CP & Evangelism - Session 7 - Finding Rev Right

welcome to session seven finding Reverend Wright now finding Reverend Wright doesn't mean we're looking for the person that you want to marry although some of you may want to marry a church planner but what we mean by that is finding the right person the right Pastor to lead a new church in this week's session we're going to focus on crucial components of a successful Church planter to have a successful Church Plant we need the right planter in place the things that we're looking for in this church planner are calling character and competency that's what we

need in our lead Church planner so before we dig into understanding more of who it takes to start a church let's let's State something that should be obvious uh more important than the where the when and even who of planting a church is the work of the Holy Holy Spirit remember what Psalm 1271 says unless the Lord builds the house those who build it labor in vain now we're going to talk about what a church planner should look like what the ideal person if you will should be who would lead a church but it doesn't

matter who that person is or what the giftings are if the holy spirit is not the one driving the church PL so in order to find that person we need to make sure that we dive deep into the nature of God his kingdom and his church and in some of our earlier sessions we touched about this a little bit we we talked about how we need to recognize who is responsible for planning the church when people tried to emphasize their status based on who they were as disciples uh remember what the Apostle Paul are model

Church planter said he said I planted Apollos watered but God gave the increase or God gave the gross growth so neither he who plants nor he who Waters is anything but only God who gives the growth what he's saying is it doesn't matter if I'm the one that started it or this man apollis is the one that helped it uh by watering it God is the one that made it grow God is the one that is important don't look to men don't look to those to give us a pat on the back of what we're

doing see in in Paul's time people were arguing about who discipled them who led them to the Lord I'm of I'm of Paul I'm of PA of apollis and he said that doesn't matter at all what matters is God the holy spirit is the one doing the work so part of what we need to do when we're looking for that church planner is somebody who gets that he's to work like crazy but he understands that God is the one doing the work 1 Corinthians 36 and 7 say God is the one who makes the church

plant grow he is the one that brings it to life he is the one that matters and so when we look at this all that being said God gives us the privilege of being used for the sake of his church and for the sake of his kingdom uh we can be used by God to do these things but they we're able to do that because of the spiritual gifts and the spiritual assignments that he gives to us it's not because of us so because of the teaching of scripture the prompting of the Holy Spirit and

the counsel of Godly leaders there's evidence of spiritual fruit and we then have some benchmarks or some mile poost some things that we can measure for understanding who God has used to help start churches this also helps us know who future Church planners might be so when we look at the things that God has done in the past we can have a better idea of what he might be doing in the future so the first thing we want to look at those three C's I said back at the beginning is calling being a gifted leader

speaker Entre entrepreneur fundraiser all those things can be helpful to somebody who's planning a church but putting all those things together is not enough to make a truly successful church plan Reverend Wright as we're calling today must be called by God to plant a church meaning God has said you're the one I want to do this so how how do we know if that's true how do we know if someone's called well there's a couple of good resources I want to point you to we're not going to get to dig into all of it but

here's a couple of books that you can look at that deal with this topic one is actually the guy that hired me to be a church planning leader uh along with some others in the process but one of the men was Dr Jeff ore and Dr Jeff ore wrote a book called am I call uh he helps you kind of work through this the discernment if you were called to be in Ministry another book is a guy that we've referred to before he's not with the Lord but a guy I've told you stories about Dr

Henry blackaby he wrote a very famous book called Experiencing God which is a great tool not just to determine if you're to be a church planner or to be in Ministry full-time but it's a good book for to help you determine what God's calling you to do with your life no matter who you are and according to Dr Black of's Book there are four primary St ources to Understanding God's will these same sources are essential to somebody considering being a church planner or somebody who's going to do something else with life and so here are

those four things the first one is God's word also known as the Bible the God God's word the Bible helps us to understand God's character his ways that he acts his mission and his calling and his calling is of Paramount importance for a church planner as some especially somebody who is venturing in to the eternally important area of planning a church the better we know God's word the better we can understand God it needs to go from head knowledge to Heart knowledge the better we understand God the more we can become like him and the

better we can come into alignment with his will scripture tells us that that those who know Jesus will give them the desires of their heart well to me that's not a holy wish list like oh gee I want a Maserati you can get whatever you want what it means is the more we know God the more we can come in alignment to his heart our desires are changed by his desires our desires become more like his so when we have the desires of our heart is because we're drawn close to him and he will give

us those desires for the sake of the kingdom and for our sake as well so the first one's the Bible the second one we've talked about it we're going to keep talking about it is prayer prayer prayer remember is listening to God and talking to God we talked about that as breathing in and breathing out you've got to breathe in before you can breathe out so we want to listen to God before we start telling God everything we think or everything we know or everything we want by breathing in and listening to God it allows

us to personally hear from the holy spirit so the second thing we want to do is have the counsel of the holy spirit in our lives so not just God's word but the Holy Spirit there are few messages that we want to hear more clearly about than if we are wondering if we're being we're being called to plant a church if we are being called to plant a church God should make that very clear in our lives it should be so compelling that there's no other direction that you could go in your life and be

right if you think you can do something else and be in the center of God's will other than be a lead Church planet you probably should do whatever that is but if God is calling you to be a planter he won't let you rest until that's made clear that's what he's got for you to do so look for what God is putting on your heart The Passion of your heart the drawing of your heart that's part of the calling is that he's calling you to start a new church and if he calls you in that

way there should only be one answer and it's only got three letters yees yes God you're calling me I'm in church planning is difficult enough if you're a strong Christian A Gifted leader and everything else seems to be lining up it is tough but if you're not called by God and confirmed by the holy spirit that he is speaking to you don't do it I have I have personally experienced and I've coached other Church planners you need to know you're called because there's going to be some days the only thing that you know is he

is God and he told told you to do this that's all you hold to everything else seems to be falling apart I know that's not a great recruiting pitch but everything else in your church plant may be going haywire and it's going to get tough and to see your way through it what you need to know is that he is God and he called you to do it so that's the second thing is listening to God through the holy spirit so we've got Bible and prayer listening to the Holy Spirit and the third thing is

circumstances now God can confirm his Direction in your life by bringing things into place to help his plan move forward you'll start to see things happen you'll you'll see people say yes to being on your team you'll see a clear calling and a pathway to a certain Community or certain people you'll see resources financially come together you'll see a lot of those things happen and uh we we need to be watching for that I feel like a lot of times in our lives we don't see the circumstances that God is orchestrating because we're not paying

attention we need need to look for those opportunities those resources the right team for doors to open to us and and through that it can be a truly empowering and affirming experience when we see those things start to happen it's important to seek God's voice to make sure that you are interpreting circumstances correctly sometimes there are challenges that God is allowing to come our way that test our resolve and grow our character we need to ask ask him to help us understand his will through the circumstances and that his will is greater than what the

circumstances are or any difficulty we might face see I can think of one time in my Ministry when I was actually leading a church and it got tough I was leading in a replant I didn't even know what a replant was but I was leading a replant and the other guys that I was doing with they they had gone on for reasons legitimate reasons I had a couple of guys that were on my staff that were working with me and we had some opposition in the church some of the original group thought okay we got

a bunch of people now we want to make the church what it was before and they were fighting the direction that God clearly was leading Us in and I went to some of my spiritual mentors people that I you know I could tell you might know some of the names these are people that are Godly men uh some have gone on to be with the Lord other are still living and I told him the situation and every single one of them said man you need to get your resume together and get it out there because

this Situation's bad you're going to need to make a move out of this church and I was actually going through a time of praying and spending some time away from the ministry for a few weeks with my wife and we decided that's what we're going to do but God made it very clear to me through a new believer Who challenged that thinking and said I have a problem with that and this is why and if I had the time I could tell you the whole story but when he said said what he had to say

it wasn't because I was what I wanted to hear the easy thing would have been to move but when he said what he had to say God used that to speak to me one of the loudest times he spoke to me in my life and he said to me Gary what did I tell you to do I said God you told me to leave this church and he said have I told you anything else I said no and he said what's the question see God used the circumstances to get my attention it didn't mean that

they were all come together beautifully but he was using it to affirm in me that that is what he was leading me to do and I stayed with that church and that church became a church planning church and through that church planning church I then was able to move into a role to start Seattle church planning and Northwest Church planning and also have the other opportunities that I've had around the world to work with church planners but it came because I listen to what God was saying to me through those circumstances so we need to

pay attention and pray for discernment don't just assume one way or another we want God's word and His holy spirit to guide us as we interpret those circumstances and that the fourth thing is the counsel of others what we mean by the counsel of others are is the church there are Godly men and women spiritually mature men and women there are people maybe they're even new in their Faith like this friend of mine I was telling you about but the counsel of others God can use that to help direct you and usually if somebody more

mature than you are in the faith and believe us there's somebody more mature than everybody speaking in this video and everybody watching this video there's somebody that's spiritually more mature than you and we need to seek those people out somebody who's got more experience more Ministry experience more experience in their growing in their personal faith those are things that God can use to give us wise counsel so who are those people in your life think about those people remember we're supposed to be doing mile poost here and writing them in Past Tense one of your

M posts might be spiritual Mentor found you know who that person is no matter what it is you're going to do in life whether it's church planning or something else who is your spiritual Mentor going to be and not just found but it might be spiritual Mentor secured you've not only found them but you've told them I see this in you and will you be this person in my life we need to know in church planning who it is that God can use to speak to us and and to guide us in that process now

God's call is not a scientific formula it's not a gourmet recipe where you say I need two cups of this and a cup of that and a pinch of this and so on it is beyond what we can just absolutely write down on paper and measure but it is based on a balance of Biblical teaching prayer the Holy Spirit and circumstances it comes together uh it is a nuanced spiritual process and at times it's going to be louder than than me talking to you right now and other times it's going to be a still small

voice but you need to seek and discern and pray and pray and pray until you have an answer to those things um God will not always make it super loud because he wants you to grow in your face sometimes he wants you to be stretched and he wants you to seek for a while I worked with church planers said man I've been praying for an answer to this this quandry to this question for six months or for a year and I just don't have the answer from God he's talking to me about other things he's

giving me gu I just don't know what I'm supposed to do and my response to that is well he's probably not done working on you yet there's more that he wants you to learn in this process and he will reveal it to you in his time not when you think it's good it's important when we do this that we start with the Bible if you have Holy Spirit speaking to you and you have circumstances and you have the counsel of others and they contradict the Bible uh well the first thing is that's not the Holy

Spirit talking to you that is somebody else if it's contradicting God's word God's word is the holy spirit speaking through the people that wrote it it is divinely inspired you don't get to go well the Holy Spirit told me something so that outweighs the Bible it does not work like that we start with the Bible and we filter everything we hear from the Holy Spirit through that we filter everything that we see in the circumstances around us in that and we filter even the wise counsel from some of the godliest men and women we know

we need to filter the through that and if somebody is telling you to do something that goes against the Bible I have another three-letter word for you are you in run just get away from that as fast as you can uh if it's somebody that you know and love and trust and you can be can with them and you can say hey you're telling me to do the opposite of what God's word is and I know you know better than that I'm not going to do that and you may actually be wise counsel to them

in that situation if God is the one speaking to you his word will confirm that so we need the holy spirit to guide us as we saturate things in prayer as we understand with his spiritual leadership his spiritual eyes as we seek to understand what he is trying to do in and through us as we seek to understand the circumstances around us and as we seek counsel from others uh who are more spiritual and more experienced than we are then through all of this hopefully you can can discern if you or someone you know is

called to start a church now if you've got some strength and conviction in that calling and you even see others affirming that calling that's part of the counsil of others they might say well of course you're supposed to this I see God doing that in you I've known it longer than you have thanks for coming to the party I'm glad you figured it out uh we have that calling it's important though that we have that character by character I mean that we have a spiritual guidance that gives us a moral compass in the way that

we do things I'm not just talking about the dos and don'ts I'm talking about the way that we live our lives as Christ followers so as we seek to understand God's calling for a new church planter whether it's you or someone else we also need to try to assess your character or that other person's character to see if they really have what it takes to be a church planter it's true that we are all sinners saved by grace don't look for somebody perfect you'll never find them there's somebody that said if you ever find the

perfect Church don't join it because you're not perfect so you'll mess it up well the fact is there is no perfect Church there is no perfect Church planer there's only been one person who's been perfect and that's Jesus Christ so the problem is that some of us take that to an extreme where we're like well I'm saved by grace so I can do whatever I want I can I can talk the talk I can preach I can lean I can do all these things but it's okay if I'm stealing money from the church or it's

okay if I'm having an inappropriate relationship with somebody that's not my spouse it's okay if I get angry and I yell at people but it's okay it's okay it's okay those things are not okay yes we will mess up yes God can forgive us but I'm talking about a willful Disobedience where we continue to pursue sin which means we worship sin instead of pursuing God so for years most of the church planning materials and research and assessments focused on the third sea which we haven't come to yet which is competency there are many authors and

leaders that just assumed if somebody wanted to be a church planner they obviously had The Godly character it took to being a church planner it took to be a church planner and they later came back and said man we made a mistake we need to redo our training we need to redo our assessments because we were making assumptions that you guys were Godly and too many people were going out as Church planers who were good preachers good leaders good money fundraisers get all these things that church planners need to do but they were crashing and

burning because they didn't have the character to be a good church planner their moral failures were showing up their weaknesses and Leadership were showing up because they they didn't treat people right so uh what we need to do is we need to try to assess that and try to deal with that I'm not saying it's a forever disqualifying thing but there are some people that have had some issues in these areas that we've said look you need to work on this you need to get right in this area before we're going to look at planning

a church with you and you can come back and be obsessed again and we'll see the progress you've made through having a mentor or a counselor or somebody to hold you accountable or doing things there you know a number of people that have had pornography in their background recent background but we need to know we need to have things put in place to make sure that that is not running your life that that sin which it is sin don't think it's harmless or you know you're not hurting that person because you just watch it is

sin and it harms your relationship with God that needs to be dealt with and then after we're convinced that that is in your past okay now we can look at the possibility of working with you again as a church planner so what are some of the key areas of failure I've already mentioned them there's three main areas that church planners fall prey to it's usually one of these but it could be all three one is sexual sin whether it be pornography inappropriate relationship or just you know just things that they shouldn't be doing or things

they shouldn't be viewing or things that they shouldn't be saying to people things like that uh the second one is financial sin that they are using their position for ill gotten gain they're they're they're patting their pockets or they're taking money that should have been for something else things like that and they've got an issue with finances and it's got a stronghold in their life they're worshiping finances instead of worshiping God by the way they live their lives and another one is a a power issue or anger issue people that want to control things a

pastor has a responsibility to lead a pastor has responsibility for the people he does lead scripture tells us that he's going to give an account for how he leads the people in the church but it's not only are is he supposed to lead them towards God but is he to lead them with the Heart of Jesus is he to lead them not only by speaking Truth by by showing Grace or sees somebody that's like I'm the pastor I'm in charge and he just blows people up and he he makes he gets angry at them inappropriately

because he's the man he's in charge so if I do it it's okay because I'm God's man you need to do what I say that is sin and that's something that all of us need to be aware of we could be doing it whether we're the church planner we're a Sunday school teacher we're a worship whatever it is that and the other issues are ones that can hit any of us see pastors are people too and uh you guys know that if you're close to a pastor you know he's not perfect and they're susceptible to

Temptations as much as anybody else and because of the role that they're in they often have more access and availability to those Temptations than others might if you're a pastor you do counseling you could be in a position to be in an inappropriate relationship if you don't put safeguards in place or make sure that somebody else is there even if they're in the next room where they can't hear anything but they they can the door is open and they know that you're in there and nothing's going to happen um pastors have access to funds and

we as a matter of fact we tell our our pastor you shouldn't be handling the money have people that manage the money you get to give oversight to it but you shouldn't be touching the the cash and making the deposits and stuff like that it's just too easy and too much of a Temptation and pastors have more access to the abuse of their power because in the church they're the ones in charge so if anything this lesson tells you right now you need to be praying for your pastor for the sake of your church but

for his sake because not only does it harm the church but it harms him it harms his soul it blocks his ability to have an open relationship with God and with others and with the community that he serves pray for your pastor that he won't fall into those sins so if those things happen uh we want to see those people restored sometimes they happen and they big things that happen and their Ministry in that church is done but we still want to care for them we still want to care for their family we want to

find a way to help restore them because they just like us are finite fallible human beings we want to help them draw closer to the Lord not just turn on them and and uh do horrible things to them that are just as bad as anything that they've done in their in themselves uh there's another man I know a friend of mine his name's Jeff Christopherson great church planning leader uh he's from the TR area has led church planning in Canada with the North American Mission board written a number of books and one of the books

that he's written is called Kingdom first starting churches that shape movements and in this uh Jeff talks about the importance of area of areas of focus when it comes to a church planner these areas should be evaluated in the church planner's life to see if he is serving God because if he's not serving God now you can't think okay if he goes and plants he's going to start serving God or is he serving God now or is there a lack of spiritual God uh Health that disqualifies him at least for now so here are some

of those areas that we want to we want to consider uh the first one is the character of Christ the character of Christ does the planter know and manifest christlikeness how can we become more like Jesus if we don't know him do they know him do they study him do they think of him do they think what would would Jesus do as those bracelets we used to wear would say some of you are probably too young to remember that W wjd what would Jesus do does he live his life in that way having the character

of Christ uh second of all is he leading himself how can he lead others spiritually if he's not growing if he's stagnant how can he be a spiritual leader of others if he's not spiritually leading himself leading himself Professor Timothy Moore some of you probably had his class but he shares with this church he says we are to have a spiritual life that starts with the devotional spending time with God a spiritual life that starts with God a spiritual life that is relational meaning connecting with god with the church and with the community at large

and that leads to a a spiritual life that is missional living a gospel life that is used by God to share the good news and expand the kingdom are these things happening in the church planner's life the third thing we want to see is is he leading his family is the church planner leading his family we are to be spiritual leaders in our home God has given us he has blessed us with a family to lead and to be stewards of to be managers of so this takes time and presence and intentionality it must flow

out of who I am who I am now FL family cannot and should not be neglected it's very easy for a pastor to go I know you're my family but all these people need me there's so many people depending on me and they end up neglecting their family and their family ends up straying from God or even worse hating God and hating the church because the the church has taken their dad or their husband away so this should not be this should not be happening our our service of others could cause us to to make

that an idol instead of planning God's healthy way which is to Pastor our family to lead our family but our family shouldn't be our Idol either I've seen this more and more there's been such a shift in society about man we got to do everything for our kids and they're in so many clubs and speech and chess and sports and music and and they they play in in special leagues that take them away from church every Sunday things like that and we end up taking God and his church and his plan for our lives and

we end up putting our children up there where that should be like God I'll get back to you someday I I'll have time for you but right now you know i' you've given me this family so I got to make them the most important thing and that's not the way it is God's intent is for him to be number one and after that comes our family the fourth thing is that we need to be able to lead God's people we are not only to lead ourselves and Lead our family but we need to be able

to lead God's people well just like family and needs to flow out of leading ourselves I can't lead somebody else to be something I'm not the Apostle Paul put it this way he said imitate me as I also imitate Christ what he's saying is I'm trying to be more like Jesus and I'm a step ahead of you or maybe several steps ahead of you so if you want to do better in following Jesus you can see me do what I'm doing live the way that I'm leading living we need to lead God's people through a

serious response to the responsibility of stewardship we need to be teaching them to be good stewards of their lives not just their money but how they spend their time how they spend their the things that they love leading God's people makes means that we need to remember that they're his people and not ours uh to help us get closer to that character and ready for Spiritual service there's a guy named Zach Minon he's one of the guys on our church planning team in the Northwest and he uses this acrossing called root to put it in

another way uh root stands for r o o t response to calling is the first one we need to be able to identify that God is calling us like we've talked about that but not just knowing that he's called us but to embrace that calling fully we need to go for that with all Gusto going for the calling that God's given us the O is ongoing Soul Care so taking time to have your devotional life to to have a Sabbath to have time to get away with God and refresh and also to have others coaching

you in this area of Soul Care by Soul Care I mean to grow spiritually another o is the overflowing Family Health you need to have a healthy family you need to spend time with them you need to manage your family and lead your family and serve your family and love your family and spend time with them making God the priority but doing in that context showing the love for your family and then the tea of root is team prayer support we need to build a support team of people who will pray for you who will

pray that you will grow spiritually they'll pray for your family they'll pray for your ministry but people who have your best interest at heart that they will pray for God's guidance and blessing in your life one of the things that we ask our church planners to have for example is we want them to have at least 50 people who are praying for them on their prayer team and we've talked about that some before and then having that more intimate group that prays for the most confidential things so pause here for a minute and do some

mile post we've talked about a lot of things that you can be doing in your own Spiritual Development and leading others and finding a mentor and finding prayer Partners take some time and write some of your mile posts now the third C that we want to talk about is the one that we normally focus on when we're looking at church planners it is important but we need to start with the calling and character before we get to this one the third one which is very important is the one called competency competency competency is we want

to find people that are able to do the work of being a church planner we want to know they're called to it we want to know that they're spiritually qualified but we also want to know that if God is leading them to plant the church that he has equipped them to do that uh one of the most extensive studies ever done about successful Church Plant identified clearly the number one thing is that where God's at work that's where it's happening but of things that we can measure and have anything to do to say about the

number one thing is finding the right Church planner that's why we're having this lesson today this research was conducted by a man named Dr Charles Ridley now Dr Ridley uh he knew that God was the one that gave birth to the church he knew that God is the one that does the work but he also said if we find churches that are healthy we find that they have a really gifted Church planner somebody who has great strengths and when he did a study he came up with 47 characteristics of a successful Church planner now fortunately

he listened to his coach and his coach said 47 is way too many nobody's going to do a test or an assessment on 47 characteristics so you need to narrow it down so Dr Ridley got it down to 13 of these characteristics and I've added a 14th that I'm going to tell you about because it's something that that I've seen as a great factor between somebody who does a good job and somebody who does a great job now out of these 13 that Dr Ridley has the top five we see as being Mission critical if

these aren't strong we don't really think the guys should go forward with planning the church some the others should be strong but there may be some areas stronger than others but these top five need to be strong and the fifth one we call the veto factor and we'll see what that is in a minute so here are the top five number one visionize capacity by visionize capacity what we mean is somebody who can see a preferred future he can project what things are supposed to become years into the future in the church plan to some

degree of success he can see what he's aiming for and then he can communicate that Vision to others so he has a capacity to have a vision and a capacity to put it into play I talk about the difference between a vision AR and a dreamer is a Visionary actually sees stuff happen whereas a dreamer just sits around and dreams stuffs up and never really gets it done we want The Visionaries the second thing we see is somebody who is intrinsically motivated intrinsically motivated what do we mean by intrinsically motivated that is somebody who's a

self-starter somebody that doesn't have to have somebody call him and go hey Gary you're supposed to play a church today get out of bed this is somebody who can't wait to get up and get after what they're doing and they they may work long hours in certain Seasons they need to have balance and they need to figure it out but they got energy for this and they got stamina and they're committed to doing it and doing it well they don't need anybody trying to light a fire under them so to speak to get things done

these people will already be doing it the third one is that they create ownership of ministry so it's important that you cast a vision but that people start to see that Vision as their own they have Buy in they feel the importance of that and we're we going to talk about that more in the next session when we get to talking about church planning teams the fourth one this is extremely important is that they they relate well to the unchurched uh they're Evangelistic and they communicate in a style that is understood by the unchurch meaning

people that don't know Jesus and people respond to them uh we see a lot of guys that'll build relationships but they're not Evangelistic they don't share the gospel and as we've said they don't do the ask we need them to do the ask and the fifth one here's the veto one spousal cooperation what do we mean by that spousal cooperation is having an explicit agreement between the partners the husband and wife and their roles together in their marriage and their Ministry and in the call to church planning now I'm not saying the wife is supposed

to be the lead planter of the and the husband is I'm saying that the wife understands what her role is and she's committed to this church plant too because she's not not committed to it it's just a matter of time till she'll be unhappy he'll be unhappy and then things can shut down and that may not seem fair that's the way it is the spouse needs to be committed to planning the church now I'm going to go through the rest of that 13 pretty quickly here and just tell you what they are we don't have

time to unpack them you can read on Dr Charles Ridley's research there's lots of studies out there if you do a little AI research you can find the more complete list um number six effectively builds relationships able to connect with others number seven they're committed to church growth they don't just go I don't care they want to see the church grow number eight they're responsive to the community that means they know what the community thinks and they're willing to appropriately respond we're not talking about doing away with theology but they're willing to do what the

community needs in order to be friends with the community and share the gospel with them number nine utilizes the gift and of others if you got somebody who won't anybody else do stuff and they want to do it all themselves not a good plan for a church planner number 10 flexible and adaptable the only thing you can count on besides there is a God and he called you to this is things will change I've yet to see a church plant that ended up being exactly what the planner thought it was going to be he's got

to be flexible and adaptable to whatever happens in the future number 11 builds group cohesiveness that means he builds a bond a Unity within the team number 12 resilience this is somebody that is not going to go running home to Mama the first time he faces trouble he's going to see his way through it and a successful Church planner quite often is somebody who just doesn't quit for one day longer he stays with it number 13 He exercises Faith Church planning is starting a church that doesn't exist you have to have great faith to do

that and number 14 remember this is the one I've added is teachable well what do I mean by being teachable um a lot of people are Learners and what I mean by a learner is they say I want to become a better architect or I want to become a better mechanic or I want to and they want to go out and they learn the things that they want to learn they read the things that they want to read they study what they want to study they know what they want to know somebody who is teachable

is a learner but somebody who's teachable is willing to learn what they don't know that they need to learn they don't know that somebody that they need to be taught something and so they have mentors and teachers and guides and Pastors in their lives who they have given permission to to say teach me I don't know what it is I need to know one of the best questions I've ever heard from a potential church planner after they've asked all their other questions they will say what question have hav't I asked you that I should ask

you but I don't know to ask what do I need to learn that I don't know I had a football coach in college he had this saying he said you just don't know that you don't know sometimes we've got blind spots we're all naive about something we need to be teachable so somebody can teach us stuff that we don't know we need to know most of the very successful Church planners I've worked with they've been the ones that have been the most willing to be led the most willing to be taught even though they had

great knowledge and expertise uh I if you came in and you've done a lot of things and sharing your faith and you had a lot of these characteristics but you never planted a church that doesn't worry me at all I'd be like come sit down we'll help you figure it out the ones that scare me are the guys that show up and go I got this figured out Gary I don't need your help I know what I'm going to do I've got my plan I know I've never lived here I know I don't know these

people I don't but I've got it just sit over there and watch me wow you those are the ones that scare me to death because they are unteachable now what happens a lot of times is six months later when everything they thought was going to be perfect hits them in the face they come back and they're like they apologize they're like man you must have thought I was an idiot I can't believe how unteachable I was I'm ready what do I need to know so to wrap things up I want to tell you this if

a planter believes he is called and a planter is somebody who has is a person of high spiritual character but he does not have the competencies or the characteristics of a church planter he probably won't get very far if a planter is competent but he's not truly called or does not have the right kind of character he may get the church started but his lack of calling and his character flaws will eventually lead the church to implode so why don't we learn from what's happened in the past let's avoid those things and find Planters who

are called who have the character and who have the competency to go do what God has called us to do in starting a new church