New Church University

As many of you know, Jamie and I were in Indy last week (Oct. 2-5) for our first conference. It was good to see family and friends at Brookhaven and Indy. Family, we miss you all. Kevin and Sandra, thanks for the meal and time with friends. Let's get together quicker than two years next time. Jessie, Jewel, Haley, David, Ty, Janel, Janna, Pastor Bob and Veralyn, Pastor Matt and Laura, and Pastor Phil and Stephanie, it was good to be back at youth group once more.

What an amazing time! New Church Specialties is a church health focused organization "based" from the Church of the Nazarene. They train pastors and lay leaders in refocusing (moving from inward focused ministry to outward focused), restarting (shut down the church, change lots of things, re-open) or church planting. Our church is in need of a mix between refocusing and restarting (leaning toward restarting).

We were blown away at how comprehensive it was. Everything was grounded in Scripture and prayer. We heard spiels from a few guys for most of the time and also got to meet in small groups with other pastors from around the nation. Guys were there from Kansas, Texas, California, Indiana, Wisconsin... Overall, we are excited about what God has in store for us. We found this to be a time of learning and commitment. The process of restarting a church takes about 3-5 years. And at the end of that time, we should be ready to at least assist with a church plant. It's like God was emphasizing how big a work He is going to do at Parkway. Not only does He want to make us a healthy church, but also a multiplying church.

Now that we're back in Baraboo, it's time to convey what we've learned to our leadership team. For those of you who've committed to pray for us, please pray that we would have wisdom to know what to say and what to hold back. There's so much information that we could easily overwhelm and discourage our church. Pray also that we would be personally renewed by God's Spirit in these next weeks and months. If we are going to lead this process, we need to be renewed first. Also pray for our leadership team, that they would commit to the long process, and that the right people would be on it. We have asked a few new people to join the team after learning we had too few. And one man is hesitant to join because he's new to the church and isn't sure how a few people will react. Pray for God's will to be done in him and our church.

If any of you know churches or pastors looking to plant churches, please pass this website on to them: www.newchurchspecialties.org. Refocusing churches are those at the "plateau" stage, and I believe most churches would benefit from this training. So, as the guy from Reading Rainbow says, "Don't just take my word for it. Check it out yourself."