CHURCH: Financial Issues faced by Church Planters and their Team

Here is a great article! Let's discuss this as it relates to the Church.


1.The BiVo Challenge - The financial realities of planting leads many planters to be bi-vocational. Let me say that I am a big proponent of bi-vocational ministry. But, that is generally not the goal of most church planters (though I think more should consider it, but that is not this project). Employment presents a unique set of challenges for planters and families. For many bi-vocational planters, fulfilling the work for their full-time position becomes the necessary priority-- you need to be a faithful employee. Outreach, ministry, and service, however, are also important and are limited as a result. A fully-funded lead planter is generally assumed to be the goal and most would say that it is best for the church and the planter when possible. I would say it this way: if the plan is to have a full-time pastor, it is best to start with a full-time pastor, if you have a plan and resources to get to full-time status before running out of full-time funds. We have some good statistical evidence that there are some positive outcomes with full-time pastors starting churches using this approach.


2.Tension Over Talking/Teaching About Giving - Tom Nebel and Gary Rohrmayer tagged this one as "Church Planting Landmine #7" in their helpful book, Church Planting Landmines. Often with good intentions, they overreact to the perceptions of lost people. No doubt, money issues need to be handled differently in church. So with those concerns they avoid talking about money at all (which robs people of the giving experience). Conventional wisdom is that people new to church do not give much during the early years. But you have to wonder if one reason they are so slow is because church planters overreact on this issue.

Read more at http://www.edstetzer.com/2011/01/exponential-blog.html

SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT: Podcasts

I'm a big podcast listener and one of the things I love to listen to are lectures on the Bible. Now you can access lectures on different subjects of the bible on your Ipod! Emmaus Bible College has been gracious enough to post video and audio podcasts from their many different courses such as Old Testament, New Testament, Life of Christ etc. Here's the link below:

http://www.emmaus.edu/407400.ihtml

Enjoy!