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Mission
Spokane's Church Planting Ministry Team
July 19, 2000
Here's an update on the efforts of the Mission Spokane
church planting ministry team. After much prayer and
several meetings, we have identified 7-10 churches or
clusters of churches that are willing to plant new churches
in our area on September 23, 2001. We plan to do a major
media blitz to invite our community to check out these
new churches. We hope to reach lots of unreached people,
and to stir the church community to further outreach
and church planting.
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is a timetable for the next steps: |
- Participating churches/clusters need to have
a potential church planter identified by the
end of August.
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- Potential church planters need to complete
the Church Planter's Toolkit by September 27th.
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- Potential church planters will be led through
an assessment process by Jim Griffith, a well-known
church planting consultant, on September 27-30.
The assessment will identify strengths and weaknesses,
and help each church planter and his/her sponsoring
group determine if they are ready to proceed.
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- Assessed church planters will attend Church
Planters' Bootcamp in Portland, Oregon, on November
6-10 (this bootcamp is provided by the Foursquare
denomination, but the training is not denomination-specific;
it is based on the Church Planter's Toolkit).
This weeklong training will help church planters
develop a workable strategy for launching their
new church and will link them with other planters
in an "incubator" for ongoing support.
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- After Bootcamp, church planters will meet
monthly in their incubators and begin forming
their start-up teams for the launch in the fall
of 2001.
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The cost for the assessment and bootcamp is approximately
$1,600 per planter or planter couple, which includes
all materials, written assessments, and food and lodging.
In the future, we plan to provide our own assessments
and bootcamp locally at a reduced cost, but because
this is our first attempt, we decided to use existing
resources (i.e. Jim Griffith and the Foursquare Bootcamp).
If
you are planning on participating, we need to know that
now.
Please call or e-mail me with the name of your potential
church planter by August 31st. If you would like to
participate and are not currently signed up (or don't
know if you are), please call or e-mail me. If you want
more information, or need financial assistance to make
this happen, please call or e-mail me. We are also looking
for churches, which may not be able to plant alone,
but would be willing to be part of a team of churches
who cooperate in planting a new church.
When Peter landed the miraculous catch of fish (Luke
5), his boat was so full of fish that it began to sink,
so he signaled his partners and they came to his aid.
The catch was so large that their boat filled with fish
and began to sink too! They needed more boats! We need
more "boats," too.
Of the 415,000 people in Spokane County, only 18% are
in church on an average weekend. There are a lot of
unreached people who need churches! We're praying for
a harvest in our area that would fill up our existing
"boats" and require lots of new "boats" too! We would
love to plant as many new churches as possible on September
23, 2001.
I hope you can join us.
Yours for the harvest,
Joe Wittwer
(for the Mission Spokane Church Planting Ministry Team)
Call at (509) 327-4422 (ask for my secretary, Cathy)
E-mail at joe@lifecenter.net
For
further information…
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