Church Planting Success

How do you measure the success of your ministry? It's a VERY important question otherwise you don't know if you are doing the right things or how to change them. If you never stop and measure, by asking important questions, then you are living in a delusional, self-absorbed and narrow-minded bubble!

We took the largest survey we've ever conducted at ONEBLAZE this year. We wanted to know what God did during the week in the lives of our youth and we wanted to know if our vision of raising up a new generation of church pioneers is working. So, we had a special communication card created for EVERYONE to complete in the last meeting -- and the results are in! Of our 185 campers we collected the following indications:

• 4 salvations
• 24 came back to God
• 33 received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (never before experience God like this)
• 44 used a spiritual gift or received a word from the Holy Spirit
• 56 were set free from fear or a wrong way of thinking
  
• 14 shared their faith with someone
  
• 20 prayed for at least one person in the community (not in the church)
• 12 people indicated they received physical healing
• The most favorite elements of the week in descending order were worship, teaching, being with friends and service projects.
• We raised $3,864.55 (If you made an IOU please send your gift to Newfrontiers-USA)

Aren't these stats helpful! The biggest negative we had was that people wanted to go back to the dorms on the Saturday to clean up after the Family Fun Day -- that's a good bad point to have.

Here are some encouraging comments made on the communication cards we used:

1. "I received a powerful word. Camp changed my life around!"
2. "God took a ton of weight off my shoulders."
3. "Felt God calling me to San Fransisco."
   
4. "I know God is pursuing me!"
5. "God showed himself REAL and WORKING to me. These meetings also helped me hear his voice more."
6. "I was Baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. I experienced words/pictures and became 100% positive that I will be a leader and plant churches."
7. "God brought me back. I prayed for the first time, prayed for someone for the first time and had a picture for someone."
8. "I was going through a season of feeling like I can't hear God's voice. And with Euan's talk I found I could really hear God's voice."
9. "God helped me to get over my shyness and fear of what others think of me by filling me with his bold confidence."
10. "This week got me excited about sharing my faith."
11. "God told me I would be a leader of one of the 100 cities."
12. "When can I plant a church? "
    

I'll leave it up to to decide, but do you think we are creating a missional generation whose desire is to impact the top 100 cities of North America by planting churches? Or, do you think we have a passive, entertainment based youth ministry with no real juice?

ONEBLAZE in St. Louis 2008 will be a camp to remember. I am positive that we have future church planters in the group who will look back to this week and pinpoint it as a time that kick started their future ministry ventures. We have taken at least 2 or 3 additional cities because of this week. We'll see the outworking of it over the next 10-15 years.

Be praying for this generation, they WANT to plant churches, and I consider this event to be a HUGE church planting success!