in Christ: Andrew Fountain's blog

One of the greatest blessings of the recent Newfrontiers Canada leadership conference was getting a chance to meet John Lanferman, the leader of Newfrontiers USA. I was particularly interested to talk with him about church planting, since he has planted 28 churches already in his lifetime and plans on planting a Newfrontiers church in each of the 100 largest cities of the USA. I was not the only one—gathered around him at his lunch table were Joe Crummey (The Meeting Place, Frederickton), Ian Jukes (Harbor Christian Church, New Hampshire), Dave Adkins (King's Family, Oakville), and myself from Newlife Church, Toronto.

John began by telling us that before a church plant "goes public", there are five areas that need to be covered:

Newfrontiers Leadership Conference 2006 - Training Track 7-1

This session was fun to listen to. Some marriage seminars seem designed to motivate by inducing guilty feelings and end up with a “to-do list” for married couples. These two couples obviously have a lot of fun which comes across as you listen to them. It is much more effective to model how much fun a good marriage can be and to lead by example than to try to motivate by negative talk.