Our Mission…

The Excel Leadership Network’s mission is to support church planters and high-level leaders for the task to which God has called them (Acts 13:2).   We’re developing a movement where church planting leaders are reproducing healthy churches.   

So how do we encourage, appreciate and value church planters?  Through our support environments and systems. 

Our primary strategy is putting at least ten support practices into place.   

The first system is the Spiritual Vitality Environment.  The Psalmist wrote, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its’ builders labor in vain.”—Psalm 127:1  We can extrapolate that to “Unless God builds the church, we’re wasting everyone’s time.”  Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”—John 15:5  

We’re developing a support structure to ensure that our movement and the church planters are staying close to God and getting in on what He is doing.   

Second is the Funding System.  Jesus warned, “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower.  Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?”—Luke 14:28 

Ministry involves raising men, momentum and money.  I’m excited about the funding pieces that are in place in the Excel Network.   

Our funding system utilizes these principles:

A.    We do investments, not grants.  We’ll put money into a project, but we expect the money to come back to the network.  It isn’t a loan--it’s an investment because we’re building a partnership--a movement.

B.    We invest based on matching funds.  We’ll match what a planter raises (to a level agreed upon with the planter).  The matching funds principle reinforces that if someone cannot raise money, they probably cannot plant a church.  Also, the matching funds principle helps greatly in raising money.

C.    We do “incentive-laden” contracts.  Money is dispersed to the planter as certain agreed-upon milestones are met.  

Third is the Inviting Environment. We’re attracting high level church planters and prospects to our movement.   And we’re developing a growing “farm-system” for planters.

Fourth is an Discovery System.  In Ephesians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul talks about the body of Christ being built up—effective ministry.  He cites gifting and “speaking the truth in love” and “each part doing its work.”  We need to make sure that a candidate is suited for the entrepreneurial leadership task of planting before we send them out.

We offer two to two-and-a-half day Discovery Centers to help clients identify their next steps in ministry. 

The fifth structure is the Vision Alignment System.  Solomon said, “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge or to be hasty and miss the way.”—Proverbs 19:2  

I have seen too many church planters who were godly, gifted and even well-funded never get their projects off the ground.  Why did they fail?  They struggled because they were often sent out to the wrong place, or at the wrong time, or with the wrong team (usually with no team).  Or they were sent out with strategies and tactics that might have been exciting and new, yet stood no chance of succeeding. 

We’ve put together an advisory team of wise strategists who will interact with planters on their plans and proposals.  We want to be fostering faith, while eliminating as much needless risk as possible. 

Sixth, we have a Training Environment.  Regretfully, most of the church planting training available today is underwhelming.  The majority of planters survive by trial and error.  We offer some seminar training pieces and we send planters to conferences, but our primary training method is to send our trainers on site to work with the planter and the church plant team. 

The seventh structure is a Coaching System.  “For waging war you need guidance and for victory many advisers.”—Proverbs 24:6  We want to provide on-going, easily-accessible advise, counsel and encouragement for the church planters we deploy.  So, we’ve assembled a team of trained leaders experienced in church planting to walk with every church planter.   The church planter gets to pick a coach from a number of highly successful planters and coaches.

In addition, we’ll be establishing an eighth structure: a Caring Environment. Most church planters feel at least somewhat abandoned. That is because they usually are abandoned. Typically, church planters are recruited, wined, dined and then dropped--behind enemy lines. If things don’t go well the sending agency begins by beating up the church planter. If it goes worse all knowledge and involvement in the project is categorically denied by anyone who did any of the sending.

If things go well, the planter is often pushed aside while the glory is scooped up by the agency, which claims, “This was really all our idea!”

These feelings of being neglected and discarded can actually feel deeper for the church planter’s spouse—and family.

Church planters are on the front lines, the cutting edge of ministry. Let’s care for them and treat them with honor (1 Timothy 5:17).

Our primary caring structure consists of Connection Events where we bring planters together for prayer, training and connecting. 

Number nine is the Creativity Environment.

It’s a new day for ministry, isn’t it?  New paradigms are surfacing.   

We’re not here to force our favorite model on everyone, we just want to support healthy leaders and churches. Jesus talked about “new wine.” He was saying that innovation is necessary. If we insist on staying old and crusty and stuck in our ruts: “the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.”—Matthew 9:17

And tenth, we promote a Partnering Environment.

Some churches are ready to parent. Some aren’t convinced they are even ready to baby-sit for half an hour. But everyone can do something in God’s church planting movement. We offer a wide range of options for involvement—from giving a hundred people and a hundred grand, to paying for that babysitter so the church planting couple can have some time to themselves.

This partnering piece also involves inviting leaders and team members to get involved in establishing and running these systems. We’re always looking for help in the spiritual, funding, recruiting, assessing, risk-management, training, coaching, caring, creativity, and partnering systems.  Finally, partnering involves teaming up with other networks, churches and denominations to support leaders and start impactful churches.