jordan muck

Shannon O’Dell helped relaunch Brand New Church in Mountain Home, Arkansas awhile ago.  Eighteen months ago Brand New Church were a small church with one campus and now they have 5 campuses throughout north-central Arkansas.  Shannon just spoke recently at the Sticks Conference in Loudonville Ohio and Tim Stevens took notes for me.  Thanks Tim!

• The greatest mission-field in the world is rural America. It is the most churched and unchurched area in the world.
• The moment you decide to grow a congregation before reaching congregants, you have lost God’s heart for the church. I don’t want to grow a congregation, I want to grow congregants.
• Rural church leaders are crippled by the “seemed to be leaders” in your church instead of getting a vision and communicating the vision.
• We have made the large church into the glamorous thing to achieve.
• I cried when I knew God wanted me to go to this rural church. There were 33 people in attendance the first weekend. One year later we were running 90.
• A dying church asked us to take over their church, and soon we were running 300. We combined into a gym, began with 600. Now we have 5 campuses plus an internet campus. People from more than 60 countries now attend our internet campus which comes from a town of 407 in northern Arkansas.
• If you have a vision, God is ready to meet you there.
• If you want a healthy church, you need a healthy system/structure.
• The only one called to the church is the pastor (or other staff). Deacons are not called. Lay elders are not called. Pastors are called.
• If you are a pastor, and your marriage isn’t red-hot…then your salvation isn’t red-hot.
• I know pastors who don’t believe God can change their church. They believe Jesus was born of a virgin—even though they weren’t there. They believe the Bible is inerrant—even though they never met the authors. Yet they’ve stopped believing God can change their church.
• The math at Brand New Church: 31 minus 12 now equals 2,000. It’s all about God.

Interesting.

-jordan