Plantation Minutes for 1/16/08

Worship & Prayer – Do it, then discuss

A couple of testimonies of God’s grace and power

Overview of Plantation format

There are four basic components to the Plantation format:

• Worship - Hope that this will be a time of worship when we come together. The language of worship will be both traditional and contemporary, and Pastor Dave’s prayer is that we all will come together and gain a greater appreciation of both styles. Prayer will be interwoven with worship. The worship time should feel more natural than rehearsed. Our hope is that this will be a place where we can learn to exercise our spiritual gifts. The Bible teaches that every part of the body has something to contribute. Those who play an instrument should play it. We’re not going to rehearse – we will just come together and share our prayer and worship together.
• Cell group format - Plantation will be a time when small groups happen. If you are already a part of a small group, you are asked to sit with that group when you come in, and if you are not a part of a small group, you will be asked to form one with others who are present.
• Interactive teaching - Pastor Dave will speak some during the workshops, though he will probably speak more tonight than in subsequent workshops.
• Action! (role playing, prayer partners, training, etc.) – Most importantly, we will be putting into action some of the things we are talking about. We want this to be something that will work for as many people as possible.

Video

Pastor Dave shared a video parity depicting the disciples planning the early church. http://www.sermonspice.com/search?topic=2&q=the+first+church+service&x=12&y=12The video showed that church marketing without a theology basis quickly gets off topic. In addition, it spoke to the following:

• Unity – in worship style, doctrine, values
• Getting off-topic by doing too many things
• The basics – Jesus, Prayer, People

Probable Plantation Topics

1. Prayer

2. Motivation for growth (changed lives, church plant)

3. Identity (values, mission statement, beliefs)

4. Unity (various groups present) – Pastor Dave shared that the larger the group you start with, the more successful a church plant will be – as long as they are unified.

5. Downsizing by thinking outside the box – For a long time, we have struggled with doing too many things, and all of those programs serve a purpose. We must ask “if you were starting from zero, what would we do?” We will start building our programs from there, and do those things well. Then we can build on that foundation.

6. Prayerfully build & evaluate teams

7. Visitor (guest) retention – What can we do to make it more likely that a visitor will return? A healthy church will retain, on average, 25% of the visitors that walk in the door for the first time. However, with a few intentional things, that rate can increase to 2/3 of the new visitors. We get one chance with most visitors.

8. Evangelism training & toolkit – By the time these workshops are finished, everyone will have a tool kit. Some people have a gift of evangelism, but all are called to go and make disciples.

9. Visitor (guest) generation – We will discuss some methods for reaching out and inviting people to join us.

10. Bridge building into community

11. Discipleship pathway – Once new people are brought to COH, we need to provide a pathway to grow these people into disciples.

12. Ongoing monitoring of church health

Plantation’s temporary nature – Plantation will not be a permanent fixture. It will last for a season until the elements of plantation become a part of how we live as a church community. Plantation cannot be just one more thing that we do.

Prayer

• 2 Corinthians 1:8-11 Why pray? –
• Battling self-reliance - We can’t rely just on ourselves – but on God who raises the dead. If we rely on ourselves, we may come up with great ideas, but if they aren’t God’s they won’t accomplish much.
• Deliverance helped by prayers – We can help with someone else’s deliverance with our prayers. Prayer helps us see what God is doing. In some cases, God may do it whether we pray for it or not, but when we pray, we see it and are involved. We get to see how God works in answer to our prayers.
• Makes connection between prayer & answer, thus bringing glory to God – The thanks goes to God, and we are much more likely to give thanks to God if we’ve prayed ahead of time. We are less likely to take credit for God’s work.

• Pastor Dave shared an analogy about Boogie boarding. Which is more fun – paddling out and waiting patiently or riding the wave in? If we spend more time praying, we will have a much easier time hitting the waves than we would if we spent our time planning (paddling). If we can get better at prayer, we can get better at hitting the waves. At the church planting training session, they suggested assembling a list of 100 prayer partners that are committed to pray. Pastor Dave will put together a sign up sheet and put it in the Welcome Center. A part of this will be to put together an email list so that we can keep people informed and distribute prayer requests to the group. We also need to find an effective means of including those people who can’t be here on Wednesday nights. One option is go record the Plantation meetings and post them on the website for those who are interested. There are also people who do not have Internet access, so hard copies are important for them.

• The group looked at several pictures and selected one that will be used on publications going forward.

• If anyone is interested in helping with music, or running the Power Points for these meetings, please let Pastor Dave know.

Testimony

• Dave/Val – Pastor Dave and Val have been walking and praying through the neighborhoods at lunchtime. This has given some opportunities to build bridges with people they’ve encountered. They had the opportunity to meet a family as they literally drove into their driveway for the first time from Vermont, and a bridge has already been built there – just through them being there, walking, and praying through the neighborhood.