Simple Church - Year Two

Hi All,

We have been working on a re-tool of our church philosophy of ministry for the last two years. It's amazing how long this has taken, but it has incorporated quite a lot of changes crammed into just 20 months.

Here's what's been happening:
--November 2006 - We read "Simple Church" by Thom Rainer, and are absolutely captivated by the idea of a clear, simple ministry plan for making effective disciples of Jesus Christ.
--Dec '06 - Jan '07 -- We ask all the Ministry Staff to read the book as well.
--Feb '07 - May '07 -- We spend time during our Strategic Staff meetings discussing the implications of the book for our philosophy of ministry.
--June 2007 -- First sermon is delivered to the congregation to introduce the simple church idea.
--Summer 2007 -- We plan out a Fall series which will detail the Simple Church concept. We also begin designing and writing our first set of discipleship courses which will match the Simple Church vision.
--Fall 2007 -- Six-week series presented to the congregation explaining Simple Church concepts as related to our church. Link up our membership class and the first of our discipleship courses together.
--Fall 2007, Winter & Spring 2008 - We teach courses one through four of our discipleship curriculum.
--Summer 2008 -- We start work on stage three of our three-part discipleship plan
--Fall 2008 -- we have all three discipleship stages in place: Main Street, Community Circle, Ministry Way.
--Fall 2008 -- we host our first 'ministry community' meeting, for everyone serving in ministry, called "REFUEL"

What's next? We pretty much have all the "big rocks" in place now. Now we are clarifying our "hedge hog" concept (ala Jim Collins, 'Good to Great'). When we have that totally nailed down, we will incorporate that into the next round of our improvements phase this year. This is what Jim Collins calls "spinning the fly-wheel". We will just get really good at what we are doing in terms of our three-stage discipleship plan, and keep adding and adjusting as God leads.

That's enough for now.
Stay with us as I update you on our church's progress in developing a simple, clear, intentional discipleship process.

God bless,
Dr. Bill