church planting thoughts

Did you know they have boot camps for people who start new churches? It’s true – Tonya and I attended one in Sacramento in January of 2005.

Granted, there are no drill instructors insulting your mother or having you drop and do push-ups. From what I can gather, the food at our boot camp was a bit better than the “other” boot camps you hear about.

At our boot camp, we learned the fundamentals of how to start new churches. During the first session, I can still remember our coach telling us, “We are not sending you out to start a church but churches.” “It’s not about one church but many churches.”

Since everyone in the room was a first-time church planter, it was a bit overwhelming just to think of getting one church off the ground! And here this guy was telling us to expand our vision even more.

I’m glad he did. To truly impact a city or region, we need an expanding number of healthy churches. To reach the most people, we need to be focused on starting a movement and not on building one large church.

Even though LifePoint is not yet one-year-old, I still want to challenge you to think in terms of giving birth to more churches than just ours. God may grow us to the point of sending out a daughter church or starting a satellite campus; he may simply allow us to partner with other churches who have a similar vision.

However God chooses to accomplish this, may we rise to the challenge and help change San Diego along the way.