| Churches learn secrets of Building New Faith Communities By JOHN W. COLEMAN JR.UMCONNECTION staff Clergy and laity from 12 Baltimore-Washington Conference churches learned some surprising insights about what it takes to plant new churches in the manner of the Apostle Paul during a full-day seminar, May 3. The Rev.  Jim Griffith, a consultant for new-church-start pastors, offered several insights during the seminar at Good Shepherd UMC in Silver Spring. For churches wanting to spawn new faith communities, he said, its a matter of intentionally multiplying themselves. He likened it to the church in ancient Antioch, rather than hoarding members and resources to accumulate size. For pastors, its the capacity to be apostolic, rather than merely pastoral, and the wisdom to know the difference. The conference Board of Congregational Life sponsored the event, titled Building New Faith Communities. Growing your congregation from 150 t o 500 is very hard work; but Im going to show you how you can turn 150 people into 10,000, Griffith exhorted. Rather than building bigger sanctuaries, create empty seats by giving people away to help start new churches, and then refill your empty seats. He called giving people and resources away a counterintuitive message for us, especially for baby boomers who are obsessed with church size as success; but its at the heart of the Gospel,he said. Griffith cautioned against the empire mindset that hoards members and often leads to depletion instead of growth. From 1990-2000, we lost more than 100,000 churches in the United States, he reported. Hoarding is killing us. Instead Griffith recommended a kingdom mentality that expands a church into other areas, leads to a healthy turnover of its leadership, and breeds a multiplication gene in its DNA that will continue to produce new churches. An Antioch church gives away the best of its resources and the purpose is to expand the kingdom of God, he explained. Griffith helped start the 18,000-member Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, one of the fastest growing churches in the nation, and other churches in Florida, North Carolina and Denver. He oversees a network of specialists that assists thousands of pastors and hundreds of new churches through leadership assessment, coaching and training in its boot camps. The right aptitude and leadership style is key to successfully planting new churches, Griffith said. You have to be able to help your members become apostolic and missional. Pastoral leaders are best at serving sheep and saints, those already convinced of their faith, Griffith said. They are good at nurturing, equipping and producing disciples, and prefer to have order and stability in their ministry. Apostolic leaders, he explained, are best at serving lost sheep and sinners, the not-yet-convinced. Their work involves seeking, witnessing, persuading, sowing seeds and producing converts. They can handle chaos and prefer to itinerate. Griffith discussed types and strategies of new church starts and outlined a basic process. Necessary steps included defining the context of the mission field, gathering support from church and conference leaders, identifying the right persons to lead the effort by assessing their gifts and skills, and incubating the new pastor in the mission field through strategic involvement and interaction in the life of the community. | 
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