2007 October » russbutcher.com

Church Planting Movement

Church Planting, Jesus, Missional No Responses »

Oct 232007

I often hear people comment that “we don’t need any more churches”, and this is usually a response when the topic of our (CATGrove) or other new churches comes up. Most often they are referring to the fact that our landscape (especially in the south) is dotted with church buildings and steeples.

The truth is that in America we have far fewer churches per capita than we did 50 years ago. Many churches are dying and closing their doors every week and when you couple that with the growing population, we have not been able to keep pace in establishing new churches that reach disconnected and unconvinced people.

I had the opportunity and privilege to meet with a couple of guys last week that are launching out to start churches:

Chad Ellis is currently serving at FBC Forest Park, GA but will soon be moving to Madison, Wisconsin to plant a new church. Check out Chad’s new church web site for Church on Prairies Edge. Check out Chad’s blog here. Pray for Chad, his family and his team.

Brian Holland is a friend from student ministry circles and has planted the Phoenix Community in Duluth. Brian’s blog can be found here. Brian is committed to reaching the disconnected and unconvinced in Atlanta. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for Brian and Phoenix. Pray for Brian, his family, and his team.

I truly believe that planting new churches is the hope for perpetuating the message, love, and grace of Jesus to the communities around us. I can’t wait to see what God has in store as we take part in changing the world through church planting. May we remain faithful to God’s leadership.

Monday Morning Thoughts

Church at the Grove, Family, Random Thoughts No Responses »

Oct 222007

It has been a great weekend for a lot of reasons, but here are a few:

I have spent some great time with my family this weekend beginning with a journey to Edwin Watts Golf with Josiah! Any trip to Edwin Watts Golf is a good trip (not if Jill is checking receipts) but this was especially good because it was with Josiah.
Josiah and I ate lunch at Stevie B’s Pizza! Not the healthiest lunch but it was awesome. To top it off, while we were eating, we watch Scooby Doo cartoons.
After coming back home we went on an adventure hike to the quarries behind our house.
Saturday morning I took Abigail and Josiah to Kellies Home Cooking! We had not been in a while.
I am still sore from working on a retaining wall behind our house. It was fun to build it with the family out there with me, but this body is not use to manual labor that doesn’t include moving chairs or unloading trailers on Sunday.
Craig Story absolutely KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK yesterday. For those of you that don’t know, that is a baseball analogy explaining that Craig did a really good job. If you were out of town with the many other Walton County Fall Break folks, you need to hear it when it is posted on our web site. YOU CAN HEAR IT BUT YOU MISSED THE WALL!
Pray for David Odom! The pastor from the church where he grew up was killed in a car accident Saturday and David is grieving and is in a position to minister to many people. Pray for his strength and for his comfort during this time.
I missed my Community Group last night but it was good to have an evening break. I love my Community Group.
Please pray with us for our friends Debbie, Cory and Dylan. Josiah and I went to visit with them last night. Dylan suffers from a terminal illness and his mother, Debbie, simply takes care of him while she waits for the inevitable.
We are overwhelmed with some friends and their families that are suffering from cancer and terminal illnesses. Please pray for their strength.
I will be at Mountain Lake Church tonight and tomorrow morning to learn some church planting stuff with some incredible church planting leaders.
I love CATGrove! Pray that God continues to use our community to reach those “least likely to go to church”!

Church at the Grove Podcast

Church at the Grove No Responses »

Oct 202007

I am excited to now have our podcast set up through itunes!

You can now subscribe to CATGrove’s weekly PODCAST by clicking the itunes link!

Or….you can go to our feedburner feed here and subscribe.

Whatever you do……simply subscribe!

Uncertainty in Leadership

Church at the Grove, Leadership 2 Responses »

Oct 192007

Occasionally I go through seasons where I experience a measure of uncertainty in my areas of leadership and I am in one of those seasons. No, I am not having a crisis of belief related to my faith in God nor questioning my call or anything of that nature. I simply am in a season of desperately trying to hear God’s voice in regard to a number of decisions related to CATGrove. Going into this season, things looked very clear and I had a confident measure of certainty in regard to our immediate and future decisions. The current context of circumstances have me questioning this certainty.

A couple of blog posts I have read the past day or two have offered me some encouragement:

Check out Bil Cornelius’ post here about a pastor’s response to God in seasons of uncertainty.

Some of my (our) uncertainty stems from some of the budgeting/stewardship/money decisions we have to make as this year comes to a close and we go into next year. Don’t misunderstand me, the wheels haven’t fallen off the truck, so to speak, but our financial giving hasn’t quite kept up with our numerical growth. When you connect this fact with the recent economic downturn due to the building and mortgage industry fallout, it spells RECESSION! As I said, we have been blessed this year, but the crunch has been felt recently.

I have come to the conclusion that there are three reasons our financial giving hasn’t kept pace with our numerical growth:

We are a church made up of primarily young families that do not have large incomes and many are probably struggling with consumer debt.
We are a church with a large number of either young believers, or those still exploring issues of faith and they simply are not familiar with the biblical principles of giving, tithing, and stewardship that provides for the ministry in a local church context.
We (America, Metro Atlanta, and Walton County) are suffering the consequences of the economic fallout of the mortgage and building industry.

The significant aspect of all of this is the fact that the crunch has come right in the middle of our budget preparation for this next year! How do balance absolute faithfulness to the vision God has given you, a willingness to TAKE RISKS on the vision and just plain and simple fiscal responsibility?

Today’s post from Pastor Steven Furtick at Elevation Church of Charlotte, NC offered tremendous encouragement to me. Check it out!

I would love to hear your thoughts concerning leadership in times of uncertainty.