Scott Whitaker

We're podcasting now. We still have some gliches we're working through. We're trying to get it down to 1mb per minute. Got any suggestions? We're recording at 16bit 44100hz.
Here's the feed to subscribe with iTunes http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=257351589 Or you can download it through our website at http://www.stonepointchurch.com/podcasts/podcasts.php.

Tadd Grandstaff has a great post about StonePoint on his blog here. Thanks for the shout out! We have a great team of staff and volunteers that works hard every weekend!
Tadd is probably one of the most well travelled church planters. He's visited more church plants than anyone I know. Tadd saying what he did makes me proud of my staff and volunteers! They're awesome!
Tadd also posted some pics of StonePoint here.

Today was an awesome day:

1. I got to take my first Sunday off since we launched! Man I needed it.
2. Tadd Grandstaff knocked it out of the park today. It was great having him and his staff with us.
3. StonePoint threw a "Baby Shower" for Tadd's church (Pine Ridge). I couldn't be more proud of our people. I'm sure Tadd will be posting some pics soon.
4. It was great to give back to another new church what was done to us!
5. Our band rocks! Today they did "Meant to Live" by Switchfoot and we opened with "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters.
6. I'm taking three Sundays off this summer.

By the way, every church planter should ask a church to throw a Baby Shower for them. StonePoint was given two showers and they totally provided for our nursery and preschool ministries. All you have to do is register at Target or Wal-Mart like you would for a normal Baby Shower. Go here and buy Pine Ridge a gift from their registry! (It looks like they didn't receive much, that's because not everything was marked off the registry.)

If you haven't seen it yet, you need to check out Ed Young's Video Blog. And before you go thinking it's your typical, creative, high energy, Ed Young alliterating video check it out.
It's raw, unplugged and authentic.

After I restructured I restaffed around our structure. My staff looks like this:

Executive Assistant: someone to take some miscellaneous projects off me. She also takes care of everything "Front of House." Someone to call and say "will you do this?" Her name is Lori and she's doing an awesome job! She was baptized in December and is sold out on this vision for StonePoint. She's part time and paid like a coordinator.

Office Manager: this coordinator takes care of "Back Stage" items. Christa has been with us from the beginning. She started out as a launch team member and joined our staff. Another person who just gets the vision!

Worship Coordinator: we've moved away from having a Worship Pastor and onto a Coordinator. Jon takes care of everything "On Stage." We have a phenomenal band that leads us in worship every weekend. We figured we would play to our strengths and let the band lead and have someone take care of everything on stage. Essentially, everything in our worhsip theater belongs to Jon.

Elementary Coordinator: from the beginning we've had Josh who has led our Elementary kids. This guy loves kids and kids love his theater! It could be a long time before we hire a full time staff member for our kids. This guy is doing great!

Preschool Coordinator: Betsy was one of my students when I did Youth Ministry. Just the other day we were talking and she said the best decision she ever made was to come to work at StonePoint. Makes me proud. She's doing great. She's a college student who works her butt off and has yet to turn in a receipt for the preschool ministry. She doesn't get paid much so we make sure that she gets lots of home cooked meals!

There are four staff levels at StonePoint:
Volunteer: unpaid staff member
Coordinator: paid volunteer. Paid because we want to hold them to a higher level of accountability and they have a different level of decision making. Expected 10-15 hours a week.
Part Time: it's just that, part time work and part time pay. Expected 15-30 hours a week.
Full Time: 40-60 hours a week

Currently we have on average 40 volunteer positions a weekend. We have 5 coordinators (although many of them give way more than 15 hours) and one full timer. One of our next moves is to move some of our coordinators to part time. I've found that we are getting just as much done through many people instead of having fewer people do more. Plus it helps the budget.

I'm a big believer that some sort of change precedes growth. Not all change leads to growth, but some sort of change must take place for growth to happen. We've recently restructured in order to position ourselves for growth through the summer and fall.

When we started, we were "task based." Essentially, what needs to be done and get somebody to do it. Well, that sort of structure won't sustain growth. So we've recently restructured around two functions: 1) The Weekend Service and 2) Small Groups.

Within the weekend service we have three categories: A) On Stage B) Back Stage C) Front of House.

Within Small Groups we have two categories: A) Home Teams B) Community Groups.

That's IT!

If you're looking for a great way to map out a structure, thoughts or ideas there is a free software called Mindomo. You can save it and create multiple mindmaps.

We've got a great opportunity to get a billboard. Anybody have any experience wtih them. I'm interested in finding out.

We've gone to a new policy of not allowing kids into our adult worship service.


We want every kid to learn about God's love and what it means to have a relationship with Him. We also want every kid to love coming to church. This is based on Matthew 19:14: "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Our adult worship service is a hindrance to kids and we're not drawing kids to Christ.

Most adults, who have attended church as a kid, thought the church was boring and were forced to go. Even now, there are churches where kids won't go because they think it is boring.

We've taken seriously the compliments of parents and kids that we have an awesome kids ministry. We get compliments every weekend. Because of the great comments we experience, we realize we do a disservice to kids by allowing them into the adult worship service. If we allow them in, they won't learn to love God and won't learn to love the church.

We recognize that we're a church for anyone, but not for everyone. If people want to go to some other church where they can take their kids in the service, we encourage it. Let some other church bore their kids, we're not!

I've found that its Christians who want to take their kids in the service, the unchurched just want to know that we have a secure ministry and if they are needed they can be reached during the service. So we approach people on those two levels. We try to help the unchurched gain confidence in us and we try to help Christians realize their obligation to not hinder their kids worship. That's why its called kid's worship and adult worship.

I'm digging our new website. We've been using O2Graphic Design for some time now for our marketing and graphics. Karen and Chris are great! They're still putting the final touches on the site.

I'm blown a way by what God is doing and has already done at StonePoint. We've experienced great growth since we launched. We're almost a year old and a number of people have come to Christ.
We've already partnered with New Community Church and are partnering with Tadd Grandstaff and Pine Ridge Church. Tadd and his staff are coming in and we're going to throw them a baby shower for their children's ministry. We are grateful to two churches for doing this for us. We didn't have to buy a thing for our children's minstry because of it! We're 9 months old and still have diapers from the gifts they bought us. We're excited to partner and do this for another new church!
Check out their gift registry and buy Pine Ridge a gift!

I enjoyed the conference but more than anything else got to hang out with some guys. I think it was the first time we all got to hang out together, all at the same time. We laughed our tails off! Tony McCollum, Bob Franquiz, Tadd Grandstaff & Gary Lamb, you guys rock!
I also got to hang with a guy I grew up with. He launched New Community Church and is doing awesome. It was great to spend some time with him and his staff.
By the way, the conference wasn't bad either.

We finally got an office. I've been in virtual office mode for a while and it was time for us to get an office. We moved in May 1st. It's great. I still hang around the coffee shops to get out in the community. I shared yesterday with StonePointers that we've set up a central command so we can do everything we can to prevent people from going to hell from Coweta County!

...Since I've posted so I'm going to do a number of brief posts.

Thanks to Tony Morgan for the Joost Invite. I've never met Tony, but saw his post on Joost and thought I'd see if I could get an invite and he did. So to continue the giving, I gave Tony McCollum one and will give away three more if you send me an email at swhitakerATstonepointchurch.com.

StonePoint was recently featured in Worship Leader Magazine. Kent Morris did an article on us and how our approach to portable church in a theater. It's a great article and has seven tips on being portable and working with a theater (see page 70.)

We enjoy a great relationship with our movie theater. We are coming to the end of a one year contract and are looking to go to a month to month contract. The local management has told me personally, "We want you guys to stay." We want to stay but we are keeping our options open as God continues to grow His church. From my understanding, only a small percentage of theater churches run over 500 people (not including multi-site churches.)

By the way, if you're looking for equipment Kent Morris equips churches of all sizes. The guy is phenomenal! Drop me an email if you're wanting to contact him.

The servers are down! For the past two days no email and no website. Man I'm ticked!

...who have NEVER heard the Gospel or even been inside of a church in the "Bible belt." I get tired of hearing people talk about the Bible belt as if people as if everyone goes to church. I am fed up with it being called the "Bible belt." Just because there a little churches peppered all across the area doesn't mean people are going. In Coweta County if you counted up every seat in every church, you still wouldn't have enough space to seat 10% of the population (115,000). And given that the large majority of these churches are not filled to capacity I'd say there are a lot of people who don't know Christ!

Here is an email from a lady we just baptized:

I was never brought up on religion, the only thing I did know was Jewish holidays at grandmas house. I never knew anything about Jesus or religion. Especially Jesus being the son of God. My whole life I heard people talking about heaven and hell, I always thought life on earth was your heaven and hell. When I got romantically involved with my husband, I never knew he was brought up in Church and he started to try and explain things to me (like the bible) and answer some questions that I had. I just started going to church the end of last year and I went for a few different reasons. I guess my main reason was for my daughter. I didn't want her to grow up without faith. What I learned is it's a hard life when all you have faith in is yourself (that's a lot of pressure to put on 1 person). I am having a lot of medical issues, so I thought maybe GOD can help me get through it better that I was. Once I started going to StonePoint, I felt different all around. I felt like this was a place I could feel comfortable and I could ask questions and I could grow with. Since coming here, my faith and my curiosity has gotten a lot stronger. I know Jesus Christ is where I want to be and who I want to follow because I know that I will always have good direction and anything I ever need help with is just a prayer away. It's so amazing to me that know matter what I ask help in, I always get it and I have never more been spiritually content. I asked my friends at work if they think god will get sick of listening to me and they said not a chance. That made me feel so good,so happy to always have someone there for me no matter what!

There is absolutely no need to be afraid of talking about money. I try to include a point in every series and do at least one series a year and if possible one message out of another series that is based upon biblical stewardship and people getting out of debt.

The last message of Simple Stress was titled "Not Enough Money." (This was one message based upon stewardship out of a series dealing with stress.) I put forth a tithe challenge to our people. This wasn't a money back type challenge. It was simply a challenge to test God and tithe for 90 days and see what He does in your life.

I even put the challenge out there for anyone who was not a believer to consider taking God at His word and tithe. If we can't trust God with 10% of our income why should we trust Him with our life.

As a result we had 19 people take the tithe challenge and one of them is a guy who doesn't believe. He wrote on his card that he wasn't a believer and was going to take the tithe challenge. Pray for this guy! I believe God is going to radically confront him and he will come to accept Christ.

Church planters need to talk about money. It is a real struggle for people. I had one couple ask if they were suppose to tithe after what was left over from paying their bills or tithe from their actual income. When you're reaching unchurched people they just don't know. People are looking for a way out from their financial stress and God has the solution.

This past weekend is what it's all about. We had our second baptism celebration and baptized 8 people! That puts us up to 24 people since we started last August. That's what its all about!

We also had our first membership class. We intentionally waited a long time to have our first class. Perry Noble has a saying, "We intentionally leave the back door open. One of the descriptions of the church is that its a body and you know what happens when you close the back door of the body." I agree!

I look back at when we started and there were a lot of people who are no longer with us. They were good people, many of them already Christians. We just weren't the church for them. One of our sayings is, "We're a church for anyone, but not for everyone!" They were with us long enough to decide that we weren't the church for them and that's a good thing! I believe had we offered our membership class early on they would've placed their membership with StonePoint and that would've caused problems for both StonePoint and them. We place a high value on people and upon membership at StonePoint. We want people to know clearly what's expected of them.

I finally got around to watching the premiere of October Road. I knew this show was filmed in Newnan. Its got some great shots of the downtown area. Newnan has a rich history. It's known as the "City of Homes" because it was spared during the civil war as Sherman marched through the south burning the cities.

If you're watching the show you'll see some great shots of downtown. But don't let the show fool you. Newnan has grown a great deal but has also kept its historic downtown. There's even an old historic theater now known as Alamo Jack's.

Newnan sits in Coweta County with a population of 110,000 people. The county is set to double in the next 10 years. According to this report, we already hold the title for the longest commute in the nation.

Last night, my wife and I went out to eat. In the middle of dinner, I told her I love Newnan. I look forward to seeing God change this County through StonePoint!

If you haven't heard it yet, here is a podcast with Nelson Searcy and myself on Momentum. Nelson and I discuss this post on Momentum from my blog.
Check out the resources at ChurchLeaderInsights.com. There are a lot of helpful tools. I would highly recommend the Evangelism Seminar, Stewardship Seminar and Assimilation Seminar.

This post on Momentum is a work in progress. I am interested in hearing your stories of how you've "recycled momentum" in your church. Shoot me an email swhitakerATstonepointchuch.com or leave a post for others to hear your story. (All posts are moderated.)

If you're thinking planting a church, you need to go to this conference! Don't plant a church. Launch a church! Nelson Searcy isn't a theorist thinking up ideas on how to start churches. He's a practitioner whose networked with church planters across the nation. He's researched and gathered transferable principles that can help anyone in any context launch a church.

I should know. He's in New York City and I'm in a suburb of Atlanta. Yet, his ideas and principles have helped StonePoint launch into our community.

This conference is FREE! Which is the perfect budget for any church planter.

I'm changing my blog. I've changed the title from "Live Life Forward" to my name. I'm also adding a blog for StonePoint as make the move to add Home Teams. The goal is that StonePointers will be able to go to www.stonepointonline.com and download questions for their Home Teams.

This will continue to be my personal blog. I will continue to share with other church planters and pastors what we experience at StonePoint.