Takaways from Tony Morgan’s Coaching Group: March

By Cleve Persinger Tuesday March 23, 2010

Every month for six month’s I’m meeting with Tony Morgan and a group of ten other church leaders at West Ridge Church in Dallas, Georgia. I’m very humbled and excited to be a part of this coaching network. Hopefully blogging the takeaways will help you in your ministry as well as my retention of them.

Here are the takaways from March.

Main Ideas

1. Growth Strategies

Leadership must listen to God AND do what he says.
Be a missionary to culture. We do a good job of this when we go to foreign countries. Why do we try to use the same methods over and over at our churches instead of adapting to culture? Paul did this in different cities he visited.
Build from the outside in. Attract the biggest crowd possible and help them take steps into the core.
Prioritize your weekend service(s). Folks feel the need to go to a weekend service as they begin their spiritual journey. Sundays are still important in helping take next steps in their journey. — Adopted from Rick Warren
Focus on those you’re trying to REACH vs those you KEEP. We tend to do church the way we like it instead of what reaches folks. Are we being intentional about the communities we’re trying to reach? — Adopted from Andy Stanley
Promote via word-of-mouth. Strip back promotional and get back to relationships. There’s lots of noise when every ministry is promoting. Huge majority of people come to church for the first time because of a personal invite.
Act twice your size. Make decisions today that will help tomorrow. What churches are double your size you can be learning from? What churches are half your size you can be mentoring?
Keep it simple.
Empower your leaders and volunteers.
Track the numbers. Create a scoreboard — generates momentum and trends. Move programming around based on what is and is not working. Track ten week averages and then compare year to year.

2. Key factors that impact the success of multi-site churches

Leadership. When you “cut” them open, do they bleed your DNA — believe in the vision, mission, and values of your church? Sometimes it’s best to find folks who have been at your church for a while. Other qualities include strong leader, good communicator, highly relational, and driven.
Location. Always choose physical location over facility. Don’t build/meet within a 15 minute radius of your other campuses.
Music/Programming
Time factor. It’s OK to take your time to get everything in place. You only get one launch.
Money. Are there funds or donors for a building purchase, renovation, or rent? What about utilities and salaries? Promotion?

Resources

Extras

Here are some mentionables from other guys in the group.

Mark Lee got the idea from Elevation Church to hand out boxes of Peeps to everyone at his church and tell them to invite their peeps to Easter services. Good idea.
Lee Mabry said ”2 plus 2 is still 4 no matter how hard you pray.” So true.

* See February’s takeaways.