Tom Nebel and Ben Ingebretson join us for our next Equipping for Multiplication podcast. In this session based on their book of the same name, the two veteran leaders look at other churches that have tried to unsuccessfully parent a new congregation to mine valuable lessons every sending church can learn from.
Drawing from their experience of working with hundreds of leaders, Nebel and Ingebretson offer invaluable insights for avoiding a costly, demoralizing and painful disaster. In this podcast excerpt, Nebel shares what he has discovered as the key to successful planting and stewarding (in addition to assessment and coaching).
“As a sending church, we have to evaluate the four strong and four moderate environmental risk factors that starts with these questions: How will your new plant be funded? Is there a cultural fit between the planter and location? How many ministry partners do you have? How many pre-existing contacts do you have?
“I can take a very good church planting couple and no matter how awesome they are, I can put them in a situation where the risks are insurmountable and their church will fail. If you’re wise about parenting a church, you’ll look at these environmental risk factors and ask, “Are the risk factors manageable?” We like risks; we just don’t like dumb. In each of these areas, planters score various points based on their responses. For example, if there’s a strong cultural fit, they get two points. The total point ranges tell us if this is a high-risk, moderate risk or low-risk planting situation. As an issue of stewardship, this is a landmine you can avoid, by calibrating the environmental risks.”
As a speaker, author, coach and provocateur, Tom Nebel works with leaders, churches and organizations to help them develop leadership. He is the former national director of church planting for Converge Worldwide and is the author of multiple books, including his most recent work Leading Church Planting: Locally, Regionally, Nationally (with Steve Pike) and Parent Church Landmines (with Ben Ingebretson).
Ben Ingebretson is a leadership consultant working with organizations, churches and denominations, a certified cultural intelligence assessor and trainer with the Cultural Intelligence Center, and the author of several best practice books, including Multiplication Moves: A Field Guide for Churches Parenting Churches and Parenting Landmines.
