The playbook / business plan of our church
 

This is the first section of our churches playbook. It will essentially be the master resource we will update from time to time that lays out our core philosophy, methodology of business practice, job descriptions and breakdown of ministry. This first section is more of a philosophical statement.

Re: The playbook / business plan of our church
 

Part 1: God Likes Different!
The South Florida Metro from West Palm Beach to South Dade County has over 4,000,000 people in it according to the US Census. It’s nearly wall to wall people with dozens if not hundreds of subcultures and languages. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Florida Everglades its solid packed with a wide diversity of churches that barely reach 25% of the community in weekly attendance. Some would ask “Why begin another church?” The actual answer is that we aren’t starting a church, it started 20 centuries ago. What we are doing is using the foundations that have been left for us by previous generations of Christians and building upon the teachings of Christ to do something new for this generation.

After much prayer and study the lead pastor came to the conclusion that the current version of how we “do church” is less effective in today’s world. After years of visiting and studying the fastest growing churches in the nation and internationally there are several principles that we will attempt to apply to make The Growing Church in South Florida more than just a "typical" church congregation. We hope to become a movement with dozens of inter-related congregations with hundreds of Growth Groups that makes a difference in lives of people. The three major principles that we will stress are Transparency, Trust, and Transformation.

Re: The playbook / business plan of our church
 

Transparency - In today’s America there are several major philosophies of how a church should be run. We have decided that the method we will use is 100% transparency in how money is spent. If anyone (even a non-member) wants to see how the money is spent they will simply need to go to our website and download the regular statements. We intend to show where every dollar is going from salaries to sound equipment. We will encourage people to ask constructive questions to help us better channel our resources to where the needs are.

Trust – It’s always been amazing that in some churches a person can be trusted with millions of dollars in assets in their work life, but not allowed to have a place of real leadership and decision making in their church other than giving money in a passive sense. One of the things we plan to do differently is that our Growth Groups will be given a set percentage of their donations to use how they see fit without having to ask for pastoral approval. If our goal is to become a network of churches with tens of thousands of members we will be unable to meet the majority of charitable needs with a central command structure. Rather than someone coming to the pastor to ask for help, we should have our House Churches/Growth Groups take care of the need at the point of crisis in a person’s life. It’s our belief that we should ”take care of our own”, no person should go hungry, no child we know should miss having a merry Christmas, and no one should lose their house because they lost their job. We have a organized accounting system to allow Growth Group leaders to access the funds they need so that ministry can be done by hundreds of entrepreneurial leaders instead of one overburdened pastor or a committee that may intimidate those who need ask for genuine help.

If a Growth Group wishes to be aggressive in their ministry we will be their biggest cheerleaders. In some sense the only bad risk is when a well thought out plan isn’t tried out of fear of failure or “rocking the boat”. Some Growth Groups may decide to take the money and give it to a missionary, give it back to the church’s general fund, or buy things they need for their growing meeting like sound/video equipment, instruments, or literature. We will have an accounting system and item purchases will be done through the accounting offices. Checks for charitable purposes will be written and made out to the charitable beneficiary through the church treasurer and made available for pickup within 24 hours by the beneficiary or Growth Group leader.

We will take 20% of the gross budget of the church and evenly divide it between it between Growth Groups on a monthly basis to be held in a separate bank account from the general operating funds. The Growth Group may choose to either let the amounts accrue, spend it, designate the spending, pool it with another Growth Group, or give it back to the general fund. In many ways it’s our hope over time that we will have hundreds of active growth groups that can effectively guide our charity and local evangelism to the point of maximum opportunity.

Re: The playbook / business plan of our church
 

Transformation – What can an ordinary person with a copy of the Bible become if given unlimited opportunity to grow and get involved? The answer to the question is simple, we could have a church with hundreds of ordained ministers who are active in the ministry God has called them to do. An old (not really) joke is there are as many opportunities in a church as the pastor has unmarried daughters. We hope to overcome that barrier of old style thinking that a person needs to be “connected”, be in the “inner circle”, go to bible college, or be related to someone to become a “real” minister. We also believe that if God calls a woman to become a leader/minister it’s our job to go out of our way to give her equal opportunity to do everything a male is allowed to do from being a campus pastor of a satellite location to teaching and preaching. It’s our belief that there are no “broken” Christians. If a person is divorced, made really bad decisions, or made past moral mistakes and is now actively living for God and in His grace it’s not our place to shackle them into anything less than their maximum potential in God, we do not have second class saints, period.

In a “perfect world” scenario someone would attend our church weekend worship service, join a Growth Group/House Church, decide to be baptized & join the church, receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit for empowerment, get involved in at least one ministry team, and begin the process to become a leader and eventually be part of a team to start a new geographical campus of The Growing Church with our blessing and full support.

Who are we as mere men to know who has the potential to do great things for God? Becoming a fellow pastor, mentor and friend of the people in either a satellite campus or Growth Group? To be an evangelist who wins a thousand souls? To be a mentor and teacher who disciples new converts? To seek a fresh word as a prophet who God gives knowledge to? To becoming open to being a worker of miracles, who is given appointment to do the wonders we see in the New Testament? The answer is that we as mere men don’t know because we can’t see the future. So we will take risks on people and allow them to succeed, fail, learn and grow in their personal walk with God so that we can win South Florida as a team. Our strength isn’t in one talented pastor, it’s in the Spirit making thousands of believers empowered for us becoming a movement that is always trying something new while teaching the eternal truths.

Re: The playbook / business plan of our church
 

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