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:

1. Preaching
2. Worship Leader
3. Someone to head up children's ministries
4. An "integrations person" to make sure newcomers get integrated into the life of the church
5. Cell-group leader/organizer

For a church to "go public" without these areas being covered is like a restaurant opening up and offering a full menu, but when people order they are told that most of it will not be actually available for several months. People will never come back!

John went on to tell us some of his ideas for training church planters, and the different ways of going about the process of initiating a plant.

I also enjoyed talking with John later about how he met Terry Virgo and how Newfrontiers USA got started. If you want to find out more about John, here are some links:

• John Lanferman's church in St. Louis, Missouri
• John's listing on New-frontiers.info
• Other references on this site to John Lanferman
• Recent blog posting about John Lanferman by Adrian Warnock
• The place of John Lanferman in the history of Newfrontiers
• John Lanferman - one of the speakers at Together On A Mission
• Pictures of the recent Newfrontiers Canada Leadership Conference
• Review in "The Link" of a conference where John Lanferman was speaking

Audio of John Lanferman

• John Lanferman speaking in February 2007 at the Newfrontiers Canada Leadership Conference
• Free download of John Lanferman speaking at the 2006 Newfrontiers Leadership Conference in Brighton
• Resources by John Lanferman - includes FREE MP3 downloads
• How to download a podcast of messages by John Lanferman and others
• John Lanferman and others speaking at a USA conference