Starting Missional Churches

Planting Missional Churches is an instruction book for planting biblically faithful and culturally relevant churches. It addresses the “how-to” and “why” issues of church planting by providing practical guidance through all the phases of a church plant while taking a missional look at existing and emerging cultures.

All mission is local—the people of God joining the work of God in a particular place. In Starting Missional Churches Mark Lau Branson and Nicholas Warnes introduce us to seven missional churches and identify best practices while examining common challenges regarding their genesis.

All mission is local - the people of God joining the work of God in a particular place. In Starting Missional Churches Mark Lau Branson and Nicholas Warnes introduce us to seven missional churches while examining common challenges regarding church planting.

Starting a church from scratch? Start here! Launch offers specific strategies for beginning a church with no members, no money, and no staff. Readers get clear, practical how-to strategies for quickly raising funds, creating a team, planning services, effective evangelism, and rapidly developing a growing membership. Specific advice is included for reaching that often difficult-to-target demographic, the 20- to 40-year-old. Now thoroughly revised and expanded to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of church planting.

Once upon a time, Moses had had enough. Exhausted by the challenge of leading the Israelites from slavery to the Promised Land, Moses cried out to God, "What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? . . . If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me" (Exodus 11:11, 15). If that sounds hauntingly familiar to you, you may be the senior pastor of a contemporary church. The burden of Christian leadership is becoming increasingly unbearable--demanding skills not native to the art of pastoring; demanding time that makes sabbath rest and even normal sleep patterns seem extravagant; demanding inhuman levels of efficiency, proficiency and even saintliness. No wonder pastors seem and even feel less human these days. No wonder they burn out or break down at an alarming rate; no wonder the church is missing the mark on its mission. In Creating a Missional Culture, JR Woodward offers a bold and surprisingly refreshing model for churches--not small adjustments around the periphery of a church's infrastructure but a radical revisioning of how a church ought to look, from its leadership structure to its mobilization of the laity. The end result looks surprisingly like the church that Jesus created and the apostles cultivated: a church not chasing the wind but rather going into the world and making disciples of Jesus.

Planting a church is one of the most exciting adventures you’ll ever embark on. It’s also one of the hardest. It requires initiative, leadership, strategy, systems, and a lot of prayer. In this second edition of Planting Missional Churches, not only will you find a completely redesigned book with new content in every single chapter, but you will also find several new chapters on topics such as church multiplication, residencies, multi-ethnic ministry, multisite, denominations and networks, and spiritual leadership. So if you’re planting a church, be prepared. Use this book as a guide to build the needed ministry areas so that you can multiply over and over again. For additional resources visit www.newchurches.com/PMC.

A tried-and-true classic in dynamic ministry growth, church building, and discipleship momentum. From professional church-planters Dave and Jon Ferguson comes the anchor book in the Exponential Series—envisioning new and practical methods of building churches, communities, and organizations on the cornerstone of Christ. Many of today's Christians consider the missional challenge of Jesus—feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, bring people to God's Word—as inspirational but not something achievable. Or they've heard the challenge of Jesus and are frustrated with how little they've done. Jesus gave his followers this mission because he wants them to hear it, be inspired, and then actually do it. And it is possible. Exponential lays out a concise and effective reproducing strategy, giving practical steps and case studies as you follow the growth of a church movement through four mains stages: The initial navigation of ministry image, set-up, and gradual growth. The gathering of a community around a cause and the conversations that take place at this point. The reproduction of communities into multisite growth and wider impact. The infrastructure and networking of large missional movements and how to stay focused on the bedrock of the Gospel. Weaved throughout this book is the amazing story of Community Christian Church, which was started by five friends who used these reproducing strategies to grow one of the most influential churches in the U.S. and develop a network of reproducing churches. Exponential is designed to help Christian leaders, groups, teams, churches, and networks experience rapid and spiritually healthy growth.

IVP Readers' Choice Award Missio Alliance Essential Reading List Public gatherings are vital for movement, but too often in our approach to planting churches, we haven't paid enough attention to the difficult grassroots work of movement: discipleship, community formation, and mission. This book will help you start missional-incarnational communities in a way that reflects the viral movement of the early New Testament church. JR Woodward (author of Creating a Missional Culture) and Dan White Jr. (author of Subterranean) have trained church planters all over North America to create movemental churches that are rooted in the neighborhood, based on eight necessary competencies: Movement Intelligence Polycentric Leadership Being Disciples Making Disciples Missional Theology Ecclesial Architecture Community Formation Incarnational Practices The book features an interactive format with tools, exercises, and reflection questions and activities. It's ideal for church planting teams or discipleship groups to use together. It's not enough to understand why the church needs more missional and incarnational congregations.The Church as Movement will also show you how to make disciples that make disciples. This is the engine that drives the church as movement, so that everyday Christians can be present in the world to join God's mission in the way of Jesus.