About a month ago, I wrote about the action of the Executive Presbytery to create the new Church Multiplication Network. The purpose of the Network is to serve the AG family with a set of resources/systems to assist districts, parent churches, church planting networks and church planters to start more, vigorous churches than ever before.

A “hot button” issue in the area of starting new churches is funding. How, where, what and when… all these questions apply to money and finding answers is tricky. So, as the first act of the Church Multiplication Network, we decided to “pay it forward” to help interested parties find answers to funding questions. The Creative Funding Forum was a free conference featuring a rather amazing variety of non-traditional fund raising practitioners. The seed for the idea came from Joel Hunter, Pastor of Northwood Assembly in Houston and Dave McNaughton ,Church Planting Coordinator for the North Texas District.  Here’s the text of the original email that went out inviting people to attend.

“Greetings:I want to invite you to a most unique event - as far as I know, the first of its kind.

Here is how I would explain the event in an equation:

Unexpectedly Potent Partnership x
No Cost x
No Pledges or Offerings x
Really Interesting People x
Powerful Funding Ideas =

Creative Funding Forum

Church Multiplication Network, The North Texas District Resource Center and Northwood Assembly in Houston, Texas are inviting a maximum of 100 leaders from around the country to the first ever:

Creative Funding Forum
July 17, 2008 - 1pm to 8pm
July 18, 2008 - 8:30am to 1pm
Grand Hyatt DFW International Airport
http://CreativeFundingForum.com

What’s so unique about this event?

Let’s start with the combination of sponsors. A national office organization, partnered with a District Office, partnered with a local church from another district? Have you ever seen such a combination before? We didn’t think so. What else makes this different from anything else you’ve ever been part of? The Forum about finding creative sources of funding is free. That’s right. It costs nothing. Nada. (You just pay for your travel and lodging…that’s it). What else? When is the last time you went to an event involving missions where an offering was not part of the agenda? We promise…we’re not going to ask you for a penny…no offerings, no pledges, no emotional appeals, and nothing for sale. In fact, we’re going to buy your dinner on Thursday and your lunch on Friday.

You might be thinking that we’re crazy…

And maybe we are. But Northwood Assembly, the North Texas District Resource Center and the AG Church Multiplication Network believe that there is great value in collaborating and learning from each other. We think there is tangible equity in relationships that will benefit everyone who participates in a gathering like this. We think that the knowledge we all glean from just sharing together will result in new sources of funding for all of our ministries. We’ve met some amazingly creative thinkers around the country and we’re convinced that getting them together in a room for 24 hours could result in new ideas we can all benefit from.

Joel Hunter is a great example.

Click here to read his story. Here’s the bottom line…his four year old church plant in Houston has a vision to plant 125 churches in major American cities and a creative funding strategy designed by business leaders in his church that is poised to generate $50,000.00 monthly by the end of 2008. Joel and the lawyer who drew up the legal documents to set the business in order will be at the CFF to answer your questions. Scott Bruegman, who leads the rapidly growing Red Rocks Church in West Denver, will also be at the CFF to share about numerous creative funding strategies he has used to accelerate his ability to reach hundreds of people in Denver. We have invited other out of the box thinkers to attend, share their stories and answer questions. We have limited it to 100 people to keep it small so we can spend quality time together.”

That’s all we sent out. Just one email to see what would happen. Our registration was full in just a few weeks and we spent $0 in advertising. And people came from all corners of the country. Even our presenters paid their own ways to be there. Obviously, we struck a “nerve.”

Right now, I’m sitting at the DFW gate, savoring the completion of an unexpectedly outstanding event. We ended up with 8 presenters. You can read about them by going to the CFF website. Topics addressed included the potential of grants, working with foundations, business/ministry leader collaboration, ministry dedicated business plans, parallel 501 C 3 non-profit, and compassion based church planting, etc. Each presenter shared their story for 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of interactive discussion and Q and A. Not only did we glean from the presenters, but we were blessed enormously by the collective wisdom that was in room. Connections were made, partnerships were catalyzed, new opportunities were realized and eyes were opened. (The pictures are shots I took at the Forum).

Here’s some good news if you weren’t able to make it, weren’t able to register in time to be one of the 100 or didn’t get the original email…you can obtain a video copy of the session or sessions that you wish you could have been a part of. We’re working on the editing the raw video and we still need to set up the ordering process online, but until the online store is set up, you can reserve a copy of the DVD by emailing Brad Causey at bcausey@ag.org and requesting a copy of the session/sessions you are interested in viewing.  We hope to put some samples online so you can get an idea of the value of the sessions for your specific application. By sending us a “reservation email” you’ll ensure that you’ll be among the first to know when the DVD is available online. Here’s a blog post from Jeff Leake about his experience at the Creative Funding Forum.

What’s next? We’re thinking about sponsoring other “hot topic” based forums with a similar format. One suggestion was a “Creative Church Governance Forum” to help leaders of existing and emerging churches develop governance structures that work well in 21^st century American cultural context. Please feel free to send me an email at spike@ag.org to share other ideas for “hot topic” forums.

Bottom line? Thank you Northwood Church and North Texas District for your visionary investment in the Kingdom! I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us next!