Church Staffing

As part of my church planting training I just finished reading Staff Your Church for Growth by Gary L. McIntosh first published in 2000. The book tackles questions like: When is it the right time to hire additional staff or pastors? And: How should a church begin to look for support staff? Gary L. McIntosh is a professor of Christian Ministry and Leadership at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and has over 22 years of experience in this field. 

There doesn't seem to be loads of material out there on the subject of church staffing, and nothing was personally recommended to me, so this book choice was an unavoidable gamble. I don't agree with everything in the book and found some language to be unfamiliar, but I'll share 2 main areas that I found particularly helpful.

Staffing a Church for Growth

I found this aspect of the book most applicable to church planting as it deals with the issues of who to hire first and how to keep making the best staffing choices to encourage growth. 

McIntosh points to C. Peter Wager who writes: "Most churches are understaffed for growth. They are staffed for maintenance and survival, but not for growth. If your church is to sustain growth momentum, staffing must become a very high priority." McIntosh writes: "[the] observation of churches that have recently called a new staff member has revealed that many are hard-pressed to define a clear, reasonable rationale for doing so." This means that church staffing decisions are largely not very smart--and at best a shot in the dark. 

The fastest growing churches are new churches. This is because the first priority of the new church is evangelism. If the core group do not win new people to Christ, the new church will not get off the ground. The early priorities of a new church are finding people, keeping people and gathering people for worship. However, as the church is successful at this, its members move into maintenance mode, taking care of what they have (people, programs, facilities) while abandoning the priorities that got them there (outreach, assimilation and worship). 

This shift in priorities is the cause of plateau in many churches. With numerical growth comes organizational needs. Those in the church are acutely aware of their needs and it can be tempting to staff based on the growing needs created by the constant addition of new people. However, staffing this way leads to an ingrown church and responds to a relational issue instead of a missional issue.

On page 26 he writes: "a church that wants to grow must staff positions ... [that] help find new people (evangelism), keep new people (assimilation), and worship (celebration)." These staff members will focus on the priorities that result in continued growth. To staff for decline would be to first hire a youth pastor in response to parents concern for their own children. This position is not going to grow the church. 

The book goes on to suggest that the second staff person to be hired should be a person who balances the gifts and talents of the senior pastor. You find the balance by understanding the two dimensions of nomothetic church roles, being growth focused positions. The first set involve finding, keeping and celebrating with people. The second set involve educating, overseeing and caring for people. If the senior pastor is stronger in the first set, then the additional leader should be stronger in the second, and viceversa. 

The third staff person should fall outside a nomothetic role and into an idiographic role, being more relational and focused on community maturity. Idiographic roles include internal programs like various adult, youth and children's ministries. However, there is a strong encouragement to staff these positions with volunteers for as long as possible because they do not grow the church. Additional staff beyond this can be alternated between nomothetic and idiographic roles to bring constant balance to the overall ministry. 

Adding a supporting staff member like a secretary, admin assistant, intern, or bookkeeper, is more flexible depending on how heavily program based the church is. A rough guideline is given of with 150 people one support staff is suggested. 300 would require 1.5 and 450 requires 2 support staff. 

The issues of hiring staff is also addresses well from multiple angles. Everything from recruiting, interviews, conflict and team roles are covered. 

Lone Ranger Vs Team

The book starts by attacking the notion of the "Lone Ranger" Pastor who does everything. On page 13 he writes: "Only one person has all the gifts and that is Jesus Christ Himself." Biblical reasons are given for the need to move away from this model of church staffing but another helpful insight is offered: "Just as the secular world has moved towards specialization and sub-specialization, so the church must respond with specialization to effectively minister to the complex needs of people." If the church is to be engaged with the culture, then we are to be engaged with an increasing complex culture. 

He also asserts that while vision usually comes from a central person, there always seems to be a team involved to bring the vision to reality. The various different team models are discussed. One example, The "Hired Gun Model", was addressed and warned against. This involves a strongly results-orientated environment where support staff and additional pastors are accepted as long as they do what they are paid to do. The major downfall of this model is that is breeds an inadequate loyalty to the team and means the "hired gun" can be hired away by another church. 

The best model for team is the relational/complementary model. There is diversity in gifting and function but with an emphasis on relationships and giftedness rather than strictly performance or popularity. The senior leader acts as a team coach, while the leadership team has room to help set the direction and agenda. A strong feeling of unity and shared ministry is developed.

The communication of a compelling vision and the development of clear job descriptions, evaluations, resources and rewards are significant elements in building a strong church staff. He writes: "Leadership and management are complementary and dependent on each other for the growth of a church ... it is entirely possible--indeed necessary if the church is to grow--for the pastor's role to move over time from shepherd to rancher." I didn't like the word rancher at first but in explanation this refers to a leader providing oversight through others, of which there are many good Biblical examples. This is a step on from the role of the shepherd which is one-on-one oversight. 

Another helpful insight is that of team and subteam size. Through Biblical observation and studies "... it appears that the best staff team is most often made up of seven or less persons since a team of seven allows for a leader and two subsets of three individuals (triangles)." This helps to explain why larger teams struggle to maintain intimacy and therefore common vision. He writes: "To keep larger teams healthy, it is wise to organize them by triangles." Keeping things small in the midst of growth is smart because it facilities change and sustains the personal dynamic and mutual ownership. He admits that developing a strong team simply takes time. 

Conclusion

This book had some really helpful insights into decisions about church staffing. There are of course many things I don't have space to mention. If you are interested, this is a quick read, checkout: Staff Your Church for Growth by Gary L. McIntosh

Online Marketing for Church Planters Part 1

Recently, Jubilee Churches city location in St. Louis discovered that 8% of their new guests came from online advertisements. Jubilee is running one type of online ad campaign which means this source of guests is not maximized and has great opportunity for improvement.

I wanted to explore the different online marketing tactics that a church planter could use to create interest in their launch and build greater connections with people. So here it is! Please comment below if you like what you read or you have additional ideas.

Blog or Web Site
You need a site, blog or at the very least a simple page to do basic web marketing. That's obvious right? Well, yes and no. The real key is not just having a website or blog but driving traffic to them.

Blogging:

1. If you are going to blog make the content really good and really regular.
   
   
2. No single blogging solution will contain all the features you might want. Compare blog software and match your specific needs at weblogmatrix.org.
   
   
3. I use blogger.com because it integrates with other Google products I use. Plus, this increases the chances of being found by other blogger users. You can also get a dedicated URL, example: www.yourdomainname.com (without the yourname.blogspot.com)
   

Website:

1. If you need more than a blog and want a fully fledged website then I strongly suggest using a Content Management System (CMS). They move the maintenance burden away from the designer/programmer and allow administrators, secretaries and other volunteers to adjust content without having to wait weeks, months or even years on the techies! There are tones of free ones out there.
   
   
2. No single CMS will have all the right features. You can use a tool like cmsmatrix.org to compare various CMS's side by side.
   
   
3. A good all rounder CMS is Joomla -- and it's free! To get this up and running you'll need:
   
   
1. Some basic web hosting. See www.ehostpros.com ($35/year)
   
   
2. A domain name. See godaddy.com ($10/year)
   
   
3. A web designer/programmer to install and setup Joomla. Feel free to contact me if you are looking for suggestions as I have a number of contacts who can perform this function.
   
   
4. Setup or create a custom template, or use an existing free one. The custom option will usually cost you some $$$ if you don't know a website designer who's willing to serve you.
   
   
5. Training on how to use the system.
   
   
4. An even easier solution would be using Google's free page creator. You could do this with no technical skills, but you probably want someone with a good eye and reasonably savvy.
   
   
5. If you Google "church websites" you can find tones of resources and organizations that specialize in this. Although I'm sure it's costly. For a church plant the above solutions are fairly inexpensive or free.
   

Promote your web presence
The most mystical of all web promotion is the organic search engine ranking. Basically, if you can get onto the first page of Google then you've made it. Well, I'm going to tell you how to get into the first 10 Google results. Read on ...

Search Engines
The number one key to a high search engine ranking is getting quality backlinks. Yes, that's right, the more inbound links that other web sites make to your web site or blog ultimately determines your position.

For example, if you Google "Church Planting" the first result (as of today) is www.churchplantingvillage.net, but the 9th result is www.churchplanting.net. Why are they ranked differently when both have the same words in the URLs? Easy. Go to Google and type in the following "link:www.churchplantingvillage.net" (without the quotes). In the top right Google says "1 - 10 of about 139". This means that Google has found and indexed about 139 inbound (backlinks) to this website. Now do the same for the other domain "link:www.churchplanting.net" (again, without the quotes). It says "Results 1 - 1 of 1". This means Google has only found and indexed one incoming link to that website. Other links may exist, but Google has either not found them or does not like them.

This is the most simplistic way to understand search engine page ranking.

It is vital that the links are quality. A quality web site is usually highly ranked, with a proven history, often older and does not attempt to trick the search engines.

The search engines can detect what are called "black hat" techniques where keywords are stuffed or hidden on the site. Or, some sites subscribe to link farms and even generate fake incoming links. The search engines always find out, believe me, I've seen it happen. A quality inbound link is worth so much more than 100's of links from insignificant blogs or unrelated web sites. Take every legitimate link that you can get, but fight harder for the quality links.

To rank well for the phrase "Church Planting" for example, the phrase needs to appear on the website multiple times, although don't overdo it. It should appear in the title tag, the meta tags, the first sentence on the site (and a few other times in the text), as an image name, as an alternative image name and as a link. It is even better if you can use it in a header tag and also place strong (bold) tags around one of it's instances. This is really the best thing you can do on your site to improve your ranking.

Another example, when you Google "Church Planting" the fifth result is www.acts29network.org. If you then Google "link:www.acts29network.org" you can see that it has 1,120 inbound links. This is way more than the 139 links for the number one result www.churchplantingvillage.net. What explains the difference in ranking? One possibility is the quality of the inbound links, the other is that Acts29 do not include the key word "church planting" in their title tag and other places. It's more of an art than a science.

It is important that you use keywords that you know people are searching for. For example, if you Google "Matt Sweetman" (without the quotes) my professional design web site comes up: www.mattsweetman.com. However, this is not particularly helpful because people are highly unlikely to find my services this way -- something I'm not too bothered about as I rely on word of mouth.

The point is that if you are not well known don't use your name as a main key phrase for your church. Do some research on competitors or what similar sites are using. These tools also help with research:

• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

The main keywords for a church are likely to be something like "churches in [location]", but it's worth doing some research using the above tools.

Other things like having well built or "clean" code, the speed of your page loading, etc ... can make a small impact in ranking.

The next question is, how do you generate quality backlinks?

Generating quality links

1. Write good content often. "If you build it they will eventually link to you" is the motto. Content is king. The reasoning of the search engines is "if it's good people will link to it, if it's bad, people will not link to it". For the most part that is true.
   
   
2. Ask websites owners to link to you. Any business, organization or individual you have a connection with might give you a link as a favor.
   
   
3. Find some highly ranked websites that are not direct competitors of yours but are in the same industry and call them. Ask for a link. Offer a link in return or pay for one.
   
   
4. Interview someone who has a website or a blog, preferably someone important or at least popular. Post the interview on your blog and send them the link. If they like it, they'll link to it and send their visitors your way. For the record, I conduct interviews on my blog not for this reason, although it is a good side-affect. Interviews with church planters are a part of my internship studies.
   
   
5. Post your articles or blog entries onto social news websites like Digg.com. It's fairly easy to do and if you get lucky and make it to the homepage you'll likely generate 3,000+ backlinks in one day! But, you'll need to carefully craft your content to match the appetite of articles that get featured. This is a great opportunity to get creative with your writing! For example, this is an article I wrote and published on Digg, it got 22 diggs, please digg it again if you like it.
   
   
6. Create an annual award and subsequent ceremony for something in your community. Make it a really big deal, hype it up, drag it out, make tones of nominations, invite some big wigs, partner with other organizations -- make it legit and do it EVERY year! Spend some cash on a good trophy or plaque. Get it in the paper. But the key is, post it on your web site/blog and watch the links come in! This is just an excellent way to get into the community anyway.
   
   
1. To make this more constant you could create a "Community Member of the Month" award. This could really create some momentum and provide constant community connection and potentially generate lots of links to push you higher in the search engines.
   
   
7. Become a lender on kiva.org a micro-financing site. Not only is this a brilliant way to directly sponsor someone across the world and reduce poverty, but it's also a totally legit way to get a backlink to your site. Once your loan is repaid you can keep it as credit and continue to lend it out. Loans start at $25. See my profile here: http://kiva.org/lender/mattsweetman
   

This strategy is long term -- there are NO shortcuts. You will be unlikely to see results from this for at at least a year, or maybe 6 months at the earliest depending on how competitive your keywords are. Don't set your hopes on this as it can be very disappointing. To begin with go for some of the more immediate tips below while slowly building towards an organic ranking.

Even if you achieve a high ranking on a competitive keyword your ranking can change over night or even disappear and never come back if it's built on the wrong foundation or superseded by a competitor. Work hard at quality and you should be fine.

Paid search engine links
You've noticed those other links on the right hand side of the results page or right at the top? They are different than the regular results. If you didn't know already people pay each time you click on those. How much it costs depends on how much competition there is. It's a pay per click (PPC) model. I've seen some cost 5 cents per click and others cost over $10 per click. The nice thing about this system is that you can set a monthly budget for your ad campaign and once you hit your top dollar then the ad disappears until the first of next month.

So, you can say I only want to spend $20 a month and it will cap it there. For example, Google "Churches in Charlotte" (without the quotes). Currently there is a paid ad on the side for "City Church Charlotte". Please don't click on this ad otherwise you'll hamper their effectiveness to reach people by using up their budget, unless of course you live in Charlotte and desire to go to their church. If I was planting a church in Charlotte I'd pounce on this opportunity as there isn't much competition for Google ads which would keep the cost down. I'd also place ads on Yahoo, ASK and other top Search Engines.

To set these types of ad campaigns up you need a web page, a credit card, a postal address (that matches the card) and an idea of what the ad should say. To setup these campaigns go to Googles, Yahoo's or Ask.com ad centers.

Alternative Sources of Traffic
Search engines are the Big-Mama of your online presence. But there are many other legitimate and effective ways to draw visitors to your site and potentially generate some backlinks.

Ads & Classifieds
Use craigslist.org to post info about church events, especially a new church launch. It is surprising how many people use this service especially to sell items locally. My brother-in-law received several calls within minutes of posting his car for sale onCraigslist . There is a community section with all kinds of posts and info from local people. This will provide you with a link to your site and you can include a phone number which in my opinion is even better. If you can get someone on the phone then you are very likely to be able to connect with them and see a more substantial relationship develop. Get creative with your listings to standout from the clutter.

Think about Ebay. Maybe there is a way to use it in conjunction with something local and link it to your website. Please comment below if you have an example. The more various types of links you can create the better.

Social Networks
The gospel is viral by nature. The new, and instantaneous, social mechanisms of today are the myriads of social networking sites out there. And, if you can utilize them to spread your cause it can be is very rewarding.

Currently, it seems that Facebook is the "in thing". See this fantastic free e-book titled Facebook for Pastors for a deeper look into this. More than one-third (34%) of visitors to Facebook.com are 18-24 years old, read full article here. What a great demographic to reach!

In short you can use Facebook to display ads to targeted individuals, keep connected with contacts you make in the community, communicate church info through a "group" and just simply understand the culture better. The church group on Facebook has a lot of benefits, but the main advantage is that it keeps new contacts in the loop and can spreads within social nodes (groups of connected Facebook users) so that when someone joins the "Church Group" all their Facebook friends see it and some will check it out. It's a totally legitimate and highly relevant source of traffic -- kinda like a passive referral.

You can use social news sites like Digg.com to try and generate interest. Facebook could be a good place to promote an article you want people to digg.

The recent social micro-blogging craze, Twitter.com, is another great way to generate incoming links to your website. Church planter Matt Payne from Portland Oregan in a recent interview said he uses Twitter to follow local people. Even recently he had a local unchurched man contact him through Twitter regarding a pastoral issue. Often times if you follow people on Twitter they can be intrigued and want to follow you in return.

Checkout my Twitter page: http://twitter.com/mattsweetman you'll notice the URL on the right hand side. It's another legitimate link to my blog and another pathway that people can get to my site, especially if I make interesting Twitter updates, people are more likely to check me out. I currently have 79 followers on Twitter. Each one is a potential return visitor and linker to blog posts I make.

You can search on Twitter for people in your area with similar interests. What a great way to connect with local people and maybe generate some Twitter followers. People are fascinated by micro-blogging so why not use it for link building and connecting?

A great resource for staying on the cutting edge of social networking is Mashable. I receive their daily update via email.

Online Video
So how can you use YouTube.com to your advantage? If you are going to ad videos to your website then just host them on YouTube. Use their code to embed it into your website. DON'T HOST IT YOURSELF. This is important because you are creating another way for people to find your content online -- for free.

We created a short video (in one take) to let website visitors know about our church planting internship and to ask people to consider sponsoring us. See it here. Currently it has had 624 views. That is actually a lot considering our blog is new. How did this happen? Search for church planting on youtube and notice that our video is ranked 8th! This has created another avenue for people to find our blog. The key is to give it a good description and title and put accurate info on your profile page. It's also another link to your site. See mine: http://www.youtube.com/user/thesweetmans

If you don't create any video's right now don't worry it's easy. Short personal videos are very powerful on websites. You don't need anything slick. Our short intro video was done in one take, with no editing software and uploaded to YouTube.

See another example of one I did here: www.oneblaze.net. Make your life easy and get a Flip Camera: theflip.com I think it has an auto upload to YouTube feature as well.

YouTube restricts videos to 10 minutes, but Google video does not! If you video your Sunday messages then this can work well for you. Either slice your video into smaller sections and store it on YouTube to generate more traffic or stick the whole thing on Google Video. It's free by the way. See my hour long preach on the Incarnation of Jesus on Google video. Adding a URL to the video would work as another source of traffic.

There are other social networking video sites that could prove to be excellent for traffic and link generation. However, at this point I must present a warning. A lot of smaller video sharing sites can tend to have sexual content on them. So, I'd suggest just sticking with YouTube and Google video as they do a reasonable job of nixing adult content.

Men, if this is a weakness for you install XXXchurch software on your computer and get an accountability partner and DON'T FOLLOW ANY OF MY ADVICE ABOVE about Online Videos, it's not worth it. Or just delegate online video marketing to a woman!

To be continued ...
Ok, that's enough for one blog post. I am going to finish this up in a part two section and give info about the following things: eNewsletters, RSS, podcasting, widgets and more resources available to church planters.

Involving college students in church planting

Special update: I wrote a book for churches to give to first-time guests. It’s had a huge impact at bringing more people back as second-time guests and adding them into the church community. Get the Kindle version of Unforgettable: Your purpose in Christ here and the print version from unforgettableness.com. Those outside the USA may need to order print copies from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.eu.
I believe that whether a church has been around for 5 minutes or 50 years it should be training leaders. So, if you have 5 people in your church, you, your wife, your 5-month old son, your brother-in-laws dog and your neighbor (who doesn't really know they are in your church because they only hung out at your house one time) then how can you be training leaders?

Answer this: what group of people are readily available, mobile, passionate, hungry to learn, ready to take over the world, looking for community, willing to help, interested in community service projects, asking to do internships and even excited about Jesus? Um, college students?

I know, this might sound REALLY obvious but I'm just starting out on this church planting thing and gathering students to train up is an exciting new concept to me. So I've done some study and called some people on why and how to engage college students in a church plant.

Why target students?

1. "Many college students will never have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. College students, numbering approximately 16 million, are one of the most significant and unevangelized people groups in North America." Source
   
2. 65% of the Builder Generation were evangelical Christians. 35% of the Boomer Generation were evangelical Christians. 16% of Generation X are evangelical Christians. Only 4% ofBridgers are evangelical Christians.
3. Judges 2:10 "And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel."
4. 18-22 is a crucial decision making age bracket.
5. 90% of men stop going to church at age 18.
6. A recent church planting conference at Liberty University LYNCHBURG, Va., designed to recruit students for real-life church planting opportunities issued a call to more than 5,000 students, several hundred responded, saying they were ready to consider summer missionary and church planting internships across the United States. Source.
   
7. College students are impressionable, energetic, idealistic, dare-some, mobile, employable and innovative -- perfect candidates for church planting.
8. College students are the most likely interns, apprentices, volunteers and part-timers.
9. Students can usually tap into larger social networks than young couples, the middle-aged or seniors.
10. These students and student aged Christians changed the world: Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, John Wesley, William Carey, Samuel Mills and the "Haystack Five", Hudson Taylor, Lottie Moon, C.T. Studd and the "Cambridge Seven", Luther Wishard, Robert Wilder and the "Mount Hermon 100", Grace Wilder and Cameron Townsend.
11. Dr. Bill Bright founder of Campus Crusade said, "If we can win the university today, we will win the world tomorrow."

What are the different models of church college ministries?

By the church, but not the church
The Northern California and Nevada district of the Assemblies of God suggest 4 models:

1. Student-Led Bible Studies on Campus: there are tons of resources for releasing students to do this sort of thing and do it well. One or two gifted and committed students are needed to launch this.
2. Lunch Programs on Community Colleges: begin offering a free meal along with an evangelistic program on campus once a week. Time, money for food and having a core of students to create energy is vital for this to work.
3. College-Age Sunday School Class: a quality leader and a core of college students is needed to start this.
4. The Three Hours Model: a college-friendly Sunday morning worship service, a college-specific Sunday school class/small group network, and a college-specific midweek worship service (either on campus or in the church). Multiple staff are required to pull this off. This model ideally needs a full-timer.

Conclusion: I think there are more models than this. These appear to be separate events, divorced from the wider body of believers. The question is: what will this reproduce? Once these students leave college will they have a vision for global church planting?

By the church, kinda the church
University Presbyterian Church in Seattle has put together a PDF manual for church-based college ministry:

1. The premise of this manual is structured around running separate church programs for college students and then having to work at connecting students back into the wider congregation. The initial draw is a large gathering of students at a weekly celebration service called "The Inn". Then they have discipleship systems and other program based activities. This is not designed to help with church planting but for more established churches. However ,there are some helpful things to learn for church planting.
2. After hooking students on a big student run meeting and then trying to pull them into the church the manual says on page 19: "We promote to students other [church] functions and opportunities so that they can benefit from the whole of the congregation. We also believe that students have much to offer the church, thus we create ways for their lives to bless the congregation. We are often asked, "how many students go to your church on Sunday?" Our response is, "We don’t really know." Our measurement for connecting students to the church is not based on attendance at a Sunday worship service. Our measurement is how many of our students are in relationship with those who make up what we call the church."
3. One key ingredient to the success of this church based college ministry is recruiting interns. This has real value for a church plant: "Each year we hire 4-5 college grads to serve full-time for 9.5-12 months as interns. The UMin intern program is designed to give college graduates an opportunity to gain valuable experience and training in both practical and theoretical aspects of ministry as well as have the opportunity to function as part of the larger church staff at UPC. The internship is a training program designed to give interns opportunities to discover and use their spiritual gifts, to develop spiritually and theologically, to work in an atmosphere of personal and professional guidance and support, and to gain practical ministry experience." (Page 17)
   

Conclusion: discipling college students in a church planting environment, getting them serving in various roles and taking on interns for a summer or an extended period seems like a brilliant way to help the plant and train up some quality leaders. I dislike the idea of separating college students from the church to create a sub-church. But then I'm idealistic and this might be the only feasible way to make it work in a large setting. It seems that the context of a church plant would make this model obsolete until you grew. Logistically a church plant needs everybody highly involved -- meaning students as well.

Simple church, but where's the rest of the church?
A book titled "The Blueprint: A Revolutionary Plan to Plant Missional Communities on Campus" by Jaeson Ma promotes the idea of Simple Churches on campus. Student leaders trained and sent by local congregational churches.

1. Jaeson Ma is director of Campus Church Networks, a church-planting ministry that has planted over 300 student-led house churches in North America and East Asia. He also co-founded Campus Transformation Network, which has mobilized 24-7 Prayer rooms on 80+ major universities in the US and 100+ in China in partnership with Campus Renewal Ministries (Jeremy Story), 24-7 Prayer (Pete Greig) and Burning Heart Ministries (Becky Tirabassi). Jaeson is a frequent speaker & strategic trainer for student revivals, retreats, outreach events and conferences in the US and around the world.
2. Jaeson writes that most local churches do not know what to do with college students. Page 199 "... sooner or later they would graduate and find the same problem of not fitting into traditional churches or not finding a church where they could be empowered." Jaeson's strategy formed: start simple churches in campuses that would bring the church to the students instead of students to the church. After much study in missionary church planting models, such as the underground house churches in China, he was convinced that simple relational-based churches would meet the most practical needs of college students. In relationship-based churches, believers can encounter God personally, experience authentic community and be empowered to do God's work. "If an 18-year-old Chinese girl can plant 100 churches in one year in China, why can't a college freshman plant a few simple churches on a college campus?" Essentially, a simple church on campus starts when one student breaks in a social network and sees salvation and baptizm -- this characterizes a church. The "missionary" would identify leaders and train them in shepherding people.
3. They look to reproduce this model in the hope that one day these leaders become elders. The goal would be to start as many simple churches as possible to cater for the myriad of student clusters. The power in the model is that of students own church as something they do, not a Sunday meeting they attend. He does say "This is not to say that students don't need to go to a congregational church on Sunday, although that may be the case in certain instances; but they need to see church as a lifestyle, not an event. The congregational church should instead act as an apostolic mission base, equipping and sending students out to plant autonomous simple churches. When students graduate, they would be sent out to start simple churches in their communities, in their workplaces and all over the city. Jaeson put this into action his last year of college. Students of peace were saved, who reached their social networks and started simple churches. In turn, simple churches were started through the city, the USA and in East Asia!

Conclusion: The fact that this method reproduced churches outside its own societal domain and in other nations is wonderful evidence that something right is happening. I agree that a lot of churches have no idea how to train and help college students and I am very impressed by the fruitfulness Jaeson has experienced.

I have a few questions about this model. Can a student led simple church really meet the spiritual needs of it's group? Why assume that attendance to a congregational Sunday service will not include serving and therefore owning opportunities? Is the best place to prepare students for Christian faith after graduation to remove them from a body of people who are living a post-graduation lifestyle for Jesus? Can a church be defined by just salvation and baptism -- what is the biblical model? If starting simple student churches is a reaction to traditional churches not knowing what to do with students, is it then acceptable to start churches just for teenagers or the elderly because they don't fit into the simple student model? If the goal is simple churches, then how do you continue to grow and establish the apostolic sending bases?

Maybe I don't understand this model enough which is why I have so many questions about it. Simple churches seem a little disconnected and isolated -- let's do church without everybody else!

Ignore the church, just train students
A book titled "The Fuel And The Flame" by Steve Shadrach addresses the needs and principles required to disciple students.

1. Steve Shadrachspan loves winning, building and sending college students for Jesus Christ. He was the pastor of students and missions at his church involving over 800 collegians before launching the ministry of Student Mobilization. He's worked with Campus Crusade Navigators and Kanakuk Kamps and writes for Focus on the Family's college webzine www.boundless.org. Steve and his family reside in Conway Arkansas next to a campus where they live with and minister to students. He's also president of The BodyBuilders providing ministry tools seminars and consulting for churches campus ministries and Christian organizations around the world.
2. Steve defines college as "a four (or more!) year window in a person's life when God has maximum opportunity to build a foundation into a life lived for Him."
3. Main points I got out of it is to focus on: prayer, relational networking, global mission, reproducing key students and viewing campuses as sending bases.

Conclusion: The focus is student discipleship which is driven by the premise that collegians are the most valuable group of people in our society because they are learning to shape the future. Again, my question is: what will this reproduce? I couldn't find a significant emphasis on church planting nor the importance of local church.

A new church for students
Jeff Gates, lead elder at Living Hope Church St. Joseph Missouri, has recently gathered some college students and formed a new location in Maryville, about 45 minutes north of St. Joseph. I called Jeff and he gave me the scoop:

1. Jeff attended some of the college ministry meetings and introduced himself to the leaders immediately. It is very important to gain their trust fast.
2. He clearly stated he was not there to steal students but wanted to serve in anyway he could. He was clear that he didn't really want to help financially but spiritually.
3. He found that certain ministries jumped at the chance to have some of their students mentored and cared for my families -- something often lacking in college ministries.
4. Jeff was on the lookout for students he was drawn to. He then proceeded to meet with them for coffee making sure that the ministry leaders were in the loop the whole time.
5. Jeff knew that 60-80% of High School students have been in church at some point. He wanted to find kids who have some kind of church background and show them that he was starting a new church that wasn't quite like their parents church.
6. Jeff ran a "Just Walk Across the Room" series with the navigators and identified more students he connected with.
7. Jeff affirmed that college ministries often talk about valuing the local church but their programs don't allow students much time to really serve local churches. Plus it didn't seem that many unsaved students were being added -- which is a passion Jeff has for the local church.
8. After talking with the college ministry leaders it was clear that Jeff's new church location was not in conflict with the campus ministries as it was meeting at a separate time and offered a different context for Christian faith.
9. Once he gathered a core group he says it went viral and started to grow pretty quick. The small store front they rent has completely filled up a few times.
10. In future Jeff is going to use the core he's gathered to target freshmen in the first 2 weeks of fall. Doing BBQ's and giving away stuff to draw interest and use it to tell people about the church.
11. Jeff now has a number of students committed to internships over the summer and next year.
12. Jeff admitted that to do this properly you have to invest a lot of time into it. There are no short cuts, it has to be authentically relational.

Conclusion: This is an exciting development for Living Hope Church. I have some questions for Jeff. Is this really a church? Could it ever draw locals in addition to students? What is his strategy for training students in church planting? With this success does he still have a good relationship with the ministry leaders? How can he connect these students to other mature Christians?

College bible study? No thanks. I'm part of a local church!
John Privett pastor of Life House Church Franklin, Tennessee has also recently seen success at gathering students into his church plant. I called him and got the scoop:

1. It started when John's son Greg, with his friends Sean and Byron, started talking with fellow Christians on campus about the local church. They would literally respond to college bible study invitations with "No thanks, I'm part of the local church!" This created a lot of intrigue because it was such a different concept from normal college ministries.
2. John started meeting with the students and spending a lot of time in coffee houses on the campus. This was critical to connecting and building momentum.
3. Because students are smart and hungry to learn he started taking them through systematic theology. He built excitement by purposefullymeeting in a smaller room so that as numbers grew people had to get their early to even get in!
4. Now, in their Sunday morning gathering, almost all their worship band is made up of students. He has students leading life groups which he personally visits once a month.
5. John did a lot of events which included food and he worked at connecting students to mature and older couples and families. There seemed to be a real desire to be with families. He said it's easy to think that students just want to be together but actually they crave community. Most are from dysfunctional families and so they love being in the context of mature families.
6. The church is not a recognized group on the campus but most of the students they gather are leaders in their dorms and allow them access for events. They do that on purpose because they want to make it clear that they are not a college ministry but a local church -- they are somehow different.
7. They are gathering between 35-45 students right now and will have about 18 staying with them over the summer. They have a couple of interns this summer and will plan for a big team next year.

How can you engage college students in a church plant?

Here are some principles I can draw from this study:

1. Connect with the leaders of campus ministries and build trust. Ask about serving their ministry or mentoring some students on campus. I just left a phone message with the leader of campus crusade offering to mentor young men.
   
1. See how to connect with para-church organizations.
2. As the lead guy be fully involved in the process. Look for people who you connect with.
3. Involve students in all church events. In worship band, in speaking, in serving. Give them roles and responsibility.
4. Connect students with families and mature couples who will cook for them and provide a functional family model.
5. Offer summer internships and extended internships to students.
6. Make recruitment during the first 2 weeks of fall a priority so you can catch some students and bypass the campus ministry route.
   
7. Any other thoughts?
   

Other Resources:

1. Getting a Church Started: A Student Manual for the Theological Foundation & Practical Techniques of Planting a Church
2. Campus Ministry: Identity, Mission and Praxis
3. The College Chaplain: A Practical Guide to Campus Ministry
4. http://exploringcollegeministry.wordpress.com/
5. Top ten college ministries in the United States