Cultivating Gospel Mission :: PLNTD + New England Conference

PLNTD announced today its second regional conference of the year – Cultivating Gospel Mission, scheduled to take place on September 20-22, 2012 in Portland, Maine. Main session speakers will be Scotty Smith and Caesar Kalinowski, with breakout sessions with Jared Wilson. This week only, you can register for 50% off regular ticket price for just $29 (discount ends Friday night). If you live in the New England or Canada area, be sure to check this training event out.

Here’s a blurb from the conference website:

We live in a day where it is commonplace to hear the words “gospel-centered” and “missionally-driven”. The danger, however, is to use those phrases in ways that diminish their meaning to that of a cliché. At the 2012 New England Training Event, PLNTD partners with the Gospel Alliance to focus on why those phrases are grounded in God and His purposes for the church.

Every church planter and pastor should lead their people to live gospel-centered lives on mission as those who have been sent by God. What does that kind of life look like? How does articulate this kind of vision to people in their community? These are the kinds of questions we hope to address as we gather together on September 20-22.

This training event is open to anyone who would like to be instructed and encouraged to cultivate gospel mission, including pastors, church planters, aspiring ministry leaders, leadership teams, and the like.

Unlike the typical conference format, the goal of this training event is interaction, integration and application of teaching and instruction. Our desire is that you leave equipped with practical instruction, edified through meaningful fellowship, and encouraged by Christ-centered passion for greater kingdom advance.

Join us as we press into the call to be oriented around the mission of church and saturated in the message of the gospel!

New PLNTD Audio: Jared Wilson

In the beginning of April, PLNTD held its first regional training event focused on “Cultivating Gospel Community” in sunny Southwest Florida. We were privileged to have Steve Timmis and Jared Wilson share God’s Word with us during the weekend. These brothers served us incredibly well by speaking plainly about the power of the gospel while graciously exhorting us to faithful perseverance in building gospel community.

Jared opened and closed the training event with exposition from Isaiah 6, and he also shared in a breakout session about creating a gospel culture using his experience at Middletown Springs Community Church. I commend these MP3s for you to download and be encouraged.

Jared Wilson via PLNTD

1.  Gospel Exultation (Isaiah 6:1-8)
2.  Gospel Expansion (Isaiah 6:9-13)
3.  Creating a Gospel Culture (breakout)

Early Bird Registration for PLNTD South Florida Conference

» Get all the info on PLNTD Conference website
» Register Now for just $39 (ends 2/14)

PLNTD December e-Newsletter

Just as a heads up, the PLNTD December e-Newsletter is out. You can subscribe to the PLNTD newsletter on the PLNTD website.  If you know someone who may be interested in what we’re doing, spread the word by liking it on Facebook or plugging it on Twitter or Google+.

This afternoon, I leave for Nashville, TN where I will be spending the weekend with the great guys leading The Journey Church.  I will spending all day Saturday with their elders and preaching Sunday in their services at Mt. Juliet, Lebanon, and Hartsville.  I appreciate your prayers as I travel and seek to be useful for the encouragement and edification of the folks on mission at The Journey.

PLNTD 2.0

As I shared last month, I have transitioned to working full-time with PLNTD.  This means, among other things, that you will be hearing a lot more about the work we are doing as a church planting network here on my blog.  For the past month, I have been working with our team to refresh everything we are doing, and today it goes live.  I’m calling it PLNTD 2.0.

Just so that you would know, we are currently in the middle of a two-year, multi-phase launch of the network. PLNTD 1.0 focused primarily on resourcing and relational community of the network build.  While continuing to strengthen these components, we are working to add two additional components to the build out, namely church-based residency centers and regional networks.  I’m encouraged where we are right now and look forward to completing the launch of the network and moving forward with the vision to create an environment through which church planters and reproducing churches can flourish in the Great Commission.

If you or your church is looking for a Great Commission cause to support, I encourage you to consider what we are doing and support our work.

Be sure to check out the network refresh and connect with us at the following places online:

PLNTD Website | Cobblestone | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

More to come.

Roots Reading Initiative (New from PLNTD)

I’m excited to share with you a new project from PLNTD called the Roots Reading Initiative. Over the past several months, we have been working on the creation of a whole new approach to leadership and networking in church planting through what we are calling the PLNTD ecosystem. We endeavor to create an environment through which church planters and churches flourish in the Great Commission.

The first new project, the Roots Reading Initiative, focuses on providing church planters targeted self-feeding opportunities through an informal structure and accountability. The goal of this initiative is for church planters to “deepen their roots” in their understanding of God, the church, gospel, mission, and the world. In doing so, we believe the RRI will be an effective way of keeping church planters “grounded” and growing as leaders, missionaries, and churchmen.

RRI will consist of bi-monthly installments of thematically-driven self-feeding. By embarking on this challenge with other church leaders, RRI will offer encouragement and accountability that we so often need to press on in growing ourselves in the midst of the daily grind. Each bi-monthly installment will have two books to read–one book for each month, along with discussion questions provided by those in the network.

The first installment of the RRI begins November 1, and the theme is “the mission of the church”.  Here’s the details for the first installment:

RRI Vol. 1 | Nov-Dec 2011 |
The Mission of the Church

November: The Mission of the Church by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert
Nov 6-12             [pages 1-66]
Nov 13-19           [pages 67-140]
Nov 20-26          [pages 141-222]
Nov 27-Dec 3    [pages 223-66]

December: Everyday Church by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester
Dec 4-10            [pages 1-40]
Dec 11-17           [pages 41-96]
Dec 18-24          [pages 97-152]
Dec 25-31          [pages 153-88]

For those who would like to help us get the word out on Twitter, the hashtag is #RRI.

More information will be made available in the Training Community of PLNTD, including when the discussions will take place and additional artwork that you can download for your own use.

» To get in on the Roots Reading Initiative (and the discussions and book study guides), you will need to join PLNTD on Cobblestone.  You can do here.  I hope this new resource will be helpful for church planters, pastors, and other ministry leaders seeking to grow in their leadership and stewardship of their calling.

And now for a personal update

2011 has been one of the most eventful years of my life.

As someone who likes to plan and prepare things, I thought I had a good beat on where the Lord was leading me at the beginning of the year.  And yet I can say that the majority of my days this year have been overturned by God’s sovereignty in ways that continually reminded me that He is in control of my life, not me.  I feel like I have been living in James 4:13-16 and Proverbs 16:1-9 for the past eight months.  Let me explain.

In December of last year, I met with my fellow elders for our elders retreat during which time I presented them the need for me to dedicate more time to developing the church planting network I started, called PLNTD.  After much discussion and prayer, my fellow elders affirmed that call and encouraged me in the transition to move full-time into directing the network as it continues to be developed and launched.  Also during this time, the door for ministry in Haiti was wide open, and I was dedicating a significant amount of time organizing mission work, creating systems to fund orphans, and forging partnerships for theological education of Haitian pastors.  At the beginning of the year, it was clear that God was abundantly blessing the work locally and elsewhere.