M2C Mission Partners Retreat, Tapatio Springs Resort, Boerne - May 6-8

            "From the Planting Church's Perspective"

Pastor - You and at least one of your members are invited to participate at no cost!  Each congregation is receiving a $400 scholarship for two people (the Senior Pastor and one other leader of his choosing -- not the pastor's wife, although she may participate as an additional congregation member) to attend the retreat at no cost.  Additional people from congregations may attend at each congregation's expense. 

200 new congregations in Texas in the next 10 years!  Can it be done? Thirty-seven have been started since 2004. The Gospel is being spread!  Could your church be a part of that effort?  With this letter we are inviting you to join with 93 invited congregations at our second M2C Partners Retreat.  We invite you to this encouraging and inspirational learning experience.  Your congregation has been identified as a one with the capacity to partner with the Texas District to start one or more new missions in the next 10 years.  As such we encourage you to register.  M2C is shorthand for Mission 200 and we believe your congregation would benefit greatly by taking a prayerful and careful look at how leaders and members might be part of this movement.

This year's retreat will focus on what needs to happen in the life of "planting" congregations as they consider planting or prepare to plant.  Key note speaker is Rev. Phil Stevenson, author of The Ripple Church, who now serves as the General Director of Evangelism and Church Growth for The Wesleyan Church.  To say Phil is passionate about church multiplication would be an understatement! Two of his congregations parented seven new congregations! The Ripple Church is the finest book we have found to date to help a church move from thinking about planting to actually planting a church. 

At this retreat, you will also hear about four different models of missions from church planters, gain inspiration and information that will help your congregation make God-pleasing and Spirit-led plans, and network with other pastors and leaders who are considering or already involved in planting new missions.  We will also spend time in prayer for these efforts, knowing that Satan would like nothing better than to thwart the starting of new churches.  Finally, you will hear details about how the Board of Mission Administration of the Texas District partners financially with planting congregations to plant new churches.

Please make as many copies of this letter as necessary to share with the professional and lay leadership team at your congregation.
 

In order for a congregation to participate, the pastor and at least one lay person (not the pastor's wife) need to register.  Thanks to a generous grant, we will cover all retreat expenses for the first two people on your team ($400).  We encourage you to register additional lay or staff team members at $200 per person.  To register for the retreat, please complete the registration form found by clicking here.
 

You must be ready for your entire team to register at one time when you go to the web site.  Accommodations will be two to a room, so also be ready to indicate roommate choices.  You'll also find a hyperlink on the Texas District website (www.txdistlcms.org) that will take you to the SPORG registration site.  Participation in the retreat indicates that your congregation is willing to explore and pray over the possibilities of partnering in this exciting faith venture.  Please pray about your participation!

Water's Edge Family Church, Frisco-Texas (LCMS) - Something they've done - Rev. Patrick Miller shares a really great thought!

Since we are an Ablaze! outreach-focused church in a developing suburban community, we knew it was imperative to make full use of any and all means of modern communication.  So one of the first things we did was to develop an interactive website, one that could offer daily audio and video devotions (podcasts and vodcasts are the official terms), as well as weekly streaming media sermons.  Naturally, these resources became an instant hit with our Water's Edge family, and yet their full effect went well beyond anything we had ever imagined.  Below you can check out what these resources have accomplished in our midst...and may we all together praise God for the power of modern technology!

*The online devotions and streaming media sermons became an instant form of evangelism, as our own engaged disciples would say to their un-churched friends, "you've got to experience what's going on in my church!"  Then their friends could instantly experience our congregation from the safety of their own home computer.  It's important to remember just how terrifying it is for an un-churched person to set foot in any "churchy" environment, so our website resources allow them to test the waters of faith from a completely safe vantage point.

*People started coming through our doors for weekend worship and saying things like, "I've been following online for about 3 months now, and finally I got up the gumption to come visit in person."  This showed us that tons of people (whom we had no idea about) were feeding on God's Word through our website resources.  It also showed us that God has used such resources to connect or re-connect them to Christ and His Church.  One of the funniest things I hear is, "Pastor P, you look great, you've lost some weight."  If only that were true!  People make that remark because as they view our online resources they see me with the 10 pounds that the camera adds.  So when they first see me in person, and the 10 pounds are gone, it's like instant Slim-Fast!  Too funny!

*We began specifically seeing that an increased amount of previously un-churched folks were connecting to our congregation via our website resources.  We had been a congregation that was seeing about 40% of its newly connected disciples coming from a previously un-churched background, and then with the enhancement of our online resources that percentage jumped to almost 70%.  We are aware of no other LCMS church that has over half of its newly engaging folks coming from a previously un-churched background, and we attribute a significant part of that reality to the use of modern website resources.

*We found that out of 10 families who visit our church for weekend worship, on average about eight stick around and become engaged disciples in our midst.  We have come to believe that this super high rate of assimilation is because most folks check us out online before they ever visit.  If we're not what they're looking for, or we're not empowering their journey of faith, they never make a personal visit.  So for those who are intrigued by what's shared online, when they do finally visit in person, they already know what to expect and they instantly feel like a part of our faith family (since they've been journeying with us online.)

You can check out our website by clicking here.  There you will find all the resources described above.

May the peace, power, and purposes of Jesus rule our days!

Pastor Patrick