Last night we hosted a dinner featuring a long-form Q&A with Ed Stetzer and Alan Hirsch. For the sake of discussion, we asked them to consider what they would do if they were planting a church. We asked questions that had been submitted by the Upstream Collective churches and leaders. Of course, we only got to four of the eight questions (if you’ve ever spoken with either Ed or Allan, that’s not a big surprise to you.) Here are the questions we asked:
1) Where would you plant? What areas, people, population segments do you consider to be strategic/important for church planting?
2) What model (house church, megachurch, multi-site, mid-size) would you start with? Are there any models you’d want to pattern your plant after?
3) You’re both proponents of a missional approach to church and ministry. What is “missional” mean, and how would it look for your church plant?
4) There’s a lot of talk about being missional, but not a whole lot about doing missions. What would missions (the intentional crossing of cultures to communicate the gospel and plant the church) look like for you?
And the questions we didn’t get to ask:
5) How would you finance your (theoretical) church plant? How would you handle funding for your work/staff/ministries?
6) Who would you plant with (think a Hirsch/Frost leadership team)? Who would you want to work with?
7) Besides the Upstream Collective, what networks would you work with?
Do you have any thoughts on current trends in church planting? What do you think about multi-site church, church planting networks, coaching, etc?
Maybe Ed and Allen will address these questions on their blogs sometime…
We had originally envisioned a smaller, more intimate affair that would allow lots of personal interaction, but the group swelled to 120. Nevertheless, we welcomed follow-up questions from the audience. Watch for the video of the event, coming soon.
We’d like to thank everyone who participated- Alan, Ed, David Putman, and Christian Associates, who helped sponsor the dinner.
If you were able to attend, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the dinner. If you weren’t we welcome your questions or thoughts.
