Acts 29 Church Planter Bootcamp Thoughts

Wow! What an experience!

I am completely exhausted. The Acts 29 Church Planters Bootcamp was that good! Plus right after the morning session I hopped on a plane and I am in the middle of a business trip to New Jersey. It is only Wednesday, but already it feels like a long week.

I'm so tired that all I have right now are random thoughts:

Darrin Patrick from The Journey in St Louis, Paul Westbrook of Metro C0mmunity Church in Edwardsville, Illinois, and Larry Richmond of the Gateway Baptist Association (St Louis Metro East Area), Illinois sponsored the conference. Darrin and Paul both spoke and were excellent. they are both very gifted men that have a deep passion for reaching the unchurched through new church plants. Larry (my personal mentor) didn't speak at the conference, but did hold a pastors luncheon for the 51 pastors in his association and raised over $60,000 for church planting from his pastors.

The keynote speaker was Ed Stetzer, the author of Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age, and director of the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board's Nehemiah Project. Wow, was he good. Ed has to be one of the most gifted speakers I have heard in a long time. Ed has a great website full of resources and doesn't mind sharing what he has found. It is located here. Link.

Acts 29 helps church planters in the following ways:

1) Acts 29 has a strenuous screening process to ensure the church planters they support are gifted leaders that can cast their vision for the church.

2) The network links aspiring church planters with current church planting pastors as mentors. The current pastor knows what the aspiring planter is thinking and is there to help and advise.

3) Acts 29 churches pledge to donate 10% of their income to church planting efforts. This money is controlled by the local church, not Acts 29.

4) Acts 29 is not a denomination, but supports both denominational and nondenominational church planters. Their concern is that the unchurched are led to Christ and develop into fully functioning disciples of the Lord.

Amazing Statistic: New church plants have a failure rate of about 80% over the first 3 years. Acts 29 has come along to help support 60 church plants and after 5 years 59 of them are still alive!