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Lifeline Leadership Podcast Network. Get A. I'm Scott Sanders. I'm Derek Hanna. Welcome to the One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel center ministry every week.

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The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia. We want to see thousands of healthy evangelistic multiplying churches. We need more churches. Now there have been lots of books written on church planting. Derek has read lots of them. So today we're going to look at his top five church planting books. So strap yourself in. Put on some nice easy listing music. Think into a nice deep leather chair. Put on the lamp and have a notebook at the ready because we're going to get Derek's top five books.

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What do you think? What comes to mind? Well, I've a little bit of a port a set. Port a set. There you go. Port a set. Play in the background very soft. That sounds great. Okay. But for now you've pressed play another episode of the One Thing. Top five books. You need to read about church planting. So Derek, I just want to kick us off books. It's not going to actually learn from books.

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Listen, I sure have thrown in a graphic novel for you today. Scott, that's what you YouTube video. It's going to be a lot of church play books because like there's a whole 70, 2010 rule. You know, you learn lots more from on the job. He's got a 10% from that knowledge base. And the reality is most of our church planted books are actually not Australian. In fact, I can think of a couple of manuals and a couple of unpublished books. But we actually don't have a lot of published books. I don't think we got a published book on church planning from Australia. No, lots of manuals. But my top five that I'll talk about today. None of them are from Australia or from the US. Can we learn from people overseas?

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Absolutely. How much green leather books? I don't know. Depends on book. Good. The book is doesn't it? I've learned he's put like it's no substitute for doing stuff. Yeah. And feeling the weight of doing stuff and leading. But they provide a framework and direction and inside and maybe help it fall. So lots of things. That question. Sure. Good. Then we're done. Yeah, that's it. Lots. I guess I want to say. Yeah, books are really helpful. It is great to talk to people again. One of the things I love about the rich Australian network is that you have access to a whole bunch of people who have planted before and planted in different decades in different places as well.

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There's a rich there's a rich network as well. So books are really good. But soak up. Soak up people as well. I want to say if you are a tweeter X for me known as Twitter, then I want you to tweet Scott's in as a quote him books are really good. Let's get to the books. Let's get a book. Okay. Book. What's your first book? Senator Schwokeller. How do you spell center? C E N T E R. It's interesting. Even in the ones sold here, that's always the same, isn't it? Yeah, I remember being when I was a barbell college, I bought the manual that you had to get shipped from a day. 126 bucks. No, it was so expensive. And it came out. I remember that. And it was formed. It was the first kind of book like that I'd read. I'm sure it wasn't.

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I'm sure there were others around there. They were in the library. Derek, you remember the library. There was a library college. But that and then Senator is coming after that. Such a breadth. The thing I love about Senator is so theologically rich historically rich as well. So he draws from so many sources. And he just drives into the pragmatics really well. He's great. Obviously, it was great with culture. Yeah. Now it's quite a it's quite a thick book, quite a heavy book. What does it cover, particularly? What are you dive into it to cover?

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The thing, well, the things that it's not a book you read back from front to the end. I remember reading with my staff team. We just would read a chapter and then talk through it. The thing that I most got out of it was around the contextualization stuff. And he was just so helpful in helping me work out. Where is it that I need to be? Whole things quite open and engage with culture in a way to be able to share the gospel and where was it? What were the things I need to be very clear on?

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So I was not to compromise my biblical principles. And so he was the first person I read in this space. And he would be the last I reckon as well. I think it's a very good book. I think it's a very good book. It's a very pragmatic book. I think it's a very good book. It's a very pragmatic book. Sorry. I shouldn't it's very biblical driven, theologically robust. But it does in the end drive towards some very practical things. It's pragmatic, very theologically driven. But the helpful thing about this book is it does push you into a whole bunch of stuff when you actually get on the ground you plan that you're going to have to deal with in terms of thinking through teams and leadership and barriers and all those kinds of things.

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So I found Stess Renning book really helpful. It's a sort of book. You can go, okay, I've got a question about. And then there's a whole chapter on it. Yeah. And the newer version of it, we're Daniels sort of added to it. Lots of excellent stories. It's updated. It's an excellent book. Yeah. Planning, missional churches in the 21st century. Yes. Okay. Book number three. Book three is nuts and bolts of church planning by Aubrey. Malfa's not Audrey Aubrey. Malfa's. He's written a whole bunch of books in that sort of church church, growth space. Yes. That's right. He's excellent. You've read it. You've obviously.

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Lots of more books. Yeah. Full of full of guy. Yeah. So you want to pretend you don't read books, but you do. It is books. But his books again, on the pragmatics, particularly Malfas, there's some ways. Sometimes I read the Bible is used to justify church planning or to talk about aspects of church planning, which I don't feel. I feel 100% comfortable with or I wouldn't use not her. Ready call not massive issues. But there's sometimes you do, but I would say for Malfa's stuff of in the air as a building leaders and church planning and all those things.

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Strategy. How you build it from the ground up here. Think about it. G he is so sharp on giving you tools that you can use and you can use with your team. So I found all of Malfa's stuff really helpful. But this is a good book as well for the nuts and bolts. Yeah. Totally. And you're right. He's got a number of books, you know, doing the deep dive on the planning piece. But that definitely comes through as a strength in this one. I should just say on the steps are in book. What's really helpful about that is the new church is podcast, you know, particularly first sort of 150 episodes.

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You can kind of use that as a conversation partner is going through as well. There've got lots of, you know, really useful stories that come out of that. And still even now that I go, I listen to that podcast. The topic say cover if you're if you're thinking about planning or you are planting, do you that cover some helpful stuff. Good. Go check it out. So shout out to new churches, podcasts and crack on. The book number four book number four. This is a book. I cannot remember how I stumbled on this one. Anyhow, it's called the honest guy to church planning by Tom Bernardo.

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Never heard of haven't read this book. This book I haven't read. There you go. Let's want to. He's a reason I like this one because it's quite different to the other ones I mentioned. In that he he looks at a whole bunch of different topics around the the challenges with church planning on you as a leader and you as a person and you as a Christian. And so church playing does place particular challenges and stresses on me and my identity being caught up in this plant.

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What it does to my behavior and relationships and hard and all those kinds of things. And so I found this book good because it just approaches from a very different. It's not telling you here are the five steps for planning a church not trying to do that. It's not an Aubrey mouth its book. It really is just pushing into your heart and saying when you plan. Here's some of the pitfall that we've seen people make that will cause them to stumble or lead in unhealthy ways. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Can I ask did you read that during the process of planting village before you plan a village.

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No, everyone would have been better if I had read it before I planted village. After. Afterwards, yeah. Yeah. And can I what was the context for for reading it? Well, I can't remember how I came across it. But I remember when I've been working with planters and so also my own journey and seeing the things that I got wrong and where pushed on my hub particularly and then working with planters and preparing boot camp and curriculum stuff for stuff we work within with Australia and planters. I think I was looking for something that that helped me putting people's hands the stuff that they will face but they're not necessarily thinking about planers are thinking about how to get this thing off the ground.

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The thing about how to pull people together to launch this church. The secondary thing that they're thinking about is oh, maybe I should be healthy. I think I want to just want to invert that little bit inside now you've got to work out how you be healthy put your own safety mask on first. So just I guess two things one of the things that we want to encourage church. So if you're listening in this and you're thinking I want to plan a church in the future journaling, you know journaling and journaling that sort of process is a really helpful piece just to help you with your reflection help you reflect on what's what's happening.

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The second second thing to say is if you are listening and you think about planning church learn to lead we've got a program that will help you think about what it means to lead and this is one of the books that you talk about in that. So if you do the church planning stream in learn to lead Pete Hughes who leads that he'll read this with you not with you like he's not going to come over and do it that'll be weird wouldn't it. Well, that book cobs are okay mate. What do you like? Like you know, he does. He's got things to do he can't be visiting everyone's house to read. Yeah, there's potential as a potential for a book club coming out of this I feel really reach out if you're wanting a

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Registrar book club Derek's happy to I'm made up with you and we can read books together that'll be great. Yep excellent. You're a lock your last book your last book. Apostolic church planning by JD pain. Okay, this is again. This is another one I haven't read and I recognize me saying the word apostolic into a microphone has properly sent shivers up people's minds level five leadership level five leadership and I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that.

[10:53]
I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that.

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I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. I think he's a great person to do that. But Keller leans heavily on English bikes, I think in his kind of formation, relating to the English church. But yeah, and it is a lot of planning and thinking tools.

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These are not, so I'm going to ask you a question, which ones are missing from here that you would have put on there. But I should say, and I should have said at the start, these are not necessarily the first books that I'll put in the hands of a planter. These are very helpful books, top five books on church planning, I think. On that specific topic there. But as I mentioned with the honest guy to church planning, there's stuff around the heart, I think you need to get right. There's helpful books on evangelism and contextualisation as well that I've read that if I was to

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give my top five books, irrespective of the church plan or not, would come above these. But these are very good books. If you are seriously thinking about planting or want to have a framework for what that might look like. Let me ask you what's not on here that you would have put on here. I would have put Hesselgraves cross-cultural church planning. I think that's an excellent book. Again, in terms of, I find reading things outside your context in a different place. Really helpful. For me, I went through college wanting to plant church in France with more than background believers.

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So that was a book that I read as part of my church planning course at college. I found that useful post, thinking about cross-cultural teams. So there's a particular chapter on that. It's the Graeme Beenan's book, a hands-on guide to church planning. It's a little book. I like to read, but I like to read little books. Written English Guy, it's again, goes through all the different models. Very simple book, but you can kind of read it in an afternoon. But I just found that a nice simple one. Two others that are kind of strange. Church planning is for whims.

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So Nine Marks book. I always find Nine Marks book. Nine Marks stuff is always excellent. But particularly, I think this is a great one. Just to sort of get your heart right, should I plant a church? We have lots of churches that need to be revitalised. And I just think that's a crack of tide. I learnt lots of planty from that because in that you've got to actually get people on board. And a church plant will become an established church and you have to do the hard work of moving people along. The other one is a book on church-panting wives.

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So I'll put a link in the show notes. Again, that's a really helpful book because it has lots of stories about wives talking about their experience. Again, your wife having an opportunity to reflect and think into what it looks like to plant a church, I think, is really critical. And then my last one is church-panting landmines. So it has ten kind of landmines.

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And I think what's helpful about that is so many of the books that are about launch and about starting. This one kind of does that in the first sort of three or four chapters. And then the last six are actually about what does it look like to build systems, build leaders, build structures to push on. But I love the landmine concept of these things will blow you up. And I reckon they all do. So I think that's just again another useful one. And the tool that we used to use with lifeway and still use with lifeway in terms of assessment stuff has those kind of ten landmines.

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And I always find that's a really helpful workout. OK, where are you sitting on those things? You know how long we haven't even had one lead at one more? The one we haven't mentioned is from a friend Tom Wood, the church-planning field. Yeah, well, I guess they're books, but they're in the manual case. We could do a whole episode on manuals. It's true. I love the manuals because the manuals are great. So manuals, you know, Stuart Robinson's one that he did like 25 years ago for the diocese is a cracker. You got the church-planning manual. Got a great vineyard coaching manual, a redeeming coaching manual.

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You've got Tom Woods, three manuals on sort of different phases. And then there is an Australian Baptist one that's also had to find, I think, Sony and PDF files as well. OK. So yeah, manuals as well. Very helpful. The mission to North America one, it's like, well, I think the copy I've got is this little, it's been photocopied so many times. And it's a PDF of that. Very hard to read in certain spots. Not microfish. It's not microfish. But that's the source document.

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You know, that's like, what is it? Q source or whatever? It's possible. That is a Q source for a lot of church-planning manuals around the place. So that was another one that I found helpful when thinking about the boot camps and things like that. Excellent. So, Derek, what's the one thing about reading more books on church-planning? Well, I think the more we read about this, the more we're going to be equipped and inspired in the form about how to do it, whether we're thinking about planning yourself or whether we're leading a church thing about how to move towards planning. We want to get a biblical drive framework in order to do it.

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And please, books are really helpful to do that. Awesome. Well, if you're thinking about church-planning and you've been inspired by this podcast, can I encourage you to head over to the Reach Australia website, look on the church-planning link, get assessed, start thinking about the book. Get this session process. I think the Bible encourages us to talk to our leaders. Church-planning has a sent out as well. So, if you're not already in conversation with your church leaders and your church about it, start talking with them as well, all the links to the books that Derek has mentioned and I mentioned will be in the toolbox as well.

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We'll probably be able to put a link to all the guides as well because a lot of them are kind of out of print. And if you're not able to read, we've got a great church-planning podcast as well. You can just listen to hours and hours of content as well. We will definitely put a link to all those books. So the other aspect of this that we've talked about as well is, you know, talk to people who have planned the churches already. Get along to the Reach Australia National Conference next year in May and use as an opportunity to network, to catch up with other people. And if you are married, bring your wife, bring your spouse and have those conversations

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together and reflect together. If you have a topic that you want us to cover, please email us at resources at reachestralia.com.au. I'm Scott Sanders, I'm Derek Hanna, chat soon.