NCLI - Day One

After getting up at 5 am this morning and driving for about 6 hours, I arrived at Mt. Sequoyah Conference and Retreat Center unscathed and in one piece. After a quick bite at a local fast food establishment, we got under way with the first group of discussions.

Today's topic was strengthening mother/daughter church plants. I have to admit that I didn't have any aha moments today. If you keep an eye on new church start blogs from our denomination and others, all of what was given out in today's information is readily available on line.

Some of the highlights include:

1) Checking your real motives for planting
2) Insuring adequate buy in(ownership of vision and ministry) from birthing church and future new community
3) Birthing church continuing to have prominence in the senior pastor's mind
4) Knowing how long to nest (as the church planter) before leaving the mother church
5) assuring proper financial responsibility in the new start
6) Making sure that the DNA of the plant is at least partially missional (I would advocate a more radical position of completely missional)
7) Pastor of the mother church doing site visits at the new plant
8) Continuing the supervisory role for an appropriate length of time
9) Making sure that the planting pastor embraces and fulfills his or her pastoral role as the spiritual shepherd of the new plant (from planning to launch and beyond)
10) Teach others how to do the same

The stories of some of the folks around the tables proved to be far more interesting than the material presented, but at the end of the day, it was survived.

My main issue was that after a 6 hour drive, I was hoping for more interaction and activity. Instead, what we received was a presenter that sat down in front of us and read off of lists for us to fill in the blanks and spaces in our handouts. In the presenter's defense, he was filling in for the person who was supposed to be leading the session that was out on leave because of a family medical issue.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.