Plant Better

For most pastors, growth is more steady than explosive, and your preaching is good, but not podcastable. But even if you don’t have those things, your ministry can still have a lot of life if you will lean into developing leaders. 

Your leadership development plan should roll off your brain as clearly as your next sermon series. 

In this episode Hunter Beaumont, Lead Pastor of Fellowship Denver, shares his thoughts on why leadership development should be right up with church planters’ other top priorities.

Most upper/middle-class Americans are living their lives to avoid having to interact with poor people who don’t speak their language. 

Christians too are apathetic, and even when they try to take the parable of the Good Samaritan seriously, they often go about things in ways that aren’t helpful. 

In this episode, author Mike McKinley talks about his newest book, Church in Hard Places, and why the church needs to do more than ladle soup. 

Other books by Mike McKinley: 

Church Planting Is for Wimps 

Am I Really a Christian?

Austin Stone has some unique leadership structures in
place.

They emphasize plurality of
leadership, having both a Lead Pastor and a Pastor of Preaching.
Kevin Peck is that lead pastor and our guest today.

Listen in as Kevin discusses how
The Austin Stone is relentlessly focused on making disciples, and
how everything they choose to do in the church trickles down from
that.

There’s a world of opportunity to build a brand on various social media—why shouldn’t churches take advantage?

Listen in as Joe Peña from Relentless Church in Las Vegas shares the success his church has found in a single year by taking advantage of community hashtags, Facebook ad tools, Periscope, and more.

The gospel is everything: saving, sanctifying, and carrying our entire ministries. It’s non-negotiable, really, when it comes to church planting priorities.

But how to make sure it’s at the center of your church?

That’s the topic of discussion today with Brad Andrews, Pastor of Preaching and Vision at Mercyview in Tulsa.

It’s always helpful to clearly schedule the most important things in your week.

For pastors, this means asking yourself how much time you’ll devote to sermon prep, leadership development, and the vision of your church.

Ryan Prater from Cross Community Church in Katy, TX shared how he divides his own week in those three areas. His schedule will help you think through yours.

When church planters have more dreams than money, how should they respond?

Aaron Stern, Lead Pastor of Mill City Church in Fort Collins, CO, gave us two answers: patience and priorities. Hear what patience looks like even in the face of pressing needs, and how faith is sometimes simply waiting.

(The book Aaron forgot the title of was Essentialism by Greg McKeown.) 

A plant team delivering 20,000 door hangers by hand because finances were low… A new church running its services out of a club…

Jason Parrish from The Well in Salt Lake City has seen a lot of deficiencies in ministry turned into blessings. 

Hear why Jason defines ministry GAPs as “Glorious Amounts of Potential.”

It’s one thing to give someone a responsibility at your church, and another to equip them to do it.

Hear how Kevin Campbell and the other pastors at Elevate Church in San Diego use a unique volunteer system to raise up a “dream team” of servants.

Brad Borowski has been lead pastor of D3 Church in Winnemucca, NV for a year and a half, but the church officially joined the Acts 29 network only within the last few weeks of this recording.

Listen in to hear Brad talk about what that long A29 assessment process was like—and why his church wouldn’t have made it without help from larger organizations.