Brandon is one of our current church planting residents. He and his wife Emily and their four kids recently moved from West Palm Beach, FL, to Indianapolis, IN, to plant Soma Church. They are building a team of people to plant their lives in Indy for the sake of planting a gospel-centered church.

How did God call you to plant in Indy?

My calling to church planting began with a series of events that transpired when I was 19 years old. First, I participated in a short-term mission trip to the Philippines with my church. On that trip, I was gripped by the reality of global lostness and urgency of taking the gospel to the nations. Second, I attended the first Passion One Day in Memphis, TN with my college ministry group. God used a message by a old nerdy guy wearing a tweed jacket (who I would later discover was John Piper) to rock my heart with a message entitled, “Don’t Waste Your Life.” As a result of those events, I committed in my heart that I would go anywhere, do anything, with anyone for the fame of Jesus’ name.

10+ years later, I found myself as a teaching pastor at a great church in South Florida. My life, in many ways, was comfortable and successful – great weather, growing ministry, and an incredible team of people to serve alongside. Despite these “comforts,” I began feeling a restlessness that God had something different in mind for our family. As I reflected, prayed, and discussed my opportunities with close friends, I became burdened that God wanted us to plant a new gospel-centered work in a strategic, underchurched metropolitan area. My wife and I knew that if we didn’t step out and join God in this risky venture, that we would look back years later with regret on a missed opportunity to believe Jesus’ promise that “I will build my church.”

Why Indianapolis?

Once we made the decision to plant, our hearts were quickly drawn back to the Midwest where we grew up and to Indianapolis in particular. Indy is a city of tremendous need for the gospel. One hundred years ago, Indy was dubbed “a city of churches,” as the number of churches grew by such a rapid rate that they outpaced even the city’s population growth. Today is a much different story – of the 2 million people that make up the Indy metro area, only about 15% attend an evangelical church. A recent study conducted by the IMB showed that at the current rate of church planting, it would take more than 1900 years to reach Indianapolis, which ranks dead last among major U.S. cities.

How can people get involved?

Right now, we’re in the process of forming a team to help plant this gospel work in Indianapolis (we’ve had several join us already). We are asking God for 30 people to partner with us in this journey.

• Families – maybe you find yourself asking how God can imprint the Great Commission into your marriage and children. Indianapolis is a great place for families – the economy is great, schools are top notch, and the city was recently ranked as one of the top 10 cities to live in the U.S.
• College seniors – the decision you make about what to do after graduation will set the course of your life for the next few years. Why not join us in Indianapolis and commit to intentionally leveraging your life for God’s mission?
• Young professionals – spend the next season of your life making God’s name great in a major U.S. city where the gospel is not known.
• Or maybe you have a connection to Indy and God has put this city on your heart.

Wherever you’re at, I want to challenge you to come on board with Soma Church – to move, get a job in the city, and be a missionary to this great city that desperately needs the gospel. To find out more, fill out the form below and someone from our team will follow up with you.

Or maybe you know people in Indy who need a church – we would love to connect with them as well.

Get Connected

Greensboro

It’s not too late to get in on the Mercy Hill church plant. In May/June, those that aren’t in Greensboro will begin moving out there. They’re looking for people who will go, plant their lives and get jobs  in order to live as missionaries to the city. For more details or to get connected, go to www.mercyhillgso.com.

Indianapolis

A couple of weeks ago we announced that our next church plant will be in the great city of Indianapolis. Indianapolis is the 12th largest city in the U.S. and is desperately in need of more Gospel-centered churches. Stay tuned later this week for more details on this plant, in the meantime, you can get connected HERE.

We are looking for additional church planting residents for this years. HERE is some information on what a residency is all about.

Advance Regional

Join us this Friday for Marks of a Gospel Movement at Vintage21 Church in Raleigh. J.D. Greear, Tyler Jones & Elliot Grudem will be teaching on what Gospel movement looks like in the life of a church, as well as the potential dangers of Gospel-centrality. For a preview, check out this post from J.D..

You can register for this FREE event HERE.

Our upcoming Advance Regional: Marks of a Gospel Movement, is only a couple weeks away. You don’t want to miss these FREE event with J.D. Greear and Tyler Jones. We’re also excited to add Elliot Grudem to the lineup.

As if that’s not enough incentive, everyone who registers online will be entered into a drawing to win 1 of 5 FREE tickets to ADVANCE13, March 19-21, 2013, in RDU. John Piper and David Platt will be joining us, along with several other pastors and leaders from around the country. Ticket winners will be announced at the regional.

REGISTER HERE. For more details, go HERE.

We launched our church planting residency 2.5 years ago. This year, we plan to have 4 residents. We’ve already identified 3, and we’re in the process of looking for a 4^th (see below for more details).

We invest a lot of time, energy, and resources into our residents. Why? Because we believe a church planting residency is one of the most effective ways to prepare planters. Here are 6 reasons I think anyone who feels called to plant should consider a church planting residency:

1. ASSESSMENT. Church planting is hard. In the last 5 years, there has been an explosion in the training and resources available to planters. Despite that, 1 out of 3 church plants still fail. The main reason? The lead planter – lack of spiritual preparation, inadequate training, and unrealistic expectations. As the maxim goes, “everything rises and falls on leadership.” Healthy plants require healthy leaders.
    
   A good church planting assessment is a must for planters, but a residency is even better. Why? A residency combines the benefits of a formal church planting assessment with the informal, ongoing assessment of a local church. We take all of our residents through a rigorous assessment process, but no matter how good a formal assessment is, it doesn’t compare to walking alongside a guy for 9 months of a residency and speaking into his life, his marriage, and his ministry. The best assessment tool we have for church planting is the local church. A residency leverages that resource for the health of the planter.
    
   
2. TRAINING. This one builds off the last. Growth and development happen best in community. Too many planters approach their training in isolation. The best place to learn how to plant healthy churches is in a healthy church. Many planters are coming out of unhealthy church contexts – it’s often one of the reasons they are driven to plant. Often they know what they don’t want, but they don’t know what they do – or they’ve never seen it. A residency offers planters the chance to be trained in the context of a healthy church that has planted churches. I’ve heard (and I believe it) that 9 mo in a residency puts a planter 3 years ahead in his thinking about planting.
    
   
3. COACHING. Residents don’t just benefit from the experience of a church planting church – they benefit from the experience of residents who have gone before them. Our planters love to pour into the guys coming behind them. They’ve been there; they’ve seen it; and they want others to learn from their successes and their failures.
    
   
4. RESOURCING. Church planting is expensive. Fundraising takes a lot of time and energy, even for those who have experience raising money. Our residents come out well-resourced. In fact, they aren’t sent out until they have their funding in place. We invest significantly in our planters, but they still have to raise a good amount of money. We teach our planters how to fundraise, we set them up with opportunities, and we give them time to travel to raise the resources they need.
    
   
5. TEAM-BUILDING. Money isn’t the only resource a planter needs. He also needs a healthy team. We help our residents discover the key people they need on their team, and we give them a hunting license on the church to recruit whoever they can get to go. Last year, we sent out over 80 people as part of one of our church plants.
    
   
6. RELATIONSHIP. Church planting is lonely. Many planters feel isolated. Churches assume what church plants most need is money, but most planters are looking for more (thought they still need the money). They’re looking for connection to a like-minded network of churches – camaraderie, brotherhood with a group of churches that share their DNA. Through the course of a residency we establish a deep relationship with our planters – when they suffer we suffer, and when they rejoice we rejoice. We pray for them, and we leverage our resources to serve them.

We’re looking for more residents for this year, for strategic cities all over the U.S.Interested in applying? You can get more info HERE. Contact us directly HERE.

It’s not just home to the Super Bowl…we’re excited to announce Indianapolis will be the site of our next church plant in 2012.

Indianapolis has always served as a hub city for the Midwest. It is the 12th largest city in the country, with a combined metro area population of more than 1.7 million people. Over the last decade, the greater Indianapolis metro area has experienced significant growth, economic prosperity, and cultural development. According to Forbes magazine, Indy’s population has increased at a rate of 50% higher than the national average, specifically in the demographic of young, educated families. Despite the population surge, the number of evangelicals remains small: only 10-15% of Indy residents claim evangelical status, and more than 1 million people are unaffiliated with a church of any kind.

Who’s leading it? When will it start? How can I get involved? Stay tuned for these and more details…

In the meantime, you can fill out the interest form below.

It is dangerous to hold up a person or ministry or church as a model…As soon as we do, the clay feet will become plain. Disillusionment often follow naive admiration. There is none without sin, and all our triumphs are mixed with imperfections. We do well to temper our esteem with the acknowledgement that there are hidden faults in any saint, and today’s victory is no assurance of tomorrow’s holiness. Nor can we even read the heart of today’s triumph. Neither the heart of others nor our own (1 Cor 4:4)…

God alone never changes, but the outpourings of his blessings ebb and flow in some ways far too mysterious for our minds to judge. The moment we think righteousness holds sway, some sinful plague is spreading in the midst. And just when we think the darkness is so thick that all is lost, someone grabs a rope that rings a bell and brings an army with torches. We will only maintain our stability and unshakeable confidence if we keep our focus on the unchanging God and take every rising and receding tide as a work of infinite wisdom for the accomplishment of His holy purposes.

J.D. Greear (The Summit Church) and Tyler Jones (Vintage21 Church) will be teaching on the Marks of a Gospel Movement in a local church.

How do you know when a church is centered on the gospel? What does a gospel movement look like in the life of a church? And what are the potential dangers of the gospel-centered movement?

We’ll seek to answer these questions and more.

This event is FREE. You can register and get more details HERE.

That weight and responsibility tends to draw guys that are comfortable operating with a degree of isolation. Sometimes this is the sign of an experienced leader who is comfortable in his own skin and has enough wisdom to know when he is hearing from God and when he just ate bad pizza the night before. Other times it is foolishness ambition that is more rooted in proving one’s own worthiness than a genuine calling. Often it’s a mix of the two.

Proverbs 18:1 offers some great advice for those exploring a call to plant, and really for any leader:

“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.”

That’s not just a verse about isolating yourself so you can pursue BAD things without others knowing about it. It’s also about isolating yourself to pursue GOOD things without godly input. Don’t pursue your calling outside of community. Make sure you have people in your life that have access to your deepest desires. And give them permission to speak into those desires, even if it’s not what you want to hear. If you find yourself making major decisions in isolation, that should serve as an indicator that things are out of balance. Remember, the greatest assessment tool we have for church planting is the local church.

Here’s an exercept from Tim Keller’s forward to the book:

One of the reasons I think this book is so important is that conservative evangelicals (particularly white ones) seem to have become more indifferent to the sin of racism during my lifetime. Why? One reason, of course, is the stubbornness of the sinful heart. We never want to hear about what is wrong with us. Another factor may be cultural. Many have made racism and prejudice virtually the only thing they will still call a “sin,” and they often lay the guilt for the sin of racism at the doorstep of those who are social conservatives. Because of that, many who identify themselves as conservatives simply don’t want to hear about racism anymore. They give lip service to it being a sin, but they associate any sustained denunciation of racism with the liberal or secular systems of thought. John’s book is a strong antidote to this misconception. His motivation is simply as a preacher of the Word to bring to light what God says in it regarding race and racism.

HERE is a link to where you can download a free PDF version of the book. Thanks to Desiring God for making this available.

I thought this sections was particularly insightful for church planters:

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is like to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams…Every human wish dream that is injected into Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself…

God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered common life with them…[So] we thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather than God for what He does give us daily…

When the morning mist of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Planters are visionaries. They have to be. Planters have to look at a lost community and envision a church that could reach them. The problem is when your vision for your community trumps the community that the Gospel actually creates.

Don’t let your dreams ruin your community. Don’t let the church you’ve planted in your head spoil what God actually gives you.

Thanks to @spenceshelton for turning me on to this book.