Church Planting in Sweden

To do list for a church planter in Sweden:

• prepare sermon aka “talk” for Sunday
• contact those involved in the “celebration service” or “big gathering” aka Sunday service
• write a weekly devotion for the small groups this week.
• meet with the mother-church’s treasurer and the church plant’s new teasurer to work through the budget
• check emails
• after reading emails: write another to-do-list just for Covenant World Mission (take a survey, write a ministry report, update blog…)
• eat lunch with people in the church plant
• make time for my bride
• make time for my wife and I to prepare for a child who is on his/her way in 5 months
• have a “fika” aka go to a café with a few misc. people connected with the church plant.
• check Facebook (see how people are doing, check the core-groups page and make another to-do-list )
• design a website
• try purchasing domain www.brunnen.se for a few weeks…no contact, pray, then call again..contact!  GREAT!! AWESOME!! needing to pay $10,000 for the domain….NO WAY!
• start looking for a new domain to use…ask for help…wait for thoughts…get good thoughts…process again…
• design business cards
• contact neighboring churches
• work with neighboring churches
• work out at the gym in Brunnsbo (“connecting” and being in the area of the church plant)
• have another lunch with others interested in the church plant (hoping to encourage others to plant churches too)
• do fundraising
• get 100% of fundraising in
• redo budget…need to do more fundraise again
• go to small group and share frustration
• small group gives the challenge: fundraising becomes FUNraising and it all of a sudden everything makes sense
• got to the mother-church to update “the information corner”
• reprint “small group material” for the small groups in the mother church to use…reprinting is needed since the material was used as scratch paper.
• update email list for the newsletter
• Write this months NewsLetter
• print NewsLetter
• Clean/organize “the information corner” area
• Go to a retreat for missionaries
• make another to-do-list to prepare the retreat and make airplane, train, and car travel reservations
• have a staff meeting in the mother-church
• have a leadership meeting with the core-group in the church plant (laugh, laugh, and laugh again but still get things done)
• realize that one has been too busy and needs to pray…add prayer meeting on Wednesday mornings to the list.
• try to redefine or rename DNA-groups, Cell-groups and big gatherings into something that others an actually understand.
• take a prayer walk in Brunnsbo
• make dinner for people in the church-plant
• pay Swedish taxes
• redo family budget because of taxes
• realize one needs to trust God more because of a tighter money situation…end up giving more money to church as a result.
• Bike to the market to get food…the pregnant wife is hungry and I actually like making food.
• answer text messages (make another to-do-list)
• realizing that 90% of the stuff on this list really doesn’t have anothing to do with sharing the Gospel and starting a new church= PRICELESS!