We just got home from All Access 2012 conference in Dallas. If I’m being honest, sometimes at these events I feel like I have to try pretty hard to get what God is trying to say to me. Do you have the same problem or is it just me? I’ve used the phrase “drinking from a fire hose” in a complimentary way to describe conferences like this in the past. But really that phrase is a way of saying there was a lot of information coming intensely fast, but you didn’t really ingest all that much of it, which means you get refreshed, but you don’t really get renewed. I’ve been to my fair share of church conferences but this one was special. I think because it was so clear to me what God was saying to me during those 3 days. Checkout this highlight video, then in an effort to try and honor each speaker, I want to share one takeaway from each message.

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• Robert Morris: Don’t do ministry for people. Ministry is for and about God.
• Greg Surratt: In the first 3 months of 2012, ARC has planted 31 new churches that have had over 7,000 attendees.
• Chris Hodges: God is always working on you, not necessarily your problems. When something is happening TO you, God wants to do something IN you.
• Ed Young: The message is the MAIN thing!
• Priscilla Shrier: Your situation is always a setup for God’s glory.
• Dino Rizzo: Don’t forget the one. We’ll only reach the world as we reach the one.
• Rick Bezet: You might not think that God picked the right one, but be confident that he picked you.
• Craig Groeschel:  Don’t blame yourself for the declines because then you’ll be tempted to take credit for the increases.

Each message had “something for me”, but what I think God was really doing in me at All Access was more specific and personal. It wasn’t anything in particular that anyone said. But yet it was everything they said. And the way they said what they said. It was the way 3,000 people from 18 countries came together yet it seemed more like your closest friends coming to your house to celebrate a birthday or something. Next week, I’m going to talk more about what I think God needed to show me about relationships, brotherhood and honor.

We’re really proud to be working with such a great organization. Below is ARC’s annual report from 2011. Take a few minutes to watch it and I think you’ll see why we’re so proud to be a part of ARC!

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You know how when you’re running late or your behind schedule on a project, you feel that pressure of each minute that ticks off the clock? Or maybe you know that feeling where you wake up in the middle of the night with your heart racing because you just had that re-occurring dream where it’s the end of the semester in college and you realize you’ll never pass the final because you skipped all of the classes. I get the same shot of adrenaline when I think about the number 532. It may seem like an awfully large number to you but for me, it makes my heart race. It makes me think of all the things that I want to do and accomplish before I leave this life for the next. It makes the song “4 Minutes” by Justin Timberlake and Madonna run through my head. (Ok, maybe not so much that. But I definitely hear the digital clock ticking off time on the show 24.)

Psalm 90:12 teaches us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. The idea is that when you realize how short life is, you’ll let your purpose begin to shape your priorities and ultimately your activities (how you spend your days). Ultimately, I believe that we all have the same purpose in life. I think the Bible is pretty clear that our shared purpose is to know God and to allow our lives to be used for His purposes. Colossians 1:16 says that we were both born by His purposes and for His purposes. So until you know Him you can’t know your purpose. But just because you know God doesn’t mean that you’ve allowed (surrendered) your life to His purposes. The past 10-15 years of my life have really been a journey where I think God wanted to get me to the place where I would realize that my life isn’t about me. It’s about Him. (This was the key thought during our first Vision Night for iChurch. You can listen by clicking here.)

What are you doing to number your days and to connect them to God’s purposes? Hugh Morehead said “The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the inventor.” What a great starting point for all of us.

Everyone of us is on a timeline, but only some of us live like it.

Mark Batterson is a pastor, author and church planter in Washington D.C. He has written several books, but one of my favorites is called “In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day”. It’s an awesome read that I highly recommend. Out of that book, he penned the following Lion Chasers Manifesto. He shared it on his blog some time ago, but it’s so good that I thought it might encourage some of you (because it pumps me up)!!!

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Grab life by the mane. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshiping what’s right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don’t try to be who you’re not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away. – The Lion Chasers Manifesto

In so many ways, launching iChurch feels like we’re chasing a lion! Especially the line about going after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. That’s exactly what we want the story of iChurch to be. I pray everyday, that in the years to come, when history tells the story of iChurch, that it simply would be summed up by saying: “God showed up”. I pray that it will be so apparent to everyone that God was in the middle of it so that He would get all of the glory and that it could never be about me, Alicia or the launch team.

What lion is God calling you to chase in your life for His glory?

First, I want to thank everyone who came out to our first meeting last Sunday. We had a good turnout for Vision Night and it was a lot of fun to tell the story of how Alicia and I got to this place where we are launching iChurch! Preparing for the meeting was a good exercise too. It was really fun and encouraging to look back and see how God has guided and directed our lives to this point. We’re so excited for the future! If you want, you can download a podcast of the night and listen to the message by clicking here.

At the meeting I briefly mentioned the organization that we are working with to plant iChurch called ARC (Association of Related Churches). I didn’t have time to go into details about their history or the process that we went through with them, so I wanted to cover it in more detail here.

ARC is an association of relational churches working with church planters, church leaders, and churches in transition to provide support, guidance and resources to launch and grow life-giving churches. The vision for ARC began in 2000 as a group of pastors (Billy Hornsby, Greg Surratt, Dino Rizzo, Scott Hornsby, Chris Hodges and Rick Bezet) met and imagined 2,000 new churches being planted based on the combination of two philosophies: relevant Sunday services and relational small groups. Pastors Chris and Rick planted the first two ARC churches in early 2001. Since that time, ARC has trained and assessed over 500 hundred church planters, who have planted 228 churches in 36 states. Over 45 churches were planted in 2011 alone. As a result of the intensive training and assessment that ARC provides, ARC churches have a 93% success rate after 5 years. Together with more than 200 ARC partner churches, ARC gives over $8 million a year to missions around the world.

ARC was first referred to us by a few of our pastors. They were aware of ARC’s model, leadership team and success rate and recommended them to us. ARC has a pretty comprehensive process that potential church planters must go through. It’s broken into 4 phases:

• 1.0 Church Planters Roundtable: consists of eight video sessions that outline key essentials to help you begin the journey of planting a life-giving church.
• 2.0 Advanced Training: we travelled to Birmingham, AL in February of last year to attend this intense training. It was like drinking from a fire hose. We learned about a wide range of practical topics including: Recruiting a launch team, identify and secure financial resources, creating an atmosphere that attracts visitors developing an effective marketing plan, strengthening your marriage and your personal leadership, creating healthy bylaws for your church government and more. It was awesome! After training, we knew that we wanted to work with ARC to plant this church!
• 3.0 Assessment: In June of last year, we travelled to Atlanta to go through the assessment process with the ARC team. Prior to attending we had to complete a variety of online tests and profiles. The purpose of the assessment was for ARC to get to know us and to evaluate us as a potential ARC church planter. They considered our calling, gifts, strengths and strategy for church planting (the Launch Plan is the strategy that we presented to them). Their entire team gave us honest feedback in areas of strength and opportunities for growth. A few days after the assessment, they called us and said that we were approved to plant a church with them!
• 4.0 Coaching: After getting approved during the 3.0 process, ARC has provided a variety of ways us to be further trained and coached. We’ve got a few personal coaches that are ARC planters who we have open access to for bouncing ideas around and talking about the journey. ARC has hosted several trainings over the phone and internet. And in March, we’ll be traveling to Dallas to attend their national conference. Honestly, the continued coaching is one of the big reasons why we wanted to work with ARC. They really believe in doing this together and connecting you with other planters who are at different points in the same journey. We love the relationships that we’re building through ARC!

One of the other benefits of working with ARC is financial support. After we grow our launch team to a certain size and raise at least $30,000 they will match the $30,000 with an interest free loan to help launch the church. (They also make an additional $20,000 available after launch if needed for a total of $50,000 investment). It takes big money to plant a church (our launch budget is over $100,000 just to open the doors in September!). So this is a huge benefit to us. And it’s great for people who want to support us financially  to know that every dollar they give (while we’re raising the initial $50,000) will have double the impact!

I hope that provides some background on ARC and our journey to-date with them. We couldn’t imagine doing this without a strong network of people who want to help us succeed.

You can get more information about ARC by visiting their website at: http://arcchurches.com

The overarching goal for all of the pre-launch meetings is to build a “launch team” of people who have the vision to help launch the church in September. Our prayer is that God would stir the vision in people’s hearts and that He would tap them on the shoulder to help launch iChurch. From experience, we’ve seen God bring people with special gifts and abilities to other people who just have a willingness to jump in at any capacity to help. Some people stay for the long-haul and some people just help to get the church launched. It really does take all combinations and types of people to launch a church.

We’ve planned out our pre-launch meetings to transition through 3 phases:

1. Vision casting: It all starts with the vision. This is the main focus of the first several meetings. People have to get to know us, our story and the vision for what we feel God is calling us to do. We want to share the vision with you and anyone who is curious or excited. But we also want to give you time and space to pray and decide if you should be a part of launching iChurch. This process looks different for everyone and takes differing amounts of time for different people. All I can say is that we have a “no hassle guarantee”. This means we’ll give you as much space as you want or as much attention as you need to help you through the process of hearing from God about being a part of launching iChurch.
2. Equipping: In the spring, the meetings still will have a strong component of vision to them, but in more practical aspects. We realize that you probably have not helped to plant a church before. That means you need to be taught the practical aspects of how we want to launch iChurch. I’ve told people that the keyword that best sums up what they need to know in order to help launch iChurch is “NOTHING”! In a lot of ways, a blank slate is best, because even if you have a picture of how church could or should be, we have our own picture (vision)! So don’t count yourself out based on lack of experience.
3. Practicing: As we get into the summer, the meetings will take on a different shape. At that point, the launch team will be pretty well established and so it will be time to start organizing into the smaller, functional teams to take on a specific focus of launching the church (e.g. hospitality, children’s ministry etc).  We’ll be having mini, preview services, more in depth trainings etc all with the goal of really practicing or rehearsing for launch day!

I hope that paints a clearer picture of how we have laid out our pre-launch meetings. They aren’t intended to be church services. In fact they are designed specifically not to be a church service. Yes, we’ll be praying, yes, we’ll be teaching you some practical things from the Bible, yes, we’ll probably sing a song or two along the way, but  we are trying to avoid the tendency that every church planter has which is to start having church services long before they are prepared. So this period of time between now and September is extremely intentional to build, train and equip a team.

Having said all of that, I want to personally invite you to come out to Vision Night!

First, thanks to everyone for your support last week! When you launch something that is so close to your heart and so personal, you really hope that people will response positively, but you never know. But can I just say, wow! We got so many positive comments and a lot of great feedback. We also got a lot of questions, which we definitely expected, and we tried to answer them all. But in case you still had some questions, here’s the top 5 questions that we’ve received since we made the announcement:

• Q: Is iChurch an online or virtual church? A: Nope! (But someday we’ll have an online campus)
• Q: Where will iChurch be meeting? A: Before we launch our first service in September, we’ll be hosting a series of meetings, starting with two Vision Nights. Those pre-launch meetings will be hosted near our home in Mars because we have access to facilities that will be a great meeting spot. You can see all of the details for our first meeting by clicking here!! We’ll be working to finalize a location for September and beyond over the next few weeks. I’ll be talking about this in a little more detail at our first informational meeting.
• Q: How do you start a church? A: Ok, that’s too much to answer here. But that’s what the pre-launch meetings are for. We’ll teach you!
• Q: When can I give to iChurch? A: Now! You can mail a check to iChurch at P.O. Box 372, Mars, PA 16046. Online giving will be available in the next few weeks.
• Q: Are you crazy? A: Yes! I’m crazy excited. Because I think the best days are still ahead for the Pittsburgh region and I can’t wait to see what God is going to do!!!!

Anyhow we hope that the New Year is off to a great start for you! If you’re like me, then you can’t believe how fast time is moving and that it’s already February. Speaking of 2012, Alicia and I have a really exciting announcement for 2012 that we wanted to share with you.

As many of you know, we first met at our church while we were in high school. That was about 15 years ago and a lot of time has passed since then. In 2003 we got married and since that time we’ve grown our family, careers and our educations. The one thing that has been central in our lives since we met was our desire to let God guide and direct our steps. That looks different for different people, but for us it’s kept us involved in church ministry in a variety of capacities for as long as we’ve known each other. Last year, we moved into a new season of life to help our dear friends and mentors Larry and Kim Bettencourt launch Champion Life Church in the Beaver Falls area and it’s been a blast! We believe in them so much and we wanted to do what we could to help them succeed. We also knew it would be a good experience for whatever God had next for us.

Right now, I can hear Alicia’s voice saying “just tell people what’s happening!” So I’ll follow her advice. On September 16, 2012 Alicia and I will be launching a new church here in the Pittsburgh area. We’re calling it iChurch and just to clarify (because I know what you’re thinking) yes, that’s really the name and there is a meaning behind it and , yes it’s a real church not an online thing! We’re really excited about it and we think that as you learn more over the next few weeks that you’ll be excited too. This has been a journey for us that has taken a long time to get to this point. There has been a lot of work and training over the past few years to get to today, and really we’re just getting started. Though an announcement like this might seem sudden, we want you to know that this isn’t some spontaneous decision that we simply hope will turn out ok. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have the support of our parents, close friends, mentors, pastors and even an organization that assesses and trains church planters (the Association of Related Churches). Most importantly we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t feel that we have a mandate from God.

So that’s the big news! As you’re reading this, I’m guessing that your thoughts might fall into one of three categories: super excited, extremely confused or cautiously curious to know what’s next. No matter what category you are in, there is more of this story, more details, and some next steps to share over the upcoming few weeks, and we want to keep you up to date. Right now, we’re really trying to spread the word.

So if you want to stay up to date with us or you want to help spread the word, there are 3 quick things we’d like to ask you to do:

1.) “Like” the iChurch Facebook page by clicking here (getting our number of “likes” up is particularly important due to the way that Facebook’s ad services work)

2.) Visit our website to sign-up for our e-newsletter by clicking here  While you’re there, if you want to get a preview into the vision and strategy for launching the church, you can view a copy of our Launch Plan on the site (think business plan, but for a church).

3.) Follow the church on Twitter by clicking here

These 3 simple things would personally mean a lot to us, it would help us spread the word and it’s the best way for us to keep you all informed and it will take you less than 5 minutes!

In the meantime, if you have questions, feel free to reach out to us. We couldn’t be more excited about the adventure that is in front of us and we hope that you’ll join us in our excitement. The blog is back because we have a LOT to talk about.

Ben & Alicia