Planting and Growing a Traditional Church with Adam Hamilton
Planting and Growing an Excellent Traditional Church: Dream Big
To be Used in Conjunction with Video Interview
Adam Hamilton, Pastor, Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas
The key to this session is to experience the clear, intentional, and methodical the leadership of Adam Hamilton.
Adam started Church of the Resurrection in a funeral home chapel with four people in 1990. Today, (2004) the church has grown over 10,000 making it the fastest growing United Methodist Church in the U.S.
Adam did his homework and researched the area to find the exact match between the church style and the people in the area. Adam had clarity about reaching non-religious people. The goal was to provide dynamic, spirit-filled traditional worship. Choose worship style due to the fact that most of the other new churches in the area were using the Willow Creek non-traditional worship. Later, after the interview he told me that if he had started the church on the other side of town he would have begun with country type of worship.
Notice that they do numerous surveys and know their constituency well. The go well out of their way to reach non-traditional, non-religious people.
Lessons: Leaders strategically target their audience and try to be indigenous to them.
What Makes Church of the Resurrection different from most traditional churches?
1. Whatever you do is done very well and with passion and excitement
2. What they do is indigenous to that community
3. His preaching starts where the people are not where they want them to be. Felt needs are addressed in this boomer church.
4. Notice the flexibility: Video screens have been added recently because they believe that people learn in a multi-sensory way. They intend to integrate multi-sensory with the traditional style of worship.
5. Adam intentionally focuses on some things and lets the rest of the staff and laity focus on everything else. He focuses on preaching, vision casting, fund raising, and strategic planning.
Lessons: Leaders focus on the main things and release all of the rest to talented others. Staffing becomes the Key issue in churches growing rapidly and over 200 in worship.
What impression did you get about Adams’s staff?
Did you like his example of how the corporate world leader had to grow with the growth of the company and the same is true with the church and pastor.
Adam’s one piece of advice: “Dream Big” if God is behind it and you are in a place with any potential, big things can happen!
Adam feels that participation is more important than membership. He thinks they have a low threshold for membership. They have four expectations of all members – attend worship, grow in their faith, give of their time at least once a year, give in proportion to their income. Don’t join until you can fulfill these expectations.
Do you think they have low standards for membership? When asked the one thing he would do over, Adam said he would have bought more land up front. They only bought 21 acres of land at first. They did not dream big enough. They have since bought land several times.