God truly blessed SendRDU in 2011. Here are just a few ways:

We planted 3 new churches in the U.S….

• In Denver, CO (Summit Denver); Murfreesboro, TN (City Church); and here in Raleigh (Imago Dei).
• One has launched and two are in the pre-launch phases, but already over 300 people are gathering weekly to worship at these churches that didn’t exist in 2010. Check out the blog later this week for an update.
• Plans are underway for our next plants in Greensboro, NC (Mercy Hill Church), and Baltimore, M.

We planted 3 new church planting teams overseas in North Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. These teams are serving in some of the most unreached and under-resourced areas in the world.

Altogether, we sent out over 80 people as a part of these church planting teams to plant new churches in strategic cities around the world.

I can’t wait to see what God does in 2012. We are praying that God would use us to plant at least 4 new churches in the U.S. in 2012, establish the same number if not more new church planting teams overseas, and send over 100 people to plant the gospel in new places.

Join us. Here are a few ways you can partner with us to see this vision accomplished:

Pray
Join us in praying that God would raise up more men and women with a calling to plant their lives in another city in order to plant God’s church. Pray specifically that God would use us to raise up qualified and equipped lead pastors and team leaders. Pray for the resources to plant these churches. Pray for our existing plants that they would reach people far from God and raise up mature disciples and new leaders to reach the lost. We believe this is just the beginning, for “he is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20).

Partner
Maybe your church wants to become a church planting church. Partnering with a church plant is a great way to get started. Before most churches begin planting churches of their own, mostof them get started by partnering with a plant that isalready in the works. This kind of partnership is a great way to get your church planting vision off the ground. Contact Us if you’re interested in this kind of partnership.

Invest
…in what God is doing. 100% of what you give will go directly to support one of our church plants. 2011 is over but it’s never to early to start giving in 2012. Find out how here.

Go.
Is God calling you to be a lead a church plant or be part of a team? We’d love to be a part of seeing that happen. Check out our Training for opportunities to get equipped to go. Or contact us here.

The holidays are a time when we get to see friends and family that we don’t normally get to see. For most of us, that means spending time with some of those who are closest to us who are not Christians.  It’s a great opportunity to share the gospel, but for many of us, talking to close friends or family about Jesus is the most difficult conversation we can have.

Randy Newman has recently come out with a book called Bringing the Gospel Home. Recommending books you haven’t read is generally, well, not recommended, but I got so much out of Randy Newman’s previous book Questioning Evangelism, and I found the video below so helpful, that I’d encourage you to check it out. And right now it’s FREE, so it’s hard to go wrong there. You can download a free PDF or eBook version of the book here.

For a few highlights, check out this video. In it, Newman gives some really practical advice to help you share the gospel with your friends and family:

1. Saturate yourself in the gospel. One of the reasons that family members sometimes dismiss our faith is because they’re the ones who are closest to us – they see our highs and our lows, so they’re the most likely to notice any shallowness or even phoniness on our part. The more we grow in the gospel, not only will our lives change, but the more humble and genuine we will be about our strengths and our weaknesses.
2. Find common ground instead of always focusing on differences. Newman says, “How many times do we try to do evangelism by first convincing people how miserable they are? Isn’t there something missing in your life? Aren’t you empty? Aren’t you longing? And I think there are a lot of our friends and family who are just not as empty as we’d like them to be, so that they would be hungering. But if they could say, look at how good life is, look at all we have, where does that come from?” Share how good life is because God is creator.
3. Brainstorm 12 things you could say. Most of us focus on trying to come up with that one right thing to say, and it paralyzes us. Instead, come up with several, and throw out the bad ones.
4. Deepen your conversation about non-spiritual things. Learn how to talk about non-spiritual things in a way that leadsto the spiritual. Don’t open the conversation with the Romans Road.
5. Don’t wait until it’s comfortable. “Comfortable evangelism is an oxymoron, at least for most people…Most people do not have the gift of evangelism.”
6. Remember it takes time. Instant results are rare. Be willing to take one step at a time, working incrementally.
7. Witnessing to family members takes love. Love people genuinely. Remember they are people, not projects.
8. Don’t be surprised if it’s difficult. We usually think that if we know the right thing to say, it will be easy, but often it’s not. Witnessing to your family takes faith. Continually go back to the gospel to remind yourself of the hope we all have in Christ, and the power of the gospel to save.

We’re a part of a coalition of churches called Advance the Church. The vision of Advance is to help plant new churches and revitalize existing churches in the urban south and beyond.

On February 24, we’re sponsoring our next Regional in Raleigh, NC. This will be a FREE event, open to all pastors, planters, leaders, and students (or in other words, everyone) who wants to attend.

I’m especially excited about the topic of this regional. So much has been said about gospel-centrality in the last few years. Much of this conversation has centered on recovering a correct understanding of the gospel – and rightly so – but sometimes that’s where the conversation ends. What is missing are the implications that the Gospel has for how we DO ministry – not just what we BELIEVE, but the content, character and strategy of everything we DO – our theology AND our methodology.

What does a gospel-centered church actually look like? What are the marks? How do we know if a church is centered on the gospel? Those are a few of the questions we’ll seek to address.

You can get more details here. REGISTER HERE.

A couple of weeks ago, our latest church plant hosted a vision day to share their desire to plant a church in Greensboro, NC. Over 75 people came out. 25 people are already committed to uprooting their lives to plant God’s church in that city.

There are a lot of good reasons to join a church plant. There are also a few bad ones. Here are ten reasons you should join a church plant, and ten you shouldn’t, courtesy of Justin Buzzard, a church planter out in San Jose. I’ve paraphrased a few, and added some of my own comments (the original posts are here and here).

10 Reasons TO Join a Church Plant

1. You want to see Jesus do something new.
2. You dream of being part of something bigger than yourself.
3. You want to enter a battle for the kingdom of Christ.
4. You feel a constant itch to see people who don’t know Jesus come to know Jesus.
5. You want to give your time, money, energy, and talents to starting something new and make sacrifices to see a mission to succeed.
6. You fully support the vision, mission, doctrine, and leadership of a church plant.
7. You want your faith to grow and you want God to fundamentally meddle with and change your life.
8. You want to love a particular city.
9. You want to watch God move in ways you could never ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).
10. You’re not afraid to bank your life on God’s promise in Matthew 16:18, “I [Jesus] will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.

10 Reasons NOT TO

1. You’re looking for the next cool thing in town. The goal of our church plants is to reach the lost, not steal sheep.
2. You don’t like your current church. You’ll find reasons not to like this church.
3. You have a bad track record at churches of being unteachable and causing problems. You’ll repeat the pattern here.
4. You’re looking for a nice show. We’re looking for people who want to live on mission.
5. You want religion. We preach the gospel.
6. You have an agenda. Church plants have their our own vision. We’re looking for people who want to share that vision, not supersede it.
7. You’re a wolf. You won’t last long.
8. You think this will be a nice little church that stays the same size, where everybody knows your name and you have all the pastors’ cell numbers on speed dial. By God’s grace, we want to grow.
9. You think this will be easy and smooth. This will be hard and difficult; this will be a fight, a battle, and a challenging mission.
10. You want to hold onto your comfortable life. You must lose your life.

If I had to sum these up in one sentence, I would say this: Bad team members see church plants as an opportunity to get something other than the gospel. Good team members see church plants as an opportunity to give something for the gospel.

Last year we launched something we call Preaching Cohorts to develop current and future preachers. We have a goal of planting 1000 churches in the next 40 years, which means we need to raise up hundreds of men who are equipped and qualified to preach and teach God’s word.

Qualified doesn’t mean you have to be the next (insert your favorite mega-church pastor) to plant a church. But it does mean there is a threshold of ability which is appropriate for the scope of the ministry God has called you to. For some, reaching that threshold comes more naturally. For other, it takes more work. Preaching is both a gift you have and a skill you develop. And the latter is true regardless of your level of the former.

There are 3 BASIC WAYS you can develop in preaching (these aren’t revolutionary, but they’re worth repeating):

1) Read and listen to sermons of great preachers

I’ve found even the most experienced and gifted preachers do this. When they get tired of listening to guys who are alive, they dig up dead ones. Two things I’ve learned: Listen to several different preachers, not just one or two. I learned this from Tim Keller: “When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone… two thinkers, you become confused… ten thinkers, you’ll begin developing your own voice… two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise.” Listen to people outside your tribe. Don’t just listen to the guys you like. If you like Mark Driscoll, listen to Andy Stanley. Different tribes have different emphases in preaching. If you can’t learn from people outside your tribe, you’re limiting your growth.

2) Read books and articles on preaching

Here are the top resources we recommend in our preaching cohorts, more or less in this order:

1. Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching
   (THE bible on preaching for the last 25 years)
2. Bryan Chappell, Christ-Centered Preaching
   (another basic text w/ a focus on Christ-centered, expository preaching)
3. D. Martin Lloyd Jones, Preaching and Preachers
   (unsurpassed in addressing the life of a preacher)
4. Andy Stanley, Communicating for a Change
   (especially his “Me–We–God–You–Us” approach)
5. Tim Keller, Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World
   (Rumor is Keller has a book on preaching coming out as early as next year. In the meantime, this is an entire class that he taught at RTS. It’s a lot to listen to, but worth every minute.)

3) Preach

For all the listening to sermons and reading books, there is no substitute for actual preaching. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that you don’t become really good at something until you’ve done it for at least 10,000 hours. I find that both challenging and encouraging. Aspiring preachers should take every opportunity to preach, even if it doesn’t seem worth it. I remember a time I got a preaching gig at a small church. There were maybe 30 people in the room, half of them over 100. I’ll never forget when one of the little old ladies came up to me afterwards. She said, “Great sermon, pastor.” When I thanked her, she proceeded to tell me she couldn’t hear me because the battery in her hearing aid was dead.

Which leads to an important caveat: there is no substitute for good feedback. Preaching one sermon with good feedback can be more productive than preaching dozens without it. A lot of aspiring preachers run to an empty pulpit where they’ll get to preach, when they’d be better off running to a full one where they’ll get to learn. Find a church whose teaching you respect that has a vision for developing preachers.