This episode kicks off our study of microchurch.

You might think of microchurches as house churches that meet in places besides homes--basketball courts, automotive garages, food courts, law offices and digital spaces come to mind.

They offer a low-risk (to planters and senders) approach to church multiplication. In some cases, "microchurches" have grown macro to the point of outgrowing and even out multiplying the sending congregations.

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net.

In this session, you'll gain insight into these simple and profound benefits of microchurch planting.

Microchurches can penetrate unreached people groups like skaters, skiers, women's tennis clubs, people who frequent a local bar, and partners in a law firm. The list goes on without end.

These are the pseudo-families in your community. Most won't make it through your doors but you can take the church to them where they live, work and play.

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net.

In this session, we'll examine five things shifting to a microchurch paradigm generates for a local sending congregation:

1. Limited risks to the planting pastor (doesn't need to move or leave job, etc.).

2. Reduced costs to the sending congregation.

3. You know the planters well before sending them).

4. The ability to fly under the radar of government regulations until they reach a certain maturity.

5. Microchurches as missional enterprises generate opportunities to change local people groups from within.

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net

In this session, you get a look at the driver behind church planting in the Hope Chapels and other congregations born of them.

You'll understand a template for what we called "minichurch" during the years when I pastored.

Today, I'd call a minichurch "a microchurch inside a larger congregation. Terminology aside, this is submitted for you as a "jumping off point" toward something that works well in your situation.

Ultimately the model shifts a congregation into a vertically integrated discipling movement--the pulpit connects to the microchurch, which connects to the members, which in turn connects to others who your members encounter in their daily lives.

The ramifications become apparent when you see a church as a vertically integrated organism rather than a gathering of siloed programs (think Apple--they conceptualize, design, build, market and retail as a single stream).

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net.

In this session, you'll find hope amidst the decline of the church in the United States.

The key to victory is not unlike the miracles shown to ancient Israel after departing Egypt. Or that of the early Christ-followers in the teeth of Roman opposition and persecution.

We'll look at lessons brought forward (again) in the movie, The Jesus Revolution.

That spiritual awakening came through ordinary people, like those you lead, as others saw value in them and fanned their small fires into a blaze that shaped our culture.

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net.

Change often breeds conflict.

Don't fight it. Negotiate it!

While conflict appears to be over an immediate issue, it is more often the fear of change itself.

You'll learn these steps to avoid potential potholes:

1. Map potential responses prior to finalizing your vision.

2. Unmask your commitment to change with a metaphor.

3. Provide a projected timeline for change—make haste slowly.

4. Understand the “How will this affect me?” concerns.

5. Address an opponent's concerns privately.

6. Gather and spread any support you glean from opponents.

7. Marginalize underminers and those totally unwilling to move.

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net.

Positive Deviant: An individual or group, who achieves the seemingly intractable while overlooked, or sometimes ostracized, by their community.

Positive Deviance: The art of discovering and implementing the practices of people deviating from accepted norms while achieving your desired results.

Lessons in Positive Deviance include...

• Assumption: Solutions to intractable problems already exist.

• Practicality: Solutions discovered by a minority within a collective.

• Frustration: Innovations get overlooked or resisted by leadership.

• First Step: Ask, “Where is this already working?” Ask without prejudice.

• Observation: You must watch to learn.

• Practice: Observation and imitation lead to better practice, leading to better thinking (a bottom-up approach to problem-solving).

• Difficulty: Outliers can possess a solution to a community problem while not realizing it or while rejecting a top-down system.

You'll find more free courses, a blog and a weekly podcast at ralphmoore.net.