Listen To Our New Plant Jersey Podcast    Episode #1:    What to Look For In A Leader

Matt Murphy and I have been partners in ministry over the last 6+ years. We, both along with Boyd Hannold of Princeton Alliance Church, embarked on a vision to reach New Jersey with the Gospel through church planting.  I led the first Plant, 217church, and Matt is leading the 2nd church plant, Element Church. It is our goal to start with 4 “Hub” church plants that ultimately plant hundreds of NJ contemporary churches. Will you pray with us and for us as we pursue God’s dream for the church in New Jersey? It is our prayer that the Gospel transforms and brings revival through church planting in New Jersey.  We are calling this PLANT JERSEY.

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  Mark 2:17

The Plant Jersey Vision:   “Extending the Gospel in the Garden State through church planting”

Matt and I spend a lot of time talking about what we are learning and then we take our learning from each other back to our churches. It is a benefit to both of us to learn from one another. In our many conversations we came to the conclusion that our church leaders could learn from what each of us have to say. We have done pulpit swaps, co-taught our staff, mentored different leaders at each others churches, and have had combined baptism services. There is a lot of unity between our 2 church plants. We want to see both churches as catalysts for revival. So, we decided to launch a monthly podcast for the leaders of Element Church and 217church.

The Plant Jersey Podcast

This podcast is to communicate leadership principles that we have learned as we have planted in Jersey. New Jersey is a different culture and many ways a culture unto itself. As we looked around, many of the church leadership concepts we have seen are geared toward other cultural contexts and we wanted to give some teachings that will be very relevant to our leaders. Hopefully this podcast will serve to help anyone seeking to Plant in Jersey. We hope that anyone serving Jesus in New Jersey will learn and enter the dialogue with us. If you are currently a church planter or pastor in New Jersey we would love to learn from you as well and possibly have you help us teach our leaders. Ultimately, we want to help anyone with the vision to plant churches in New Jersey. If you are passionate about reaching New Jersey for Jesus let us know so that we can pray with you.

Podcast #1 What To Look For In A Leader 

Click Here to listen  or  itunes users Click Here

The first podcast which you can find on this blog post is called “What to look for in a leader.” As church planters we have so many people ask us about being in leadership at our respective churches.  Identifying leaders is the greatest challenge of growing any endeavor.  We will look at 4 key traits we look for in developing leaders.  People who love Jesus, love people, love the vision, and love self discipline.  As church planters we have to be careful in the early stages of a church plant who we entrust leadership to. We hope this helps as we discuss what we look for in leaders at Element and 217church.

Josh