I visited one of our Launch Network Churches recently, River Church in Charleston SC.  I’ve been there before but as always Lead Pastor Todd Magouryk continues to blow me away with his passion for the City.  After the service I grabbed a few minutes with Todd to ask him about his vision. After watching the video make sure you check out their website www.lovegave.com and see what they’re up to next, better yet, join in with them for the cause.

Has today’s economy put a squeeze on your church budget?  Do you find yourself reducing costs, cutting staff or stressed over making the monthly budget?  Are you questioning how you’re going to get more money for ministry?  Well, LAUNCH wants to help you find answers.  On Monday December 6 we will be hosting our first Whiteboard session entitled, More Money for Ministry, featuring Casey Graham of The Change Group.  During this two hour highly interactive learning experience you will have the opportunity to share best practices, hear stories of financial victories and failures, discover 5 Key financial drivers, walk out with an action plan and best of all be coached by Financial expert Casey Graham.

Casey worked for 10 years in the trenches of local church ministry.  He most recently served at Mountain Lake Church as the Chief Financial Officer.  He is the author of Funded and Free and works with hundreds of churches across the United States helping them establish healthy financial systems.  Learn more about Casey’s ministry by visiting his blog at www.beancreator.com

The Whiteboard session, which is being held at West Ridge Church, in Dallas GA, will be followed by a FREE lunch where you will have the opportunity to hear about a new model for inspiring, equipping and resourcing next generation church planters.

I hope you can join us, sign up today at www.launchstrong.com

I’m flying to North Carolina today to prepare for a vision meeting for all those in NC who are interested in church planting and hearing more about what we’re doing with a brand new organization called LAUNCH.  We have folks coming from all over the state to join us at Summit Church our gracious host site.  During the time together we will…

• Learn about the incredible need for new churches
• Hear the story of how West Ridge Church has planted nearly 50 churches in the last six years.
• Discover a new innovative model for equipping church planters
• Get an understanding of how LAUNCH is more than a church plant network, it’s a Leadership Development Network
• Discuss best practices in church planting
• Connect with some other great people from NC who have the same passion for Kingdom growth
• Eat a really good FREE lunch

The Vision Meeting isn’t until Wednesday, Nov 3 from 11:00-1:00, so it’s not too late to join us.  If your interested drop me an email at macl@launchchurches.com.  If you can’t make it to NC we have other vision meetings being scheduled for other major cities, let me know if you’d like to be on our mailing list.

Church Planting and Leadership Development are two of my favorite subjects.  And now in my new role at the Launch Network I get to bring those two passions together!  I’m excited to announce that we’re gearing up for Fall sessions at The West Ridge School of Church Planting and I want to warn you, we’re breaking the mold of traditional church planter training.

We believe leadership development should be a highly relational process.  So through this six month training experience you will build relationships with other pre-launch planters, receive coaching from seasoned ministry experts and be mentored by experienced church planters who have proven success.  These highly  interactive sessions will challenge your thinking, strengthen your leadership confidence and help you refine an effective strategy for a successful launch.  We want to walk with you, pray with you, challenge you and help you refine the work that God is doing in your life.

Over these six months you will have the opportunity to hear from and interact with expert practitioners like:

• Brain Bloye, founding pastor of West Ridge Church.  Under Brian’s leadership West Ridge has grown to more than 4200 attenders in 13 years and has planted nearly 50 churches in the past 6 years.
• Tony Morgan, strategist, coach, writer, speaker and consultant who equips leaders and churches to impact their communities for Christ.  Tony has written several books including Simply Strategic Growth.
• Jim Akins, Church Planting guru, veteran church planter, coach and Director of West Ridge School of Church Planting.
• I will also be attending each session to provide on site coaching and teach sessions on How to Build a Leadership Development Culture and Designing Your Small Group System.

And you have the opportunity to hear from successful church planters like JR Lee, Mike Lukaszwski and others who are still in the trenches of the early years of planting. Sessions will be held one Saturday a month for six months.  Planters are encouraged to bring their wives and as many of their launch team members as possible.  For more information please drop me an email at macl@launchchurches.com or maclakeonline@gmail.com

Through a God inspired moment in January (too long of a story to write about) Cindy and I sensed that God was up to something new in our lives.  We had no clue what it was but knew God was calling us to put ourselves in a fresh posture full surrender. 

Over the next few months God began to impress on my heart the following lesson:  Moving into the purpose for which God has designed me will include an ever increasing challenge that will be larger than what I am comfortable with and therefore will keep me always dependent upon Him.  So I knew God was getting ready to stretch me.

Back in February I read Tony Morgan’s post advertising the position of Chief Launch Officer for a new Church Planting Network that Brian Bloye at  Westridge  and a few other churches would be starting.  It sounded fascinating but I was very happy at Seacoast and wasn’t looking for a change, so I didn’t even consider applying.

Through a series of circumstances over the next couple of months it became evident that God may be leading me that direction.  So I sat down with Pastor Greg, told him what God had been doing and asked his blessing to investigate this opportunity. After he and Brian Bloye spoke on the phone I then went to Atlanta to meet with Brian and Tony to discuss this possibility.  It became evident in my heart that this was the new calling God had for my life. So I am very excited to announce that on July 19th I’ll be joining West Ridge Church in this effort to start the Launch Network, a church planting network of like-minded churches that understand the power of working together to accomplish a God sized vision.

So are you ready to be a part of a movement?  We want to hear from you. If you’re a church planter who is looking for a highly relational network of leaders you can learn and grow with, we want to hear your story.   If you’re a church that’s passionate about  planting healthy churches and investing in new movements of God, let’s talk. Or if you’re a business leader who is looking to invest in changing lives by planting churches overseas and expanding God’s Kingdom, I’d love to meet you.   To learn more about the Launch Network please fill out this brief form and we’ll get in touch with you.  Also you can check out Tony’s recent post that tells a little bit about West Ridge’s influence in church planting and other churches that will be a part of The Launch Network.

Seacoast is not an easy place to leave.  It’s a fresh, innovative, life-giving environment that allows you to operate in your areas of God given strengths and passion as a leader.  Pastor Greg is a humble, empowering leader who has supported me, challenged me, encouraged me and now, not surprisingly, graciously commissioning me to this new calling.  Over the next few days I will be posting some Leadership Lessons I’ve learned working at Seacoast Church.

Cindy and I will be making our move to Atlanta sometime during the week of July 12-16.  We would appreciate your prayers as we have a house to sell here in Charleston. 

(A really cool side note: Brian planted West Ridge Church on September 7, 1997, the same exact day I planted Carolina Forest Community Church in Myrtle Beach, SC.)

The largest gathering of Church Planters on the Planet…you won’t want to miss this. 

My friend Sebastiaan Van Wessem came for a visit to Seacoast recently to learn more about multi-site ministry.  Sebastiaan is the lead pastor of Thousand Hills International Church in Hilversum, Netherlands.  This young pastor is one of the most teachable and hungry leaders I’ve ever meet, and God is using him to reach the lost in a very difficult territory.  Sebastiaan was one of the earliest members of our Leading Multisite Social Networking Community; when he heard about Seacoast mentor based approach to leadership development he implemented it right away; at a recent conference I watched as he hardly made it to sessions because he was so busy networking and learning from anyone he could talk to.  He  exemplifies the truth- when a leader remains teachable, he remains usable.  In this video interview Sebastiaan shares about Thousand Hills decision to go multi-site and what he’s learning along his multi-site journey. 

I had the opportunity recently to meet with Steve Pike, the Director of The Church Multiplication Network.  CMN, a Church Planting network of the Assemblies of God collaborates with church multipliers to effectively equip, strategically fund and network new faith communities. I asked Steve, who has a deep passion for Church Planting, to share what he feels are the top success indicators of a church planter.  Check out what he has to say in this short video interview.  You can follow Steve on Twitter @StevenPike.

I had the chance to sit down recently with Pastor Jeff Leake from Allison Park Church near the Pittsburg area.  Jeff has a huge heart for leadership development and church planting.  In this video he shares some great insights about helping transfer values in the leadership development process.  Scroll down below the video to see my takeaways.

My Takeaways

• Values are more caught than taught
• Leadership development is the key  to transfering values
• Leaders have to be a part of a culture for a signficant time in order to really catch the values of an organization
• We must have intentional conversations with those we are developing about our DNA and values
• It’s not until a potential leader gets out on his own that his values are really tested
• We have to allow people to learn through failure
• It is essential that we keep an ongoing relationship of influence with those we have developed, coaching, encouraging and resourcing them.