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3 Principles for Meaningful Men’s Ministry
Barnabas Piper
Men’s ministry, especially when starting out in a church plant, needs a clear trajectory and culture. It needs to have an objective: what is this ministry for? If the objective is to draw men nearer to Jesus and closer to one another (as...
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Church Branding Isn’t Church Planting
Mason Ballard
When we started church planting, we were taught to differentiate ourselves from other churches. Every church has the Great Commandment and the Great Commission—why does your church need to exist? We were taught to craft a vision statement to highlight the uniqueness of the church we were planting. I’m going...
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Mid-Life Planting: Staying Faithful When the Honeymoon Is Over
Dan Steel
Over the last decade, I’ve wrestled a few times with what it means to serve faithfully in our midlife. I turn fifty (fifty!?) next year, and I’ve been in paid ministry for over twenty years—long enough to have watched people...
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7 Organizational Leadership Questions for Church Planters
Jon Kelly
As a church grows numerically, more organizational leadership skills are required. Most church planters think like missionaries and love the flock as faithful pastors. But beyond preaching and shepherding, there is a need for the planter to think more broadly, strategically, and organizationally. In the early...
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The Gospel vs. Legalism in Men’s Ministry
Barnabas Piper
Every good pastor and church planter wants to see men grow–grow in their faith, grow in character, grow in discipline, grow in maturity. We want to see them grow as husbands, or in readiness to be husbands. We want to...
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How to Design a Sunday Morning Service
Mason Ballard
When we started planting our church, I intuitively knew what the worship service would look like. We’ll sing, we’ll preach, and we’ll pray. What else would we do? We just had to figure out how many songs, what type of songs, when to do an offering, and how to transition from one thing to...
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Planter, Get Low Before the Lord
Noah Oldham
There are several things in life that have a way of exposing what is really in you. Church planting might be at the top of that list. Even if you’re really good at masking the truth, striking out on the path to plant a...
