7 Processors for Church Planting Interns

I just read this article by Vince Antonucci which reviews The Multiplying Church by Bob Roberts, a book I am currently reading. Bob Roberts takes his interns through 7 processors and Vince has identified 7 land mines he sees with a lot of church plants. His mines are in italics and my responses to each are bold. I tried to be as honest as I could:

1. Guys who are planting because they want to be the leader and do their own thing rather than feeling called. If that's you, you'll quit.
   I do want to be a leader, I think I am ok with not being THE leader, but there is a tug in me to take the lead -- this ties into an area of thinking I have in needing to be "right". I have heard from God about doing the Church Planting Internship and I have somewhat been groomed for leadership from a young age. I am aware that I have struggled with self-reliance a lot and self-promotion. God has spoken to me many times about how he opposes the proud, and gives grace to the humble. I need help from other leaders so that I fall back onto my calling and not make it about my ideas and strategy.
   
   
2. Guys who steal someone else's values because their church is successful, "so maybe we can capture some of their mojo!"
   I am not aware of myself having this problem. I tend not to want to copy things, but reformulate them or create things I get from intuition. Plus, I feel pretty strongly about my values. For church, I value intimate and celebratory worship, clear bible teaching, baptism in the Holy Spirit & spiritual gifts, creativity, excellence, smart strategy, etc... But, I do feel like my values need to mature more and be rooted in scripture, rather than just preference (my preference is greatly molded by my Newfrontiers upbringing)
   
   
3. Guys whose purpose is to start a "cool church" rather than win lost people to Christ and glorify God.
   I hate this mentality. It's stupid in my opinion. No cool or just "fun" church for me. I'm going for power -- I want the real deal! I want to transform society through communities of radical givers -- that's never cool or fun.
   
   
4. Guys who have a vision but don't share it concisely, passionately, and consistently.
   I have a vision for sure and I can get pretty passionate about it. But I do need to learn more skills in being concise and consistent. Do my mentors have any thoughts here?
   
   
5. Guys who have no strategy. They have a vision, maybe they pray, and they just hope/assume it's gonna happen.
   I have some steps in mind and I like coming up with strategy, but the key for me is to do it through a team. Right now, in the internship, I am building connections through social encounters (made another contact last night) and will aim to do some type of neighborhood event and look to launch an alpha (or something similar) out of all this. I always feel challenged about getting other people to really own the steps towards the vision. They own the vision, but not always the steps. This might be because I need to be more relaxed about the specifics of the steps or release people to do it their way and work with them. I feel this is something I do need to grow in. Sometimes I see the steps so clearly that I am inflexible with what others want to do.
   
   
6. Guys who do it all rather than developing layers of leadership in the church.
   I am fully convinced that more can be done together than apart. I am convinced that leader multiplication is a kingdom principle. I was recently challenged by the idea of having an Apprentice Leader. The key in that title is that the apprentice has to be apprenticed by someone -- a leader! I have already taken steps to be more purposeful about developing guys.
   
   
7. Guys who don't evaluate how they're doing. Maybe the worst thing that can happen is early success because it can lull us, if we don't do evaluation, into complacency.
   Doing a Church Planting Internship is all about evaluation. You try stuff, then you debrief and evaluate the process and your attitudes. I have a mentor and I just started meet weekly with another guy so I am in good relationships with guys who can challenge and evaluate me. Plus, I have developed a very extensive peer assessment tool that I will be mailing out to people here soon to get feedback and measure my growth. My only hope is that this evaluation continues as I plant out. It depends how far removed I will be from other leaders I am currently close to. This could be a challenge I face down the road.