Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART III: P LANTING U RBAN C HURCHES • 433

WORK (Stop talking and start doing.) • Be bold; innovate; “Give the boundaries in which people are free to live out their spiritual gift without asking for permission.” ~ Bill Easum • Friction: things seldom go as planned. • Better to execute a poor plan than poorly execute a great plan. • Be creative. (Matt. 25.14-30). • Two extremes: rigidity and lack of discipline. REVIEW (Don’t assume what you did was effective.) • Make half-time adjustments (Sanballat, Cornelius, Gideon, Macedonian vision). • Check the fruit (John 15.2). • “The most important part of any mission is the debrief.” • Be reflective. “Poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is honored. . . . Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence” (Prov. 13.18; 15.32). • Celebrate! (Remember Ed Delahanty’s 65.4% failure rate.)

What Is PWR?

We will spend time this week in Preparation, but don’t be deceived. No formula or good plan will plant a church; not a analytic process.

Bobby Bowden on blending control with improvisation: “You may work all week on a game plan, then get four plays into the game and realize the plan’s no good. You have to be able to adjust. You have to build flexibility into your people and strategies.” Robert McNamara: “We must first determine what our foreign policy is to be, formulate a military strategy to carry out that policy, then build the military forces to successfully conduct this strategy” (Failed Vietnam Strategy).