National New Church Development Conference

I’m back in the office and blogging again after spending three days last week at the National New Church Development Conference at St. Pete, Florida. Approximately 200 people from around the country attended the conference. The conference was made up of two plenary presentations by Rev. Shawn Lovejoy, who is the organizing pastor of Mountain Lake Church in Cummings Georgia. He started the church in 1999 and today has over 2000 in worship. We had the opportunity to enjoy worship, six different workshop tracks, and a large group seminar. The workshop tracks were: Evangelism and Disciple Making, Nuts and Bolts of New Church Development, Spirituality and Prayer, Leader Development, Multi Ethnic Church Starts, and Churches Starting Churches. I attended the Churches Starting Churches workshop.

It was a privilege for me to attend this conference with four other people from Chain of Lakes Church. I have decided that I want to avoid going to conferences unless others from the church come with me. I have too much experience of getting all excited at a conference and then having my excitement die when I get back because no one shared the experience with me.

Ideas from the conference that resonated with me personally:
• We should pray the following prayer every day: “Lord I give this church to you. This is your church”

• The denomination has put together an excellent process for starting a new church. It’s a 16 session process. We at Chain of Lakes did part of this when we developed our Purpose Statement and Core Values. At Chain of Lakes we could benefit by getting on the same page about the following questions: “Who is Jesus?” “What is the church” “What is salvation” “What is evangelism?” We also could benefit by doing some site interviews into the community.

• The importance of protecting Purpose Statement and Core Values. We have to communicate this over and over to the congregation and also be aware of vision leaks.

• I saw some outstanding ways that Mission Insight—a demographic tool that we at Chain of Lakes have access—can be used

Congratulations to our National Office for putting on an excellent conference.