developmental approach where people are increasingly not only responsible for their own spiritual development, but for the development of other spiritual infants. 

QUESTION:  How do you know if you've been successful? 

We have a dashboard that measures what percentage of each ministry, each campus and our church are 3C Christ followers.  This is the most critical metric and we are constantly monitoring that number.

QUESTION:  What advice would you give to an emerging (just getting started) pastor?

Four quick pieces of advice come to mind:

1. Don’t buy into the way most churches divide discipleship and evangelism.  UGH!   People and churches need to do both…and a Christ follower is both a disciple and an evangelist.
2. Don’t create a dependency model of spiritual growth by constantly “feeding people” and never insisting that they grow up and learn to “feed themselves” and “feed others”.
3. Make it very clear what it looks like to be a disciple or as we prefer, Christ follower.  Some might think 3C’s is too simple.  But we believe you want something that is biblical, memorable and simple to get people started.  They will grow from there.
4. Find a way to measure the spiritual maturity of an individual and your church.  Anecdotes and stories are very important, but sometimes they are incidental and not reflective of the reality of the whole community.

Deliberate Simplicity

As the church struggles with the polarizing arguement of whether it should be incarnational or attractional Dave Browning is a prophetic voice that calls for simplicity.  In this new book, Deliberate Simplicity Browning compares the traditional church with a church based on simple and reproducible Biblical principles.  If you are looking for a new paradigm for accomplishing the Jesus Mission that is much less cumbersome than old models then Deliberate Simplicity is a must read.  Dave has done a tremendous job of re-prioritizing what’s really important and showing us how to empower and unleash others to accomplish the mission of Jesus.

I have a tremendous admiration for Dave Browning and I also consider him a good friend.  That is not a good enough reason for you to buy this book.  But the fact that Dave is one of the global leaders in the reproducing church movement is a good enough reason; so get your copy of Deliberate Simplicity.

God's Economy Celebrates Generosity!

Wow, what a weekend at COMMUNITY!  This weekend was Celebration Generosity and what happened was so remarkable that it could only be described as a God thing!  Thanks to the tremendous generosity of the people at COMMUNITY we will give away over $360,000 in donations!  The reason I say "over" is because donations are still coming in!  That’s already four times our average weekly giving and by far the largest single offering we have ever received.  Each and every one of those dollars will be used toward the 4 Teams to reach the 20% of the world living in poverty and the 67% of those who have yet to find their way back to God.

If you want to learn more about the 4 Teams supported in Celebration Generosity, click HERE. This is our second year of supporting these teams and God is doing miracles through the generosity of His people.  Check out this 4 teams update video outlining what was accomplished around the world last year because of COMMUNITY'S generosity.  And if you want to join us, we invite you to participate in our Celebration Generosity online. 

Right now, I am feeling very grateful to God for His generosity and giving us the opportunity to be generous with a world that is in need.

Discovering God's Dream for Your Life

Whenever I encounter someone who is making a significant impact I start asking questions.  If I find that person motivated and passionate about what they are doing, I explore their story even more.   Most of the time I quickly learn that at some point in their life they encountered the power of Discovering the Dream that God put within them and are living that dream.

God has a unique dream for each of us to discover and live out.   I would love to see every one encounter the power of discovering and living out the dream that God has placed in them.  That is why NewThing is hosting Discover the Dream  at 8:00- 11:30 am on Monday April 20, 2009, at Exponential Conference in Orlando, FL.

We are looking to connect with emerging leaders who want to live out God’s dream for them through a reproducing church movement.  Have you thought that maybe God is calling you to something new?  Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit that is begging to be unleashed to impact God's kingdom?  May be you aren't sure what your dream is, or you have an idea, but you haven't defined that dream.  If so, Discover the Dream is an experience that will put you on the path to discovering how to make God’s dream for you a reality.  

We want this to be a personal experience so space is limited to the first 80 people who sign up.  For more information and registration click HERE.

Leadership Tension During Tough Times

Last week I was invited along with 7 or 8 other pastors to spend an afternoon with Bill Hybels.  The purpose of the gathering was to get us some pumped about the upcoming Leadership Summit. (Which by the way - it looks like they have put together an extraordinary line-up).  But after we spent about 30-45 minutes talking about the Summit we got to do just Q & A with Bill the rest of the afternoon.  And I'm telling you, if there is any doubt - the guy is a genius when it comes to the topic of leadership! 

One of the concepts we discussed I scratched out on the napkin pictured above.  The topic was leadership tension during tough times.  The two tensions are as follows:

• DEFINING REALITY - According to the Peter Drucker, "the first job of a leader is to define reality."
• FAITH BASED OPTIMISM - The second job of the leader is to envision the future in way that inspires the people that follow him to believe for and help create a new reality.

One of my observations is that the percentage of time you spend doing each of these activities differs based on what part of the organization or movement you are leading.  With the inner circle of top level leaders you can spend a lot more time defining reality and confronting the brutal facts with a fair measure of faith based optimism.  With the masses you need to lead with a lot more faith based optimism and a measure of defining reality.

As you think about how you are leading through tough times what are some of your new learning's?

Is Twitter for Guys & Facebook for Girls?

    I got a hunch and here it is: facebook is more for girls and that twitter is more for guys.  Not sure why, but it's a hunch. It started when my wife Sue told me that she wanted to watch the final episode of The Bachelor tonight.  So I complained to all my friends on twitter in 140 characters or less, "my wife just explained to me how she will be watching the 2 hour Bachelor finale tonight...look for me on twitter."  Since I have my twitter automatically update my facebook status it showed up there too.  I had a hunch that I would get a reaction from people by whining about The Bachelor. What I didn't expect is that the comments and responses I got would reveal something else about these two favorite types of social networking.  Here's is what I noticed:

• I got 17 responses on facebook and 16 of the responses were from women (most declaring their love for The Bachelor) 
• I got 11 responses on twitter and 9 of them were male (all in favor of anything other than the Bachelor)

So my hypothesis is that there are a higher percentage of women who utilize facebook and that there are a higher percentage of men that are on twitter.  Agree?  Disagree?  Why?   Is there any research out there to support this?

5 Questions Interview

Kary Oberbrunner just posted the first in his new series of Leadership Interviews that he is calling 5 Questions.  Kary asked me to be his first interview in this series of leadership profiles.  So, if you want to hear a little more about the BIG IDEA, NewThing and where I've screwed up (yes he asked!) - check it out.